SECRET WARDROBE OF DUCHESS

Arman.”

Rubica looked up at the man who was trying to protect her from the falling bombs without caring about his own safety.

“Arman.”

“Please… don’t say anything more.”

She couldn’t feel her body already. She knew the end was near, but she wasn’t sad about her death. Although her life had been dramatic, it had been normal.

“There’s no hope for me.”

“Rubica, no.”

She tried to use what was left of her strength to at least put on a pale smile. If anyone had seen her, they would have felt pain in their heart. Her smile was that sad.

She just tried to memorize Arman’s white hair and kind wrinkled eyes using her fading sight.

“I want to tell you something.”

Arman shook his head, knowing it would be her last words. He didn’t want to hear her last words. He wanted her to believe that she could survive. He couldn’t imagine living without her.

“Ar… man,” Rubica said.

She was already seventy years old and she had been enduring well. She had suffered so much, working at a small abbey in a land razed by the war.

Still, she felt she had led a quite decent life. She had found happiness in healing the wounded and helping the people suffering from the war like herself.

Before the war, she had had no place to go to. Ironically, it gave her a place to stay. However, she still had one regret remaining in her heart. It was that she hadn’t told Arman that she loved him.

He had shown up about a decade ago at Hue’s Abbey where Rubica was staying at. He was another victim of the war. He was blind. However, Rubica had never seen anyone as capable as him. He knew many languages, enough to communicate with everyone at the abbey where people from many countries lived mixed together and knew much more.

Oh, if Rubica hadn’t had his help, she wouldn’t have been able to save and heal so many people.

Moreover, he was so kind to Rubica. When she overworked even a little, he cooked food to help her recover sooner, and he always volunteered to do the hard work. Rubica fell in love with him. However, she couldn’t bring herself to say that out loud.

She was an old woman, withering more and more every day. Her confessing love would have been something to laugh at. She was ashamed of the spring that came to her at an old age. So, she couldn’t tell that to Arman.

Now, she was regretting it when the time to face death had come. Human beings are so foolish, regardless of age. She raised her weak hand to touch Arman’s cheek.

His skin was just as wrinkled as her own. Although he was quite handsome, he was old just like herself.

Why had she fallen for him?

Nevertheless, she enjoyed looking at him more than looking at young and good-looking men. The thought made her smile.

Why had she hesitated? Why had she given up, thinking others would think it was wrong? She had experienced more than enough that life never waited.

“Arman, I…”

“Rubica, I…”

They spoke at the same moment. Rubica’s old heart started beating fast. She wanted to tell him the last remaining feeling to him.

‘Ah…’

But maybe, it was too late. Her fussy sight turned black, and she couldn’t hear the sound of the bombs anymore.

She could only hear a faint buzzing. She wanted to say her last words, but she could no longer move her lips.

‘I am just like him now.’

That’s what she thought when she couldn’t see anymore. Then, she didn’t feel as bad for not being able to see. However, not being able to say to Arman what she had to say for the first and last time made her sad.

And that sadness became a small drop of dew in her eyes.

Soon, she felt something cold on her ******. Then, she felt the sound of warm breathing on her ear, as if someone was whispering to her.

‘Is Arman talking to me?’

Sadly, she couldn’t hear the sound. However, she didn’t want Arman to know that. She wanted her last seconds to look beautiful and happy for Arman, even though she was an old woman.

Even though he couldn’t see…

Rubica felt Arman stroking her face with his hand. When his fingers reached her lips, she smiled as if she had heard everything Arman had said.

Did he notice her smile?

His hand stopped. Then it trembled as if he was holding back the tears. He moved his hand to take her hand tightly and started to pat her shoulder.

You shouldn’t give up yet. You should live. It was as if he was whispering through that gesture. However, despite his efforts, Rubica’s consciousness just went further and further away. Arman’s hand patting her shoulder, his scent, and his breath. They all got smaller and smaller. Eventually, she couldn’t feel anything.

Rubica’s life had been unfortunate and dramatic, but also long enough, happy, and meaningful. Her life was about tocome to an end, leaving just the regret of not telling her beloved that she loved him.

***

Rubica suddenly woke up in front of a mirror. Her eyes were full of tears.

“Hup!”

She checked her reflection and shock appeared on her face.

‘… no wrinkles? No streaks of white hair, it’s just all brown.’

Is this really my face? She touched her face and looked down at her milky-white hands. She still couldn’t get used to it as too much time had passed, but what she was seeing in the mirror was her younger self.

‘What is going on?’

