He gave a broad account of Lucian’s background — who stood behind him, what manner of man he was — and spoke of his conduct over the years. A life of glamour and excess. Every social club where men of consequence gathered had Lucian’s name woven into it without exception. They were called social clubs, but they bore no resemblance to the world of ladies assembling for embroidery and afternoon tea.
Men sat together filling the room with tobacco smoke, with drink and women in endless supply. Neither day nor night made any difference to them. They postured and preened over who was the greater man, and when the hot blood running through them boiled over, all manner of rough behavior followed.
If it was settled through sport, that was the more respectable outcome — sometimes they placed bets on things that defied all reason. It was, in every sense, exactly the sort of den of arrogant, insufferable noble men that Eugene — before he lost his memories — had despised with every fiber of his being. Lucian owned several establishments of precisely that kind.
Hearing it described, it sounded as though his primary occupation was simply spending money and causing trouble on the strength of having been born well — but that wasn’t entirely the case either.
He had taken on the Highwinter name and led the family alone from quite a young age, and he had a talent for reading the currents of any situation with precision — to the point where it would be fair to say Highwinter had a hand in virtually every venture operating within and beyond the kingdom. His years of wandering had also made him fluent in foreign languages and cultures, and more than once he had been pressed into service as an envoy entirely against his own wishes.
There were factions seeking to place him on the throne — and it wasn’t for bloodline alone. Once Ivan had given a rough account of the man’s background, he moved on to a set of stories that were distinctly one-sided in nature. Namely, the reasons Eugene needed to keep his distance from Lucian and tread carefully.
A baronet who had fallen out of Lucian’s favor and proceeded to run his business into the ground, losing every last coin he had. A woman whose rumored entanglement with Lucian had left her all but buried in society. And a man who had become a wreck of a person after catching a fever of the heart over Lucian.
At this last part, Eugene couldn’t help but repeat it back. “A man?” Through that exchange, he learned that this world was more open-minded than he had expected — that in high society, a wide range of personal inclinations was not considered a particularly serious failing. In any case, Eugene heard somewhere between ten and fifteen such accounts of Lucian having pushed someone’s life into ruin, or having set the conditions for it.
“And this is the man you called admirable? Someone worth emulating?”
The things Ivan had been saying right up until the moment before they came face to face with Lucian flashed through Eugene’s mind. He narrowed his eyes with a sour expression — and Ivan, reaching up to rub the back of his now considerably lighter head with a sheepish air, laughed awkwardly.
“Ha ha…. Among men, he’s something of a legend, I suppose. That holds true for me and others like me — but not for you, Eugene.”
He knew exactly what Ivan meant. It seemed this particular dynamic didn’t change much regardless of the era. Back when he had been Park Yujin, working whatever jobs came his way, the atmosphere in most male-dominated spaces had been more or less the same. Even bone-tired and run ragged, there were always those who insisted on going out drinking, on showing off for absolutely no reason.
The unpleasant memory surfaced on Eugene’s face without his permission. In this regard, Park Yujin and Eugene Primrose were not so very different from each other.
“Why? Because I find those kinds of men repulsive? Are you worried I’ll say something reckless to him?”
“No. It’s more that you’re too…. well. Beautiful. Regardless of how you carry yourself, you attract attention and become the subject of talk.”
The word beautiful raised goosebumps on his skin. He simply wasn’t accustomed to hearing that from an older man. Much had been left unsaid — but Eugene wasn’t naive enough to miss what Ivan was worried about. He let out a short, dismissive laugh.
“You’re worried I’ll be seduced by Lucian Highwinter? That there’ll be some kind of scandal?”
“Until today, I never could have imagined you’d become entangled with the Duke of Highwinter in any way.”
“Do I look like someone who’d fall for Lucian Highwinter and go running off to his house?”
“No. It’s not you I’m worried about, Eugene. It’s the Duke and the people around him. They’re…. not the sort you’d take a liking to.”
He had a point. None of this would have happened if Park Yujin hadn’t entered Eugene Primrose’s body. Perhaps in another life, Lucian and Eugene would have gone their entire lives without exchanging a single word.
Ivan leaned close and whispered “And call him ‘the Duke,'” — but Eugene only swept his gaze around the sitting room and answered with a shrug.
“Ivan — if they’re truly the kind of people I’d find insufferable, why would I be trying to get close to them?”
“…Because he’s handsome?”
“Ah, well. That’s not wrong, exactly…. But there’s a debt to repay, Ivan.”
Ivan had thrown that out as a light remark to break the tension — but Eugene couldn’t bring himself to deny it outright. He let out a short, helpless laugh, but his expression hardened almost immediately after. The moment Eugene said the word debt and his face turned grave with it, Ivan looked visibly shaken.
“What are you saying, Eugene. No one has asked you to repay any debt!”
“I know. Ivan, this is something I want to do for myself. I find being in debt genuinely unbearable, and the thought of being poor is even worse. And above all, I want to avoid marriage.”
“No one is forcing you. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I’ve told you more than once — the Primroses aren’t so fragile that we’d crumble from something like this.”
The mere act of imagining poverty made Eugene shudder. He had worked so hard to strip away all the wretched things that had clung to him — the very last thing he intended was to let them settle back onto him again.
Say that Ivan was right and marriage could be avoided. But there was no telling when — or whether — he might ever return to being Park Yujin. It could be tomorrow. It could be in the far-distant future, when he was a bent old man. Accounting for every possible variable, regardless of when that might be, Eugene needed to make sure he could stand on his own two feet.
“Setting all of that aside — what exactly do you intend to do by getting close to the Duke of Highwinter? This isn’t someone you can afford to take lightly. If anything, he’s above you.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter if he can see through my intentions. What matters is whether he finds my ideas interesting or not. If I’m useful to him, he’ll keep me close even if he knows I have an agenda. A simple relationship of mutual benefit — each using the other for gain — is enough.”
