I’m Sorry I’m Not Qualified to Be Empress - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Why didn’t I know back then?

Rosé was going to die. But she wasn’t afraid. In fact, she felt that dying was better than living, because if she died, she could finally see her family.

Just one thing. Something that made her tear up with regret. It was that man, the Emperor Cassiax! The devil who took away her family and her life!

She regretted.

That she had loved this man, who had smiled at her while squeezing her neck.

That she had married him.

That she had failed to protect her family from him.

She regretted meeting and getting married to this man. Hot and heavy resentment built up her neck like lava until she felt like she could not breathe.

**

The past few days, Rosé had become so weak that she couldn’t even grab onto anything. She couldn’t trust the court physicians who dismissed any notions of an illness any longer, so she secretly called in a physician from outside the palace.

“You have become addicted to poison. It seems that you have been taking a very small amount of poison for a long time.”

“Did you just say…poison?”

“…I once had a miscarriage. By any possibility…was it because of this poison?”

“Oh dear…how could such a thing happen to the empress…who could have…” The physician stroked the end of his beard as if it was a pity, declining from saying that the miscarriage and poison were related.

After her father was executed and mother died in prison, she had thought she had miscarried due to shock and grief. But to have found out that she had been poisoned for a long time!

The first person that came Rosé’s mind was Sasha, Cassiax’s mistress, who, shortly after Rosé’s miscarriage, became pregnant. Rosé had a bad feeling that Sasha was always watching her. So she sent away the physician and called for Sasha, who asked to meet at the top of the palace tower, a place with fewer eyes watching.

Perhaps Sasha was afraid that the Empress Rosé would start a false rumor and wanted to protect her privacy. To show her sincerity, Rosé agreed to meeting Sasha in the tower.

Little did she know how the situation would end.

**

Cassiax tightened his grip around Rosé’s neck.

“How dare you touch Sasha? How dare you touch the one who bears my child?”

Huu-uup Ugh.

As she suffocated, Rosé struggled to push his arms away. He released his hands. Freed from his grip, she bent down and let out a rough cough.

“Since Sasha did something you couldn’t do, you should be thankful.”

His green eyes, which usually seemed to reflect shallow seas, had turned black like the deep sea instead. Rosé looked at Sasha, who had collapsed behind Cassiax.

“Sasha, are you okay? Someone hurry, call the physician!”

“I’m fine, but your Majesty’s child…will your child be okay?”

Sasha stroked her round belly with a tearful face.

Somehow, all the women in the vicinity seemed to become more enthusiastic after Cassiax entered the room.

Sasha held her stomach and remained in a collapsed position like she was the weakest person in the world. Her face was pale and she looked as if she were going to collapse at any moment, but the edges of her pretty lips were slightly curved. In Rosé’s eyes, Sasha seemed to be smiling.

“I…didn’t do anything. Sasha fell down on her own.”

When they had met to talk, Rosé had only grabbed Sasha’s shoulder to ask about the long-term poison. But as soon as Cassiax appeared, Sasha screamed as if her stomach had been struck and fainted.

Rosé was surprised as she watched Sasha fall in front of her, thinking her acting was absurd. The maids in this room had all witnessed the situation, but strangely, everyone took Sasha’s side, acting as if they were following a script. Even more ridiculous was that Ella, Rosé’s personal maidservant, sided with Sasha instead of her own mistress.

It was then clear how her food had been poisoned for so long unnoticed.

So Sasha had tricked her again. With my stupidity, it’s no wonder that my family was killed off. 

Exhausted, Rosé staggered. Her legs trembled so much and she felt like she would faint. Whether it was because of the drugs that had spread throughout her body or because of her sense of shame at having been tricked, she felt like all the blood in her body had left, not leaving a single drop behind.

As she stumbled, Cassiax grabbed Rosé’s shoulder and pushed her strongly against the wall.

“Rosé. Please wake up. Don’t test my patience anymore.”

“…Addicted to poison…That’s why I had a miscarriage. I was also told that I can never get pregnant.” Rosé muttered to herself.

When he heard what she said, Cassiax’s eyebrows went up. “What poison. The court physicians take care of you everyday, how could you say that.”

Red flags went up in Rosé’s mind. If she said she addicted to poison, wouldn’t he check to see if it’s true? Instead, he dismissed her words as absurd. She raised her head and looked straight at Cassiax.

“No way…it wasn’t you who poisoned me, was it?…How…how could you.”

Rosé looked at Cassiax as if looking at a monster.

“How could you do that to a girl who was pregnant with your child?”

“Rosé. Please wake up. Are you even being delusional now?”

“You. You are not a person. You’re a devil. I’ll follow you to hell and curse you!” Rosé screamed and shouted at Cassiax like a madwoman.

The resentment and sadness that had accumulated inside her exploded in that moment. Hot tears burst out.

“You’ve seriously gone crazy. Completely insane.” Cassiax looked at her with contempt.

“Do you have any idea why you’re still sitting on the position of empress? Be grateful that a rebel’s daughter like you got to keep your life.”

