C2

T/L Corner:

“She put herself to sleep, as she always did.” (For this last sentence in the previous chapter, Sorry guys I made a mistake. It wasn’t sleep, but she was calming herself down as she always did. 그녀는 그렇게 늘 그랬듯, 자신을 잠재웠다. So this means, “She calmed herself as she always did.”

잠재웠다: This sentence has two different meaning, Putting someone to sleep/calming oneself which I mistook for.

1. 1. Leader: Merchants’ group head. It would be easier to call him a leader.

1. 1. Mobile: A decorative structure that is suspended so as to turn freely in the air.

***

‘What if I come out of Biflten?’

The relationship might fall apart after midnight.

It was written in the recruitment of brides.

Go back if you don’t like it.

Still, I didn’t intend to return to this mansion.

No one will welcome me anyway.

My father, Viscount Arlene, doesn’t love me enough to accept me, who broke off the engagement and returned home.

I’m sure he’ll kick me out by saying his reputation has been tarnished.

Slam!

The knight shut the door violently, making the room echo.

Looking at the knight’s attitude, it seems like I’ll have to wait a little longer but, releasing a person will be much faster than running around.

Anyway, the first night will happen. The hostess of the Biflten family is already fixed.

You don’t have to be nervous.

Ilyin again calmed her anxious heart.

***

It was dreary dawn as the morning sun had not yet risen properly.

It was the time when only the shadows of people and objects could be seen in the light nearby.

A dozen people moved busily next to the wagon.

There was no light, so they could have bumped into each other or made a little fuss, but they were moving swiftly without a single sound.

In a big wagon, there was mostly rice and fruits that were loaded. They picked the high-quality items and hid the items concerned with packaging under the blanket.

The blanket was painted in green, which meant trust. The pattern of a flying hawk.

[Essid]

What was written next to it was the name of the merchants’ group who distributed these items.

「Hurry up! Let’s depart before the sun rises! 」

The voice of the leader rang around.

Ilyin looked around. One person ran in front of the leader and bowed his head.

「Leader-nim (1), if we leave too early, they might freeze.」 

「If we depart now, we will reach the entrance to the Biflten Territory at precisely 2 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s all right.」

Biflten?

Ilyin watched the leader lift the blanket and check the items. Inside the blanket, there was a thick cotton buffer. They were probably trying to protect food from the cold rather than from collision.

「We’re all ready to depart!」

The leader lifted the last wagon’s blanket among the people at the top, moving in unison.

Ilyin clearly witnessed there.

All of a sudden among the food was a mobile (2), with colorful decorations made of ten different colors of light.

Ilyin opened her eyes.

“Ah…”

Perhaps the dream was hoping that she would quickly reach Biflten.

***

Autumn at the age of seven, my first precognitive dream. 

Ilyin’s younger brother, who fell from the terrace on a snowy day, was still clearly seen in her dream.

‘Sid will …!’ 

As a child, she clung to her parents about what the dream was.

Unlike Viscount Arlene, who treated it as just a dream, Mrs. Arlene herself, who noticed that it was a precognitive dream, was afraid of winter and soon went crazy as the days got colder.

‘Sid dies from falling from the terrace on a snowy day.’

Only those words seemed to be stuck in her head.

Mrs. Arlene had a seizure whenever Sid went near the terrace and prevented him from going out of the room on snowy days.

It was a desperate effort to prevent death somehow.

 ‘No!’ 

Then Sid rolled not on the terrace, but the stairs of the mansion. The exceptionally high emergency stairs on the third floor were the cause of the trouble.

Unfortunately, the edge of the stairs had a huge impact on the tender Sid’s head, and he, who was suffering from anxiety, eventually died on a snowy day.

No matter how desperate she was, the precognitive dream could not be avoided.

“Haven’t you ever had my dream?”

After Sid’s death, Viscount Arlene asked that question whenever he saw Iliyn.

Little Ilyin was afraid of such a father.

Seeing Ilyin shaking her head every time in front of him, Viscount Arlene, who was anxious that he would have an accident in the near future, repeatedly scolded her.

“Crazy B*stard!”

Ilyin’s maternal grandmother, who couldn’t stand it anymore, slapped Viscount Arlene. Since then, instead of prying into Ilyin’s future, he treated her as something terrible.

Looking ahead to the future is a terrible ability.

Ilyin’s maternal grandmother was sick and tired of the curse that had been passed down to the mother line.

The same was true for Ilyin.

When I was young, I wanted to believe that my dream was nothing.  However, even after waking up, the oddly clear dream always came true. It showed the future without fail, and the mobile was always with me in that dream.

The thing that was hanging by her bedside when she was a child.

Looking at the mobile that her mother gave her, Ilyin sometimes thought about her mother before she went crazy.

She was a loving mother.

Until Ilyin foretold Sid’s death.

‘Why did you have such a dream?!’

The resentful voice at Sid’s funeral still seemed to ring in my ears.

‘It’s like the cursed dream of blood…’ 

Ilyin’s maternal grandmother was saddened to see Mrs. Arlene, who had no reason left. She hated the ability to have a precognitive dream.

“My lady. This is Brad. “

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Almost at the same time as I said come in, the door opened with a bang. It was clear that he would have entered even if she hadn’t told him to. It was a family knight for whom she asked to find out about the merchant’s group the other day.

“Good job.”

Words stuck in my mouth popped out.

The Knight left the room without saying a word. The sound of a door slamming, like a week ago, rang loudly in the room.

