Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Three years after the elopement, Adrian Hawthorne and I came to our end.
When he returned to the capital in triumph, his name already carried weight. Everywhere people spoke of him as a rising man, a scholar favored by fortune, someone with a brilliant future ahead of him.
Not long after, word spread that the Hawthorne family was preparing a grand marriage alliance for him.
Someone asked me, half curious and half probing, “Have you and Adrian settled on a wedding date yet?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
The woman sighed, then gave me that look women use when they already know the answer. “Men are all the same. The moment they climb high enough, they forget who helped them get there.”
I said nothing.
By then, everyone who should have understood already understood. Adrian had not appeared, had not written, and had not sent for me. That silence alone was enough to tell me everything.
I had once been the daughter of a respectable household, a proper young lady raised behind quiet walls.
When Adrian smiled at me back then, I had thought fate itself had finally turned to favor me.
Why else would I have believed that a man could place love above everything? Why else would I have followed him so recklessly, convinced that if two people truly loved one another, that would be enough to carry them through anything?
One night, while the whole world slept, he had climbed over the wall and found me. Gripping my hands, he whispered, “I don’t want to be anyone else’s son, and you don’t have to be anyone’s obedient daughter. Come away with me. We’ll leave this place and build a life of our own somewhere far from here.”
I had been moved into a daze. In a single fever of courage, I packed up what little I could carry and ran away with him into the night.
We were too young then. Neither of us understood what it meant to leave the shelter of home. We thought life beyond those walls would be freedom. Instead, it was hardship without end.
The rice we bought was coarse and full of grit. More than once, I picked pebbles from it while tears burned in my eyes.
The cloth we wore was rough, and before long my fingers were rubbed raw with chilblains and cracks from cold and work.
In winter, we wrapped ourselves together at night just to steal a little warmth from each other’s bodies.
Even then, I had told myself it was all worth it. At least he was with me. At least we had not been torn apart.
The young master of a great house had abandoned comfort and family for my sake. He had chosen to endure poverty beside me. I believed that meant his heart was true, that he would never fail me.
So when we eloped, I went without hesitation. I left behind everything.
All those careful lessons drilled into me inside my family home—modesty, caution, obedience, the thousand rules meant to shape a woman’s life—I cast them aside.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Back then I smiled and told myself, If I can eat coarse food with him, if I can suffer with him, if I can spend every last coin for the chance to stay by his side, then surely our love must be stronger than anything.
But in the end, love was still love. It could not fill an empty stomach. It could not buy coal for winter. It could not open the doors of the world.
Once Adrian saw the chance to rise, once fortune finally placed a path beneath his feet, he changed.
That proud, stubborn young man who had once spoken of nothing but us fell silent.
That night, after I had gone to bed, he sat alone for a long time in front of the lamp.
Only later did I realize he had already made his decision then.
After that, his manner toward me grew colder day by day.
He began leaving more often.
And each time he returned, he brought more news from the capital.
They said he had distinguished himself in the imperial civil examinations. They said powerful men had taken notice of him. They said the Hawthorne family, once merely respectable, was now poised to step into an entirely different world.
A future like that was dazzling.
Too dazzling.
At last, one night, he told me the truth. The family had arranged a marriage for him, and he could not refuse.
For several days after that, I felt as if I were walking through a nightmare. I did not want to hear a single word from him. I did not even want to look at his face.
When he tried to explain, I cut him off.
“So after everything, I was only a burden to you. Only an obstacle.”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
But he said it without enough force to make me believe him.
“I gave up everything for you,” I said, my voice shaking. “I left my home, ruined my reputation, and followed you into misery—and now you’re telling me to step aside so you can chase your future?”
What was he trying to prove? That he had no choice? That ambition was stronger than love? That the promises whispered in the dark meant nothing once a grander life was within reach?
He stood there and let me cry.
He stood there and let me break.
I still remember how heavy the air felt in that room, how familiar everything was and yet how strange he had become, like a man wearing Adrian’s face while bowing his head beneath another life.
Only then did I understand.
He truly meant to abandon me.
Outside, snow had begun to fall.
By morning, the world beyond the window was blank and white, cold enough to numb the bones.
Adrian never came back.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The innkeeper was still sweeping snowmelt from the doorway when Adrian came striding in, looking as if he had searched half the town to find me.
He caught sight of me at once.
Then he turned to the innkeeper and said, “The room upstairs—how much does she owe? I’ll settle it.”
I looked up at him and laughed, though there was no warmth in it. “What is this supposed to be? Charity?”
Before this, I had thought he had at least spent every last coin he owned for my sake. Even if he had abandoned me in the end, even if he had chosen glory and a better marriage, I had once believed the hardship we suffered together had been real.
But now?
“Money?” The innkeeper gave a short, awkward laugh.
He had clearly taken Adrian for some wandering madman and said, half-mocking, “What are you pretending for? And what nonsense was that about being some young master from the Hawthorne family? Have you lost your mind?”
Adrian said nothing.
The next moment, he stood up so suddenly his chair scraped harshly across the floor. He grabbed the innkeeper by the collar.
“You can insult me all you like,” he said through clenched teeth, “but don’t insult her. I am Adrian Hawthorne. Believe it or don’t. She is my woman. Apologize to her.”
The innkeeper was stunned.
“Y-you…”
Adrian repeated, each word colder than the last, “Apologize.”
The man still refused.
Adrian drove his fist straight into his face.
Then came a second blow. A third.
“Adrian!” I cried out.
No one could stop him.
Only when the innkeeper could no longer bear it and shouted in panic, “I was wrong! I was wrong, all right? Let go of me—please, let me go! I won’t dare again!” did Adrian finally halt.
His fist stopped in midair.
“Say it again,” he said.
The innkeeper curled on the floor, face swollen, voice shaking. “You are Adrian Hawthorne. You are, you are—”
Only then did Adrian release him.
The innkeeper collapsed in a heap, scrambling backward in terror.
But Adrian’s figure swayed.
I stepped forward almost instinctively. “Adrian, let’s go home.”
At those words, he seemed to go limp all at once and pitched toward me.
I barely managed to catch him. My arms trembled with the weight, and for a moment everything in front of me went black.
And yet he still clung to me with drunken force, his voice rough and broken against my ear.
“How could you… how could you leave me and marry another man?”
He was drunk beyond reason, and still he kept accusing me, over and over, as if I were the one who had wronged him.
I was so angry I nearly laughed.
“You took another wife, and somehow I’m the faithless one?”
My chest ached so badly I could scarcely breathe.
But he went on, stubborn even in his stupor.
“You did it,” he muttered. “You left me first.”