For My Birthday, I Was Gifted Five Husbands - Chapter 24
She should clean up. Her thighs were soaked with her own fluids, and her upper body was sticky with s–en. But after such an intense session, she felt utterly drained, as if she had collapsed after a rigorous workout…
Alfred gently wiped the s–en from the corner of Eugenie’s mouth and smiled faintly.
“Eugenie, are you exhausted?”
“Mmm…”
“I’ll clean you up. Just rest for now.”
“…Okay…”
Eugenie, still dazed, managed a weak reply.
‘Maybe I should at least offer to clean him up out of courtesy.’
But she was too exhausted to even think about observing basic politeness. Watching Alfred’s slightly embarrassing backside as he walked away to get a wet towel, Eugenie thought absentmindedly,
‘So that was my first night.’
Her first night, shared with just one of her husbands.
Could she really go through this four more times?
She tried to do the math in her head, but her mind quickly drifted off again.
‘What was Mom thinking… getting me five husbands…?’
What would happen if her daughter ended up dying from s-x?
Eugenie wanted to dwell on her frustration longer, but the overwhelming fatigue took over, and her vision slowly faded to black.
* * *
…Perhaps it was because she was so exhausted from her first experience with Alfred.
For the first time in a long while, Eugenie saw a familiar face in her dreams.
“Mom.”
Considering that her mother was the one responsible for this farcical marriage, it almost felt natural that she would appear in the dream.
But unfortunately, this wasn’t a pleasant dream where they could exchange greetings. It was a memory from when Eugenie was fourteen, right after winter break, as she was about to return to the academy.
Her mother had spent the previous night lamenting after catching her father with another woman, sharing stories about how she grabbed the woman by her hair in a fit of rage.
“I should never have chosen a worthless man like him.”
It was the same endless complaint Eugenie had heard since she was a child. She knew if she just listened a little longer, her mother would move on to another topic. But that day, an unexplainable anger welled up inside her.
“Mom, just stop already.”
“Eugenie?”
“If you hate Dad so much, why don’t you just leave him?”
The train station was bustling with noise, yet the space around Eugenie and her mother felt strangely quiet.
Her heart pounded in her chest, filled with fear.
Eugenie felt pity for her mother, but at the same time, the way her mother constantly vented to her made Eugenie angry and resentful. Was she her mother’s emotional dumpster, expected to absorb all her regret, hatred, and frustration?
Sure, she disliked her father too, but hearing her mother chew him out like that over and over again was infuriating.
No, to be honest, it scared her.
‘Does she just talk trash about Dad to me all the time? Am I supposed to be the mother here?’
She worried that her mother might tear her down in front of others just as easily as she did with her father. No matter how hard she worked at her studies every day, she feared being labeled as her mother’s ‘cold-hearted daughter.’
And what if, deep down, her mother blamed her for ruining the marriage, all because she had unknowingly revealed her father’s infidelity when she was seven years old?
Her mind was flooded with countless thoughts.
She regretted sneaking up on her father that day, thinking it would be fun to surprise him.
She regretted telling her mother exactly what she had seen, without thinking it through….
No, she told herself, that day she had done the right thing. Of course, it was her father, the one who cheated, who was a thousand times more in the wrong.
Still, the guilt of feeling like she had betrayed both her parents confused her fourteen-year-old self to the point where she wanted to run away. But whenever her mother ranted about her father, Eugenie felt she had no right to flee—she was the one who had ruined her mother’s marriage, after all.
But that day, she reached her breaking point.
“Have you ever considered that maybe you’re the one who’s not strong enough to leave him? You can’t even write a single decent letter, and you don’t have any other family anyway.”
“Eu-Eugenie…”
“How are you any different from the other women clinging to Dad? You can’t even divorce him!”
At that moment, the train bound for the academy was approaching. The loud blare of the whistle drowned out Eugenie’s voice, but just before it did, she threw out one final, scathing remark.
“Sometimes, Mom… you just seem so pathetic.”
“…”
“I will never…”
What had she said after that? It was as if the white steam from the train had briefly clouded her vision, cutting off her memory of what came next.
But in truth, Eugenie remembered exactly what she had said that day.
And she remembered her mother’s face, too—every bit of it.
