Chapter 3: A Faux Slumber

“Hmph.”Evening barely managed to compose herself, biting back a laugh. She knew nothing would displease him more than for her to smirk in such a situation.

She certainly wasn’t prepared to be dragged straight to bed for ‘the deed’. The mere thought of shedding her clothes and getting intimately entangled filled her with such dread that she longed to flee.

Yet, when the man pulling her towards the bed had provocatively asked if she wasn’t already prepared, her heart had inexplicably begun to pound.

How could she not be flustered when such a handsome man whispered such intimate words? It felt as though she had just heard a flirtatious line straight out of a drama, and she had nearly shrieked aloud.

“You wear a puzzling expression,” Erich remarked, turning to Evening who was still making odd noises, his eyes narrowing.

“If you’re trying to play the fool, you’ve made a mistake.”

“That’s… no, it’s not,” Evening stammered, unable to conjure a plausible excuse, and awkwardly shifted the topic.

As Evening was being led away by Erich, her gaze swept across the banquet hall, prompting Margrave Flam to intervene, his discomfort plainly visible.

“It appears you haven’t reached an understanding with my daughter.”

“We’ve already spoken, so there’s no need to worry.”

“My daughter still has many guests to meet. She looks regretful to be leaving the banquet hall.”

Margrave Flam stood squarely in Erich’s path. Erich tried to circumvent him a couple of times, but each attempt proved futile.

“The banquet continues until tomorrow, doesn’t it? She can meet her guests then.”

Erich halted, his face clouding with annoyance, his brow furrowing deeply.

“Don’t be so uncouth as to ruin our wedding night.”

Margrave Flam, biting back a curse that threatened to erupt from his throat, glared with blazing fury.

While a fierce protective instinct for his precious daughter burned within him, it was surpassed by an even more potent surge of hostility towards the Emperor.

He was being publicly rebuked in his own stronghold, the Margraviate, at a banquet attended by his closest kin, and, insultingly, even in his capacity as the Emperor’s prospective father-in-law.

A nobleman, whose very being was woven with pride, could never tolerate such an unjust public affront.

“Even—” Margrave Flam was, by nature, a man of fiery temperament.

Evening, sensing his patience was about to fray completely, hastily linked her arm through Erich’s.

“He’s being considerate because I said I’m tired.”

“Hmph! His Imperial Majesty, you say?” An immediate, disbelieving retort shot back, delivered in a tone remarkably insolent for addressing the Emperor.

The Margrave’s expression suggested he knew he’d made a slip, but it was already too late. Erich, not one to back down, returned his gaze with undisguised displeasure.

Erich’s face betrayed no intention of offering even the slightest apology to his future father-in-law. Evening, seeing this, pressed herself a little closer to him.

“Yes, His Majesty did. He told me to go and rest if I was tired. I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly… May I go and rest?”

If these two were to quarrel here, their long-awaited political marriage would be for naught. It even seemed possible that Erich was deliberately provoking the situation, aiming for precisely that outcome.

She couldn’t allow that to happen.

In a corporate setting, nothing was more detrimental than witnessing superiors squabbling before their subordinates.

While this was neither a company nor were the men before her mere superiors—rather, they were Evening’s father, the original owner of this body, and her future husband—the predicament was remarkably similar.

Every guest at the banquet was keenly attuned to the brewing conflict between the two men.

“If you say so,” the Margrave conceded, his expression still sour, but he finally relented as Evening gave her most convincing performance. “My apologies, Your Majesty.”

“I understand. It’s a sensitive time, sending off a beloved daughter.”

The Emperor, apparently having no intention of causing a scene here, readily accepted the apology, his grip on her arm tightening subtly.

The guests, their faces etched with sympathetic concern, found themselves unable to applaud, merely raising their goblets in a silent, solemn toast.

Erich, utterly oblivious to the lingering awkwardness, held Evening’s arm in a firm, possessive grip.

He surely knew how to link arms properly; therefore, this was a clear declaration of his intent not to release Evening.

“Shall we go, Your Majesty? Please escort me to my room.”

‘Who would be so foolish as to simply flee like that?’ As the second child of the Lee family, a master of social maneuvering, she would never resort to such a clumsy tactic.

Evening offered a subtle smile, a hint of temptation that wasn’t quite overt.

Erich, who had until now behaved as if he meant to devour Evening whole, gazed down at her with an expression that suggested something was troubling him.

His eyes, brimming with suspicion, were intimidating, but there was no turning back now.

“Call me by my name,” he stated stiffly as they left the banquet hall and ascended to the second floor.

“Understood, Erich.”

“Lord Erich, surely,” he corrected. Apparently, he wouldn’t tolerate even informal address.

Well, that was sufficient. She wasn’t actually aiming for the intimacy of true lovers.

Evening gave a casual shrug, then leaned in to whisper intimately into Erich’s ear.

“Lord Erich, would you like to wash up first?”

Erich’s face contorted into a profound frown before the demure-acting Evening, as if he had just heard the most outlandish suggestion.

****

Margrave Flam’s entire household, encompassing his parents, her brother, the wet nurse, the ladies-in-waiting, and even the lowliest maids and gardeners, were unequivocally on Evening’s side.

To be precise, while they didn’t exactly revere Evening, they harbored a profound dislike for the Emperor.

They weren’t the type to do absolutely anything for Evening, but when it came to a choice between Evening and the Emperor, their allegiance would undoubtedly fall with her.

Yet, when it came to the actual wedding night, their reactions were surprisingly subdued.