The list was only three lines long.

Even though this was the capital, it would have taken less than a week to investigate this if he had searched from the merchant’s group of a large scale, setting aside miscellaneous ones. As expected, he didn’t work properly.

[Essid Merchants Group] 

But there was the information she wanted.

She stood up after checking the location of the capital branch of the Essid Merchants group.

It was time to move.

***

“Who are you?”

“Ilyin de Arlene.”

Viscount Arlene had some acquaintances, but few knew how much of the name Ilyin occupied in the family.

The clerk at the merchants’ group of the Essid had a long, easy look on his face.

It was clear that he was weighing if the woman in front of him was impersonating to be an aristocrat.

If you aren’t an aristocrat who is cultured to memorize each family’s genealogy, you may not know my name.

Anyway, my family has no outside activities, and my father has treated me like a nobody.

Ilyin opened her mouth.

“Ilyin de Arlene. Isn’t it enough to be a member of the Arlene family?”

“Then, please wait for a moment.”

The clerk eventually went inside, unable to ignore the aristocrats.

But was it too much to say that I wanted to meet the leader right away?

The clerk, who had been inside for a long time, came out again and said,

“He’ll be back if you wait for half a day,” the clerk replied with an indifferent look on his face.

It was a predictable story.

Are you telling me to wait for half a day knowing where the leader is?

No, in the first place, the words to wait for half a day without giving out a chair were just euphemisms used to refuse the meeting.

If it came out like this, there was only one way.

Ilyin said softly after confirming that there were no more people around.

“I know that there are a lot of goods that will depart north soon.”

The clerk replied with a wry look.

“Of course. Borough is where we usually go.”

The Borough Territory was north, but it was much closer to the capital than the Biflten Territory.

It was closer to the central part of the capital than to the north of the empire.

“A lot farther north than that.”

She added her words in a convincing voice.

“I know there’s a lot of carts loaded with food to go to Biflten. I don’t think Biflten, who is unwilling to interact with the outside world, would have a lot of deals with many merchant groups.”

Ilyin wouldn’t have been able to specify it here if it weren’t for the precognitive dream.

There was no reason why Biflten would be called isolated territory as long as it was easy for a person to find out.

People live in Biflten, too.

However, in a place where you can’t even have something called summer 365 days a year and is much colder than winter in the capital, you can’t possibly grow corps.

So, where do they get the food from?

Do they keep a year’s worth of food in the summer when the weather gets warmer?

That can’t be.

There were many variables in the operation of the territory.

There must be a way to Biflten even in the winter.

Very few people know.

It wasn’t winter now, but the weather was cold enough. Perhaps Biflten is already in hell with a blizzard.

“…please wait a moment.”

In an instant, the serious clerk went back inside.

It looks like I guessed it correctly.

Ilyin was convinced.

“This way.”

The clerk guided Ilyin with a subdued look as if he had become a different person than before.

As I went inward along the curved corridor, a sign with the word ‘Leader’s office’ came out.

The sign was spectacular.

However, the clerk passed by and opened the door of a small room inside.

“Leader-nim, I brought her here.”

“Good work.”

When the clerk went out, the leader smiled and welcomed Ilyin.

“Did you say you were Ilyin de Arlene?”

It was far from the fancy impression that comes to mind when you think of the merchants’ group leader.

The leader who wore a white shirt and comfy pants looked simple.

It’s the same look that I saw in my dream.

“That’s right.”

“It’s a very careful matter, so I want you to understand what we’re talking about,” said the leader with a deep bow.

“We’re not dealing with Biflten.”

That can’t be true.

Ilyin’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“For now, the wagon doesn’t go to Biflten. I’m not a vicious employer enough to send a wagon loader to that stormy land.”

The way he smiled was natural.

“It’s true that large quantities of food are distributed north. But it’s a piece of goods that are scattered across Borough state and the surrounding land. As you know, the north is vast.”

Would I have believed if I hadn’t seen it in my dream?

She might have gone too far. But Ilyin knew the answer.

“If you can’t believe it, would you take a look at the wagon yourself? They’re just getting ready.”

“All right.”

The leader showed Ilyin directly to the place where the wagon was being prepared.

It was the same as I saw in my dream.

It was late afternoon, not early morning, and the wagon was steadily filled with cotton buffers.

As Ilyin looked at the buffer, the leader smiled.

“It’s really needed to get to the North. There aren’t a lot of roads that are good enough for the wagon.”

“I know that, but- “

Ilyin pressed the buffer firmly.

It must have been a bigger wagon than she thought, as her hand went quite deep.

“Even if it’s cool, it’s still hot enough to move fresh items. Everything inside will be damaged if you use so much cotton to walk around Borough,” said Ilyin, who put her hand on the cotton.

The leader softly spoke, “I don’t know how you got interested in our stuff-”

“But.”

Ilyin intercepted the soft words of the leader.

“If you’re going to the winter region, then it’s a different topic.”

A winter region.

It was another name for Biflten.

The place, which maintains the weather winter all year round, was also called the winter region by the people who lived there.

It was also a more definite name than nicknames such as land abandoned by God or land of monsters.

Ilyin took out the letter she had brought.

One was a letter she wrote.

And then overlapped was a bride recruitment letter from the Biflten family.

Ilyin showed the leader a letter stamped with the sentence of the Biflten family.

“If I wanted to be this man’s bride, would you change your mind a little?”