I don’t even know how long it has been since I last opened my eyes.
The white ceiling, the bright lights, and the distinct, sharp smell of antiseptic characteristic of a hospital signaled to me that I was currently in a medical facility.
Only after staring blankly for a long while did the events that transpired before I collapsed begin to piece themselves together in my mind.
And then, my legs, which had been completely drenched in bright red blood, suddenly came to mind. The blood… there had been an immense amount of blood.
It was a terrifying volume of fluid.
It was frightening to think how such an enormous amount of blood could possibly pour out of me.
I carefully reached down and caressed my lower abdomen, touching the place where the child had once resided.
It wasn’t a place that could be felt merely by touching it like this, and I even tried to restrain myself, wondering if I was making an unnecessary fuss over a life that was in a tiny embryonic state, rather than a fully formed fetus.
However, I do not believe I am making an unnecessary fuss at all.
This is an emotion that anyone who has ever carried a child can fully understand.
Without my even realizing it, another living being had slipped into my womb and settled down.
Why on earth did I not notice?
Come to think of it, my lower abdomen had been aching for quite a long time.
Back then, I dismissed the pain as nothing major.
If I had been careful and gotten an examination back then, this never would have happened.
It was a tragedy brought about by my own negligence and ignorance.
The fact that my stomach ached might have been a signal the baby was desperately sending to me.
‘I am right here. I am here, so please notice me, please care for me just a little more…’
It feels as though the child was sending me those signals.
I lived far too recklessly, completely oblivious to the fact that I was harboring a baby inside me.
I was an Omega, and I had even gone through noting with an Alpha, so I should have been much more meticulous and attentive regarding that aspect.
“What should I do? I am truly so, so sorry. I’m sorry for not looking after you. It’s all my fault.”
Clutching my stomach, I quietly repeated the words to myself. Because of my ignorance, things ended up this way.
The pain from being beaten by my grandfather didn’t even register.
The sheer shock of sending the child away right before my eyes was simply too immense.
How could I have let the baby go like that?
The child must have felt every single bit of the trauma inflicted upon my body.
Being kicked and beaten in such a manner, there was no way that tiny life could possibly find the strength to hold on.
I pulled the blanket back over my head, retreated inside, and wept.
I sobbed so intensely that I began to wonder why so many tears were flowing, and whether it was even right for me to cry this hard.
I utterly detested the humans who called themselves imperial royals and nobles.
Just hearing those words filled me with a profound disillusionment and made me sick to my stomach.
Everything they did and everything they thought was entirely contemptible.
In the end, I was thoroughly utilized by everyone.
I was ruthlessly used by Joo Minhyuk, the one person here to whom I had opened my heart the most, and I was treated as a mere tool by the grandfather who shared my bloodline.
Why? Why does everyone treat me this way?
Am I truly a person of so little worth?
I wondered why I was subjected to this kind of treatment.
Am I a person so utterly unworthy of love that there is no meaning to keeping me around unless I can be used for something?
Thinking along those lines made everything feel incredibly sorrowful.
I couldn’t help but wonder why people could never just love me purely for who I am.
My grandfather goes without saying, but Joo Minhyuk, who calculatedly chose to utilize me in that exact situation, is the most horrific of all.
And after doing all that, he has the audacity to shamelessly tell me to trust him?
Good god, to trust him alone?
No. I can no longer trust Joo Minhyuk.
It is permanently impossible for me to return to how things were with a man who treated me as a mere tool.
“I should have just let things follow their natural course. I should have just kept myself alive, connected him to Yeong Hwagung according to the original plan, and left.”
I should have locked down my heart from the very beginning so it wouldn’t waver, and I never should have given my affection to Joo Minhyuk.
Like a complete and utter fool, why did I change my trajectory only to suffer this kind of disaster?
I am such an idiot.
I should have just paired him up with Yeong Hwagung as written in the novel and washed my hands of it.
I could have gone on to live my own life freely, experiencing the kind of existence I never got to enjoy in the past.
Though I didn’t die, this has turned into the absolute worst-case scenario I could have ever imagined.
Because I can no longer bring myself to trust Joo Minhyuk.
I can’t even remember the exact moment I gave my heart to Joo Minhyuk.
It just happened naturally, like water seeping into the dry earth.
Because of that, everything is a source of regret. I regret it a hundred times, a thousand times over.
I felt so incredibly pitiful for the child I failed to protect, and everything surrounding me was utterly desperate.
After a long bout of weeping, I woke up to find it was already afternoon.
These were days of barely getting by on an IV drip, having touched neither breakfast nor lunch.
Then, Joo Minhyuk, whom I hadn’t seen because he was supposedly so busy, walked into the hospital room.
The moment I saw him enter, I pulled the covers up and retreated entirely into the bed.
“Are you awake? Did you eat something today? I wanted to come sooner, but I couldn’t leave the palace unattended. I barely managed to slip away to get here…”
“Nobody asked you to come, so why do you keep showing up? You don’t need to force yourself to find time, so please, just don’t come at all.”
“…If you can’t swallow any food, should I go buy that drink you like? I came by without knowing whether you’d be awake or asleep.”
Despite my cold attitude and open rejection, Joo Minhyuk remained undeterred.
