“I didn’t come for revenge. I came because I couldn’t understand—why you and Mother betrayed me so cruelly. But now, I think I already know the answer without hearing it.”

“……”

“You seem to have suffered enough, as much as I did, so I’ll give you one last chance. Say what you wanted to say.”

The emperor stammered, moving his lips but unable to speak. After waiting briefly, Alois let out a low sigh and was about to rise from his place. Reflexively, a desperate hand grabbed his clothes. The emperor, who had only been shedding tears, finally burst into tears like a child and barely managed to express his messy apology.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. I, I did wrong. I, I really didn’t mean to……”

After receiving the emperor’s apology, Alois looked up at the sky for a moment. Just as the ceiling that had once seemed so high no longer did, he felt he could now face that day which had once seemed so difficult to approach.

Alois helped the emperor to his feet. Rising unsteadily, the emperor leaned against a pillar and gasped for breath. Alois stared at him for a long time, as if trying to remember his younger brother’s appearance, then slowly opened his mouth.

“Even if you hadn’t placed a curse on me, I was planning to leave after you came of age.”

“Wh-what?”

“The reason I stayed in the imperial city was not because I coveted the throne, but because I was waiting for your birthday when you would come of age, and for Mother’s birthday celebration.”

“……”

“I wanted to attend your coming-of-age ceremony and mother’s last birthday celebration that I could share, since I planned to leave and never return, but I didn’t realize that my desire was a different fear for you and Mother.”

He left the emperor, who could only blink in shock and say nothing, alone. Soon burying his face in his hands, the emperor wept and wailed loudly. He cried more sorrowfully than when his mother passed away, in front of Alois, regretting every day he had hidden his suffering and turned to drugs and alcohol, and lamenting the misunderstandings of the past that could no longer be reversed.

A hesitant hand wrapped around the emperor’s crumpled shoulder. While patting him as if to comfort him, Alois continued.

“I came to see you because I want to settle this tiresome connection now. Since I’ve received your apology, I won’t let my wound of betrayal fester any longer.”

You’ll forgive me so easily? The emperor looked at Alois as if he couldn’t believe it. Alois also understood the doubt in his gaze. If it had been himself just a few months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to forgive him so easily even if he had known all the facts.

But now it was different. The wound from that day was no longer everything to Alois, and the thought of being buried in that wound and suffering seemed like a waste of all the time he had left.

“So you don’t need to fear that I’ll come for revenge someday. Don’t ignore your duties as emperor out of guilt. You don’t need to do that, since it’s your place, take responsibility for where you’ve risen to.”

“…… Br, brother.”

It was once the title he had called most often in the world. The title he had forcibly buried in his memories awkwardly flowed from his mouth. Alois also felt strange hearing this title he thought he would never hear again. He felt neither pleased nor angry. Like when various paints mix and you can no longer recognize the original color, Alois couldn’t identify each emotion in the chaotic mix.

But that was okay. He was here now to let go. He didn’t stir up the remaining emotions unnecessarily. Because he could accept that this was fine as it was, he had decided to let go now.

Looking at his younger brother who was still floundering in confusion, he smiled somewhat comfortably. It seemed Julian still needed more time, but that too was now an issue that he had to sort out and move forward with on his own.

With a relieved heart, Alois spoke the words he really wanted to say to him.

“Seeing your actions since becoming emperor has been nothing but disappointing, so I hope you won’t disappoint me anymore. Can you do that?”

Unlike the seemingly reproachful sentence, his voice held a strange warmth. At Alois’s smile, no different from when they were young, the emperor nodded very slightly.

Even after placing a curse on Alois and driving him out, he couldn’t properly care for the Empire due to his guilt. Even when he tried to pull himself together and attend to state affairs, he would turn to alcohol and drugs on days when nightmares of Alois’s return haunted him. He knew there were sycophants like the administrator who clung to him and told him what he wanted to hear, but he couldn’t completely drive them away. Because he needed them to distract himself from painful things when he wanted to escape all reality.

‘What kind of emperor do you want to become later?’

When his brother asked him that in his very early childhood, what did he answer?

In his eyes, which had shed all the tears they could, the blurry regret gradually gave way to a forgotten gleam that he had neglected for so long.

Yes, this was the look in his younger brother’s eyes that he had known. You from when nothing was broken and we were all a happy family.

Alois felt himself becoming unburdened despite being the one who received the apology. Even the small burden of Alois’s self-blame, wondering if all this tragedy had started with him, completely disappeared.

‘When you’ve hurt enough, new flesh grows, and then you can move forward.’

He heard Olivia’s voice again, which had given him courage. She was truly the most excellent healer in the world. Imagining a future with her, Alois could now smile more happily than anyone, even in front of Julian.

* * *

He carefully placed a single flower resembling Olivia in a pot. It was a flower with lush green leaves and a bell-shaped blossom that started as a light olive color at the tips and gradually changed to a bright pink, creating a mysterious hue. Lime approached Olivia, who was waiting alone, carrying the pot.

“Huh? Are the two of them still talking?”

“Who knows. I left them alone as promised, so like men, they’ll either fight it out or figure things out themselves.”

This was his time with Olivia that he had obtained with difficulty. Time to be completely together without interruption from anyone else. Instinctively, Lime knew this was his last opportunity. After this moment passed, he might never be able to face Olivia with the same feelings as before.

He cleared his throat and carefully opened his mouth. His fingers holding the pot twitched with tension.

“So when the duke returns, will you go back to the ducal mansion together?”

“Yes. That’s the plan.”

If the conversation between the duke and the emperor went well in the direction they hoped, the duke would no longer need to hide in the mansion. Then Olivia could proudly remain by his side under the name she wanted. Though Lime felt that Olivia’s most precious family was no longer just himself, he still brought up his story as if he knew nothing, something he had kept inside for a very long time.

“My dream was to receive a knighthood, buy a nice house in the capital, and live there with you without lacking anything.”

“That’s an admirable dream. I never imagined such an amazing future. I just thought the inside of our hut was my entire world, as if it were the most natural thing.”

“But now my dream has changed.”

“How?”

“In exchange for granting the duke’s request, he promised to place me in the imperial knights to monitor the emperor. Whether by persuading the emperor or threatening him. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s really possible, but if it happens, it would be incredible, right?”

No matter how much merit he had earned or how skilled he was, he had never dreamed of a position in the imperial knights. It was an extraordinary position that only the legitimate heirs of renowned noble families could enter, and if Lime, of commoner origin, entered, it would go down in imperial history as a radical precedent.

“If I get in, there will probably be those who look down on me because of my origins, but I’m not afraid of that. I’m already strong and will become stronger. So I’ll climb higher and higher. Living like that, even dreams that seem impossible now might become possible, right?”

Maybe later I might even receive a title that allows me to govern a territory? Lime said this playfully, but Olivia nodded vigorously with a serious face. ‘No, you can do it!’ Olivia clenched her fist and filled Lime with encouragement.