Before she could look around to figure out what was happening, someone knocked on the door and opened it.

“Miss!”

The maid was familiar to Rubica. However, she couldn’t recall her name immediately as it had been fifty years since she lived with her.

“You must prepare for the morning!”

“What?” Rubica asked confusedly.

“Hurry!”

The maid didn’t wait for Rubica. She seized her thin wrist with her own rough and powerful hand and ran down the stairs. Rubica, who had just been in the attic on the second floor, arrived at the dressing room on the first floor in no time.

“Rubica! You’re way too late.”

A little lady sitting in front of a dressing table stomped her feet in anger. She wasn’t acting like a noblewoman at all. Then, the maid handed a comb to Rubica as if it was only natural.

“Angela.” Rubica’s voice shook, but this time, she said the name right away.

How could she ever forget the girl?

Rubica’s mother had died in the year she turned 16. Ever since then, she had been under the protection of her uncle and his wife who had paid her family’s debt. However, that protection was more like exploitation. Angela was Rubica’s uncle’s daughter, her cousin. She didn’t like Rubica calling her by name.

She pouted and turned around while saying, “Comb!”

She spoke as if she was talking to her maid. Rubica’s tears disappeared in no time. Instead, she frowned hard to Angela in the mirror.

‘You shouldn’t speak like that!’

Their gazes met, and Angela looked away instead of yelling again. Rubica sighed. It was so strange. Had she had a bad dream? She hid her complicated feelings and combed Angela’s flowing red hair.

Oh, Angela.

Her red hair always had a pretty glow. It feltquite soft to Rubica’s fingers, she had probably been raised with good food. Rubica had missed that soft texture. She barely stopped something hot coming up her throat and asked, “Which style do you want?”

“Same as yesterday. I liked it. It was pretty.”

Same as yesterday?

Rubica blinked her deep reddish-brown eyes. Then she tried to remember the yesterday Angela meant. However, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t recall the style Angela had worn yesterday.

When she thought of the word yesterday, the memory that came to her mind was…

***

“Rubica, Amanun will strike nearby tomorrow.”

Rubica has just returned after taking care of the patients. Arman gave her warm water and biscuits. She then drank the water and sat down next to her to look at the fishing net he was making. They had planned to go fishing to the lake with the children the next day after finishing the net.

“Would they even strike this abbey, anyway?”

“You see…”

Arman’s hands stopped, and Rubica widened her eyes in surprise. Even during the violent war, no country nor any monster had invaded Hue’s Abbey.

That was why so many refugees had come there, following Hue god’s teaching of ‘Love your foe as if he were your neighbor’. Rubica and Arman had been one of those as well. Arman hesitated for a long time, wondering if he should tell Rubica what he knew, but he eventually started speaking.

“Dragon Iber, that used to sleep, has woken up.”

“Ah.”

“Rubica, I’ve prepared a hideout under the zelkova. If anything happens…”

“Arman.” Rubica took his shaking hand. She thought it was good that he couldn’t see her eyes shaking in fear just like his hand, “If anything happens, save the children first.”

“… Rubica.”

“We’ve lived long enough.”

She wasn’t wrong.

She had lived for seventy years. The children were much younger, so they were more likely to find happiness at the end of this pain. They had to survive.

____________________________________________________________

“Rubica?”

Angela called Rubica who had stopped combing and was in a daze.

“Oh, sorry, sorry. I must be a little tired.”

Angela’s calling brought Rubica to her senses. Thinking about it again, it felt so strange. She was combing Angela’s hair here, without a single wrinkle on her face…

However, the Rubica of the present didn’t even have the luxury of doing nothing and being lost in thoughts. For now, she started to comb Angela’s hair.

‘I cannot remember yesterday’s hairstyle…’

Nevertheless, the moment she touched Angela’s soft hair, her anxiety and confusion melted away. That softness calmed her down.

Oh, when she sometimes thought about her, she would recall Angela’s hair rather than her eyes and nose.

She started combing the hair and sprinkled rose water on it to enhance its softness and elasticity. Soon its scent filled the air.

‘I’m happy.’

Rubica enjoyed working on Angela’s hair. Her hair was fancy top-grade that was worth taking care of. Rubica could even endure her uncle and aunt using her as a housekeeper as long as she could do Angela’s hair.

Her hands started to move busily. Although she couldn’t remember, her hands knew what to do. All the Berners had soft but thick hair. So, the style had to show its richness. Rubica started to use the comb to skillfully pump up the hair and braid it.

“Huh?”

“I think it isn’t yesterday’s…”

“Shhh!”

