Chapter 3.2

Next was Thea’s turn.  

She blindfolded Aristide. Still shaken by the ghost story, Aristide was scared of having his eyes covered but didn’t resist.  

“Open your mouth, Your Majesty.”  

Thea said.  

She placed food in Aristide’s open mouth. He raised his eyebrows as he tasted it.  

“It’s savory yet spicy, chew chew, and chewy… chew chew… This is my favorite jerky!”  

Aristide, as if he had guessed correctly, excitedly removed the blindfold.  

“Gah!”  

What Aristide had eaten was a carrot Thea had crossbred.  

“Ptooey, ptooey!”  

Hostile toward vegetables, Aristide spat out the remaining carrot in his mouth.  

Reselda said to Thea,

“You’ve managed to fool even His Majesty, a carnivore. This time, you’ve truly succeeded, Thea.”  

“Right? Even Cannoli loves it, thinking it’s meat.”  

Thea fed the remaining carrot to Cannoli, who wagged his tail vigorously.  

“The texture is exactly the same!”  

Aristide shouted.  

It wasn’t praise—it was resentment.  

***

Reselda didn’t present her research.  

“I can’t bring a corpse here, nor can I poison His Majesty and then cure him.”  

So she skipped, leaving Celeste as the last presenter.  

Celeste wriggled into a comfortable position on the piano bench in the parlor. She placed her long, slender fingers on the keys and took a deep breath.  

The performance began.  

Vivace.  

The tempo shifted constantly—sometimes like gentle waves, sometimes like a massive storm swallowing a ship. Celeste dominated the keys with her entire body.  

Her piano sonata transformed into a symphony as new melodies were added to existing phrasing, moving between minor and major keys.  

Lucia closed her eyes, letting herself be carried into the midst of a battlefield created by dozens of chords.  

Bang.  

The beauty shattered with a dissonant chord.  

Celeste reached into the piano’s open lid and plucked its strings. The sound produced by plucking the strings was more unpredictable than the sound of striking the keys.  

The fragile Celeste attacked the laws of the world indiscriminately, moving between dissonance, percussion, strings, and keyboard. She was a warrior.  

When Lucia came to her senses, the performance had ended.  

The room, silent for a while, was soon filled with applause.  

***

By the time all the demonstrations were over, it was close to midnight.  

The harem members and Aristide, who was sitting on the sofa, were sharing impressions of the most memorable moments of the evening while sipping vermouth.  

Thea, who had taken a blanket to the guest bedroom, returned and said to Valeria, 

“Sister, the fireplace in the bedroom is acting strange. The smoke isn’t venting.”  

“Really?”  

Valeria and Thea checked the situation and returned a few minutes later.  

“A brick fell and blocked the chimney, Your Majesty. It can’t be fixed today, so I’ll sleep outside, and Your Majesty, you can sleep in my room—”  

“Snore…”  

Aristide was already snoring, seated on the sofa.  

Valeria shook his shoulder, but he was deeply asleep and didn’t open his eyes.  

“Snore, puff…”  

The harem members concluded that it was best to let him sleep where he was. They covered Aristide, who was lying on the sofa, with a blanket, turned off the lights, and went to their respective rooms.  

A few minutes later, Aristide opened one eye.  

Once he confirmed that everyone had left, he stretched his legs and lay on the sofa. Sleeping properly on the lumpy sofa was impossible, so he rolled around for a while before settling into a somewhat comfortable position and closing his eyes.  

Late into the night, the harem finally fell into slumber.  

***

In the hazy world of dreams, her golden hair glowed exceptionally bright.  

‘Your Majesty, I was praised by my professor today!’  

He teased her playfully.  

‘I told you, you don’t have to call me “Your Majesty.”’  

She smiled beautifully.  

‘I forgot again, Aristide.’  

He reached out his hand toward her.  

Suddenly, she disappeared.  

‘It’s not your fault, Aristide. Don’t cry.’  

Flash.  

Aristide woke up from the dream.  

That dream again.  

He tried to calm his ragged breathing, wiping the sweat-covered back of his hand against his forehead.  

It was just a dream.  

He squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. The persistent images slowly faded away.  

As he blankly looked around the room, he saw the cause of his nightmare.  

Aristide pretended not to notice and closed his eyes, trying to sleep again. However, a few minutes later, he opened them again.  

“Damn it.”  

He got up, his stiff body protesting, and took down the portrait of Emperor Orestes, his predecessor, which hung above the fireplace. Turning it over, he leaned it against the wall.  

