–

“I’ll save you!”

Tael smiled wryly as he soaked in the water. He remembered Aila’s words.

“Such a small thing, yet so brave.”

The image of the woman who had stepped forward to save a mere slave kept appearing in his mind. Lost in thought, he muttered in a low voice:

“Is that why I’m here?”

As Tael absentmindedly lowered his head, he spotted something in the water and his eyes widened. A large fish was visible.

“Would she be happy if I caught that too?”

After a moment’s consideration, he bent down and dove underwater.

The fish was large and difficult to catch, but he finally managed to grab it and lift it up. When he surfaced, there was an uninvited guest before him.

Seeing the woman who had come all the way to find him, Tael released the fish.

“Aaaah!”

“Aaaah!”

Tael and Aila screamed simultaneously. Clearly n*ked, he shouted in alarm:

“You said I was handsome! You were targeting me all along!”

He covered his body with both arms, horrified as if he’d seen a terrible criminal.

“Trying to see something precious so easily! Your character is at rock bottom!”

Aila screamed:

“Aaaah! My eyes! My eyes!”

“Your eyes that saw me must be precious to you! So there was a reason you told me to wash first! Is this why you’ve been keeping me around?!”

“It’s rotting! Rotting!”

“What?!”

Tael flared up at those words. He straightened his hunched body. Lowering the arms that had been covering him, his well-muscled, firm body was revealed.

With his tall stature and broad shoulders, it was a perfect body at a glance, but Aila was even more alarmed and ran away.

“Look well! It won’t rot!”

Tael chased after Aila.

“Aaaah! Don’t follow me! My eyes!”

“They won’t rot! Don’t miss this good opportunity!”

“Stay away!”

“Do you think you’ll ever experience such luxury again in your life?!”

“No! I don’t want luxury!”

“Open your eyes!”

Tael grabbed Aila’s shoulder as she fled.

“Your eyes won’t rot from looking at my body!”

He spun Aila around to face him, then hesitated. Looking at Aila with her eyes tightly shut, he felt strange.

Perhaps it was because it was getting dark, or because the moon was bright, or because Aila looked embarrassed, or because Tael wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing—it seemed like a very odd situation.

Tael found himself staring at Aila intently. When he lowered his gaze to break the atmosphere, he saw her clothes clinging to her body in the moonlight.

The moment he realized her clothes were somewhat see-through, Tael’s eyes widened.

“Aaaah!”

“Aaaah!”

The two fled in opposite directions, utterly alarmed.

–

Tael, who had fled far away, hid behind some bushes.

“Not content with just looking at me, you’re trying to seduce me? Ha! Do you think I’ll fall for it!”

He carefully put on the clothes he had thrown aside.

“I should be careful since she might pop out from anywhere.”

As he remained vigilantly on guard, Aila’s words suddenly came back to him.

“It’s rotting! Rotting!”

His brow furrowed.

“What a lie! I almost fell for her tricks and showed her everything.”

As he looked around cautiously again, Tael was shocked by a sudden hypothesis.

“Could it be that I’ve fallen into a trap?”

He tried desperately to recall his past.

“Maybe something like this happened in my forgotten past too.”

The word “too” left him dumbfounded.

“‘Too’… as if this situation has happened before…?”

He sat down heavily on the ground, pausing midway through putting on his top. He recalled the subtle situation with Aila earlier—the situation that had made him tense.

He ran a hand through his hair.

“Why am I here?”

A household where it’s difficult to place one more fork, people sleeping huddled together in a small room. The only food being soup with carrots and potatoes every day.

There was no compelling reason for them to keep Tael there.

Even though Aila had said she liked Tael’s face, rather than admiring it daily, she kept making him sweep and clean, frequently getting angry at him.

His face clearly wasn’t the main reason. Then, Aila’s words came back to him once more.

“I’ll save you!”

Her cry to save Tael somehow. After treating him so poorly, she stood against a bear to save him.

He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

Melia’s words also came to mind.

“Big brother is an important person, they say.”

“I…”

Eyes rotting from looking at Tael’s body? Impossible. It must be a lie.

“In what way was I an important person…?”

No one would fail to desire his perfect body.

“Could it be that I was someone who did ‘that kind of work’?”