The maids on both sides were about to point out the style wasn’t yesterday’s, but Angela stopped them. The style was definitely not yesterday’s.

‘… pretty. I like it.’

Angela was once again impressed by Rubica’s skill. She wasn’t just braiding the hair. She was making Angela’s somewhat round face look cuter and more attractive.

Not anyone could do that.

While Angela was satisfied with her new hair, Rubica was going back on her memory as she did her hair.

‘Was it a dream?’

She could still remember every part of it as if it had been only yesterday. The wounded recovering with Rubica’s warm, caring aid, and the priest who insisted they couldn’t forget the god’s teachings in any suffering.

And Arman, who was always there when Rubica looked. She felt pain in her heart at recalling him. She was most certainly standing there, doing Angela’s hair, but that reality felt far away just like a dream. It was so strange that her fingers, doing Angela’s hair, didn’t have any wrinkle.

What had happened? She might have lost her senses while looking at her mirror and had a long trip of daydreaming, but what she had felt was so real.

Arman… Arman… was just dream? No way.

Rubica finished doing Angela’s hair. She then opened the accessory box to give it the final touch. Her head was full of thoughts about Arman and her new reality, so she couldn’t decide on a pin for a long time. No hairpin in the box caught her eyes.

‘They aren’t right.’

In the Kingdom of Seritos, Rubica’s homeland, frugality was a virtue. However, as the Berner Family had been in the trading business for generations, the accessory box was full of hairpins that were way too fancy for Angela’s status.

‘They all look expensive, but they are not for the color of Angela’s hair.’

Then, she spotted a silk ribbon next to the box that was tied around a comb and an iron.

It was pale gold, and it fitted Angela’s hair.

Angela had the lively energy of spring. Silk knots that dance with the breeze would be better than a pin made of cold gem…

When her thought reached that point, her hands moved first. Half in a daze, she made a knot with the ribbon. It was different from the normal knots used to decorate sofas and curtains.

She tied four, five times, made the end dance with the wind, and put it on Angela’s hair using a pin.

“What is this?”

Angela frowned at first to see an unfamiliar knot on her hair. Then, she shook her head from side to side. The gold ribbon started to play hide-and-seek behind her red hair as if it was shy.

“Hmm…”

It was witty and pretty. The gold light that remained after the ribbon moved made her hair look brighter and livelier.

“I think it’s good.”

“Yes, Ms. Angela. It fits you very well.”

“It is so pretty.”

Unlike Angela and her maids, who were in joy, Rubica was shocked to see the knot she had made.

‘That’s…’

***

A sailor without legs who had been recovering at the abbey had taught her how to make that knot. He was from Phanas Island and had made all kinds of knots since he was young. He got his ideas from the knots used to tie furniture and hair. Then, he invented a knot that did nothing but just looked luxurious.

-Oh, Mr. Chris. That is?

-Ah, I used to tie the anchor like this sometimes, just for fun.

The sailor smiled shyly and tried to cover the knot he had made as a pastime. However, Rubica was fascinated by that knot. Her eyes sparkled.

-I want to tie like that, too. Please teach me.

-… but this knot isn’t even strong.

-But it’s pretty.

Pretty. The sailor got a compliment he thought he would never hear. He scratched his face in embarrassment, but he willingly taught Rubica how to tie that knot.

‘That happened when I was… about forty.’

In reality, the Rubica of her present age didn’t know that knot. The maids and Angela didn’t know it, either. They were so impressed, wondering how Rubica had thought of tying silk like that and looked at the ribbon gently moving on Angela’s hair. ‘It isn’t something like a dream you briefly dreamt. It all really happened.’

Rubica’s hands started to shake. The knot on Angela’s head was saying so. However, she didn’t want to admit it. If all that really had happened… everyone in the room…

The girl, poor Angela will…

“Rubica?”

Rubica wasn’t applying the soft cream on Angela’s neck and hands. So, she looked back with wide eyes.

Then, her big green eyes spotted something shining on Rubica’s chest. It was a ring with a stone that looked like a piece of blue sky. It was linked to a golden chain and was hanging on her chest. Angela stretched out her hand to snatch that beautiful ring.

“Give it to me!”

When she failed to get what she wanted, she lost her temper and stomped her feet on the console table.

The little tyrant of Berner Family.

Although Rubica sometimes told her she couldn’t behave like that when she threw a tantrum, she always gave in to what she wanted. She had just backed off because she was surprised to see Angela suddenly reaching out to her. She tried to soothe her and looked down to see what she wanted. She was going to give it to Angela, as usual.

