“I don’t know if you lack awareness or manners.”

“……What?”

“I let it slide for a moment since my memory isn’t intact. But your attitude of barging in before the Empress as if it’s natural, and your behavior mentioning the bedroom when it’s not even a private space—everything is awkward and utterly unpleasant.”

At Raul’s cold tone, Evelyn’s eyes widened. The attendants lined up beside them also held their breath in shock. As everyone fell silent, Raul cruelly added, as if mocking the room’s sunken atmosphere.

“Saying I kept you as a mistress over the Empress—isn’t there some serious misunderstanding? No matter how I think about it, my taste is closer to the Empress than you.”

“Your, Your Majesty. But……”

Evelyn’s shoulders flinched as if she couldn’t believe it at all. Her bright orange eyes shook mercilessly while holding transparent tears.

However, Raul maintained a cold silence, and eventually Evelyn had to turn and step down from the bed. The attendants secretly sighed. Even to them, it was a truly pitiful sight, a back they wanted to embrace.

But only the Emperor alone seemed not to think so.

Having issued what was practically an order to leave, he ignored Evelyn standing there awkwardly and gestured to the attendant again.

At the Emperor’s summons, the chief chamberlain who had been waiting rushed over immediately.

“Chief Chamberlain Morantz Greendale, Your Majesty. If you have orders, please tell me.”

“Having been lying down for a week, there must be much work to catch up on. Bring the backlog of documents to my office and make sure no one else enters.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

As soon as the crisp order fell, the chief chamberlain bustled away hurriedly.

Then Raul, pressing his throbbing head with one hand, curtly snapped at Evelyn, who was still standing there awkwardly.

“What are you still doing here?”

Finally, tears welled up in Evelyn’s eyes.

Trembling slightly at the shoulders, she eventually left the room limping with the support of her maids.

Raul confirmed Evelyn’s departure with an irritated gaze and spat out to the nearby attendant.

“I liked that woman? My eyes must have been buried in the ground.”

At the ambiguous smile that returned, Raul’s mood worsened even more. Had he really been completely smitten with the mistress named Evelyn, leaving the Empress aside?

Even having confirmed it with his own eyes, he couldn’t believe it. Even if a person’s memory disappeared, their heart wouldn’t change. No matter what anyone said, the one his heart responded to was the Empress with silver hair and a fairy-like face.

Moreover, the only person remaining in his memory was also the Empress alone.

As the imperial physician said, the Empress was clearly someone deeply imprinted in his mind, one way or another.

The next day. In the office, the Emperor’s work officially resumed.

Raul shuddered at the pile of documents that wouldn’t decrease.

“I should have pretended to be unconscious and stayed lying down a bit longer.”

“Haha. You must be joking, Your Majesty.”

The chief chamberlain looked serious, but Raul was half sincere.

There was already much work piled up while he’d been collapsed, and among it, the amount the Emperor without memories could handle wasn’t much.

Eventually, he had to spend several hours studying Tirantus’s history and geography, relations with neighboring countries and current most important issues, the composition of major noble families and the power structure they formed, and such.

“Can I really see all this in a few days?”

They had narrowed down and narrowed down again to only what the Emperor absolutely must know, yet still a pile of paper several adult men’s heights was completed.

“Still, if you’re to appear at official events, it can’t be helped. Your Majesty knows this, right?”

“What do I know?”

When Raul snapped curtly, the chief chamberlain’s eyes widened.

“Ah, oops. I apologize. I keep forgetting you have no memory…… Once word spreads that Your Majesty has awakened, the nobles will immediately compete to have an audience with you.”

“But if I show I know nothing, everyone will notice my condition?”

“Won’t they sense something is strange, Your Majesty?”

Raul irritably flipped through the papers before him.

“D*mn. Being Emperor isn’t easy work either.”

After discussion, they had decided to keep the fact that he’d lost his memory secret.

Only two years since the war with Niyev ended. Tirantus was still going through a rather dynamic and chaotic era, with post-war recovery not yet complete.

In the midst of this, news that the Emperor had lost his memory would only negatively affect the Empire’s stability.

Moreover, the culprit who attacked him hadn’t been revealed yet. When they didn’t even know who had targeted his life, there was no need to widely announce that he was in a vulnerable state.

Of course, to properly deceive people, effort would be required.

Raul furrowed his brow and reached out to pick up a book placed on top of the paper pile.

“Niyev region’s system and governance structure? You said the place where I had the accident was toward Niyev.”

