Many dismissed it as absurd gossip, but Chancellor Lemiere could not let pass the talk of a bread that calmed the mind.

The more Kyle’s mood swings worsened and the more precarious situations arose, the more dangerous his position became. Lemiere had prepared it on the principle that there was nothing to lose.

The eagle that was Kyle stared down at the banana roll cake sitting quietly on the table.

“What’s this bread doing here……”

He glared at it for a long moment, then turned his head away. His already low spirits seemed to sink even further at the sight of it.

It wasn’t as though he had always disliked bread. When he first came to the imperial palace as a child, he had been completely captivated by the soft, sweet taste of it. For a boy who had grown up eating nothing but rough food in the wild hills, the palace bread had been a whole new world.

* *

It was not long after Kyle had entered the palace.

At a banquet attended by the emperor and the nobility, Kyle stuffed the bread piled on his side plate into his mouth and chewed noisily. Occasionally he picked up crumbs that had fallen onto the table or his clothes and put them in his mouth.

The nobles cut glances at him with baffled expressions while pretending not to look.

One day, Kyle quietly slipped a few round rolls into his pocket with his small, fern-like hands. He had suddenly thought of his mother, left alone.

Clatter.

Then Kyle accidentally knocked his fork to the floor. Ordinarily it would have been a servant’s matter to handle, but unfamiliar with palace life, he pushed back his chair and bent down to pick it up.

At that moment,

Thud. Thud.

The round rolls Kyle had been hiding in his pocket tumbled out and rolled across the floor.

“……”

The nobles, who had stopped eating, all stared at Kyle reaching for the fallen bread.

It was a period when the palace placed great emphasis on aristocratic manners. Feeling threatened by the rise of the merchant class, the nobility had become obsessed with etiquette as a way of reinforcing their own exclusive circle. In that atmosphere, Kyle’s outburst was inevitably fodder for their ridicule.

That night, the emperor came to Kyle’s room.

“Why did you steal.”

The emperor approached with a scowl and an air of intimidation, and Kyle couldn’t bring himself to meet his gaze, stumbling backward.

“……”

Terrified, the young Kyle swayed with dizziness. He had only wanted to take some of the palace bread to give to his mother.

But faced with the cold eyes of a father whose existence he had never known, Kyle could not calmly explain himself. His small lips, which had been trembling, pressed shut, and the emperor’s brow drew together.

“Do you think the scolding is unfair?”

“……”

Kyle shook his head, on the verge of tears, at the emperor’s icy voice.

The shadow of the emperor, a large whip in hand, swallowed the shadow of the small child.

“I’ll have to show you what you did wrong.”

“I want to go to my mother. Please let me go.”

“You will never see your mother again.”

“……”

“If you don’t obey me……”

“Ugh!”

Kyle stumbled backward and slammed into the wall.

That night, the sound of a merciless whip and the stifled cries of a child in pain came from the boy’s room in turns.

When the ordeal was over, the emperor looked down at Kyle, who was sobbing with tears and snot streaming down his face, and said without feeling.

“Do you know that people look down on you for your lowborn blood?”

“……”

“If you don’t prove yourself, you will be mocked and trampled. There must never be a mistake like this again.”

“……”

“Do not make me look foolish.”

His legs and back bruised from the beating, Kyle was locked in his room for a day without food.

The education that followed made him lonelier and more miserable still.

“When eating bread, you must tear it into bite-sized pieces and eat one piece at a time. You should cut it over your plate so that crumbs do not fall on the table as much as possible.”

During table manner lessons with his private tutor, whenever moisture began to gather in his eyes, Kyle would clamp his mouth shut to hold back the tears. There was no one in this cold palace who would understand how he felt.

‘Did Father bring me here specifically to hate me and make me suffer?’

Kyle thought about it every day.

He wished he had a different father entirely. Not the terrifying emperor, but an ordinary man who would smile warmly and hold him close.

Thanks to the strict education, Kyle quickly learned to eat and conduct himself with aristocratic elegance. But for some reason, whenever he approached his noble peers at the Academy and tried to speak to them, they gave the minimum response and kept avoiding him.

One day the emperor’s words came back to him.

‘Do you know that people look down on you for your lowborn blood?’

He had thought the emperor was wrong. Not everyone treated him with contempt.

Then one day, standing behind a pillar, Kyle overheard a group of noble peers gathered nearby, snickering and calling him ‘the red-eyed bread thief.’

Shame flooded his face until it burned red.

He could not deny that the emperor had been right.

Only then did he see clearly how others looked at him.

A shameful, defective thing.

Meanwhile, disappointed by a son who turned out to be more ordinary than expected, the emperor’s methods of education grew increasingly cruel. When Kyle turned thirteen, he was forced into demonic beast hunts where his life was genuinely at risk. The intent was to push him to extremes and force the extraordinary abilities granted by the Sun God to manifest quickly.

On the days Kyle killed a demonic beast, a flat voice told him to do better. On the days he was badly injured by one, a shout of disappointment and anger came down on him asking why he was so careless.

From then on, Kyle threw himself at scholarship and martial arts alike with ferocious intensity in pursuit of recognition, and whether that mad effort moved the heavens or not, he awakened as the proxy of the Sun God and claimed the throne.

*

To Kyle, bread was a reminder of the nightmares of his childhood.

Now, he was eating bread for the first time in a long while out of respect for Chancellor Lemiere’s goodwill. He was also dizzy from skipping dinner.

With a trembling beak, Kyle cut the roll cake and picked up a piece, pushing it into his mouth.

Chew, swallow.

The moist, dense bread melted down his throat.

‘Hmm……’

The soft texture was punctuated by the satisfying crunch of nuts, making it pleasant to eat.

As the banana fragrance and the gentle richness of the cream that had been lingering on the tip of his tongue spread through his mouth, the cloudiness in his eyes slowly cleared.

It was as though his whole body had been sweetened, bathed in banana.

‘……’

Kyle sat motionless for a long while, as if intoxicated by the deep, lingering flavor in his mouth.

“Your Majesty, are you all right? I’ve come to collect the dish……”

A few hours later, Lemiere returned to Kyle’s chambers. He had come to take back the empty dish. This was ordinarily a servant’s task, but for the sake of strict secrecy, he had to handle it himself.

“……”

For some reason, there was no sign of life from inside. He assumed Kyle had fallen asleep from exhaustion.

“Your Majesty, I’ll come back another time.”

“Wait a moment……”

Lemiere stopped at the sound of Kyle’s voice and turned his head.

The two of them spoke with only the door between them.

“Did you call for me, Your Majesty.”

“Who made the bread?”

“A baker who runs a shop in the city. Shall I bring more?”

“That would be good.”

Lemiere narrowed his brow and tilted his head.

“Understood.”

That night, completely absorbed in the deep sweetness of the bread, Kyle forgot his foul mood without even realizing it. He kept finding himself drawn back to the lingering taste in his mouth.

Even he was surprised at himself.

Was it because he had been so hungry when he ate it? Or because it had been so long since he had eaten bread at all?

“Your Majesty, there is also something to report. His Holiness Pope Daniel wishes to meet with Your Majesty as soon as possible……”

“Tell him to come whenever he likes.”

“Pardon? But Your Majesty’s current condition……”

“Come inside.”

“Pardon?”

Click.

The sound of the bolt being drawn back came from inside the door.

Lemiere stepped into the room and his eyes went wide.

Kyle was standing with his back to the brilliant light pouring through the uncurtained window, fully in the form of a man.

Beneath dark brows, eyes that glowed red. A nose rising strong and straight. A silk robe draped over broad shoulders and tied at the waist. He was unmistakably Emperor Kyle.