Aila must have desired him too. That’s why she followed him when he was bathing.

“What did you do to me that made me lose my memory…!”

All sorts of depraved and terrible pasts he had never experienced were being created in his mind.

Deeply shocked, Tael made a decision.

To uncover all of Aila’s wicked schemes.

–

Aila stared blankly at the campfire and muttered. In front of the fire, shoes were stuck on branches to dry.

“What happens if you see the emperor n*ked…”

She lowered her head abruptly.

“Execution. Of course, execution.”

Her heart ached.

“If I say my eyes are rotting from seeing his body, will I not even get a grave? And I jumped in to save him because I thought he might die…”

Tears welled up.

“Ugh. I want to have a grave.”

Sniffling, Aila suddenly realized something and clenched her fist.

“No. As long as he doesn’t recover his memory, it’s fine. If he doesn’t recover his memory, there will be no war or execution. If he doesn’t recover his memory, I can hit him more and I won’t die.”

Aila thought of the pot in the house.

“Yes, let me hit him just one more time.”

With entranced eyes, Aila made a motion of striking his head in the air.

“He might not recover his memory, right? I can’t let a guy who tried to show me something strange get away with it.”

She wanted to deliver one final blow with a powerful swing. If only she could, just one more hit, no, two hits, no, three hits, no, five thousand eight hundred and eighty hits…

Something warm was suddenly placed on Aila’s shoulders. It was Tael’s coat.

With his hair still wet, Tael sat down beside Aila and said:

“Never come into the water again.”

“……”

“Just looking at you, with that dull appearance, you probably can’t swim well.”

At any other time, she would have snapped back immediately, but now, feeling guilty, Aila just turned her head away without answering.

“……”

“I know everything, so speak honestly.”

“?”

“How many times has something like today happened?”

Tael was serious.

“Were you waiting for when I was bathing? No. You deliberately told me to wash, didn’t you? So you could come in after waiting.”

As Aila looked bewildered, Tael narrowed his eyes with more suspicion.

“What did you do to make me lose my memory?”

Aila was perplexed.

“How much did you torment me that I ran to the mountains and lost my memory?”

“?”

“How many times did you do such things to me?”

“……”

“I asked how many times. If you tell me now, I’ll overlook your past wrongdoings.”

He was asking with very aggressive eyes. Aila was dumbfounded.

“Hey!”

“Seeing how loud you are, you must feel guilty. Yes, it doesn’t make sense that a vicious woman like you would resist looking at me.”

He looked down at his body and his eyes widened. Now he noticed a wound on his wrist.

“Don’t tell me you tied me up…!”

Aila’s mouth fell open in surprise.

“That must have just happened!”

“I should have known when you said you kept me around because of my handsome face, yet you mistreated me every day while looking me straight in the eye.”

He was convinced.

“Your goal was my body.”

“No, it wasn’t!”

“Now I understand everything. You crushed my spirit by tormenting me, brought me into the mountains, made me wash, and then…!”

He muttered with contempt, shocked.

“How meticulous.”

“Hey! That’s not it! Something strange passed by, so I went after it, but you were nowhere to be found! I couldn’t hear any sound, so I thought you’d fallen into the water and went in to look for you… oh, forget it!”

Aila fanned her bright red face with her hand, but it wouldn’t calm down.

“What do you take me for!”

“Obviously, a pervert…”

He paused and tilted his head.

“You came to save me again…?”

The aggression in his eyes gradually faded. He looked up with round, surprised eyes.

“You didn’t even take off your shoes properly to save me…?”

She tried to calm her reddened face and regain her composure.

‘Tael is an emperor. An emperor.’

She had seen too much of his n*ked body to just let it go. It seemed different from simply calling him horse dung and treating him poorly.

Aila thought “hmm” for a moment, then placed Tael’s coat back over his shoulders and covered her legs with her own coat.

“Don’t misunderstand. That’s absolutely not the reason. I’m covering you because you look cold.”

Aila quickly removed her hands from Tael.

“I didn’t touch your body. You saw that, right?”

Tael stared at her still-damp clothes and said indifferently:

“I’m fine.”

“No. You should still cover up. You need to stay warm.”

He stared at Aila.

“Other masters don’t treat their slaves this well.”