The Future Calamity’s Brainwashing Won’t Wear Off Chapter 3

My consciousness snapped in and out. As my mind grew hazy, my body trembled with the impending terror of death. My head knew he would find it horrific for me to touch him, yet my body clung frantically to Zachary by any means necessary.

“Za—Zachary. Zachary.”

Even though I knew he was the one who had come to kill me, a desperate voice broke out of me against my will.

“Please… save me.”

I’m really going to die.

Scolding me is all well and good, but couldn’t we just get out of here first before talking?

This was not an environment that my frail, sickness-prone body could endure. Zachary seemed obsessed with me because he hadn’t fully broken free from the brainwashing yet. So, I needed to use his lingering spell-bound instincts to escape this place first, and then properly find and undo whatever remaining traces of magic were left in him.

“I can’t… breathe…”

I’ve hit my limit. I can no longer take a proper breath.

As my eyes rolled back, I instinctively wrapped my arms tight around him—the only warmth left to hold onto. A sensation came over me as if my head were collapsing heavily backward. Right then, Zachary wrapped his arms around me urgently. I felt his touch as he blew air into my lips and patted my back.

Deep down, I had worried about what I would do if he simply threw me aside, but Zachary didn’t do that.

Just like the novel’s protagonist, he was kind and gentle—the Zachary who would have grown up upright had he not fallen victim to our family’s sorcery.

‘I should have set him free a little earlier.’

Lamenting with brief regret, I slowly let my body go limp within the familiar comfort, and my mind drifted back to the past.

Back to the origin of all this, which led to my new marital home burning down on the day before my wedding.

That is to say…

“His Majesty the King has personally requested the education of someone. He is the 6th Prince of the Sacred Empire, Zachary Thaddeus.”

The day a prospective disaster walked right into our peaceful household.

My lovely mother was a person who lived her life as the textbook definition of royalty.

Born a king’s daughter, her high and mighty nose showed no sign of bowing for anyone from the moment she took her first breath. Furthermore, though she didn’t flaunt it openly, she was cruel by nature. Pot-bellied old men would constantly click their tongues, wondering who would ever take such a royal princess as a wife, but no matter how much they put on airs, my mother was royal blood through and through.

The King, who shared a surprisingly deep sibling bond with her, refrained from using her for his own political gain. Mother turned the entire world upside down by marrying Cedric O’Hamua, a legend among bards who was undoubtedly the most handsome genetic father I could have had.

However, like most human lives that are decided by which family line they catch at birth, their married life did not last long. The difference in their lifestyle and level of consciousness was as vast as heaven and earth.

Mother was always noble, while Father was always humble. While Mother naturally held things in her hands that anyone would open their mouth to praise, Father merely marveled with his mouth agape, lacking any greed to possess them.

This might have been the spark that made them fall in love, but it also became the decisive reason for their split. Unable to narrow the gap that widened with each passing day, the two fought frequently, and Mother eventually divorced him. Then, not long after the divorce, I was born.

“Ah… Truly beautiful. Your name shall be Oscar, my sweet Oscar.”

I remembered my own birth. It wasn’t because I was a genius, but largely because the memories of my past life—having lived for over twenty years in South Korean society—remained completely intact.

That’s right. I remember my past life.

I couldn’t recall how I died, but I remembered quite vividly what my family and friends were like, what their names were, what I liked, and so on.

“Nice to meet you, Oscar.”

However, memories of a past life are merely the past.

The sight of Mother holding me in her arms and smiling like warm sunshine was still vivid today. Even though she had no way of knowing that I understood every word from the moment I was born, her voice was packed with love, as if she were carefully selecting only the prettiest and most precious words to give me.

A short nose, faint freckles, kind amber eyes folded into crescents that bordered on gold, fingertips brimming with grace despite her unpretentious impression, and warm brick-red hair heavily adorned with priceless jewels even right up to the moment of childbirth.

However, my birth could not be blessed.

