On the day of the wedding, not many people came to celebrate—because the Tokai family had deliberately shrunk the scale of the ceremony.
As for the details of that day, Tokai Natural couldn't really remember them anymore.
Because when she woke up from unconsciousness the next day, she could remember only one thing:
Are all Umas this terrifyingly strong?
In the scraps of memory she had, she recalled only that, during the forty minutes of clarity she'd had the night before, every time she looked at the clock on the wall, the time was different. When she finally blacked out completely, about six hours had already passed since the start.
As for how much longer it went on after that, Tokai Natural had no way of knowing.
Thinking of this, Tokai Natural actually felt a little grateful she hadn't died in bed.
After all, she had at least some understanding of her "sickly" attribute.
To survive such an intense night and still see the next morning—that alone was practically a miracle.
But more than worrying about her frail body, what really concerned her was something else entirely: she'd discovered that Symboli Rudolf wasn't in the bed.
Slowly sitting up, she turned her head, searching for the woman from last night.
Then Tokai Natural spotted her sitting at the edge of the bed.
"Ru…"
"You're not Tokai Roman, are you?"
Those purple eyes beneath a white mane-like fall of hair carried a trace of anger.
That alone told Tokai Natural instantly: her identity had been exposed.
"Mm. I'm Tokai Natural. It's because—"
A moment's hesitation.
Tokai Natural was weighing what words she should use.
Without a doubt, this Symboli Rudolf standing before her was a figure of near-limitless power in the Japanese Uma world.
If her identity was exposed now, divorce was already a foregone conclusion.
And with her body, if she lost the family's support, it would just be a slow death—an incurable one. Poverty has no cure.
So—
"Because of my admiration for you, Rudolf-sama, I agreed to this. Please don't punish the Tokai family or my sister."
She delivered the excuse the family had drilled into her long ago.
Listening, Symboli Rudolf's expression didn't change much.
She only spoke after Tokai Natural finished: "If you're done, then you can go back now."
Standing up, without hesitation, she left the room—cold and distant, showing not a trace of the warmth of the night before.
Watching this, Tokai Natural only lowered her head.
Failed.
She knew clearly: this Symboli Rudolf wasn't yet the one who would someday soften a little after holding a non-existent memory of skating with Oguri Cap.
This Symboli Rudolf was still the Emperor.
Put simply—still scum. So…
After Rudolf left the room, it took Tokai Natural only a few minutes to collect herself.
After all, she'd already been through enough disasters. A few more wouldn't make much difference to her anymore.
So now, what she really needed to worry about was something else entirely.
"Did I bring anything besides that white wedding kimono yesterday?"
Tokai Natural fell into a problem she couldn't easily solve.
...
Several hours later, the Tokai family came to take her back.
Back at the Tokai household, what she had imagined didn't happen.
At least, they didn't immediately strip her of the family name and throw her out. Doing that would have allowed them to shift all responsibility onto her, and with the joint statement from the Symboli and Tokai families, she wouldn't even have been able to work a real job—just day labor until illness killed her.
But over the next few days, Tokai Natural began to see the Tokai family's true greed.
The constant blood tests had only one real purpose: to check whether she was pregnant.
And naturally, the results brought them joy.
After all, that night's timing had been calculated by the Tokai family themselves—and considering the "intensity" of Symboli Rudolf and Tokai Natural's union, not conceiving would have been stranger.
In this way, Tokai Natural earned a temporary right to stay in the Tokai household—at least until the birth of the child she was carrying.
But soon, a second problem arose.
According to the pregnancy test, Tokai Natural was carrying not one, but twins.
As everyone knew, if an Uma bore twins, people tended to be pessimistic about the outcome.
But because of Symboli Rudolf's overwhelming legend, the Tokai family decided to take the risk.
They planned to wait and see.
And as with previous "good news," the twins Tokai Natural carried turned out not to both be Umas—one was human, the other an Uma.
Upon hearing this, the Tokai family's attitude immediately softened.
After all, the nutritional needs of an Uma and a human were completely different. Because of this, Tokai Natural was allowed to continue surviving in the Tokai home.
But after these worrisome issues disappeared one by one, the Tokai family still had one last concern.
That was Tokai Natural's body.
She had been born frail. It was precisely for this reason—though she'd once had the talent to be an Uma—that she'd been sent to marry Symboli Rudolf in her sister's place.
Now Tokai Natural's health was the only real question left.
Of course, what they really needed was only the child in Tokai Natural's belly. As for Tokai Natural herself—
She no longer had any meaning.
She was, after all, the scapegoat of the "Symboli Rudolf wedding incident."
Under the Emperor's pressure, to protect themselves, the Tokai family would naturally dump all the blame on her shoulders.
So why should the Tokai family continue to feed someone who had angered the Symboli family and wasted money besides?
Thus, as Tokai Natural watched her belly grow day by day, she had no choice but to think about what came next.
Because she knew: the Uma child she carried would be taken away by the Tokai family.
Although the thought of her child being separated from her at birth made her want to explode with rage, when she thought of her own situation, Tokai Natural felt perhaps leaving the child with the Tokai family wasn't such a bad thing.
After all, she knew with her body, she probably couldn't even get hired for part-time work.
And under these circumstances, having to support two children on her own—
Tokai Natural understood she simply couldn't keep them alive.
If she could, she would even have left both children with the Tokai family. At least there they wouldn't be living off half-price convenience store bentos in a ten-square-meter room.
But sadly, that was impossible—because one of the children was human.
And humans… to borrow a famous line, "Humans are like trash."
This was the clearest explanation of the Tokai family's attitude.
Compared to Umas with talent, talented humans were far too easy to find.
Lightly stroking the curve of her already-swollen belly, she sat on the bed and, at last, could only let out a long sigh.
---
T/N: HUHHH PREGNANCY ALREADY??? WHERE DID THE SCENE GO!!