I Start with a Bad Hand!

He sometimes felt that perhaps he existed solely for this moment. For the moment when that girl, always a mess and broken, was now completely hollowed out. Her profile was half-hidden by her disheveled black hair, but he was sure of it. That shattered face was the beacon of revenge he and his dying bloodline, his deceased family, had been longing for.

‘I waited far too long.’

He fingered the letter in his pocket. For him, everything began with the letters. The strangely burnt-scented letter from that countess and the letter from his father asking someone to look after him.

Those letters, brought with no seal or registry, had somehow become ingrained in him, defining everything about him.

His most enduring memory was of an old relative, crying like a beast. Of all the many days, it was the day he had been found and extracted from some nameless ship’s cargo hold and eventually brought to his kin.

‘What rotten luck.’

He thought, even as a child, that it was pitiful for a grown man to cry like that. And on the day the crying stopped, his relative began talking incessantly about their bloodline, one that could no longer be traced in the Empire. Whether eating, drawing, or smoking until his eyes glazed over with the pungent odor of tobacco, he spoke of their lineage.

Thus, he would say…

“We need to find a child with hair as black as a wolf of the wilderness.”

His sole remaining kin would always murmur to him. That child would be the blueprint of the building they were going to create.

“We need to find a girl with black hair.”

The starting nail driven into the marble.

“Find that damn black-haired girl.”

The first sacrifice to fulfill the duty left in his blood. His one remaining relative, stranded like an isolated island in a foreign land without anyone’s help or support, grew older and more decrepit as time passed. The pride and sanity that barely lingered faded with the deepening rancor. Like a broken music box, his relative would repeatedly utter that same phrase, always about the black-haired girl.

“I found her.”

So perhaps it was for that reason. The black-haired girl he occasionally saw from a distance among the people of Elexion. He wasn’t sure at first since he never got to see her up close. But the moment he saw her face head-on, he grabbed her hand instinctively.

“It’s you, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t supposed to happen. Despite having mulled over her face multiple times, his body and voice reacted before he could stop them. She was different from the colors and demeanor of the ducal family he had observed countless times. However…

‘Is everyone in the Elexion Ducal House fools? She has such a resemblance to her brother, and yet they don’t recognize her.’

While mocking the foolish ducal family, the black-haired girl didn’t seem particularly surprised by his sudden appearance. She merely raised an eyebrow and said,

“…Who are you?”

Her voice was calm, deeper than he expected, and her relaxed demeanor took him aback for a moment.

“I think you have the wrong person.”

That was their first meeting. It was more vivid, slower, more indifferent, and more unpleasant than he had anticipated.

The girl, black as ash, left traces of herself wherever she went. Even in his dormitory, which she must have somehow managed to enter. No matter how much effort she put into it, she couldn’t fool him.

‘Who else but that little rat would leave clothes on my chair?’

He never put his clothes on the chair. He would place them on the bed, the desk, even the floor, but never the chair. It wasn’t always that way for him.

“This practice room’s chair, you know… it’s like a small island.”

“An island?”

That was until the day a girl with eyes like clear water lightly mixed with blue paint said that to him.

The chair in the practice room back then couldn’t support anyone’s back properly, and its hard base made everyone complain about its discomfort. Everyone would rub their backs after long practice sessions, and yet she called it an island. Back then, when she was part of the music club rather than the drama club, she would say such things while gently touching her slightly swollen lips.

“This chair is narrow and uncomfortable… only I can sit on it. If someone else tries, they might endure for a few minutes but eventually, they would give up due to discomfort. So it’s an island. An island where I can only be alone.”

Her lips, which should have been touching a white and delicate instrument rather than fingers, seemed to produce a melody nonetheless. Like the woodwind instrument designed to mimic all existing bird sounds, even her trembling breaths sounded like music.

“So sometimes, when I sit on this chair and play… I feel like I’m floating on the sea.”

“Interesting thought. But wouldn’t that be too lonely? It must feel like being alone in the middle of the vast ocean.”

