Chapter 198. Reunion (2)
The air in the reception room hung heavy and still. Even the warm spring sunlight of the afternoon was not enough to melt the cool silence.
Trickle.
Jurgen poured steaming coffee into a teacup. Rather than stepping away to give them space, he chose to sit beside Penelope and quietly drink his coffee.
There was no need to intervene.
Simply the fact that he was there, behind her. That alone would be the greatest support Penelope could have.
Across from Penelope sat Clarisse.
The gaze that had always tilted her chin up and looked down at Penelope. The eyes that had fired words laced with contempt and scorn—they were nowhere to be seen.
There was only a sister with nowhere to look, her gaze falling again and again toward the floor.
She hadn't known it would come to this—meeting again like this, in a relationship like this. Now that they were face to face, there was a heavy, stifling pressure in one corner of her chest, like something that wouldn't digest.
"It couldn't be helped."
After a long silence, Clarisse was the first to speak.
"It was to protect you."
It was a single line that sounded like the excuse of someone who had swallowed pain alone for many long years.
"If you showed talent, if you started to shine even a little—you would have caught Rupert's eye."
Clarisse slowly lifted her head and looked at Penelope.
"You would have become the finest toy for Rupert. If not for me, he would have violated you—slowly, horribly."
Clarisse's voice grew wet.
"That's why I crushed you. I spread the word that you were incompetent, a disgrace to the family, and drove you into a corner."
By this point, Penelope already knew.
The reason Clarisse had chosen to play the villain. That Rupert had in fact been the head of the End Order, and that Clarisse's suppression had been to protect Penelope.
"That part… I'm sorry. I have nothing to say."
Clarisse's confession ended. A heavy silence settled over the room once more.
"So?"
Penelope's voice came low and flat. Clarisse's shoulders flinched.
"What do you want to hear? That I'm grateful you protected me? That I should thank you for clipping my wings?"
"……."
"Don't make me laugh."
Penelope snapped. The tightly knotted lump lodged in her chest burst free.
Penelope remembered.
The days when everyone's mockery and contempt stabbed her in the back. The days when whispers of useless flower clung to her like a tag no matter where she went.
Every single day she had thought of death. If not for Jurgen, she might truly have ended in such a hollow conclusion.
"That isn't love, and it isn't protection. That was just your arrogance, Sister."
"……."
"If we had been sisters. If you had truly cared for me. If you had truly been afraid of Rupert…."
Penelope swallowed her tears and let out a breath that trembled like a sob.
"…You should have told me. We should have run away together, or fought, or found a way."
"……."
"You weren't protecting me. You just didn't trust me."
Penelope had known nothing.
Driven by one single conviction—to be acknowledged by the family, and to reconcile with Clarisse—she had lived on, standing firm.
The moment she realised that all that scorn and contempt, all the reasons she had become the useless flower—had been orchestrated by her own sister Clarisse, Penelope had wanted to give up on everything.
"Can you even imagine how wretched I was because of your self-righteousness…?"
Clarisse could say nothing.
What was there to say?
You were too young back then?I knew no other way?
No—all of it was nothing but self-justification.
This was not a question of whether the method was right or wrong. Clarisse had pressed down on Penelope until she couldn't breathe. The weight of that choice had been borne not by Clarisse alone, but by the younger sister she loved.
"You're right."
Clarisse lowered her head, drained of strength.
"It was my arrogance. I didn't trust you, and in the end I couldn't even do that properly. I gave you wounds that can never be washed away, Penelope."
She rose from her seat. And then, slowly—very slowly—she bent her knees.
"Don't."
Penelope's voice rang out, sharp and clear.
"It's infuriating. Don't do that."
Penelope turned her face away with a scowl. Clarisse froze in an awkward half-crouch.
She hated Clarisse. Hated her with a deep, bone-deep ache.
But she had no desire to watch her sister kneel in such abasement. It wouldn't erase the wounds of all those years anyway.
"Does kneeling make anyone forgive you? I'm going to hate you for the rest of my life. I'll resent you until the day I die."
"…Penelope."
Penelope strode toward Clarisse with broad, deliberate steps. Clarisse calmly closed her eyes. She had thought she might be struck across the face. No—she had thought she deserved to be struck.
But.
"……!"
A warm, enveloping heat came over her.
Penelope threw her arms around Clarisse with all her strength. The difference in their heights meant Penelope ended up burying her face into Clarisse's chest.
"Hk—… hh…"
Penelope's shoulders heaved.
She hated her. Truly hated her with a deep, bone-deep ache.
But at the same time, she didn't hate her. She could not hate this foolish sister who had, however wrongly, tried to protect her younger sister.
Penelope wrapped her arms tight around Clarisse's waist and whispered in a voice thick with tears.
"You've had it hard, Sister."
At those words, the tears Clarisse had been holding back flooded from her eyes all at once. She raised her trembling arms and carefully returned the embrace around her sister's back.
"I'm sorry. Penelope."
It was an afternoon in which two sisters, having wandered a long and winding road, had finally found their way back.
