ERTHMB Chapter 133

Broken and Crumbled, Worn and Slipping

“Time is truly cruel, isn’t it. I suppose with your advanced age, your hearing has grown quite dull, Mother.”

“Eugene!”

“I can hardly find a reason not to accept Helena’s opinion, and you too should have no reason to oppose it out of tact. It would be best to cancel the birthday banquet altogether.”

“What, what? How can even you treat me this way! No matter how much you deny it, she is a stranger while I am your mother, bound to you by blood!”

Christine burst into fury, shaking the arm that had been seized. Eugene applied even stronger force to his grip, blocking her movement.

“I’m the one who doesn’t understand. Why do you keep trying to find reasons? All that remains for you is to simply accept it.”

Christine gritted her teeth and frowned, but he showed no intention of letting go.

“I told you clearly last time. Never appear before this person again, nor lay a hand on her.”

“……!”

“Must I tell you once more before you understand?”

At Eugene’s ice-cold question, Christine suddenly turned pale and nodded.

“That…! No, no, Eugene. My thinking was short-sighted. I’ll withdraw now.”

Unable to meet Eugene’s eyes, Christine fumbled about. Her retreating steps looked extremely unnatural. Helena watched her with strange eyes.

Whatever words Eugene had spoken to her last time, Christine’s momentum had completely reversed.

Eugene hadn’t yet uttered a single word, but she already wore the expression of someone struggling to endure humiliation. It seemed even worse because it was in front of her.

“I said I made a mistake, Eugene. I’ll depart first, so let’s meet at the hunting grounds.”

Christine shook her arm again, urging him to let go. Then Eugene’s face, which had maintained only one expression throughout, crumbled.

Helena could see the corners of his mouth curl up at an angle. It was a sickeningly familiar expression. Whenever he would cruelly gouge at someone’s wounds, he would smile just like that.

Christine seemed to sense this instinctively, gradually giving up on escaping from Eugene’s grasp.

Having completely stopped her movement, she looked up at Eugene with last vestiges of affection. But Eugene no longer had the luxury to accept such opportunistic sentiment.

Who was it that had raised him to be such a twisted human being in the first place? And yet the very perpetrator undoubtedly regarded it as karma, which made him sick.

She probably had no shame in considering such a ruined situation. Those eyes that didn’t look at others, that mouth that had abandoned even her child, would pathetically spew only what she desired as a mother.

So if she thought of him as her burden, he should become exactly that kind of son, even if it felt unjust.

“This is the last time, so listen well, Mother.”

Eugene finally crushed the windpipe of the prey that had lost its fighting spirit.

“When your knees that knelt so carelessly are broken and broken again until they crumble, and when the fingerprints of your two hands that beg so lightly are worn and worn until they slip away.”

“……Eugene.”

“Only then will I ask Helena, as I said before.”

Christine’s wrist finally fell from Eugene’s grasp. Having lost her support in an instant, Christine gasped and swayed.

Instead of supporting her, Eugene coldly withdrew his gaze. He now fixed both eyes on Helena and moved his lips.

“—Whether she can forgive you.”

Whether she can forgive me.

Helena also looked at Eugene in that moment. She finally saw Eugene Evergale approaching as someone’s husband.

He was saying that he was unquestionably on her side. These were words she could feel in her bones. Now she could believe it.

But she didn’t want to believe anymore. She would rather he remained a person who never changed.

Meanwhile, Christine hurriedly retreated far away like a beast freed from a trap. Sensing movement, Eugene turned his head toward her again. He pursued her weakness to the very end.

“So you choose to flee rather than apologize?”

“Don’t speak such nonsense—what did I do wrong! I only did my best for Evergale! Please come to your senses, you’ll thank me someday too!”

“……You still don’t understand.”

Eugene let out a sneer and then declared sharply.

“So this time, engrave it firmly in your head, Mother. Next time, you’ll have to answer before I even ask. You must show at least that much sincerity if you want me to even pretend to believe your true feelings.”

“You, you…….”

Rubbing her reddened skin, Christine caught her breath. Her heaving shoulders gradually calmed, and she raised her head to face Eugene directly.

Despite the shadow cast by her hat, fierce light blazed from her eyes. It flickered with murderous intent aimed solely at one target.

“You’ll regret this, Eugene. The more you act this way, the more I hate that girl to death.”

Her voice was more ominous than usual. Mixed with the morning air, it was terribly chilling. If this had been Helena before leaving Evergale, her body might have trembled greatly.

With those words, Christine turned sharply and left the hall.

Her stiff back, looking particularly shabby today, quickly disappeared from view. Helena was staring at that figure when Eugene’s touch brought her back to her senses.