However, when she saw the ring hanging above her chest, her eyes shook hard.

Oh… this is…

“No!”

The moment she checked what it was, she tightly grabbed it to not have it taken away from her. It was the blue ring Arman had always worn.

‘Why is Arman’s ring…’

She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t think straight because too much information was swirling in her head, but she knew one thing. She couldn’t give up that ring, ever.

Angela was the one who was shocked. Rubica had always given her anything she wanted, no matter what it was. But now, she was glaring at her, her lips tightly shut and her eyes full of tears!

She was so shocked that she forgot to stomp her feet and stared at Rubica. Then, her maids started to get nervous. Angela would nag at them for the whole day whenever she got angry.

Pleading to their master and their mistress about the little girl’s behavior was no good. They just smiled and thought it was their cute daughter’s charm. However, Rubica was the Cinderella of the Berner Family. The maid who was holding the accessory box glanced at Angela and started speaking.

“Ms. Angela just wanted to take a look at the ring. Did you really have to speak like that?”

“You could have expressed yourself in a nicer way…”

“Yes, it is not elegant to express your anger to your younger cousin.”

They were both speaking for Angela. She looked at them and then turned to Rubica.

Today’s Rubica was different from the usual. She had willingly given Angela anything, even when she wanted what her mother had left to her, saying ‘If you want it…’ but now, she was holding that ring tightly as if the persuasion and accusation of the maids could not make her change her mind.

Angela got mad. It was just a stone ring, Rubica doesn’t know what I am thinking!

“Fine! I don’t even want to look at you.”

She looked away and told Rubica to leave. Rubica was rather relieved to see she was giving up on her ring. One of the maids rubbed Angela’s neck and hands with cream and glanced at Rubica. It meant she had to leave before something bigger happened.

Rubica was about to obey the little tyrant and leave the room. But things were extremely strange, so she asked one of the maids, “Where’s my aunt?”

“She is at the drawing room with her husband. They are meeting a guest.”

A guest, so early in the morning? And they hadn’t politely pointed out how rude that visit was but met that guest in the drawing room. What was going on?

Rubica’s aunt considered dressing up as extremely important. When the ladies of the neighborhood kindly pointed out her excessive dressing code, she just dismissed it as jealousy of the poor people. Therefore, she only met guests when she was perfectly dressed up.

Additionally, she would only let Rubica do her hair, saying she was good at it. But now, she skipped the morning dressing up session to meet a guest… Rubica couldn’t understand. She stopped and blinked her eyes.

But then, the maids looked uncomfortable for Rubica still lingering around after Angela told her to leave. She had no choice but to give up asking and left the room. She wanted to know who the guest was, but she was the Cinderella of the Berner Family. She didn’t belong in that meeting.

She used the back stairs for the servants to go up to her room in the attic. Then, she asked something to a servant she ran into.

“What year is it in the kingdom’s calendar? I suddenly can’t remember.”

“It’s year 473.”

The servant, who was carrying food, answered without giving much thought to it. Rubica could now feel the goosebumps appearing on her skin, and she held the ring even tighter.

The ring was the only thing that told her she wasn’t crazy, that what had happened in the past wasn’t fake.

‘Oh my!’

Rubica had died at the age of seventy and come back to herself at 22.

***

‘Am I crazy? Am I not crazy?’

Rubica asked herself, lying with her face down on the old bed in the small attic. What had suddenly happened to her was enough to make her lose her mind in shock. It wasn’t like she had died and resurrected. She had gone back in time, it should have been impossible.

Still, she couldn’t think that the life she lived until reaching 70 years old had been fake, and it was all a brief dream. She could clearly remember what had happened just before her death and the famine she had suffered when she 69. However, everything that had happened this year, at the age of 22, was foggy and faint, and the memories were jumbled up together as if she was trying to recall things that had happened 40 years ago.

Most of all, she had a reason to believe she had come back in time because…

She looked at the ring on her chest with sad eyes. The blue stone that decorated it was beautiful, but it was neither sapphire nor blue topaz. It was just stone. However, Arman had never parted from it as if it was something precious.

The ring had been one of the reasons Rubica hadn’t been able to tell him she loved him. She thought he still couldn’t move on from hisformer lover.

‘This is Arman’s, it has to be.’

She had a good reason to be so sure like that. On the day of her birth, her mother had been very delighted to see that her child’s eyes had a red hue.

-Hue will bless you.

