Chapter 24: Marriage Blue (4)

“No, what on earth do you mean?”

“Lahan Carlstead is heavily leaning toward extreme republican ideology. And Mildred Aristid wants to become the head of her house to escape an arranged marriage.”

Sena tried to ask what any of that had to do with her, but her voice wouldn’t come out, as if a thorn were stuck in her throat.

No one understood better than Sena herself what a person driven into a corner was capable of doing.

After all, had she not also taken Adrian Blake’s hand out of the sole desire to escape punishment from the Federal Government?

The voice answering him shook slightly.

“So you think my friends are going to use me.”

“You need to know your own worth a little better.”

“That worth is strictly given to Adrian Blake’s wife. Not to me as an individual.”

“Do you really think so?”

Adrian placed his hands behind his back and bent at the waist toward Sena.

She hurriedly stepped back, but the moment she met his gray eyes, she froze in place.

Those persuasive eyes, strangely dark as if shrouded in storm clouds.

Standing in front of those eyes made it strangely difficult to lie.

When Sena hesitated, Adrian asked once more.

“Do you think that you have no value?”

“It’s not that, but…”

Sena turned her head away to avoid his persistent gaze and spoke in a low, cracked voice.

“The war hero and the journalist who used to chase him around. It’s pretty obvious which side people will choose.”

This was on a completely different plane than basic discussions about how all human beings have fundamental rights from birth.

Just moments ago, the reaction of the friends she had known for a long time proved it.

Even while finding this scandal unbelievable, hadn’t they turned into meek little lambs and left the moment Adrian Blake, the idol of the Federation, asked them to leave?

Truth and facts are two different things.

Furthermore, the greater the authority of the messenger, the more weight the message carries.

As a tabloid journalist, Sena knew that fact all too well.

Even so, she had helplessly gotten swept into Adrian Blake’s pace.

Foolishly.

She lamented like a quiet monologue.

“Is it because I wrote all those trashy articles?”

Even if she was suffering to pay for her past karma, wasn’t this a bit too harsh?

While Sena was resenting a God she wasn’t even sure existed, a sharp clack, like the sound of cracking a walnut, rang out.

Her forehead began to throb with pain.

Sena covered her forehead with both hands a beat late, only then realizing that Adrian had just flicked her forehead.

The face of Adrian, which usually carried a hint of a smile, was slightly hardened.

“Sena, that doesn’t sound like you.”

“And signing a marriage contract with you was something like me?”

“That’s not what I mean. Do you truly think the articles you wrote were trash?”

“Whatever I might think, it’s a fact that people call them trash.”

Sena shrugged her shoulders with a smirk.

When Sena praised Adrian Blake, people elevated her as a true journalist.

However, the moment she wrote articles pulling him down, they pointed fingers, calling her blind to money.

She had heard the word ‘trash’ so many times that she was sick of it by now.

‘Honestly, it’s not like they were entirely wrong either.’

Sena truly thought so.

Looking back at it now, holding hands with Adrian Blake didn’t seem all that different from joining the Oscar Tribune.

Because the fact that she had ultimately compromised with reality remained unchanged.

‘No, actually, this might be a better option.’

Sena narrowed her eyes and scanned Adrian.

Without a doubt, Adrian Blake was a far better connection than the Oscar Tribune.

There was no reason she couldn’t accept the conveniences he provided.

She might even be able to reclaim the glory she had before getting on the Special Bureau’s bad side.

If only it weren’t for her aversion to him…

The moment her thoughts reached that point, Sena clapped both of her cheeks loudly.

‘Get a grip, Sena Han.’

She wasn’t in a position to pick and choose what she liked or hated to suit her convenience.

There were more than a few politicians and celebrities who held a grudge against her.

If Adrian hadn’t covered up Sena’s illegal acts in exchange for signing the marriage contract, she would have already stood trial and been dragged off to a political prison camp with extra charges for contempt of high officials.

And then she would have disappeared without a trace.

Sena feigned a bright attitude and lightly patted Adrian’s shoulder.

“Anyway, where is my room? Don’t tell me you’re suggesting we use the same room?”

“Ah.”

Adrian, looking much more relieved at Sena’s smile, gently took her hand.

“Follow me.”

His body temperature felt slightly cold for a human.

