GIF 2

Chapter 2

She had not started this “divorce business” from the beginning. Iris—the second name she had come to acquire.

Inside the rattling carriage, she chewed over how she had come to live this way.

She had originally been “Seo Shin-a,” living in modern-day South Korea.

Finding the carriage with its windows shut tight stifling, Iris opened the carriage window and pushed aside the small curtain.

The wind that blew in as the carriage ran lightly swept through her thin hair.

“A dog’s life…….”

She leaned her head against the carriage window and muttered. Seo Shin-a had married at the age of 28. No, she had been about to marry.

‘I thought the groom running off with his first love on the wedding day was a story that only happened in dramas.’

The murmuring guests, the face flushed bright red, and the despair.

‘Still, whatever. Good thing I dodged that. Who would have known I’d die on the trip I took to shake it all off, dumping all the penalty fees behind me.’

After dying like that and opening her eyes, she had possessed the body of a commoner named “Iris.”

A body that had nothing but a pretty face—a hopeless commoner girl whose debts only grew because of a father addicted to alcohol and gambling.

‘Fuck, life…….’

Her mother had passed away from illness long ago, and the debt had swelled to the point where even a decent noble could not pay it off in one go.

No, was there even a loan shark who would lend money to a gambling-addicted bastard like that?

Did he dig up actual land to sell or something?

Just as she was wondering whether she might really be sold off somewhere later because of her father’s debts, there was, in fact, someone who reached out a hand to her.

‘Gerz Heinrich.’

That would be her first husband.

Thanks to her pretty face, she could get hired anywhere, and she was able to work as a hotel employee with a fairly high salary.

It was Gerz Heinrich who came to that hotel as a customer.

A marquis from an overseas kingdom, he was a little older than her, but with a face that looked younger than his age and good manners—literally, an upper-class man.

<I will wait in the hotel’s rose garden at 3 o’clock. I would be truly grateful if you could spare the time.>

When she first received a napkin with such words written on it, it would be a lie to say her heart did not race. Money was money, but he was, by anyone’s measure, a fine man.

With a fluttering heart, she went out to the rose garden at 3 in the afternoon, continued several meetings with him just like that, and developed into lovers.

‘Still, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to pay off my debts.’

Wouldn’t that make it look as though she had become his lover for money?

And yet, pretending not to know was impossible, since the loan sharks all knew her face and name.

In the end, she hid her debts, worked hard, and lived a life paying off only the interest day by day, but the time she spent with him was, in its own way, happy.

Then one day.

[I want to become not your lover, but your husband.]

When he held out a diamond ring along with a hundred iris flowers, she forgot her own circumstances, drunk on happiness, and accepted.

One year of married life with him—it was not bad. Thanks to his name, she had even made her entrance into high society.

She became not Iris the debtor, but Madame Iris, the wife of a kingdom’s marquis.

She lived with her husband in the townhouse he had bought in the Empire’s capital, and saved and saved the money allotted to her, using it bit by bit to pay off her debts.

Even then, the guilt of holding such a secret was beyond words, but she could not muster the courage to tell him.

‘But what if this happiness breaks?’

Yet that hollow worry lasted exactly one year.

On their wedding anniversary, her married life came to a grand end.

She had made countless preparations to spend their anniversary specially, but her husband had been preparing since early morning to leave for somewhere far away.

[Honey, where are you going?]

[Ah, you’re awake. Iris.]

He smiled gently and kissed her forehead. At that, the strange unease seemed to lift a little.

[If you were going somewhere, you should have told me in advance.]

[Indeed, it is rather sudden, isn’t it.]

He smiled gently and held out an envelope to her.

He held it out with a cheerful face, as if it were an anniversary gift, so she opened the envelope with a pounding heart.

But the first thing she saw upon opening the envelope was.

<Divorce Papers>

[What is……?]

Iris asked with utterly shaken eyes, and her husband, with that same gently smiling face, said.

[I too should end this little game of house and return to my home country. My wife is waiting for me, after all.]

[Your wife?]

[Ah.]

He opened the door to the outside and, with a face shining bright in the morning sunlight, answered cruelly.

[My ‘real’ wife. My real wife, of noble birth—not a commoner like you.]

Eee—

A ringing filled her ears. The shock was so great that she froze in place with an awkward smile, and the man ordered the servants to pack his things.

[I’ve packed enough that you won’t feel slighted, so let us agree not to resent each other. After all, you had plenty to hide from me as well, didn’t you.]

There was much she wanted to say, but her lips only moved soundlessly, and no voice came out. Because his words were true.

She was, in the end, Iris the debtor.

Creak, click.

And so he left the mansion. What remained in her hands were the divorce papers, the mansion deed, and the check deposited at the bank—that is, the alimony.

She looked down at the document envelope with trembling hands. Soon, tears fell—plip, plip—onto the brown envelope.

The empty mansion was filled with wailing screams.

Then someone abruptly cut through her thoughts.

“What are you thinking about so deeply?”

A handsome face that looked dangerous because of a large scar.

“Unlucky thoughts of the past.”

“Why think about things like that.”

“Just, feeling sentimental. There’s not much left now, is there?”

At that time, only malice remained in her. She vowed never to trust men or love again.

She realized it only after being betrayed twice. Twice.

It was around that time that word of her father’s death arrived—it seemed he had also died in the end, drinking and gambling in a corner of some room.

The debt passed to her intact, but since it was a debt she had already been paying off anyway, there would be nothing more to increase besides the interest—that much was a relief.

Not that he had ever been much of a father anyway.

With the alimony he had given her then, she paid off a good portion of the endless debt.

After that, she opened her eyes anew. A way to pay off the debt faster than anything else.

It was not working hard, nor living honestly. It was divorce—more precisely, the alimony one could receive as the innocent spouse.

“Now the only thing left for me is money.”

“The only thing left is debt, you mean.”

“There’s not much left.”

She muttered.

“Now I just need to get married one more time.”

At those words, the red-haired young man closed his mouth.

“Why that expression? You’ll finally collect all of that tiresome debt.”

“Shut up.”

“Jack, I still don’t quite understand you.”

She laughed as if in disbelief. The red-haired young man who was with her, Jack, was a debt collector who had suddenly appeared after her first divorce.

More precisely, he had said he was the son of a debt collector, hadn’t he.

‘I never thought our guild’s biggest debtor would be such a young lady.’

This man, who looked about her age, said he had inherited the business from his father and had come to personally manage her—his largest debtor—in a special way.

‘Do bosses really go around collecting debts themselves, no matter how big the debt is?’

Well, a “boss” here was just a back-alley loan shark, after all.

“So are you going to rest for a while again now?”

“No, I’ve already picked out the next target.”

At that, Jack asked with one eye narrowed.

“Already? Usually people leave some time in between.”

“I’m going after a big catch. Since it’s the last shot.”

“A big catch?”

“Yeah. After this job, I’ll take a generous alimony, pay off my debts, and get out of the country.”

“Out of the country?”

He spoke as if bewildered. He seemed to think something over for a moment, then ran a hand through his hair and asked the next question.

“Anyway, who’s the target?”

Iris smiled, her eyes curving wide.

“Cliff von Parsedes.”

“Cough……!”

He began to cough, as if he had swallowed his breath wrong. Of course he did—that name was.

“The Crown Prince of this Empire.”

And the male lead of the romance-fantasy novel she had possessed into.