Once I was born, things took a strange turn. The royal couple, who had been childless for nearly ten years, began to view my existence with deep vigilance—since I was born bearing the royal surname instead of my father’s due to Mother’s divorce.

They likely deemed that I would pose a threat to any child born to them later on.

The King’s anxiety did not stop at simple worry.

With those around him whispering so many malicious words into his ear, anxiety slowly began to gnaw away at the King. To preserve his throne, he prepared to cast aside both sibling affection and blood relations.

The King sought to bind Mother in a remarriage to drive me out of the royal household. But in truth, this was merely pulling the wool over people’s eyes. If the King and Queen failed to produce an heir down the line, I—the son of a direct royal line through Mother—would end up inheriting the throne after all.

And so, the King personally chose Mother’s remarriage partner.

When I was around three years old, Mother began preparations to remarry Marquis Serpentine, a man who already had a child of his own. By the time I turned five, the wedding was held, and preparations were complete for us to move into the Marquis’s estate.

There were several noble houses in the kingdom besides Serpentine, so why that family of all places?

‘Because they’re gloomy.’

Because the Marquis Serpentine family was a shadow house that possessed immense talent in manipulating sorcery with master skill, serving the King with absolute obedience while cleaning up his filthy messes behind the scenes.

It was the King’s grand scheme: if I grew up in a household no different than loyal hunting dogs, I wouldn’t even dare dream of coveting the throne. And so, holding my mother’s hand, I toddled right into the house of hunting dogs.

My first impression of the Serpentine estate was cozier than expected.

Well, cozier than expected.

This too was a place where people lived, and being one of only three marquisates in the entire kingdom, everything from the front gates to the polished exterior of the mansion was splendidly decorated. Even at a glance, every last construction material was of the highest quality. The issue lay elsewhere.

Most of the estate servants who came out to greet us wore cloth patches stamped with strange patterns covering their eyes. What was more, they bowed and scraped before Mother… as if they didn’t care about their own human rights in the slightest.

“Bowing and scraping” didn’t even cover it. From the moment Mother stepped off the carriage, they made sure her feet didn’t accidentally touch the bare ground.

And what about their attitude? Goosebumps broke out across my skin at the sight of them bowing their heads in polite, absolute reverence as if serving a deity. I looked up at Mother, but having visited several times already, she seemed thoroughly accustomed to their bizarre behavior.

“Adelheid. You have arrived.”

Just then, the creepy crowd of servants parted like the Red Sea, and a man appeared.

“So you are Oscar.”

The moment he walked forward, every single servant took a step back in unison as if they had been waiting for it.

Fascinated by how they kept their distance as though terrified of accidentally brushing against him, I looked around when he greeted me.

“I am the master of the Serpentine household, and the man who will become your father. I was deeply disappointed that you could not attend the wedding due to your cold.”

Ah. Only then did I understand why the servants couldn’t even look this man in the face.

How could anyone lift their head and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the person who had cast a spell on them?

From what I had heard in rumors, while some servants entered the Serpentine household through normal channels, most were serious criminals who became servants here after undergoing “education.” Calling it education was a gross understatement; it meant breaking their minds using unique Serpentine sorcery mixed with torture to force absolute submission.

I had heard that those who completed this education were so loyal and terrified of the Marquis that they wouldn’t hesitate to die at his word.

‘He doesn’t look like the type to personally enjoy torture, though.’

Because of all the terrifying rumors about the Serpentine family, the Marquis’s face in my imagination was practically that of a demon, but seeing him in person, he looked quite ordinary.

Grey hair, grey eyes, and dark, reddish skin around his eyelids gave his overall impression a slightly gloomy and somber look. Still, just as I was thinking he was rather handsome, our eyes met.

“You are, just as I have heard, remarkably…”

It seemed the Marquis was observing me just as I was observing him.

He stared intently at me, temporarily at a loss for words with a look of utter disbelief on his face.