The Cruel Imperial Family Episode 9

[Episode 9: The Birth of the Bottom-Dirying Yobu, The Crossed Day 14 Years Ago]

Secretary Han, the brain of the Minseok Group, and the ferocious bodyguard Kim Min-hyuk, ready to get their hands bloody, followed in ironclad protection.

In front of the empty throne, emptied like a receding tide, lay only the emperor's meager dignity, crushed and battered, scattered on the floor like broken pottery shards.

At the same time, in the holo-manual prison at the darkest and most damp bottom of the royal palace

Shin Ah-ri, dressed in a lavish gown, was mercilessly thrown onto the filthy, musty straw of a cold, shadowless prison, with not a ray of light coming in.

  Clank-!

  The sound of heavy iron bars closing and a solid lock being fastened shattered the silence of the underground.

  These guys are crazy! How dare you lay a hand on my body? Open the door right now! Can't you open the door?! If His Majesty finds out, know that your lives will be worth as little as a fly's

  Red blood oozed from the joints of Ari’s white fingers as she clung to the bars, writhing and struggling like a madwoman.

  But all that came back was his own piercing voice and a cold echo, crashing against the moss-covered stone wall.

  Struggling, Ari’s legs gave out and she collapsed onto the cold floor.

  It was filled with a bone-chilling cold creeping from the ground, a pungent musty moldy smell, and the stench of rotting rats.

  Startled by the horrifyingly familiar smell, Ari shivered all over and wrapped her arms around her own shoulders.

  This smell...…Yes, this is the smell—the smell of that place, so terribly poor and dreadful, where I had desperately tried to run away

  Ari’s unfocused eyes were violently drawn into the terrible, filthy memories of 14 years ago that she had been desperately burying deep in her mind.

  Fourteen years ago, an old, dilapidated orphanage located on the outskirts of Seoul, 

  It was not a fence that warmly embraced and protected abandoned children.

  It was a hellish detention center where a heartless director exploited the children’s labor and embezzled even the meager government subsidies for personal gain.

  It was a horrific place where freezing to death in winter and dying of disease from eating rotten food in summer were everyday realities.

  Twelve-year-old orphan Shin Ah-ri was a cunning and despicable child who had mastered the brutal laws of that hellish ecosystem faster than anyone else.

  When hungry, he cornered younger and weaker children to steal their trays, and when the director was about to discover his crimes, he would, as if nothing had happened, fake being the one who had been beaten and force himself to cry bitterly, blaming all the other children.

  "Director! Sob, Younghee stole my bread and hit me Even though I told you not to...… Ugh, it hurts so much Director "

  Completely deceived by the thick tears falling from Ari’s large eyes and the disgusting smoke, the director dragged a small, skinny child named Young-hee into the backyard and beat her until she was half dead.

  As Younghee’s screams echoed desperately beyond the orphanage fence, Ari hid in the dark corner of the storage room, greedily stuffing stolen bread and letting out a vile sneer.

  'A foolish woman who pretends to be kind will end up starving to death or being beaten to death; you have to thoroughly trample and seize others to survive. This is how disgusting and vile the world is.'

  That was the only survival rule twelve-year-old Aria had learned from the mud, and the cruel nature that had settled at the bottom of her soul.

  It was a late spring day when a dazzling and overwhelming sense of alienation arrived, one that could never reach Arie’s dark and twisted world.

  On the day a grand “Orphanage Visit and Support Event” jointly hosted by the Korean Empire’s royal family and the top-ranking business group, the Minseok Group, was held,

  Dozens of black luxury sedans, dazzlingly bright, entered in a line through the orphanage’s unpaved dirt yard—where garbage trucks usually passed—blowing up dust.

  Those who got out of the car were all wearing pristine, luxurious suits and glamorous dresses, and it was the scent of expensive perfume, not a sewer, that filled the air.

  And in the very center of that dazzling crowd stood 13-year-old Min Si-eun.