Eugene looked at Ivan with eyes that carried none of the uncertainty they’d held back in Atrian. Brief as it had been, even in his own experience Lucian had not struck him as someone easily managed. Eugene had been the one to engineer the situation — but in practice, Lucian had smiled his eye-smile and stirred everything up while appearing not to, and Eugene had been pulled along entirely on Lucian’s terms.
“I have a plan. But explaining it piece by piece and asking for your approval isn’t something I’m able to do. I don’t have enough confidence to lay it out in full detail and prove it to you, and I can’t guarantee I’ll actually produce results. But at the very least, I won’t bring harm to the family.”
To Ivan, it probably sounded like utter nonsense. Whatever he said, it would naturally earn very little trust, and Ivan would simply be left anxious — worried his unstable younger brother was about to do something reckless. On top of that, Eugene had no confidence in his ability to explain what he was envisioning and persuade Ivan to believe in it.
“I understand it’s hard to feel reassured or to trust someone who isn’t even fully recovered suddenly announcing they’re going to do something. But it’s not because I’ve fallen for the Duke. Just — watch and wait for a while. Ivan.”
Trying to explain the concept of influencers and the way they generated income was a hopeless endeavor from the start. To Ivan, it would sound like nothing but empty talk about catching clouds.
For now, rather than trying to make a logical argument, Eugene needed to appeal to Ivan’s feelings. The kind of persuasion that would actually land had to come with tangible results. At his appeal, Ivan let out a low, contemplative sound. He seemed to consider it for a moment — and then an unexpected question came out.
“…You’re not — entertaining any subversive thoughts, are you? Overturning the class system, seizing the royal family’s wealth, redistributing it equally — that sort of thing? Eugene?”
Had the real Eugene Primrose actually been going around declaring he intended to start a revolution? Eugene shook his head. It was quite the opposite. He needed to become part of the privileged class. To make people want to imitate even a single scrap of fabric draped on his body.
“Not at all. If anything, I intend to make my own privileges and the Duke’s even more firmly entrenched.”
“All right. Fine.”
“That’s it?”
“You asked me to watch and wait.”
Ivan nodded with more ease than Eugene had anticipated — and Eugene was the one caught off guard. He hadn’t expected it to work that simply. It struck him anew, in a way that felt almost startling, just how genuinely Ivan cared for his younger brother.
“Let’s be clear about one thing. Repaying debts, protecting the family from ruin — none of that is your responsibility. That’s not why I’m going along with what you’re saying…. You locked yourself away in that room for so long, and then barely came back from death itself. If you’re asking me to watch and wait while you try to do something — what kind of family would turn that down flat.”
The look in Ivan’s eyes as he watched Eugene was one of the most tender things Eugene had ever seen. Was there a warmer shade of blue than that? It was a gaze, and a feeling, that Park Yujin had never truly known. There hadn’t been a single thing since waking up as Eugene Primrose that he hadn’t envied — but this, in particular, ran deep. When the real Eugene comes back, I might not want to give this up. He felt so envious it almost made him think — what did a little debt matter, if it meant having this.
“It’s not as though just anyone could say something like that. Coming from you, it’s like playing your hidden card. Eugene, if you say it that way — I have no choice but to fold.”
A hidden card. An ace up the sleeve, a point of no return — that’s what Ivan meant. Ivan — who had no idea of the pitch-black ambition that had shot up in Eugene at those very words — laughed openly and bright. Faced with that laugh, so full of nothing but pure, uncomplicated affection, Park Yujin found himself at a loss for words.
A vague, undefined longing swept over him — I wish this were really mine — followed immediately by a wave of guilt. The guilt of not being the real Eugene Primrose, of only wearing his face. If he found out there was someone else wearing his younger brother’s skin — would it be exorcism, burning at the stake? Does witch-hunting exist in this era? A small, uneasy fear settled in.
At the same time, Eugene felt a genuine resolve take shape. It wasn’t truly his — but as repayment for having been allowed to feel, even indirectly, the warmth of something like family, he made a quiet vow to protect the Primroses.
Perhaps his expression had shifted in some odd way — Ivan smiled and ruffled Eugene’s hair roughly with one hand. It was exactly the kind of gesture a real older brother would make. A textbook example, as though painted into the scene.
“For now, I’ll watch. But you really do need to be careful. This isn’t someone you can use so easily, the way you’re imagining. If you’re not careful, you might be the one who ends up caught. He looks endlessly lighthearted on the surface — but never forget that he isn’t. Keep that in mind always.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Even setting Lucian aside entirely — if Eugene’s plan proceeded the way he hoped, a great deal of noise would follow whether he liked it or not. He had come from a world where posting a single video brought dozens, hundreds of reactions pouring in beneath it.
He’d been hit with insults about his looks the moment the comments rolled in, heard things he couldn’t repeat aloud — but he’d also had the support of strangers whose faces he’d never seen. Because he understood well what it meant to capture other people’s attention, Eugene didn’t say don’t worry — he said I’ll be careful instead.
“Which brings me to something. I’ll need to take etiquette lessons — more systematically than before. Ideally from a tutor who knows the social scene inside and out.”
Ladies had their chaperones — called guardians in name, but in practice strict overseers who would note the precise angle of a single finger to make sure nothing could be held against them. Men had no equivalent. They simply gathered among themselves and murmured to each other, and that was more or less the whole of it.
If the goal was merely to avoid uncomfortable situations and get through things safely, Eugene could continue as Eugene Primrose had been doing all along — declining invitations with health as the excuse, and standing at dances like a wallflower pressed against the wall.