When he made a dolphin shadow with his hands, a soft, rippling laughter bubbled up.

“But we’re connected, aren’t we? Like this, through the melody… While I’m playing my part, other people’s sounds blend over it, so I’m not entirely alone.”

An island for a chair. He thought it was a silly metaphor, but it didn’t matter to him. No matter how foolish her words might be, the girl who stood before him, unaware of her own false identity, was utterly endearing. A diamond’s value isn’t diminished because it doesn’t speak. Its brilliance alone is enough to justify its worth.

“Don’t you think so?”

Yet, when he saw those eyes, or when her silvery hair, like fine clouds in the sky, brushed against his cheek, he felt a tingling sensation deep inside his chest. He forgot about the long, sleepless nights, the aging relative waiting in a distant country for him to fulfill “that” duty, and the traces of the black-haired girl scattered like burnt ashes across the empire.

So, he often stood quietly with his feet on the chair, trying to become an island like she had described. To be alone, away from his duty and the forced hatred. In those moments, oddly enough, he felt as though his own heart was connected to hers, the girl with eyes the color of blue paint.

‘Irritating….’

Maybe that’s why, at some point, he couldn’t stand that girl anymore. Every time she looked at that black-haired girl, his sighs grew deeper. Every time the girl with the ridiculous name came to mind, Roxanne tilted further. His chest ached whenever her delicate face darkened with shadows.

‘I didn’t plan to go this far….’

Looking at the foolish couple who would take anything offered to them, whether it was a poisoned painting or a suffocatingly painted picture, he thought.

‘I really didn’t plan to go this far.’

He muttered to himself while burning down the street where the wretched girl had even sold her own hair. But if taking the long way around brought the ducal family the pain they deserved, perhaps this method was suitable. It fit his temperament well.

‘But the problem is that girl.’

What was she thinking? Her pale face always bore a faint weariness and aimless indifference, which constantly annoyed him whenever he saw her looking at Degoph. Her dark complexion on top of her unattractive features made it feel like frost had settled over a snowfield. And most importantly, the notion that “her expression is dark” was a common view among those who, like him, were dissatisfied with Degoph.

“You look more tired than usual today.”

“I slept for 13 hours yesterday.”

“Didn’t look like that at all.”

“Agnes, you slept in my room too. Why are you pretending not to know?”

Maybe that’s why. Even when her face sometimes turned completely ashen, it always returned to its usual expression, with that slight frown.

It was after Roxanne’s first summer break that her face became irreversibly damaged.

‘Is she crying?’

When he saw her standing alone in the hallway, crying, he felt a different emotion than he did when he saw Roxanne. Triumph. Exhilaration. A strong pleasure that he had never experienced in any other relationship.

But occasionally, when his mood was utterly crushed beyond recovery, he would watch that ashen face from a distance.

***

So, he had truly been waiting for that moment for a long time.

“Kicked out by her adoptive parents?”

“Why else would she come back to the academy at that time?”

The day he heard the rumor that the girl who had returned to her hometown was back at the academy, not even halfway through the vacation, he hummed a tune.

“They were always together.”

“Even if she’s just a commoner, there’s… that kind of rumor with Degoph.”

“What rumor?”

“It’s a bit inappropriate to talk about here. Haven’t you heard the rumors related to Elexion?”

When he heard the story that the short, scruffy commoner girl who used to stick with her had a loud argument with her in the hallway, he didn’t smoke his usual cigarette that day.

“Hayden, why are you crying?”

“Why are you crying, Dietrich?”

When he saw her face again, it was a mess of tears, and her face was slightly sunburnt and flushed. The girl, who would only appeal to tasteless men, was staring at him with empty, dead eyes and muttering.

“I feel like everything is wrong.”

Her usually rigid posture had slumped, and her eyes, which used to look straight ahead, were now downcast. In that moment, he instinctively knew.

“I want to change something, even if I have to die.”

The moment he had been waiting for was finally here.