  A top-quality white silk dress with a subtle pearl sheen, black hair without a single wrinkle swaying in the spring breeze, and a clear, gentle smile as if she had never experienced the world's wrinkles or malice even once,

  Si-eun, walking hand in hand with Chairman Min Hyun-seok, was a dazzling light that illuminated the dark orphanage just by her very presence.

  Ari hid behind the pillar of the shabby restaurant, glaring at the shining girl as she crushed and bit her until her fingernails bled.

  From the deepest part of my heart, a dark, sticky, and suffocating jealousy coiled like a giant venomous snake and surged up to my throat.

  Why? Why on earth is that girl wearing such beautiful clothes and smiling, loved by everyone, while I have to crawl on the ground like a bug in this garbage dump? I'm so wronged! This is so annoying! That's unfair! I want to tear apart all that laugh, that clothes, and that seat that  has and take them all for myself

  As Ari’s eyes turned bloodshot, a boy with a haughty stride came into her view, filled with rage.

  It was 15-year-old Crown Prince Yoo Jong-seok, who seemed to have been dragged out to a royal banquet under the guise of representing the royal family.

  With an arrogant expression, he looked around the stinky orphanage, blatantly clutching his nose and grimacing.

  Those filthy eyes that despise orphans as if they were cockroaches crawling at their feet.

From that disgusting gaze, Ari read a strange sense of kinship and his petty vanity in an instant through her beastly intuition.

  That's it! If I use that arrogant, stupid boy, I might be able to get out of this damn cesspool in one go

  Ari's mind raced. 

  Without hesitation, she rolled onto the floor and tore the sleeves of the tattered clothes she was wearing even more mercilessly.

  After smearing black mud on my face and bare white skin, I dashed madly into the path Jongseok was taking and deliberately fell hard on the edge of his shoes.

  "Aah……!"

  With a thud, Aria collapsed at Jongseok’s feet and lifted her head sorrowfully, gasping for breath.

  "What, what! You stinky rat!"

  When dirt and mud splattered onto his finest handmade shoes in the sudden collision, Jongseok snapped angrily and stepped back. 

  The guards were startled and tried to rush forward, but Aria was one step ahead.

  I...I'm sorry...! Please forgive me Your Highness……I... dare to... touch Your Majesty's precious body...… Sob!"

  Ari, with her slender shoulders trembling and her arms tightly hunched, let a tear fall from her large, glistening eyes. 

  Transparent streams of tears fell sorrowfully over her cheeks, covered in pitch-black mud.

  It was as if it were a pitiful and beautiful little bird, mercilessly trampled by a cruel world.

  A flawless tearful performance practiced hundreds of times, solely to survive

  As he looked down at the gaze of blind fear and absolute submission directed at him, a strange sense of superiority briefly flashed across Jongseok’s arrogant face, which had been twisted with displeasure. 

  Always burdened by the royal family's strict discipline and the pursuit of outstanding talent, and tormented by feelings of inferiority, this miserable girl, trembling at his feet, was the perfect sacrifice to delight his petty desire for power.

  "Tsk, seeing the orphanage, how could you have been able to just look ahead as usual?"

  Jongseok pretended to be kind and generous, withdrew his hand as if to shoo her away in disgust, and instead took a handkerchief from his chest, tossing it lightly at Ari’s feet.

  "Go and at least wipe your face."

  Ari picked up the top-quality silk handkerchief that had fallen to the floor and sobbed in a voice filled with emotion, bowing her head repeatedly.

  "Thank...Thank you, Your Majesty; I will never forget you until the day my life ends."

  But beneath Ari’s disheveled hair, bowed as if touching the ground, the tips of her red lips stained with black mud twisted upward in a chillingly grotesque and fishy manner.

  "You've got me, you arrogant, stupid bastard."

  That was the beginning of all tragedy.

  For 14 long years, the horrific femme fatale Shin Ah-ri, who would erode the very foundation of the royal family and trample upon everything that remained, was sowing the cruel seeds of a vicious and disgusting bond between two men and women like vile beasts in the very depths of the gutter.