It didn’t seem like he was deliberately trying to make him sick, but the discomfort was unavoidable all the same. If he answered honestly here that he liked meat, he might genuinely end up with indigestion.
Unlike Korea, meat here wasn’t seasoned much, and it didn’t suit a Korean palate grown accustomed to bold flavors. He could already picture Avelos bringing some and pressuring him to eat it in front of him.
Uriel shook his head.
“There’s nothing I particularly like.”
“Even so, there must be something you prefer. In the past, you used to drink coff—”
Avelos stopped himself mid-sentence and closed his mouth.
Why is coffee suddenly coming up? Uriel looked at Avelos with puzzled eyes. The violet gaze of Avelos, who had been acting in a manner rather too warm for someone who was supposed to be his enemy, darkened.
“…Understood.”
Avelos, who had been standing in front of Uriel, turned on his heel and walked out. Thrown by the abrupt shift in his manner, Uriel stared up at him with a bewildered expression. Even feeling that gaze on him, Avelos left without looking back.
Striding out of the library and marching all the way to his office at a pace that brooked no interruption, Avelos looked every inch an enraged bull. He was not someone who normally showed much emotional turbulence — and the only times he ever did were times that had something to do with Uriel. Uriel himself had no idea.
The sudden recollection of coffee had sent Avelos’s mood plummeting to its lowest point in an instant. The black liquid didn’t show additives even when something was mixed in, and its distinctive burnt smell masked the faint scent of any drug.
It was the drink the original Uriel had used to dispose of him all those years ago. He had drunk it and lost consciousness — and when he opened his eyes, there had been nothing left in his mind. He had arrived at the duke’s estate like a blank sheet of white paper, with nothing at all. Of all the moments for that wretched black liquid to surface in his thoughts, it had to be then.
Most galling of all was the expression on Uriel’s face when it had come up.
There were nobles who enjoyed that bitter black liquid. But Avelos was someone who loathed coffee. After becoming Emperor, he had gone so far as to order all coffee removed from within the imperial palace entirely.
It had become that kind of thing for him — and yet the very person responsible for it had worn an expression that seemed to remember nothing at all. That fact left him feeling something unbearably bleak.
It seemed Avelos alone was the only one who still cared about a past that meant nothing anymore.
“Ha…”
Nothing sat right with him. Not Uriel — who watched him so carefully with a face that remembered nothing. Not the way Uriel had eaten the bread, joylessly, as though chewing through stale, crumbled-dry crusts.
Should I just give up on all of this entirely? No — that didn’t sit right either, in its own way. Uriel, who seemed to remember nothing unlike Avelos himself, was irritating, yes — but it was also true that things had been genuinely enjoyable lately.
Tap, tap, tap.
A soft wind drifted through the window into Avelos’s office. As the breeze moved, the iluah scent thickened for just a moment. The dissatisfied tapping that followed was entirely out of place in his office, which was otherwise filled with that warm and gentle fragrance.
“Your Majesty. Have I made some kind of mistake?”
The movement of Avelos’s finger drumming against the desk went still. With that, the movement of the three aides working at the wide desk positioned in front of Avelos’s also stopped.
The three aides carefully exchanged glances with one another. One had asked a pointless question and was now reading the room anxiously; the other two were sending him sharp looks in return. After a brief silence, it was Avelos who spoke.
“How many meals do you each eat in a day?”
The aides each gave different answers to Avelos’s rather out-of-nowhere question. One said he ate meat, quality wheat, and bread divided into four portions a day with a glass of wine alongside each meal. Another said he only ate two meals, with strips of dried meat to snack on in between. The last one’s answer was similar. The more work they did, the more they ate.
Having heard his aides’ answers, Avelos asked a second question.
“If you were in a situation where you could only eat one meal a day, and Baron Veint offered you bread — how do you think you would feel?”
That too was a question that seemed to come out of nowhere. Veint was the fourth son of a baron’s family, one who could not inherit a title. Yet through his exceptional skill in baking, he had received the rank of baron from the previous Emperor and become an outstanding imperial baker. The three aides were bewildered by the sudden mention of Baron Veint’s bread, but they answered dutifully.
