“You were so gravely ill, and yet not a single visitor has come since you woke up — didn’t that already give you a hint?”
“…….”
He’d already sensed something was off when he asked, but for a moment his head swam. With looks like these and a family background like this — if he still had no one to associate with, didn’t that make him a spectacular failure of a personality? It sounded as though he’d been so disagreeable that people hadn’t even found it worth their while to exploit his face or his fortune.
“I… did I have a bad personality? The type who coasts on his looks and has no manners? Enough of one that he doesn’t have a single friend?”
“Mm…. It’s less that you had no manners, and more that you didn’t mix well with people.”
“That’s just a roundabout way of saying you had no friends, isn’t it?”
Ivan was the kind of devoted older brother who simply could not bring himself to tell his beloved younger sibling outright that he’d gone around acting unbearably superior and putting everyone off their appetite.
“Eugene, you…. Mm, well. You didn’t want to bother talking to people who spent every gathering showing off their strength, their money, and their women. And unfortunately, a nobleman who doesn’t do any of those things simply does not exist in this world.”
Talking behind people’s backs was something everyone did. Especially in a nobility steeped in pretence — that went without saying. They were the very people who hid their mouths behind fans and whispered amongst themselves about how the Bourgeoisie were nothing but vulgar nouveau riche. By comparison, Eugene’s disposition wasn’t particularly foul.
Before losing his memories, Eugene had simply regarded himself as different from most men and kept his distance — he just hadn’t wanted to associate with them. In one sense it could be called arrogance, but if one were to draw a finer distinction, Eugene Primrose was, in a rather un-nobleman-like way, a dreamer.
“You were quite tender-hearted, so even if you were cursing someone internally, you never let it show to their face. You always wore the same expression and treated everyone with equal indifference.”
“Can that really be called tender-hearted? Just say I was two-faced.”
“What I mean is that while you kept your distance from people, you weren’t the type to openly criticise them.”
“Right. So in other words, you were insufferable in a passive sort of way.”
Eugene received this critique of himself with his arms folded, entirely unbothered — as if he were listening to an assessment of a perfect stranger. It was only possible because he wasn’t the real Eugene Primrose, but watching his younger brother like this left Ivan with a rather peculiar feeling. In some ways, Eugene with his lost memories seemed exactly like Eugene — and yet, not quite.
If he’d been his old self, even bringing up such a topic would have wounded his pride, and he wouldn’t have spoken to anyone for days. Thanks to that characteristic poker face of his, he was perpetually cold-looking regardless, so it had always been difficult to tell whether Eugene was upset or content — his inner feelings were nearly impossible to read. And since he was a man of few words, it was equally hard to notice when something was making him uncomfortable.
So when Ivan would thoughtlessly butt up against Eugene’s frayed nerves and they happened to share a meal together, there would always, without fail, be a servant going to fetch the physician that same evening. Only then would Ivan and the family think, ah, so Eugene’s feelings were quite badly hurt. Either way, having inadvertently ended up criticising his younger brother, Ivan felt rather embarrassed and cleared his throat several times.
“I keep saying — it wasn’t that bad, Eugene. It wasn’t that people avoided you. It was that you avoided people.”
After several bouts of illness, Eugene had drifted through public school like a ghost. Whenever he could scrape together a reason, he’d pull every excuse he could think of to obtain a leave permit and come home, and he hadn’t participated in a single activity. As a result, he’d graduated with quite a dismal set of marks.
After graduation, he’d taken up residence in the townhouse and hadn’t gone out even for the smallest errand. By modern standards, he was the very definition of a shut-in recluse. As one year passed, and then two, Eugene Primrose simply faded from everyone’s memory.
To the point where people would look at Ivan and Kyle and think, oh, there was another son in that family, wasn’t there — I remember he was rather a stunning beauty, but I can’t for the life of me recall what he looked like. But all of this had come about because Eugene had wanted to be forgotten and isolated — by his own choosing.
