Black Swan Chapter 34

Listening to this, Yoo Nanoh’s goosebumps gradually stood on end.

“Hey…? Somehow your ideal type is awfully specific…? Sounds like someone I know, too…?”

“Right. Even to me, she seems very similar to our mother in many ways.”

Lee Hwanmae replied, lifting his chin shamelessly. Yoo Nanoh couldn’t help but grab the back of his neck. He really does all sorts of things, this crazy bastard!

“Don’t look at me strangely. They say all sons in the world unconsciously seek a woman resembling their mother as a bride. To be clear, I have never once had a filthy thought targeting my mother. Even though our blood isn’t mixed, she is no different from a biological mother to me.”

The point Yoo Nanoh was worried about was a completely different matter. The image of Lee Hwanmae, with a displeased expression in front of a dining table set by his wife, slamming down his spoon and coldly snapping, “This isn’t the taste mother used to make,” flashed vividly before his eyes. They say people can’t be fixed, and he was a fool for having briefly sympathized with that crazy hedgehog just because they shared blood.

Yoo Nanoh glared at Lee Hwanmae for a moment before opening his mouth.

“Hey, let’s not waste time. Do you think I’m stupid enough to go around searching for a woman who doesn’t exist in the world? You’re a prophet. As someone who peeked at your younger half-brothers since childhood, there’s no way you haven’t seen your wife, right? Tell me your fated wife right now. I’ll go escort her here immediately.”

Lee Hwanmae was silent.

“You know it too, right? It’s not that my brain itself is bad, it’s just that I hate running it. I thought you were suspicious from the start, you see. A prophet like you purposely making me go out and find a woman. Let’s lay it out and ask. You, you didn’t like your fated wife, so you made me go through trouble on purpose to find another woman, right?”

“…”

“Don’t be like this. Don’t throw a tantrum just because your fated wife doesn’t suit your taste! Face reality. Check a mirror before you start picking and choosing bride conditions, you bastard! By general standards, you’re a bust as a marriage candidate, a total bust!”

Yoo Nanoh fiercely battered the table and then paused. Lee Hwanmae’s downcast expression was imbued with uncharacteristic sorrow. Even while boiling with anger to the top of his head, Yoo Nanoh was dumbfounded.

Why on earth is that jerk acting like that all of a sudden. Staring blankly downward with the gaze of a young child abandoned by his mother.

A terrifying suspicion suddenly grazed his mind. No way…?

“Hey, you then….”

As soon as Yoo Nanoh spoke up, Lee Hwanmae let out a bitter smile.

“Right. You saw it accurately. What do you think was the reason a prophet like me purposely made you find a bride?”

Yoo Nanoh’s head went blank.

Lee Hwanmae turned his head as if avoiding his gaze.

“I tried to change my destiny. I’ve never seen her even once in my dreams. My wife and children, that is.”

“That….”

Yoo Nanoh’s head was simply blank. Even though he had imagined thousands of times the scenario where Lee Hwanmae was demanded a divorce on the very first day of his honeymoon, he had never even dreamed that he might not be able to get married at all. Isn’t he a fellow whose looks are outstanding even if his personality is foul? Whether loved or hated, he’s a brother sharing blood, the only older brother he has—how could that older brother spend his whole life as an old bachelor in loneliness… living and then dying—of course!

His sympathy vanished entirely in ten seconds. Yoo Nanoh glared at his half-brother with blazing eyes. Ah, you lacking-in-conscience hedgehog bastard. I clearly understand why you’re doomed to be an old bachelor for life. A head family’s eldest son entering his thirties, yet he desires a young flower-like girl a zodiac cycle younger who is pretty and even good at housework—no wonder you can’t get married!

Without reflecting on his own shamelessness even one bit, his itch to beat his half-brother—who was looking downward with a wistful gaze—to death made his fists itch. Yoo Nanoh gulped down a cup of water all at once and set it down with a thud.

“Understood, you bastard. Understood! I’ll cooperate with the task of changing your old-bachelor destiny.”

“Really?”

Lee Hwanmae raised his head with a rather surprised expression. Yoo Nanoh hardened his expression and glared at his older brother.

“I’m cooperating because you are the king of this country before you are an individual. I’ll look for a woman who fits the mandatory conditions you stated. Right up to there, and that’s it. Don’t even think about making any more absurd demands of me.”