“It’ll be over quickly, that sort of thing,” was all the lady-in-waiting, who claimed to be her closest confidante, offered in the bathroom just before ‘the deed’.

“How quickly? One minute?”

“Not *that* quickly, I assure you,” the lady-in-waiting replied, shaking her head as if Evening had uttered something utterly preposterous.

“That’s a relief… One minute would be a bit much.”

People often said that even an unsightly face could be forgiven if a man was skilled in the bedroom. If she couldn’t forge any genuine connection with him, then at the very least, his ‘lower half’ ought to be exceptional. That way, her time spent with him wouldn’t be utterly dreadful.

“Anyway, going to bed isn’t that difficult. It’s a bit awkward to show your body, but in such cases, you can just imagine you’re dealing with a doctor or a tailor.”

Their understanding, for the most part, extended only to this degree.

While Evening herself would become embarrassingly enraged and disparage the Emperor when discussing their marriage, the general attitude was that sharing a bed with him was not a matter of great consequence.

Their reasoning wasn’t rooted in the danger of refusing, nor in a wife’s duty to indulge her husband’s desires. Instead, it was an atmosphere where the physical act of intimacy itself simply wasn’t taken seriously.

Unlike modern individuals who, when faced with an unwanted marriage, would primarily worry about forced physical intimacy, these people were most concerned with the changes in reputation and social status that marriage brought.

They worried about the various problems that would arise from being bound to the Emperor, but the discomfort of sharing a bed with a disliked man was not something they seriously considered.

The concept of chastity here was not as strict as during the Joseon Dynasty, but as liberal as contemporary Europe.

It was a society where a desperate cry of ‘I don’t want to be beneath that man’ was regarded as little more than a finicky preference.

In other words, there was no acceptable excuse to escape this situation.

Naïve excuses like ‘I’m not mentally prepared,’ ‘I’m nervous,’ or ‘I want to get to know you better before we make love’ wouldn’t work at all.

Conversely, if she were to glare and demand, ‘How can I sleep with someone I’ve just met?’, she would undoubtedly be hanged for insulting the Emperor.

“……”

So what was she to do? Evening chose a very simple method.

“Hoh.”

“…Cough.”

She would simply postpone the entire discussion until tomorrow.

If she pretended to be asleep while he was washing up, she could smoothly defer the problem until the next day.

“Hmph… Hmph…” Evening murmured what sounded like sleep-talk, trying not to close her eyes too tightly.

Having changed into her negligee, Evening curled up, feigning that she had drifted off to sleep due to tension.

‘She fell asleep.’

He must be bewildered that his fiancée had completely fallen asleep while he was washing up as instructed. Though she couldn’t see him, she somehow imagined he was standing with his arms crossed, shifting his weight onto one leg.

“Evening.”

“……”

“Evening Flam. Are you asleep?”

His voice carried a hint of suspicion. Evening continued to hold her breath, suppressing any human sound.

If she were to even flutter an eyelid and peek at him, she would be caught, so she desperately maintained her pretense of sleep.

She knew quite a bit about this man.

Erich Winb was a tyrant, a villain straight out of a romance fantasy novel.

Though she couldn’t recall the exact circumstances, such handsome and powerful villains were often obsessed with the female protagonist.

Furthermore, his gaze, devoid of any affection, suggested he wasn’t particularly interested in his fiancée’s body.

He must have only brought up a passionate wedding night to provoke the Margrave and the guests.

‘He probably isn’t serious about it.’

It wasn’t as if they absolutely had to consummate the marriage tonight, nor did the partner necessarily have to be Evening herself.

Clinging to this belief, Evening continued to feign sleep, breathing softly, unable to even wipe away the sweat beading on her back, when she felt a sudden change.

“Ugh.”

She was so startled that she inadvertently tensed her eyelids.

His hand had slipped inside her negligee and removed her underwear.

She distinctly felt the sensation of the silk fabric, resembling bloomers, sliding down her legs and catching at her ankles. Erich’s hand unceremoniously lifted her foot, completely removing the undergarment.

The hand, which had been stroking her ankle and ankle bone as if she were porcelain, suddenly lifted the hem of her negligee high.

The thin fabric rose above her chest, fully exposing her pristine naked body. Her slightly crushed breasts and concave stomach rose and fell subtly with each breath.

“Ugh…”

Embarrassing.

Truly embarrassing.

More shameful than showering together or accidentally exposing herself while changing clothes, her thighs involuntarily grew damp.

Though it was the same nakedness, being successively undressed while lying in bed felt thrice as mortifying.

Her thighs trembled, her knees drew together, and her toes curled inward. As her lower abdomen began to clench, an overwhelming urge to cross her legs surged within her.

“Why don’t you wake up before you make your thighs even wetter, you lewd woman?”

“……”

Erich’s words struck her like a dagger.

The unfortunate part was that they struck her in the lower abdomen. She couldn’t tell if she was burning up or in pain.

“Or we can do it like this. I don’t mind. It would be quite a delicacy to have my way with a woman who can’t move a muscle.”

To continue pretending to sleep and be thoroughly taken advantage of, or to open her eyes now.

Evening quickly weighed the two scenarios, then slowly opened her eyes and pulled the negligee back down.

“I’m sorry. I must have been so tired that I fell asleep.”

A snort of derision erupted from Erich, who had seen right through her obvious excuse.

After thoroughly mocking Evening with a nasal sound, he poked her near her collarbone, which the negligee had failed to conceal.

“You play quite a charming little game, both in and out of bed.”

Evening, easily swayed by just a single finger, collapsed back onto the bed.