He offered a bright smile, pulled up a chair, and sat right in front of me.
It’s not as if he’s actively torturing me, so why on earth does he keep sticking around here instead of just leaving?
“Since you haven’t fully recovered yet, once you return, I will move your quarters to a much more spacious residence. The Daebin Palace pavilion is far too cramped and suffocating, so this will help change your mood.”
“And why should I do that?”
I fiercely pushed back against Joo Minhyuk’s shameless statement about moving my quarters.
Revealing myself from beneath the blanket, I looked straight at him, my face still heavily marred by unhealed, dark-purple bruises.
Startled by the sight of me, Joo Minhyuk frantically scans my face here and there.
Even that worried look of his appears as nothing more than a superficial act.
“Why on earth should I go back to the palace?”
“You are my concubine and your home is the palace, so where else would you go? Naturally, you belong with me…”
“I am not going to the palace. I will not return with you, Your Majesty.”
Joo Minhyuk’s face stiffened more severely than I had ever seen before.
He wore an expression that looked as if he had braced himself for this.
His jaw muscles locked tight, freezing into a rigid line as if he were clenching his teeth with immense force.
“…Why?”
“Why? I am the descendant of a traitor, after all. My utility value has completely vanished. I will no longer be of any use to Your Majesty. I am telling you this just in case you are under the delusion that there is still something left to exploit.”
Joo Minhyuk stares at me without so much as blinking.
Biting his lip, he lowers his head slightly, locks his eyes with mine, and makes no effort to hide his deep anxiety.
It’s completely useless to look at me like that. That kind of acting won’t work on me anymore.
“I am not utilizing you. You are my Omega. I was ignorant, which caused you to get heavily injured and lose the child, so I believe you simply need time to recover. Do not blame yourself too harshly over the matter with the baby. It was not your fault; the circumstances were simply too cruel, and since we are young, we can easily—”
“Easily? Easily what?! The circumstances were too cruel? You forced me to take those contraceptives for so long—did you really think a baby could endure that? Was I even in a physical state to properly harbor a child?! As if that weren’t enough, I was beaten to a pulp on top of it, so did you honestly think that tiny life could survive?! And you just stood by and watched me get hit. Because of you and your mother, I lost my baby! It is all because of you and your mother!”
Screaming at the absolute top of my lungs, I grabbed the pillow I had been leaning against and began to strike Joo Minhyuk’s face with frantic, crazed force.
Whether he was stunned by my words or shocked by being struck with a pillow, Joo Minhyuk stared at me in total daze, completely frozen, simply taking the blows exactly as I delivered them.
Perhaps because my screaming was loud enough to carry outside, a startled Chief Court Eunuch rushed into the room.
Shocked to find the Emperor being frantically thrashed, he stepped in to restrain me from swinging at Joo Minhyuk.
However, finding absolutely nothing amusing about the spectacle, I bellowed at the Chief Court Eunuch instead.
“Don’t you dare interfere and get the hell out! Leave!”
“G-Gungju Saga…”
“Chief Court Eunuch, wait outside. It is alright.”
Joo Minhyuk brushed his hair back and dismissed the attendant.
Then, picking up my fallen pillow, he placed it back onto the bed and inquired in a trembling voice.
His expression betrayed a rare, profound sense of panic that he couldn’t possibly conceal.
“Haejoo… How on earth did you find out about that… about the contraceptives…”
“How did I find out? Is that what matters right now? I already knew the exact moment you started forcing those drugs on me. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know? Even though I knew you were doing such a vile thing to me, I chose to endure it. Just how much am I supposed to endure? Does the fact that I miscarried the baby actually come as a surprise to you? How laughable. You want to have another baby with me? You would have to be completely out of your mind to utter such words.”
Gasping for breath, I unburdened every single thing I had been harboring deep within my heart.
Yes, I am aware of that much.
I know that Joo Minhyuk’s heart ultimately changed somewhere along the way.
I understand that initially, he had no intention of allowing me to have a child, and that it was a choice he felt forced to make out of fear that my family’s influence would grow far too massive to control.
If that was the case, he should have apologized first.
He should have offered a sincere apology to the child who departed and to me, whom he forced to take contraceptives for such a long duration.
Yet, without a single word of apology, he attempted to gloss over everything far too conveniently, even spouting the absurd nonsense that we could always have another baby.
When my body has been ruined to this extent, a baby?
“You utilized me! Did you ever offer a single apology for that part? Why are you trying to transition back into a normal daily life with that completely unfazed face? How could you?!”
Joo Minhyuk turned me into a piece of bait, dropped me inside a trap, and simply waited for his target.
He waited for that precise, fleeting moment until the target finally bit into me.
Even though he knew the bait would inevitably be chewed up and destroyed, Joo Minhyuk chose to use me in exactly that manner.
My safety, my very life or death, was never that important to him.
Joo Minhyuk was an Emperor, a man capable of doing absolutely anything for the sake of his nation and his imperial throne.
Therefore, I was never his top priority.
As if my life weren’t of any significant value, you actively chose to make that decision, Joo Minhyuk.
Since when did a word like ‘trust’ become something so incredibly cheap?
I have absolutely no desire to remain by the side of a man who treats me with such utter insignificance.