“After you graduated, you never accepted a single invitation, and you never came out onto the streets like this — not once. You turned down every engagement on the grounds that you were unwell. Naturally, no one came to visit you. That’s all there is to it.”
The moment he stepped one foot outside, people would swarm around him like bees. The situation was entirely different from his foolish days at public school. This wasn’t being isolated in a school for six years. The reckless young men he’d known had all grown into adults who now knew how to calculate their own interests. Even if they resented him privately, there were precious few in the entire kingdom who could afford to openly snub a Primrose.
“Right now, if you simply expressed a willingness to join any club at all, most would welcome you. Because you are Eugene Primrose.”
Eugene waved a hand. He had no intention of recklessly throwing himself into situations when there was still so much he didn’t know about Eugene Primrose and this world. Everyone tended to him as though he were a child left near the water’s edge, and they all described him as frail and delicate — so he’d genuinely imagined the body’s original owner as a hothouse flower of a young master.
Not simply a beautiful flower, but a rose that had enclosed itself inside a glass dome of its own making — thorns and all. Eugene thought he needed to revise his understanding of what “frail” and “delicate” meant in this era.
“You said he patronised artists — poets and the like. Didn’t they ever come to visit?”
“Not at all. You preferred letters. Though there were artists who did write to ask after you when your correspondence went quiet for a while.”
“Tell me more about them. What sort of people were they?”
“I told you. Without exception, a lot of gloomy, critical types who’ve given up on the world. Instead of beautiful or glamorous things, they paint and write about despair and the gutter.”
Eugene nodded. The more he listened to Ivan, the more a certain extremely biased image of a person came together in his mind.
“No matter how much you patronised them, they were the sort who could never break into the mainstream.”
“Was I deeply dissatisfied with my status as a nobleman — with the privileges I enjoyed?”
“I wouldn’t say there was none of that, but you weren’t the revolutionary type either. It was simply that other noblemen looked like idiots to you.”
By this point, Eugene finally understood why the servants had looked so pained whenever they watched him give orders awkwardly. To summarise everything Ivan had laid out — he had simply been a reclusive shut-in with a severe case of adolescent angst gone off the rails. He’d have to open all the letters to know for certain which artists he’d associated with, but even without doing that, he could picture it well enough.
Holed up in his room, writing letters: “Hmph, to think these philistines don’t even recognise how extraordinary this work is!” That sort of figure. Well, of course there would have been reasons behind why Eugene had shut himself away in his room like that.
But there was no one who could tell him what thoughts, what worries, what wounds had driven Eugene Primrose to barricade himself inside — no one who could reveal the inner workings of his heart. It was an image that was extremely one-sided and bordering on mere prejudice, but even so, it helped Park Yujin form some understanding of Eugene in its own way.
“Ivan — so what did you think of me, then?”
“A sensitive, delicate younger brother. So delicate that just sitting there breathing quietly was enough to hurt him — a sibling I couldn’t help but feel sorry for.”
“I see.”
“Kyle, and our parents — they all thought the same, I’m sure.”
Right. That’s it exactly. I, ‘Eugene Primrose,’ am this era’s shut-in recluse. An otaku.
“But back to the point — Eugene, that’s precisely why I want you to live a life doing only what you enjoy.”
What remarkable brotherly love. Truly, he was so moved he could almost cry. In most films, noble families like this one had brothers killing each other over inheritance, or one side tormenting the other for being incompetent. The more he thought about it, the more Ivan’s very existence felt like nothing short of a ray of light to Park Yujin. If Ivan hadn’t been there, Eugene would have had to navigate all of this entirely on his own.
“Becoming a lawyer or a doctor at this point is out of the question, and theology is the same. And you, who can’t even enjoy hunting or riding, joining the military is even more absurd. That said, someone of Primrose blood can’t very well get their hands dirty. It’s hard on your temperament, setting aside that entirely — it would be a stain on the family name.”
