HIGOS 01

Chapter 01

[It’s three months at most.]

Baroness Cassia Greze closed her eyes quietly, recalling the physician’s words.

It had been four months since she received the diagnosis of an incurable disease with no known cause. She had managed to eke out one more month of life than expected. During that time, she had done more for the people she would leave behind than in all twenty-seven years of her life combined. It would have been fine to live for herself at the end, though.

But she had no regrets. To leave behind a domain where her son and daughter could live well, even this much wasn’t enough. She could only trust Paul, the butler, who would serve as the master of the estate in the future.

Had there ever been a time in twenty-seven years when I lived for myself?

At seventeen, she had been sold as a kind of trophy to Baron Greze, a war hero branded with the dishonorable title of the emperor’s “dog.” Her father, Count Ruverno, unable to overcome the emperor’s coercion disguised as persuasion, had married off his daughter and said:

[You should have been a little less pretty.]

Beautiful appearance and noble status. She had been praised as the empire’s finest bride candidate, but her end was nothing more than being sold to a commoner mercenary-turned-appointed-noble. Still, up to that point, it was fine. She had dreamed of a happy married life in her own way, stepping into the Greze domain with a fluttering heart.

But there was no heart-pounding married life. Her husband was not the emperor’s dog but everyone’s dog with money. Whether he was a war hero or a mercenary was unclear. From small and large civil wars to national wars to support forces for distant domain battles, he went wherever there was money to be made and never stayed at the castle.

Was it because he had lived in poverty as a commoner and was obsessed with accumulating wealth? Or did he simply enjoy hitting, slashing, and killing people?

Either way, Baron Jester Greze was never a good husband. Even on the rare, very rare occasions he stayed at the castle, their relationship was nothing more and nothing less than a obligatory married couple. Needless to say, during ten years of marriage, there were no expressions of affection like “I like you” or “I love you.” Even for a couple in an arranged marriage, it was a bit too much.

“Ugh, Mo, Mother… Don’t die, don’t die…”

“Mo… Waaah…”

The baroness swallowed her sorrow as she looked at her two children sitting by her bedside, tears and snot streaming down their faces.

The only thing that had allowed her to endure her hellish married life was her children, whom she cherished more than anything.

Her first son Rael, who looked exactly like her husband but had a completely different personality, and her youngest daughter Lucy, who was full of charm and had captured the love of everyone in the castle. They were eight and five years old, respectively. Too young to be left behind.

Everything she had done with the last of her strength before dying was for her children. She had searched for a tutor for Rael and a nursemaid for Lucy, trained the servants to treat the young masters with utmost respect, and even left her husband a will—the first and last—saying, “Please, I beg you, love the children a little.”

“My, my babies… Even without Mother… Ugh!”

“Kyaaa!”

“Mother, Mother!”

A clot of blood burst from the baroness’s mouth as she tried to leave a touching final farewell. Rael and Lucy, with shocked faces, clung to her, tears streaming down.

“Madam… You can’t leave like this…”

“Madam! Don’t speak! Save even a single word! Please!”

Clara, her trusted maid, and Paul, the butler, also shed tears. There were four people watching over the baroness’s final moments. Her cruel husband had not shown his face until the end. He had gone to the Viche barony as a support force for a domain battle a month ago and still had not returned.

If she had told him she was terminally ill, would her husband have forgone the campaign and stayed by her side?

The baroness, who had posed this question to herself, shook her head inwardly. When she had said, “I don’t have long to live,” his reaction was obvious.

‘That’s unfortunate.’

And he would have said:

‘I’ll be joining a domain battle soon. By the time I return, you’ll be dead. Let me say my goodbyes in advance. You’ve worked hard until now.’

Of course, this was her imagination, but it was a quite realistic reaction. Those who knew Baron Greze well might nod and say, “That does sound like him.”

The baroness nodded, thinking that not telling her husband she would soon die was the best thing she had done in her short twenty-seven years of life. She didn’t want to leave with the memory of her already-hated husband’s even more distasteful appearance etched in her mind until the very end.

“Was I a good mother to the children?”

“Motherrrr!”

“Mom! Mom!”

“No, Madam! Of course you were! Where in this world is there another person who cares for her children as much as you do!”

Clara the maid answered while embracing Rael and Lucy.

“Was I a good master to you?”

“I could talk until my mouth hurts, Madam. There’s no other master who memorizes even the names of new chefs in the kitchen but you. There are many who say they won’t stay here after you pass. If it weren’t for your final wishes, I would… Heuk!”

Paul the butler, who had barely been holding back tears, finally wept. He took off his monocle and wiped his eyes, looking terribly awkward.

“To the domain’s people… Was I, ahem, a good, ugh, proxy lord…”

“Aah, Madam! What do you mean proxy lord! You know the domain’s people call you ‘Lord,’ not the master!”

“It was you who ruled the Greze domain, Madam!”

Clara and Paul, finally on their knees, clung to the bed and wailed like children.

“Come to think of it, I… don’t remember ever living for myself…”

“Madaaam…”

“Moootheeeer!”