Dumbfounded and speechless, Rosé let out an empty laugh. Yet the words that followed were even more disturbing and absurd.

“Listen, you can resent me all you want, but you can’t do what you did to Sasha.”

Cassiax looked back at Sasha with an anxious gaze.

“You’re really are too pitiful. You know, you’re on the throne because, you see, the former empress implored me everyday that I treat you well.”

“Ha!”

Laughter popped out of Rosé’s mouth. As her lips twisted in ridicule, Cassiax’s face shifted into an ice-cold expression.

“You’re smiling? Are you laughing at me now?”

“Who ruined and killed my family!” Rosé screamed.

“Are you saying this is because of me?” Cassiax responded

“Then why did you marry me?”

“What?”

“You married me because I’m the daughter of the Etoile family.”

Cassiax clicked his tongue as if what she said was absurd. He pulled up her chin with one hand and repeatedly slapped her head with the other.

“Don’t delude yourself. What would I be missing with family of a lowly merchant with no noble background. How annoying that your father thought he had some property.”

Rosé’s purple eyes looked directly up at him. She now clearly realized why our father, Count Jared Etoile, had been concerned about her marriage to Cassiax. Her father had already anticipated this situation.

“Look at you. Where did the Rosé who was adorable as the flower go? It was worth watching you only when you smiled and acted shy to get my attention.”

Cassiax looked Rosé up and down and shook his head.

The once bright red hair, shiny like a pomegranate, had become brittle. Her smooth, almost-transparent skin, like ripe peach, was gone. Her cheeks, which had been soft like an infant’s, were now dried up and showed jutting cheekbones. Purple eyes that used to twinkle according to the angle of light were now blurry and desolate.

It was hard to believe that such a woman had changed so much during her years in the palace.

Cassiax clicked his tongue and looked at her as if she were pathetic, but Rosé smiled calmly as she said, “Even if you had the same experience as me, you would still be beautiful.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Even if your parents and family were slaughtered terribly, you wouldn’t blink an eye. Not a single hair on you would shake. Because you only possess cold blood without human warmth.”

Cassiax, who was still listening to her, slightly tilted his head. He seemed to be thinking, and answered briefly.

“Is that bad?”

Rosé laughed bitterly with a despairing expression on her face.

Why didn’t I know that he was this kind of a man? When I think back to before we married, I had definitely felt this mean side of his from time to time.

Platinum hair flying in the wind and emerald green eyes smiling charmingly.

A mouth as if painted with a brush, rising at the tips to expose white teeth.

A loving whisper tickling her ear.

Why did you only see these things before you got married? 

Now all of this, all of him, was disgusting and strange. Even his breath that touched her ear felt terribly dirty.

“Divorce me. I’ll go to the monastery.”

Rosé turned away from him.

“There you go again. Who would want to get a divorce.”

She had asked for a divorce a number of times, but she was always ignored like this, the reason for rejection despicable.

Cassiax was afraid that Rosé, who had lost everything, would garner sympathy when she entered the monastery. So instead, he intended to slowly kill her in this imperial palace without mercy.

“Actually, there’s a simpler method. To cut off this nasty relationship.”

As Cassiax whispered in her ear, Rosé stepped back. He walked towards her as he smiled, one side of his mouth twisted up.

She took many steps backwards, away from him, until she felt that couldn’t step back anymore, cornered by Cassiax and with her back against the wall…except, the “wall” felt like air instead.

He had lured her to an open window. It was the largest window in the castle at the top of the building.

“You…”

Rosé craned her neck out the window and looked up at him with bewildered eyes.

He carried an eerily calm gaze. His golden lashes languidly covered his eyes. He whispered small enough for only her to hear.

“What if you jumped down from here? The funeral will be generous. I promise you.”

As soon as he finished talking, he firmly pushed Rosé’s chest.

She instinctively reached out and grabbed his forearm, but he coldly flung her off him.

“Ahh-!”

Her body collapsed into the air before she could even yell. It was at this moment.

“No! Rosé!”

Cassiax extended his arm forward and called out her name, as if she had thrown herself off the tower.

His face carried a painful and agonized expression, and his scream was so horribly real, a level beyond Sasha’s acting.

Rosé thought so while falling: The moment I fall to the ground, my body will burst, shatter, and bloom as far as the water fountain down there.

At that moment, she was sorry to the one who would pick up her mangled body. Though she was not afraid of death, she was sad that she had been deceived by her husband until the end.

The falling moment felt like an eternity.

Sasha, who had originally collapsed, was now looking down at her and covering her mouth with her hand as she stood next to Cassiax. Rosé didn’t know if Sasha was surprised or laughing.

Had she not been involved in marriage with Cassiax.

If she had listened to her father’s advice at that time.

If she hadn’t been deceived by cheap emotions disguised as love.

Foolishly used by her husband, she regretted so much that she felt like her heart was going to burst.

If only…

If only I had been a little bit smarter.