Being nobles themselves, they each put on something of an air of dignity. But the conclusion all three landed on was essentially the same: we’d be hungry, so we’d probably eat it all happily. At their answers, Avelos’s expression shifted subtly.
Avelos quietly recalled Uriel over the past few days. Slaves were only provided one meal a day, so he would always be hungry — and yet Uriel had shown strangely little reaction. Of course, Avelos hadn’t expected someone of that disposition to just happily help himself without hesitation.
Even someone who started out maintaining their dignity would find they couldn’t keep it up the moment food touched their lips. That was what hunger was. Before smelling it, before putting it to your mouth, it seemed like something you could manage — but the moment you crossed that line, you couldn’t hold back anymore.
Uriel seemed less like someone with strong self-restraint, and more like someone who simply wasn’t hungry.
“Is there a way for a slave to obtain food beyond what they’re provided?”
“……”
“…That would be…”
“Ahem…”
At Avelos’s question, all three aides fell into uneasy silence at once.
“Plainly.”
Avelos cut through their hesitation and hedging. In the end, the youngest of the three aides was practically pushed into giving an answer.
“I have heard that there are those who sell themselves to others in exchange for access to mid-grade dining halls.”
The moment Avelos heard that, his face went rigid in an instant. The mere disappearance of expression from Avelos’s face was enough to turn the air in the office cold and sharp.
It was as though time in the office had stopped — everyone halted what they were doing and looked to Avelos. Avelos, who had been still, exhaled slowly.
“They sell… themselves…?”
At what amounted to a murmured question from Avelos, the aide who had been standing frozen answered in a stammer.
“We, we do conduct regular crackdowns… b-but… I’m sorry.”
In truth, conducting crackdowns on that sort of thing wasn’t the aides’ responsibility. Primarily, that fell to the people managing the dining halls, and beyond that, if blame were to be assigned, the slave overseers would bear far greater responsibility than the aides. And yet the aide confessed as though the fault were his.
“In exchange…”
Avelos turned the aide’s words over slowly. Even now, chewed out and spat, the phrase still grated against him. The image of Uriel making a lukewarm expression at the sight of the basket he had prepared rose to his mind. The image of Uriel carefully watching him, then slowly, hesitantly putting the bread to his lips in front of him — when he had expected Uriel to eat with enjoyment — followed right behind it.
The enjoyment and interest he had found recently felt as though they had been flung headlong into the mud in a single instant. The word in exchange clung to him unpleasantly.
It was only a suspicion. And yet merely entertaining the thought was enough to make Avelos’s eyes settle cold and still. His expression was one that looked ready to tear a slave overseer apart on the spot if one happened to be standing in front of him.
The lips that had been pressed shut as tightly as the clenched jaw muscles beneath them parted slowly.
“Bring me the overseer.”
“Yes — yes, Your Majesty.”
At Avelos’s order, the aide who had been standing there looking as though he might cry turned and rushed out at once. He hadn’t even had a chance to ask which overseer. For now, his plan was to bring both the mid-grade dining hall manager and the slave overseer.
Knock, knock, knock.
Uriel opened his eyes to the familiar sound of knocking. Without opening the wooden door to check, he could already guess who was standing on the other side. He rubbed his eyes roughly and opened the door — and just as he’d expected, Alec was standing there, grinning sheepishly.
“Did I wake you again?”
Alec asked in a careful, tentative voice, watching for his reaction. Uriel quietly let out a sigh inside. At first Alec had come by once or twice after setting a time — but now he was showing up every single day without exception. He was a guard, which meant he couldn’t be on duty every day, and yet here he was regardless.
“No. Aren’t you the one who’s tired, Alec?”
“I’ve been training every morning before dawn, so it doesn’t bother me at all. If anything, having a proper breakfast every day because of you makes me feel healthier — I like it, actually.”
Worried that Uriel might feel like a burden, Alec said instead that it was actually a help to him. His brief laugh echoed in the corridor. Uriel lifted his eyes and studied Alec’s face in the dim early-morning light.