“So in other words — make at least a minimal effort this Social Season for the sake of a comfortable future?”
“Yes. It’s the most realistic and easiest option. Especially for you.”
Eugene nodded, because he understood Ivan’s point well enough. With looks that could make him the centrepiece of any party even if someone dressed him in rags, marriage really was the easiest path. All the more so given that he had no particular talent to speak of. Well, appearance wasn’t the only thing that mattered in marriage, but it certainly couldn’t be ignored as a factor.
For Park Yujin, it would have taken active and vigorous courtship — making a good impression, drawing someone’s interest, working hard to turn that into genuine affection. But as Eugene Primrose, surely a single smile would take care of all of that.
It wasn’t that Eugene placed an especially biased value on looks — it was simply a face that anyone with eyes couldn’t help but look at twice. It made him genuinely curious what on earth this face had said and done in its daily life to have made such a ruin of his social relationships.
There’s a saying that even babies prefer beautiful, handsome faces. It was just a natural thing. For one’s eyes to drift a moment longer toward a person who is beautiful and well-featured.
He understood the situation, but Eugene had no other options. He had no knowledge of this world whatsoever, and he couldn’t exactly just bolt out of the Primrose household on a whim — nor could he tell Ivan that he was actually a modern person from another world, and that he couldn’t proceed with anything unilaterally until the real Eugene Primrose returned.
As Ivan had said, he’d have to read the room, hope that everything resolved itself peacefully, and simply let things flow as they would. What else could he do? If the real Eugene Primrose came back one day and demanded an explanation — all he could say was I had no choice.
“Haah, I want to go home.”
Eugene let out a long sigh.
Home.
The home Eugene was thinking of was neither the new place he’d been swindled out of, nor the Primrose townhouse he’d just stepped away from, nor the estate — strangely, it was the semi-basement room he’d barely scraped together monthly rent for, grinding through misery in his old life. Ivan, of course, could have no way of knowing that.
“That’s not happening until the end of this season.”
“Ivan, you don’t understand anything.”
How could Ivan possibly understand the complicated feelings of a modern person? Eugene propped his chin in his hand and shook his head.
“The way you say that — you really are the precious youngest son of the Primrose family, aren’t you.”
Ivan clicked his tongue, reassured — because in manner and word, this Eugene was no different from the one before his memory loss. While the two brothers took a brief moment to face reality together, the carriage drew to a stop in front of a tailor’s shop at the far end of Primo Street. Ivan stepped down from the carriage with an air of having pulled strings to get here, but Eugene didn’t even bother to respond.
Despite what Ivan had implied, the exterior of the tailor’s shop was worn and narrow. As Ivan climbed out, Eugene looked around and scrambled out a beat behind him, slightly flustered. It was only natural for Eugene, who had lost everything except language and the most basic knowledge, to react that way. Ivan stepped into the shop with a rueful smile, watching his younger brother who, even now that they’d left the estate, was still a source of worry.
The moment the door opened, warm air and golden lamplight seeped into the skin. A young-faced clerk, as though he’d been waiting for this very moment, received Ivan’s hat and cane and helped him out of his coat.
Following behind Ivan, who accepted being attended to as an entirely natural matter, Eugene only then realised he’d left his cane behind in the carriage. A mistake born of unfamiliarity. He was still receiving etiquette lessons, but he was currently only partway through the foundational module — Indoor Life. Going Out was an advanced topic.
Every gentleman on the street carried a cane. Every single one, except Eugene. Standing awkwardly at a standstill in the entrance of the tailor’s shop, Eugene felt a sudden, sharp sense of alienation — as though he and everyone else here existed in separate, incompatible worlds. And all because of a single cane. Flustered, Eugene quickly stripped off his hat and coat and handed them to the clerk, all his etiquette lessons rendered entirely useless in that one moment.