***
After a storm of emotions had swept through and passed.
Penelope wiped the reddened corners of her eyes with the back of her hand and settled back into her seat. Clarisse too dabbed her tears with a handkerchief and smoothed her dishevelled appearance.
"Ahem…."
"Hmm…."
It was, predictably, a little awkward. They had spent so many long years living as less than strangers. Suddenly acting like sisters felt embarrassing too.
Clarisse drew in one deep breath, then produced a document envelope from inside her coat. It was a document stamped with the red seal of the Rosemore family.
"What's this?"
"Take it."
Clarisse slid the documents toward Penelope.
"It's the succession documents for the position of Family Head. My signature is already in place, and…."
Clarisse glanced briefly toward Jurgen and continued.
"Thanks to Hanbin-nim's mediation, the royal consultation has concluded as well. The moment you stamp it, it takes effect immediately."
"What?"
Penelope's eyes went wide.
She looked toward Jurgen, who did nothing more than give a light nod. He had clearly known all along.
Even for Clarisse, handling something like this alone would have been impossible. This was most likely the result of Clarisse—who had been consolidating her footing within the family—throwing her full support behind Penelope and pulling it through.
"I have no right to it."
Clarisse smiled bitterly.
"I couldn't stop Brother's rampage, and I couldn't properly protect even one younger sister. What face would I have to sit in that seat?"
Penelope looked at the documents again.
Words written on stately parchment. A succession agreement bearing the royal seal.
Of course, the events of this affair meant the Rosemore family would stumble. They would already have made great concessions to the Royal Household, and perhaps might even have to cede the position of Overlord of the North to the Marquis Ashford family.
Even so, Rosemore was Rosemore.
This paper was a deed of surety that would bring Penelope wealth and power beyond anything she had ever dared to dream of. The moment Penelope signed, she would become Countess Penelope Rosemore.
And yet. Without a shred of hesitation, Penelope slid it back in front of Clarisse.
"Penelope…?"
Clarisse stared at Penelope with eyes that could not believe what she was seeing.
"Why are you so surprised?"
Beneath that stunned gaze, Penelope bared her teeth in a grin.
"I have Y&P. I built it with my own strength, with my own people."
Clarisse knew well that Penelope had achieved success in business.
But this was not the position of manager at some neighbourhood corner shop. It was the seat at the head of the Rosemore conglomerate.
No matter how the family had been shaken by the chaos Rupert had stirred, it was a seat of honour and power beyond any comparison to Y&P Trading Company.
"So the Countess will be you, Sister."
"I am…."
"And forget comfortably stepping back and lounging around at some splendid resort—don't even dream of it. I'll only feel better once I see you grinding away and struggling through overwork."
It was a harsh thing to say, but the meaning behind it was unmistakable.
Penelope was yielding to Clarisse.
Just as she herself had once been. To a sister who would lose her purpose, lose everything, and fall into powerlessness—
She was creating a reason to fight fiercely and hold on. Clarisse sat there with a blank expression, then let out a hollow laugh.
"You still won't listen to your sister?"
"And whose little sister am I?"
Penelope shrugged her shoulders with an insufferable smirk.
There had been only one choice. No—there had never been any choice to begin with.
"But I have a condition."
Penelope added.
"Unconditional priority rights over all foodstuffs produced in the Demon Realm."
"That goes without saying. Rosemore will be standing behind you now."
"That's not all—hear me out to the end."
Penelope paused for a moment to collect herself, then broke into a grin.
"Every once in a while, you buy me a meal. That much is fine, isn't it?"
"Of course."
Only then could Clarisse smile back in kind. The sisters' negotiation ended with that.
Clarisse rose from her seat.
"I'll need to get moving again. Thanks to you turning down the Family Head position."
She pulled Penelope into a tight embrace one last time, then bowed her head to Jurgen in gratitude, and with that, Clarisse left the estate.
She would now have to undo the royal mediation agreement they had only just managed to conclude, so they likely would not meet again for at least another month.
The two were left alone in the reception room once more. After watching until Clarisse's carriage disappeared beyond the horizon, Penelope sank heavily into the sofa.
"Haaah…."
She had turned away an enormous fortune with her own two feet. Anyone who knew would likely point at her and call her mad.
But the suffocating weight that had pressed down on her chest for so long was gone now. She felt unburdened.
"Was that the right thing to do?"
Penelope lifted her head and looked at Jurgen. Jurgen set down his empty coffee cup and gave a quiet, wry smile.
"For a merchant, your arithmetic is a disaster."
"Maybe it is? Should I go back and ask for it? You'd probably think Countess Penelope sounds more impressive, wouldn't you?"
Whether from Serena's influence or not, Penelope had grown into someone who could toss out a playful joke with some flair. She curled into herself and let out a quiet giggle.
"But to my eyes, it looked rather impressive. Far more so—the representative of Y&P than the Family Head of Rosemore."
Jurgen smiled and reached over to ruffle Penelope's hair.
That was enough for Penelope.
This ordinary, noisy happiness. It was the everyday life she had wanted so desperately to hold on to.