If I Throw Myself into His Sea - Episode 1.27

Irene Iphraim knew that to Pereian, she was a hateful presence in this palace, even just for breathing.

Begging her first love for shelter was more humiliating than she had imagined. It made her, still living a life at rock bottom unlike the proudly grown Ian, even more insignificant.

The princess of Epin, to whom he had proposed, was still in Epin Castle. However, Irene Iphraim’s claim that she was the princess of Epin was also not a lie.

Pereian, unable to decide which to believe, sheathed his sword and stepped back.

“You can’t be a princess!”

Pereian wanted to deny it, if possible. He wanted to say that Irene Iphraim was not a princess, and immediately lodge a formal protest with Epin about sending a fake, to nullify this marriage.

“Please Pereian, just trust me once.”

Why was she pleading with him so pathetically?

“I won’t be seen anymore.”

Why was she telling him a truth he couldn’t deny?

“I don’t want to go to the mainland. I’ll live quietly in your sea.”

Sipri’s magic had no errors. Then Irene Iphraim was the princess of Epin, and there must be a truth behind Epin that Deltia had not yet discovered.

“Just let me live here. That’s all I need.”

Stupid woman. Is the mainland going to kill you or something? What was she so afraid of that she was begging, trembling? Pereian couldn’t understand why she was acting as if she had experienced a life more terrible than that of a neglected foreign queen.

“…Please.”

“I won’t be conspicuous. I’ll live quietly.” Irene nodded, wiping the blood that had seeped from her mouth with her hand. Whether it was from crying so much, or the aftereffects of bleeding, she staggered.

Pereian caught the queen as she leaned to the side, unable to support herself. He frowned at her pathetically thin body, her wrist easily grasped in one hand. Even as her eyes closed, Irene gave a faint smile, as if grateful for the touch.

Disgusted by the sight, Pereian replied harshly, again and again. Live quietly. Don’t be conspicuous. And along with that, don’t seek my love in this sea.

“…That’s what you should be doing even if I don’t order it.”

The woman’s pupils lost their light. Even as she lost consciousness, she caressed Pereian’s lips with her cold fingertips and said, “Ian, still, your sea is…”

Kind to me. Irene slumped, unable to finish the sentence. Only when one of them finally lost consciousness did the situation subside, and Sipri spat out a question filled with resentment.

“Have you gone mad? Are you trying to kill the queen?”

He grabbed Pereian’s arm and warned, “If you kill your wife after your father, you’re finished too.”

“…I don’t care.”

Pereian irritably shook off Sipri’s hand and headed to the deep-sea palace, leaving the fallen queen behind. Even as he opened the door to his office, the cheap sword was still dragging along, making a terrible noise.

Pereian, having tossed his worn and jagged sword onto the floor of his office, suddenly thought the sword resembled himself.

A life worn and weathered. A future that seemed unlikely to improve. A cheap life.

He had a premonition that he would soon rust away if he continued to live like this, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Yes, if Ruine were by his side, this life would have been different. That child, with so much affection and worry. Where anger passed, melancholy always remained. Even after killing his brothers who had mistreated his father and himself, or even after venting his anger like this, Ruine always came to mind at the end of the ensuing gloom.

Ruine, what should I do?

He became a monarch to avoid losing what was precious, but now nothing remained by his side. Everyone in the underwater palace avoided the monarch who had ascended the throne with a sword.

Looking back, avoidance was a long-standing experience for Pereian. Everyone avoided him as a child because he was the offspring of a lowly concubine, and when he was beaten by his father, they avoided him because his bloodied body was dirty.

“…You were the only one, Ruine, who didn’t avoid me and comforted me.”

And I turned my back on you. I was so desperate for royal power that I made a marriage alliance with a princess from the land. And look, even knowing that woman isn’t the princess I proposed to, all I can do is get angry.

I grew up so pathetic, but where are you, and what are you doing? With his eyes still red, Pereian reached into the safe in his office.

A conch shell, treasured as if it were a jewel, was held in his hand. The conch had been painstakingly pieced back together after being broken, so it was cracked here and there. There were also holes in places where fragments had been lost. Crouching on the sofa in his office, Pereian held the conch shell in his arms. His breathing grew rough, and soon a mournful cry filled the silence. “Ruine, I miss you so much.”

Pereian wept wretchedly, like a lost child.

Without you, my life feels fractured. Without your comfort, without your tender affection, I am living a life of dying, day by day. Heavy breaths poured out incessantly. I’d rather just die like this. Then, in the next life, I’d be born as a child of the land, watching Ruine from afar.

Chewing on his tear-filled breath, Pereian recalled Ruine from his younger days.

It started in the summer of his fourteenth year, around Pereian’s birthday. Born and raised in the palace of Deltia, amidst the vast ocean, Pereian Richard was always lonely. His birth mother was a woman of the land.

Her fall into the sea was not of her own volition, but the first misfortune created by his father’s greed.

His childhood was empty, with not much to recall.

Wherever he was summoned, he was beaten, and even showing tears was not tolerated. From the time his own mother fled to the land, his life was all darkness. His father, the crown prince, and the other royal children were stealing the meaning of life from him.

For a boy living only because he couldn’t die, his fourteenth birthday was a day he wanted to erase. He believed that if there were no birthday, if his mother had never given birth to him, everything would have been quiet.

A life sinking to the bottom of the sea.

When he, the heir of Deltia, unusually manifested powerful magic, the elements that made up his life underwent upheaval. Hiding his magic and seeking darkness to avoid the kicks of his half-brothers as usual, he encountered Sipri. A peer with similar magic.

Sipri’s family was from a lineage that had been the ruler’s right-hand family for generations. His father was the one who had been framed as the main culprit for helping Pereian’s mother escape to the land and was imprisoned in the sea trench.

A family that brought hope to his mother and, at the same time, brought despair to her child. Sipri, who at the time was consumed by the thought of not knowing his father’s fate, was not as affable as he is today.

As instructed by his father, he came to Pereian and conveyed his mother’s words. The last words she left for her son, who had to endure a painful life in the underwater kingdom of Deltia, before leaving for the land. Along with the formal words, he received two conch shells. She had barely collected them in Deltia.

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