The joke that Adrian Blake might be a war weapon developed by the Federation crossed her mind, but Sena shook her head to erase the absurd hypothesis.

Her room was the one at the very end of the second floor.

After bringing Sena to the front of her room, Adrian asked with an subtly expectant look.

“Sena, aren’t you curious where my room is?”

She wasn’t curious at all.

By the looks of it, the room directly across from hers was Adrian’s room.

However, since Sena had completely run out of the social grace required to maintain a smooth conversation with Adrian, she opened the bedroom door in silence.

And then she froze solid.

“This is…”

The moment she opened the door, inside a display cabinet visible directly ahead, was a piece of crystal about the size of an adult man’s forearm.

Neither the rosewood furniture—which must have been painstakingly custom-matched—nor the walls and decorations adorned in her favorite soft blue shade, nor the bookshelf filled with old paper newspapers and books came into view.

Sena dashed toward the display cabinet in a single breath and reached out her hand.

[Joseph Award: Spot News Photography Division] A.U. 323. 04. 21. Selena Han

Naturally, her hand was blocked by the glass of the display cabinet.

Only then did Sena snap out of it and turn around to face Adrian.

“That’s my trophy! Where on earth did you get that?”

Sena’s voice came out shaking miserably like the bleating of a goat.

Adrian asked back with a slightly flustered expression.

“Sena, aren’t you glad to see it?”

Of course she was glad.

How could she hate the symbol of the period when she shone the most brilliantly and was filled with confidence as if she had tasted all the sweetness of life?

However, that object also symbolized Sena’s foolishness when she was young.

Sena scanned the crystal sculpture with deeply sunken eyes.

Her immersion in memories was brief.

She pointed at the crystal piece while shuddering violently, as if a doll she had thrown away in a trash dump had somehow returned home completely intact.

“I clearly sold this to a pawnshop when I was moving, so how did this happen?”

“…”

When an answer didn’t come immediately, Sena glared at him fiercely.

Adrian was standing, leaning obliquely against the doorway.

He didn’t seem particularly inclined to speak, but unable to endure Sena’s stare until the end, he confessed.

“I bought it.”

“My goodness, I’m at a loss for words. So you’ve known me since back then?”

“Actually, the truth is…”

“No, don’t answer. Whether you knew me since I was young or before I was even born, what do I care?”

Sena waved one hand and turned her back on Adrian.

She then looked down at the beautifully sparkling trophy with complex, intertwined eyes.

She was so focused that she didn’t even notice that Adrian, whom she disliked so much, had stepped closer.

He examined her face intently before asking.

“Why do you hate it so much?”

“Because it’s the Joseph Award.”

“But isn’t the Joseph Award like a medal of military merit for a journalist?”

At that ridiculously blunt and intuitive analogy, Sena let out a dry laugh.

Sena, too, knew the value of that award.

The Joseph Award was given every year to freelance journalists or media outlets that captured crucial moments of the Federation.

When she became the youngest recipient of that award, her heart felt like it would burst.

At one point, that crystal sculpture felt like her everything, and she used to polish it with a cloth every night out of pride.

Not anymore.

“Not everyone supports the Federation.”

Sena slid her fingertips against the glass display cabinet.

A faint sigh escaped her lips.

“You, as a hero of the Federation, probably wouldn’t understand.”

Adrian looked down at Sena with a face that was hard to describe in words.

His narrowed eyes seemed to be smiling, while the lowered corners of his eyes seemed sad.

He whispered softly.

“I understand.”

For a single moment, Sena was swept up in the illusion that he understood everything.

Even though there was no way a war hero enjoying all the benefits and glory of the Federation could ever do so.

That peculiar atmosphere was shattered by Adrian’s gesture.

Adrian knocked on the glass of the display cabinet with the back of his hand and asked briskly.

“Shall I remove it then?”

“No, leave it alone.”

“But didn’t you dislike it enough to sell it away?”

If you knew that, you shouldn’t have put it here in the first place.

Sena merely raised the corners of her mouth in a smile at Adrian’s question.

And then she spoke with cold eyes.

“That’s how much I love it, too.”

Love and hatred were originally two sides of the same coin, inseparable from each other.

To Sena, this trophy was exactly that.

Just as she currently despised Adrian Blake, even though she had originally admired and even rooted for him.