He lay back down on the sofa, avoiding his father’s gaze as he fell asleep.  

***

Lucia woke up screaming again today. The darkness filling the room told her it was still too early to get up.  

She removed the noise-canceling headphones from her ears and headed to the kitchen. She scooped a generous spoonful of Thea’s “earth-flavored tea” into a kettle and placed it on the stove.  

Next, she took a teacup from the dish rack. The dishes Aristide had washed were spotless, reflecting light without a single trace of water or food residue. Lucia muttered to herself.  

“He wasn’t lying about being good at washing dishes.”  

Cannoli, hearing the sounds from the kitchen, ran over and repeatedly bumped his nose against Lucia’s ankle.  

Lucia picked Cannoli up and placed him on her lap, letting his curious nose sniff the teacup.  

Cannoli bared his teeth and growled.  

Lucia laughed and drank her tea. After discovering its miraculous ability to induce sleep, she could tolerate the tea’s unpleasant taste.  

After three cups, sleep crept up on her, placing heavy arms on her shoulders. Lucia clung to the last shred of consciousness and stood up.  

“Want to sleep with me, Cannoli?”  

Cannoli didn’t even look back as he headed into the parlor where Aristide was.  

“Tsk.”  

Lucia peeked into the parlor to check if Cannoli had crossed the threshold properly.  

Even in the darkness, she could tell something had changed in the room.  

Perhaps because of the tea, like a sleepwalker, Lucia entered the parlor, drawn against her will.  

Aristide was curled up asleep on the sofa. His hunched figure resembled that of a boy.  

Looking around the room, Lucia immediately noticed what had changed. She stood in front of the fireplace.  

The portrait of Emperor Orestes had been taken down and leaned against the wall upside down.  

Had someone taken it down while preparing for the demonstration? Had they cleaned it and forgotten to hang it back up?  

Or…  

Lucia turned around and gazed at Aristide, who was sound asleep, breathing softly.  

“Miss Bianchi?”  

Aristide called out in a half-asleep voice, his eyes barely open.  

“You’re in my dreams now. I don’t have anything to apologize to you for…”  

Apologize?  

“Or do I? If I had done better, would you have been unharmed? If I hadn’t been such a coward—”  

Listening to someone’s deepest thoughts when they didn’t want to reveal them wasn’t right.  

Lucia didn’t let him finish his sentence and hurriedly left the room.  

***

Through the open curtains, the rays of dawn reached out to caress Aristide’s closed eyes. He tried to block the light with his hand, but the persistent brightness eventually forced him to open his eyes.  

He rubbed his aching shoulder, cramped from being squeezed onto the narrow sofa.  

“Ah.”  

Aristide quickly got up and rehung his father’s portrait.  

He aligned the frame with the square of wallpaper that hadn’t faded, hidden by the picture’s shadow.  

Then, faint memories surfaced.  

The woman standing in front of the fireplace.  

No, it must have been a dream.  

‘I don’t have anything to apologize to you for….’  

No, it wasn’t!  

Aristide banged his head against the wall.  

What kind of sorcery did she possess to make me show such sides of myself? Was her honesty contagious?  

He rubbed his face roughly as if trying to erase a stain.  

Regret was like spilled water—it couldn’t be put back into the glass. Aristide thought about how to handle the situation.  

But, as always, he couldn’t think of anything besides running away.  

He banged his head against the wall again.  

***

Lucia yawned as she stepped out through the harem’s back door. She reviewed her weekly household chores list and mentally planned the order in which she would complete the remaining tasks.  

Every Monday, the harem members drew lots to divide the week’s chores. Though it wasn’t the most efficient method, as tasks weren’t assigned based on individual skills, everyone willingly accepted the minor inconvenience for the sake of fairness.  

Lucia’s chore this week was chopping firewood. As she walked toward the woodpile, she wondered why she couldn’t fall asleep even after drinking three cups of tea earlier.  

Of course, it was because of Aristide.  

Those words. That expression.  

If he wasn’t going to give her answers, he should stop triggering her curiosity.  

It annoyed her.  

She hated herself for caring about the Emperor, the sun of this nation who had everything and enjoyed everything. She hated the Emperor even more for making her feel this way.  

‘He’s on my mind.’  

Lucia scoffed. If she ranked the people in the world she should care about, the Emperor would be dead last.  

Thump thump thump… crack….  

Suddenly, a dull sound reached her ears.