Even if she hadn’t been happy, it had been a life lived diligently and well in its own way. She had been faithful to the duties given to her. The one regret was that she had never taken care of herself. If she had lived just a little more lazily, selfishly, and badly, she might have been happier.

But life was already racing toward its end. What use were late regrets?

Baroness Cassia Greze, chewing over a life that somehow left only emptiness, decided to humbly accept the death that would soon come. She closed her eyes.

“…Cassia!”

That was when it happened. Suddenly, an unexpected intruder appeared at the baroness’s modest deathbed scene.

“…Master?”

Paul the butler’s eyes widened in surprise.

It was Baron Greze, looking exactly as though he had just returned. His face, still in armor, was covered in dirt and dried bloodstains. He must have heard the news of his wife immediately upon returning and rushed straight over.

The baron’s reaction was a little peculiar. As though his soul had left him, he staggered with dazed eyes and knelt by the baroness’s bedside. He looked like a man deeply shocked by his wife’s death. That couldn’t be.

“Why…”

Everyone could guess what he had swallowed back. He seemed about to demand why she hadn’t told him she had been diagnosed as terminal. But the baron simply swallowed the unfinished words.

“Keuk!”

“Madam!”

The baroness vomited blood once more. Everyone gasped in alarm.

“Madam! The master is here now too, so say everything you couldn’t say until now! You always told me you had so much you wanted to say!”

Clara felt that the baroness’s death was very near. So she wanted to make her final journey at least a little refreshing. She secretly hoped that even if she couldn’t manage much, the baroness would slap her wretched husband’s cheek hard.

“Yes. Do so. Anything.”

The baron muttered with a dazed expression.

“…Anything?”

“Yes.”

“Then…”

The baroness closed her eyes. The tears that had pooled at the corners of her eyes hung there, then plopped down.

“A pearl necklace… I really want to have one…”

“No, why are you asking my permission for that? If you want it, you should just buy it!”

“B, because you, k-kill yourself earning money, how could I, keuk, be extravagent…”

The baroness, who had grown up in a wealthy family without lacking anything, had tried to be frugal, mindful of her husband who seemed hell-bent on hoarding wealth. Even as fashions changed every year, she had only the five dresses and two coats she had had made when she first married. Everyone knew how she had lived as a noble so un-noble-like.

The baron shouted with bloodshot eyes.

“Why is buying a necklace like that extravagance? Damn it, why the hell did I work myself to death earning money in the first place!”

“Keuk!”

“Aaagh! Madam!”

The baroness vomited blood again. Now, just looking at her face, she was no different from an already-dead corpse. Her skin was pale without a trace of color, and her mouth was stained red from repeated vomiting of blood.

“And… I want to visit the capital once…”

“Then go!”

“You’re off to war and, ugh, not here, so how am I, k-kuk, supposed to leave the domain?”

“Ha…”

“And, and there’s more…”

“Tell me.”

“When I, when I die, the new, new mistress…”

“There won’t be one!”

“…If, if you bring one in, you’ll die, you’ll die. Li-live alone forever. You, you bad man…”

She must have had a lot accumulated. The baron was stunned by his wife’s frank and unfamiliar appearance, so different from her usual shy, bowing demeanor.

“You’ll, grant me all of it?”

“Of course. I’ll buy you a hundred of those damn necklaces. The capital too, damn it, I’ll take you. And by the name of Greze, there will be no other wife in my life but you.”

“B-being treated so, so kindly when I’m about to, die is, nice. Th-then grant me this too.”

“Just say it.”

The baroness reached out a corpse-thin arm and pulled a sheet of parchment from the table beside the bed.

She had wanted to thrust it at her husband for a very long time but had held back and held back. Because of her beloved children, because of the domain’s people she had to protect, because of her position as Baroness Greze.

“St-stamp it…”

The baron hurriedly took the parchment she feebly held out and scanned it, his face hardening. It was a divorce document. The worn paper seemed to have been sleeping in the baroness’s drawer for quite a long time.

She must have known that handing it over now was meaningless, yet the baroness forced her eyes wide open as if seeking her husband’s permission.

It was probably an expression of wanting him to understand. That her life, which had never been happy, had all stemmed from her husband—she clearly wanted to let him know, even like this.

“Keoeok…”

“M-Mother!”

The baroness vomited blood once more. Rael, as if sensing something, grabbed her shoulder with alarmed eyes.

“…Mother?”

“M-Madam!”

“Heuk. Madam! If you leave like this!”

“Moootheeeer!”

It was truly a pitiful death. Whether it was because she couldn’t extract the words of permission from her husband’s mouth to the very end, she couldn’t even close her eyes, and so the baroness ended her short twenty-seven-year life.

The baron stared with dry eyes at his wife’s upturned eyes, now devoid of light.

As everyone bowed their heads to the floor and wept, mourning the baroness’s sorrowful death, the baron carefully straightened his knelt knees and stood.

Chiiiiik.

The divorce document in his hand tore lengthwise in one long rip.

Then, in a coldly settled voice, the baron answered his wife’s final request, and as always, turned his back first and left.

“This won’t do.”