“Correct. Since it’s a place we recovered not long ago, it was unstable in various ways…… and eventually an incident occurred.”

Raul opened the book and quickly scanned the section the chief chamberlain had marked. The finger sliding smoothly across the paper stopped at one term.

House of Adrian

And Kareina Adrian.

Raul’s brow furrowed.

“Is the Empress from Niyev?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. She was the last imperial princess.”

Dark clouds gathered on Raul’s face. Silently scanning the pages about the House of Adrian’s history and downfall, Raul opened his mouth in a heavy voice.

“The Empress seemed to hate me.”

“Ah……”

“Is the reason because I’m Tirantus’s Emperor?”

Raul recalled the woman who had rubbed her wrist as if disgusted after he’d grabbed it.

Her expression that seemed unbothered even when another woman intervened, and her back as she left the bedroom without lingering.

Recalling it again made his chest feel stuffy, as if someone had firmly plugged his throat with cotton.

“Right. I would have hated it too. Having the one who destroyed my homeland as a husband. Her cold reaction is completely understandable.”

Raul rubbed hard over his stuffy heart. Even with just half a day’s accumulated knowledge, the past with his wife could be sufficiently inferred.

It would be difficult for someone who had been an imperial princess to forgive the person who brought down her country. Raul sighed self-deprecatingly.

“So all this time my wife kept pushing me away, and I had a one-sided love for her? Has it been like that for two years?”

“What? That’s absolutely, absolutely not the case, Your Majesty!”

“……What?”

Then the chief chamberlain straightened his back for the first time and looked serious. His expression seemed to say that even if he had no memory, there were things one could and couldn’t say.

“One-sided love is preposterous. Rather, Your Majesty treated the Empress more coldly.”

“I treated the Empress?”

Raul raised his eyebrows sharply as if he couldn’t believe it. But regardless, the chief chamberlain continued speaking with a firm attitude.

“Yes, Your Majesty. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Empress hated Your Majesty any less. So…… the two of you merely maintained a nominal marital relationship for strategic reasons.”

“Strategic reasons……”

“It was a marriage for post-war stability and maintaining peace. Though Niyev fell, since it had once been a great empire, it didn’t easily bow down. We had quite a headache in the beginning too. The war also took longer than we initially expected.”

The chief chamberlain trembled. Raul listened carefully to his words, then slowly opened his mouth.

“So you’re saying we put forward the Niyev-born Empress as a kind of appeasement policy.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. That’s all there is to your relationship. Instead, Your Majesty later kept a separate mistress. You saw Miss Evelyn Debussy yesterday, didn’t you, Your Majesty?”

“Debussy…… Ah, that redhead yesterday.”

Raul frowned and barely remembered. Though it was orange, not red.

In any case, the chief chamberlain had to roughly inform him of the Emperor’s marriage history, or rather love history. More specifically, the fact that he had always been on bad terms with the Empress and had spared no affection and gifts for Miss Evelyn of House Debussy.

In fact, this was mixed with a bit of self-interest hoping Raul would keep Evelyn close as before.

Like other nobles, the chief chamberlain also hoped for an heir from a Tirantus woman rather than the Niyev-born Empress. He had no particular ill will toward the Empress, but his unavoidable patriotism toward the country made it so.

No, at least his pride as a Tirantus citizen wouldn’t allow him to imagine the Emperor groveling before the Niyev-born Empress.

However, despite the long explanation, Raul seemed to have latched onto an entirely different point.

“So the Empress didn’t unilaterally push me away. Then isn’t that rather good?”

“What? In what way is that good?”

“It means if only I do well, our marital relationship could improve in one stroke. There’s still hope.”

He wondered if it was a joke since it was so absurd. But seeing the serious expression, it didn’t seem to be.

The chief chamberlain was left speechless at His Majesty the Emperor’s unexpectedly positive attitude. To him frozen with his mouth agape, Raul asked again.

“What does the Empress like?”

“What, what? Why are you suddenly asking that……”

“You said we were on bad terms. I should send something so her heart opens even a little.”

The chief chamberlain, who had no idea what this was all about, also had no idea what the Empress liked. There had been no need or reason to know the Empress’s preferences until now.

But he was someone who had nothing but a bit of intuition and cunning. Receiving the Emperor’s gaze and working his head hard for about ten minutes, he soon managed to recall that the Niyev woman had enjoyed walking in the garden since her days as a hostage here.