The emperor hesitated at Lime’s confession. While looking at Lime, who smiled shyly as he thought of Olivia, the emperor gazed at a distant flowering tree. His wistful eyes searched the empty space for a long moment.

“I too once had a time when family was most precious……”

Since the emperor’s mother had passed away only a few years ago, Lime thought he must miss his family and quietly remained by his side. After lingering for a while with his hands behind his back, lost in memories, the emperor belatedly collected himself and smiled awkwardly.

“I was just thinking of the old times. Yes, you said you wanted to take flowers that I choose, right?”

The emperor examined the garden flowerbeds and stopped abruptly when he discovered a certain flower. Unlike the other flowerbeds, this one had only a single plant growing in solitude. As if someone had forgotten one while reorganizing the flowerbed.

“Can I take this one?”

“Ah, no. Not this one yet. Since there’s only one, I’ll recommend something else. What would be good……”

The emperor hastily tried to move Lime elsewhere. But the hand that grabbed Lime’s arm began to tremble. Lime stood silently, holding his ground. His shadow stretched long. And from that shadow, Alois emerged and stood before the emperor.

“You, you!”

“You should have just told him to take that flower. Then everything I left for you would have disappeared……”

Alois’s gaze fell upon the single flower standing alone. Decades ago, when they were still friendly siblings, Alois had planted it for his younger brother Julian. He had happily filled an entire flowerbed with these flowers, but over time, only a single one remained.

The emperor, struck with shock, trembled and stepped backward. As he retreated unsteadily, he tripped on the edge of the flowerbed and fell ungracefully. Lime, who had been watching everything, bowed politely and stepped aside.

“Since you brothers seem to have things to discuss, I’ll step aside. I’ll take one flower that I want.”

With Lime gone, only Alois and Emperor Julian remained. Julian, fallen to the ground, couldn’t control his trembling body and tried desperately to distance himself from Alois. But soon he could retreat no further, blocked by the flowerbed, and Alois slowly closed the distance as he watched his younger brother.

“Don’t, don’t come closer! Guards! Guards!”

“Even if you call, no one will come. This is the inner garden of the imperial palace.”

It was a place used for secret conversations within the imperial family. A secret mechanism was installed that automatically blocked sound from the outside when only those of imperial blood remained. It had been so long since it was used that its existence had been forgotten, and he never expected it would be activated because of this unwanted guest.

“I told you about it, but it’s disappointing if you’ve already forgotten.”

“What, what are you doing here? Why! Why! Have you come for revenge now!”

The emperor, who had been trembling in fear, now pointed his finger and shouted. Still unable to stand properly, his eyes grew increasingly fierce as he looked at Alois. His bloodshot eyes were a chaotic mix of fear and anger.

Alois overlapped the image of his young brother in his memories with the emperor who was now much older than himself. While I was frozen in time, that child has already grown up to become such an emperor. He was once a child whom Alois truly believed would become an excellent emperor, but feeling inexplicably stifled, Alois briefly averted his gaze.

“I knew you would come someday, hahaha, I knew you would come! But what difference does it make now? Huh? Even if you eliminate me now, do you think you can become emperor?”

The emperor alternated between laughing maniacally and becoming angry. His distorted face showed layers of suppressed emotions accumulated over a long time. Alois read a strange sense of guilt in the emperor’s ruined face. Recalling the wistful expression from moments ago when he spoke of missing family, Alois tried to gauge which face revealed the emperor’s true feelings.

“It seems you knew I would come find you someday? Is that why you sent the administrator?”

“Yes! If you had just stayed in your mansion, I wouldn’t have thought of it. I wouldn’t have. If only you hadn’t caught my eye first!”

The emperor vividly remembered the day he brushed past Alois running in the rain. When he faced his brother, who visited him as a nightmare every night, in reality, his guilt and fear grew uncontrollably with the rain.

So he met with the administrator. Despite knowing the administrator’s impertinence in trying to use him by crossing the line, he pretended not to know and told him how to provoke Alois. Hoping the administrator might deal with Alois for him, while also feeling anxious about whether he would actually kill him.

In fact, he had always wondered. If the former empress and Julian, who had cursed Alois and driven him from the imperial palace, truly wanted to kill him, they could have done so while he was at the mansion, yet they left him alone. Why, for over a decade, they never came directly to kill him despite spreading rumors that people should fear him. Whether they were truly too afraid to approach him as they had shouted “monster,” or if they actually didn’t want to kill him.

Alois approached the emperor and raised his hand. The emperor immediately shrank back and closed his eyes, as if Alois might hit him with his large hand. Alois felt conflicted. He had never hit Julian, yet the emperor cowered as if he had been beaten countless times by him.

Was it my own illusion that tormented Julian so much that it became ingrained in his body?

Alois placed his hand on the emperor’s shoulder, who was trembling like a child. Too much had changed during the time they couldn’t be together. His mother who had cursed him was gone, and now Julian too was growing old. Alois also contorted his face as he gripped and released the emperor’s shoulder. Where exactly did things go wrong between us?

Though he expected immediate pain, no blow came no matter how long he waited. The emperor cautiously opened his eyes. What he faced was Alois, who had placed his hand on his shoulder but couldn’t do anything more. He recognized this expression. In childhood, whenever he cried, his older brother would always approach with a frown, not knowing what to do.

“I, I……”

Tears fell from the emperor’s face. It was the weight of heavy sorrow that he had buried in his heart since the day Alois was driven from the imperial palace, unable to shed tears. It was already irreversible. He couldn’t regret it. The moment he regretted, he wouldn’t be able to properly face either his mother or his brother.

“If you were going to suffer this much for so long, why did you place such a curse on me?”

The quiet voice held no reproach. It was simply because he truly couldn’t understand. It was a calm and composed question, asking why their relationship, which had been nothing but good, had been broken, something he couldn’t figure out no matter how much he thought about it.

“Because if we hadn’t done that, my mother and I would have died…… One of us had to die! Everyone was weighing which of us would become emperor! If, if I hadn’t driven you away like that, would I still be alive now? Huh? You probably would have tried to kill me. It was… it was unavoidable.”

The emperor rambled excuses through his tears. Words that couldn’t be properly formed devoured each other and spewed out of his mouth like excrement.

“I, I wanted to kill you. But I couldn’t. I just, just couldn’t kill you!”

Julian had seen his mother crying alone the night before her birthday celebration. Yet he couldn’t go to her and tell her not to do it. Because if he had said that, she would have been more distressed. Though she knew she was doing something terrible to a child she had raised like her own, she willingly carried the cursed necklace in her bosom for her son’s sake.

And fearing that Alois’s anger might be directed at Julian, she anxiously protected him until her dying moment. But now alone, the emperor thought he had to take responsibility for his mother’s share as well.

“It was the best option. The best……”

The emperor blankly muttered the same words like a broken music box. Alois sighed deeply and looked directly into the emperor’s eyes, which were anxiously shifting back and forth.

“Tell me you’re sorry.”

“What, what?”

“Say you were wrong. Say you want forgiveness, and I’ll give it to you.”

“Lies… you’re lying. Impossible.”

The emperor thought Alois was trying to deceive him. Thinking that he was doing this to make him let his guard down, to weaken his heart before taking the cruelest revenge, he shook his head. His snow-white hair became disheveled. Standing beside the weak old man with no trace of imperial dignity, Alois spoke again, word by word.