[TIDK] 58 – His Feelings

Scarlett shook her head at the remark.

Eventually, she returned to Viktor’s room. Scarlett looked around the bedroom and pointed at the door.

“Where does that lead to?”

“Closet.”

“...and that door?”

“The office. You’re not privy enough for me to let you in there yet.”

She looked around, thinking about how to sleep as far away as possible from the man she’d divorced, but there was no answer except for the sofa.

As Scarlett headed to the sofa, Viktor pulled on her forearm.

“Now you’re being stubborn. Just rest.”

“On the sofa….”

“How can I ask a lady to sleep on the sofa? Haven’t we lived together long enough for me to know that?”

Viktor stated, and took Scarlett to bed. It was fortunate that the bedroom was ridiculously spacious. Viktor was far away, so it didn’t seem like he was in the same room.

Scarlett eventually took off her slippers and sat down on the bed. As she looked above, she saw stars that seemed to pour over the huge window.

“It’s beautiful….”

The stars, which had become less visible in the capital, seemed to have moved to this canyon. It was so full of stars that she wondered if it could be that dense.

She wondered how she slept in the same room with her ex-husband but in the end, she closed her eyes and settled softly into the warm blanket.

Sleep eventually overcame her.

After a while, Viktor, who’d been reading on the sofa, rose and walked over to her.

He took her left hand out of the blanket and checked it with his own eyes. There was still a scar.

“…did it myself.”

He recalled Scarlett’s words.

It was ridiculous to claim that she did not remember, and the wound on her wrist was even more absurd. The lie she did not remember and the wound on her wrist did not connect. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Scarlett’s wrist for a while.

His mother was royal, but his father was not, so he was treated half-heartedly when he visited the royal family with his mother.

His mother made sure the governess instructed him with no room for a single mistake for fear of being blamed by the royals. And when she returned from the imperial palace, she would tell Viktor and someday have the royals who ignored her under her feet.

In childhood, there was always lashes on his body for ‘corrections’. For him, the family was as sticky and persistent as a web.

Scarlett Crimson was in love from the moment she first saw him. All she had was a beautiful face with a youthful sensuality, but she couldn’t give Viktor anything more.

She made it her business to know about what he had done all day; she embraced him first, and even though his bedside manner was not so intimate, she looked at him and fell asleep with his face as the last thing before she closed her eyes. In the morning, she would whisper shyly with her cheeks flushed, “I love you.”

“I open my eyes and am so happy to have you next to me.”

One time, she came next to him as he drank. She sat down and poured herself a glass of wine too, stating she would drink with him because he looked lonely.

Eventually, one sip turned into a few glasses, and she was drunk and couldn’t even walk properly. Thus she went to the bedroom in Viktor’s arms.

She grumbled in his arms.

“I’ve been practising drinking all week, but I haven’t improved. It’s unfair….”

“Why would you do that?”

Scarlett had tried to pry her eyes open, struggling because she was drunk.

“Because you look lonely….”

That was probably the first time he had laughed since he had gotten married. It was ridiculous that she practised drinking, to drink with him. Scarlett’s concept of love was not to take, but to give. That was what Viktor had thought when he looked at her.

She didn’t even bother Viktor. She was happy even if he didn’t do anything. So he thought it would be okay to live like this after getting married because she was always happy. He didn’t have to do anything.

Little by little, he began to fear that she would get tired of him. And that fear gradually became a reality.

For a while, Scarlett was just as usual: participating in meetings here and there, and greeting him cheerfully when he arrived home.

However, one day, she stopped saying that she was happy.

And then she said she was unhappy.

And eventually, came the divorce letter.

Scarlett thought Viktor signed the divorce letter without much thought.

But Viktor knew his wife was unhappy, and being who he was, with his family a mess, he didn’t know how to make Scarlett Dumfelt happy. She was tired of him, he didn’t know how to make her love him again, nor did he know how to make her smile again.

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