People with red eyes were blessed by Hue, the god of love. They will always meet good lovers and live happily. The mother hadn’t known that those red eyes would just become normal reddish-brown eyes as the girl grew up. Therefore, she named her Rubica.

Ever since then, ruby had been the only type of jewel Rubica wore. Although her aunt had taken all of it from her because of debt, there was a time when her accessory box was full of red gems. Even after that, she never wore any accessory that wasn’t red. The color fitted her the best and her late mother had liked it.

‘Arman…’

She had felt something cold being dropped on her ****** as she died. Was it this ring? The ring had come to the past with Rubica. So, she held it tight. Arman had always been there for her. It was as if he had sent the ring with her so that she wouldn’t go crazy.

Everything was taken from me, but I will never lose this!

Rubica had never been obsessed with things, but Arman’s ring was different. It was the one object that let her stay sane and was a clue at the same time. She suddenly got worried. What if her aunt tries to take it away like the other things? For now, she carefully wrapped it in a cloth and hid it deep in her dress.

Then she sat down on her bed, wiped the tears, and decided to try to make sense of everything one by one. First of all, year 473 of the kingdom. Rubica was 22 years old, already way too old to get married. She bit her lips hard at that point.

‘If it only has been 6 years earlier…’

Then, she would have been able to see her mother, although she was sick. At the time, she hadn’t known her mother would leave her so soon. She had been so young. She had even slightly protested about how her friends went to balls, and she had to take care of her mother all day within the smell of medicine.

That time had been precious. Everything she had enjoyed was only been possible under her mother’s kindness. She realized that only much, much later.

-Sister Rubica, thinking of what cannot be undone and blaming yourself will only make you miserable. Now, let’s use our time to think about the present that we can change, the time Hue gave to us.

Rubica recalled what the priest had told her when she had just arrived at the abbey and was just despairing at the reality. The world is like a fine-meshed net. There are things you cannot fix, no matter how much you regret it.

The priest had told her she had to focus on what was in front of her, the things she could do and fix. Only then a new net will be knitted. He just said that to comfort her, but it had changed Rubica ever since. She decided to think of the things she could do now in this new reality.

The war will break out after four years.’

Rubica’s land, the Kingdom of Seritos, was in the harsh Seris Mountains. It had no decent specialty and the land wasn’t good for farming. It was a poor land. However, that changed the moment the founder of Seritos found a mana stone mine deep in the mountains.

Mana stones had great energy. At the time, few knew how to use that energy.

However, there was a great inventor next to the founder king. The inventor, who later started the Claymore Family, made weapons using the energy in the mana stones. His weapons were very powerful.

Everyone started buying weapons from Seritos to get rid of the monsters that infested the continent. Seritos bought wheat with the money it earned from the weapons and it started flourishing.

For more than 400 years, the Family of Claymore kept inventing, and kings used the messy situation of the world to sell mana stones and weapons. Apart from the kingdoms, dragons’ territories were the only other places where such pure mana stones could be mined.

However, after 4 years from now, in the year 477 of the kingdom’s calendar, the same thing that had made Seritos flourish destroyed it, as if collecting the debt people owed to it.

***

“Have you heard that? Duke Claymore has invented a weapon that flies up in the sky!”

“Weapon that flies? Well, is it as big as a baby’s finger?”

“No, of course not. I heard it is almost as huge as a ship.”

“Something that big cannot fly!”

“Hey! You know Claymore turns the impossible into possible!”

At the age of 26, Rubica had been working in the Berner’s house without getting married as she had no dowry. She diligently picked up grains to be sowed while listening to the servants.

“Now it’s the time to fight the dragon.”

“Why should we mess up with the sleeping dragon?”

“If it weren’t for that dragon, we would be eating meat instead of potatoes!”

Rubica had to restrain her laugh at this and continued carrying out the bucket full of grains. Actually, there was a large plain right next to the Kingdom of Seritos, and that plain belonged to the greedy dragon Ios.

‘Will they really attack the dragon?’

Nonsense. Rubica muttered so as she sowed the field. Then, a huge and black shadow went over her. At first, she thought it was the dark clouds that were about to rain. However, when she looked up, there was something black floating there, huge enough to block all the sunlight.

She learned its name only later. ‘Stella’. The only thing she had seen that flew had been birds, so she opened her mouth in surprise and so did the others.

-What is it?

-I don’t think it’s a bird.

Wait, something’s coming out.

Its smooth surface seemed to be made of black iron. A hatch opened, and something came out. Rubica thought it looked like cannon, and soon an ominous feeling overwhelmed her.

_______________________________________________________