“Nanoh…. As expected, you’re the only one.”

“Shut up. Lee Hwanmae, you’re a son of a bitch.”

“Stop that habit of calling me by my full name only when you’re cursing. I should get to work now. Gotta earn my keep diligently today too.”

Parting ways with his troublesome half-brother, Yoo Nanoh trudged back home. As the shock from Lee Hwanmae’s old-bachelor destiny gradually faded away, optimistic thoughts crept in stealthily once more. Leaving everything else aside, the burden of having to procure a homely woman resembling Kim Hobong had been cleanly shaken off. Since he had clearly confirmed that Lee Hwanmae also had a strong will to marry, it felt like everything would be resolved if he diligently used his feet.

They say even straw shoes have pairs, so how could he possibly fail to find that guy a wife? If even the destiny of a war breaking out could be changed brilliantly, surely an old-bachelor destiny was no big deal.

Yoo Nanoh calculated this and that on how to find a bride. Once again, it was a millions-of-times stroke of luck that Lee Hwanmae was at least handsome, resembling himself.

If her mug is just passable, I need to find an aestheticist who doesn’t care about a man’s conditions at all.

The younger hedgehog left right then to meet matchmakers.

∞ ∞ ∞

It didn’t take long for Yoo Nanoh to realize that getting Lee Hwanmae married was harder than the grand enterprise of preventing a war. After scouring heaven and earth to arrange a blind date by finding an aestheticist who thought that with a face like this, a man’s other conditions didn’t matter at all, Lee Hwanmae absurdly rejected her.

“Hey! I went through all that trouble to find you an angel, why didn’t you ask her out for a second date!”

When Yoo Nanoh protested fiercely, Lee Hwanmae got angry first as if he were in the right.

“Her face was Lady Park before shedding her skin!”

“It only looks that way to your eyeballs! I’m telling you she’s pretty! Why don’t you believe people’s words!”

“Her age is the same as mine too! To be my wife, she has to be twenty!”

“Twenteeee-y? The mandatory conditions you blabbed didn’t include a flower-like girl a zodiac cycle younger! You said it was just a wish!”

“That is.”

Fumbling for a moment, Lee Hwanmae soon raised his voice.

“Can’t you even distinguish between jokes and seriousness? Saying a flower-like girl a zodiac cycle younger was a wish was a joke after all, and in reality, it was a very important condition!”

“Hey, your greed is excessive….”

“Can’t I be greedy? I want to receive some compensation too! Do you know how much the old sycophants monitored and harassed me just because I killed my biological father?! Do you know how unfair I felt? A son can kill his father a little, can’t he!”

“…”

Yoo Nanoh was too flabbergasted to close his mouth. Lee Hwanmae raised his voice consecutively. He protested, asking if he should even be deprived of the right to want a young and pretty queen when he himself voluntarily abandoned wealth and the strengthening of royal authority due to the bureaucrats’ pressure. He whimpered that if he had any conscience, his younger brother should have stepped up to procure a young, pretty wife who was even good at housework, so why did he necessarily have to say these things with his own humble mouth, and that treatment of a monarch was far too lacking. Warning that he didn’t want to play such a sorrowful monarch and would enter an indefinite hunger strike from now on, he threatened him.

With no other choice, Yoo Nanoh changed his strategy to a mass-quantity operation. Boldly fabricating Lee Hwanmae’s age as twenty-four, he distributed introductory letters to matchmakers. Risking even the danger of facing a divorce suit for fraudulent marriage if the truth were found out, he barely managed to secure a large number of women. However, this time Lee Hwanmae rejected them one by one. The women weren’t fools.

“He brought up stories about his mother at five-minute intervals.”

“He went on and on bragging about his younger brother, who is young enough to be his son, at ten-minute intervals.”

“In the middle of our conversation, he wiped the table with a handkerchief several times.”

“I had a strong premonition that if I married this man, I’d regret it until the day I die.”

Rebuffed a whopping 128 times over the course of five whole months, the 37th Lee Hwa finally cut off all food and drink and took to bed for a week. Ever since getting up from his sickbed, he picked petty fights with direct bureaucrats and unabashedly threw old-bachelor tantrums regardless of time and place. Complaining that his adoptive parents—who threw him anxious questions asking if he was staying home on the weekends because there were no women to date—made him feel awkward, he came out to the official residence even on weekends to handle state affairs.