Eugene gently grasped beneath Helena’s elbow, making her accept his escort.

When they came outside, a carriage with an elaborate gold border on a black background stood solemnly waiting. This time, Walter, who had been waiting in front of the carriage, extended his hand.

Helena couldn’t immediately accept his escort. It was the first time facing him since she had seen him at Garta’s castle last time, making it somewhat awkward.

She hadn’t expected to return to the estate and face him like this.

‘I won’t stay long.’

Helena swallowed her apologetic feelings and placed her hand on Walter’s. Perhaps sensing the calluses formed from her training, Walter briefly raised his eyelids.

But he soon gently rubbed the calluses and wore a warm smile at the corners of his mouth.

“The world that Madam has seen—will you show it to me someday?”

The wrinkles around his eyes softened gently, and Helena felt the deep warmth of his hand matching that smile. Walter’s hand was firm and warm. Unbelievably warm for someone who had lived alone in a remote house.

If he had been her father, if she had been born as a lord’s daughter.

‘It really would have been nice if that were so.’

Indulging in selfish imagination for a moment, Helena climbed into the carriage. Soon Eugene took his seat on the opposite side, and the door closed with a thud.

Helena turned her head toward the window without looking at Eugene. The faint sunlight penetrating through the half-open window gap felt melancholy.

In the dry atmosphere of the winter morning, the carriage carrying the Grand Duke and Duchess of Evergale began to move.

****

‘You’re really making me like this, Eugene.’

Christine roughly fanned herself and shook her head. The attendant sitting across from her hurriedly opened the window wide to let in fresh air.

The cool breeze that swept through the moving carriage brushed past Christine’s hair ornaments. When the heat still didn’t subside, Christine put even more anger into her fanning before throwing it away.

The attendant, struck in the cheek by the fan handle, swallowed a groan. Christine paid no attention and asked while resting her arm on the window frame.

“What happened with what I had investigated last time?”

“The whereabouts of Viscount Owen’s family……do you mean?”

“Well, was there anything else I assigned you, you fool.”

After being expelled from Grand Bleu, Christine had immediately sought out the Owen family upon hearing that Eugene had found Helena.

However, the Owen family was not at the Hyer estate. They too had completely gone bankrupt and disappeared, unable to handle their snowballing debts.

‘Some merchant suddenly appeared and bought it out. The timing roughly coincided with when that Helena girl left. She put on all sorts of innocent acts on the surface, but she acted quite cunningly, that little one.’

The detailed circumstances could be heard by meeting the Owen family directly. So she needed to place them on the stage she had carefully prepared. Then those already maddened horses would naturally tear apart and devour the wicked witch.

The attendant straightened the crumpled fan and offered it back to Christine while answering.

“After losing their residence, they wandered between their old hometown and the Hyer area, and are currently in the Katan region. Since this information was obtained just two days ago, they should still be staying there.”

Christine’s lips curled up in quiet elation. Katan bordered the Hecate region where Eugene’s magic stone mines were located. The hunting competition was also being held near there. Everything fell perfectly into place.

‘Heaven is helping me.’

Christine tapped her lips with the returned fan, suppressing her smile.

Having erased the wrinkles around her mouth, she then commanded.

“Turn the carriage toward that place immediately.”

“What? Then the hunting competition……”

“I’ll go with those people.”

The attendant removed his hand from his swollen cheek and went to the driver’s seat to inform them that the destination had changed.

The carriage ran continuously for half a day, passing the hunting grounds before stopping in front of a shabby wooden building. Without the signs of life felt from within, one might mistake it for an abandoned building.

Christine frowned as she got out of the carriage. A musty smell filled her nostrils, and instead of a well-maintained garden courtyard or clean marble, rough dirt ground greeted her.

The sensation of her shoe heels hitting that surface was most unpleasant. Christine waved her hand at the attendant.

The attendant, understanding tactfully, moved quickly once again. Fortunately, he was able to bring the Owen family before her before her angry rebuke could fall.

“Your Grace, how are you here in this place……!”

Three people in shabby attire matching the building’s exterior bowed their heads. Christine’s narrowed gaze swept over Viscount Owen, his wife, and their son.

They were truly wretched faces. Faces where poverty had become a way of life and stained them. Meanwhile, that son was supposedly a gambling addict—he looked as if he had left fingers instead of money at the gambling den.

Christine finally raised her gaze from Eric’s bandages to meet the Owen family’s eyes. She felt uncomfortable that the foul air might enter her mouth if she opened her lips.

But if you want to obtain something, there are things you must endure. Also, the enemy of my enemy is my ally.

Christine hung the smile of a most benevolent savior at the corners of her mouth and asked.

“You need money, don’t you?”