“I’m glad I was of help.”
Anyway, if I nitpick, I’m the only one who loses. I’m the fool who brought the evidence even knowing what kind of bastard he is.
Would I have done the same if I were Seha? Absolutely, never, I wouldn’t have. But comparing myself to the main shou only makes me feel miserable.
Just in case, I should ask Raki to get me some tentacle stuff. I need to check if there’s a character who gets thrown away for being a sub. It might be a cliché, you never know.
“Of course, it would have been a bit easier if the Crown Princess hadn’t stupidly collapsed there.”
“……”
Right. If you think about it, it’s all because I’m slow. The Seha in the original work even climbed up himself and brought the key. If I hadn’t fallen into the water, the tentacle monster would have been quiet like an ordinary tree. Same with the slave trader incident—it’s all my carelessness. Yes, yes. How nice to be so cold-hearted.
But you know, Your Highness the Crown Prince. You knew I was slow and brought me along, didn’t you?
“I am deeply sorry for being a burden to Your Highness the Crown Prince. I’m trembling with rage at my own patheticness.”
However, even if I felt wronged, what could I say to Eldon? If it were a lover or friend, a work colleague, or even a boss, I’d say something, but that person is the Crown Prince. A psycho who beheads his partner even though she’s pregnant with his child.
I lowered my eyes as if I was truly sorry and didn’t know what to do with myself.
“Your Highness the Crown Prince is the hope of the Empire and a war hero. It’s only right that strong and skilled people assist you by your side, but the only skill I have is holding a brush, so my excessive greed has brought about today’s disaster. Even for Your Highness the Crown Prince’s honor, I will break off the engagement and leave the palace.”
Since I had already prepared and even practiced my farewell lines, the words flowed smoothly even as my mind gradually blurred with a strange sensation. Eldon propped his chin on his right hand, then tilted his head at an angle and looked at me.
“The Crown Prince doesn’t change.”
“I know. Didn’t I give you the evidence?”
“I heard you broke up with the Third Prince.”
“It’s a connection that ended long ago.”
“I thought you had chosen me, but now you’re leaving again. Even though I branded you with a slave mark, you only think of running away, so what should I do now?”
His hand moved toward my collarbone. It was different from Hereis. Rather than gently placing it on top, his fingers pressed down forcefully as if crushing the brand.
“Hng, ugh. Your High-Highness, stop… It hurts.”
“Was it true that you have no experience?”
“What?”
What kind of ghostly nonsense is this? Who spread rumors that I’m a virgin? No, even if someone wanted to spread rumors, no one would know, right?
“Where did you hear such false rumors…”
“Didn’t you say it with your own mouth? ‘It’s my first time. I’ve never done it. You think I kept my virginity to be violated like this? If you have any conscience, save me, Eldon you son of a bitch.'”
“I-I said such things?”
“Yes, you said a lot. But the content was the same. Should I tell you more if you don’t remember?”
“N-no.”
Damn! I had lost my reason because the tentacles were kneading my entire body. I remember muttering something, but I said something like that.
“The fact that it was your first time bothered me quite a bit.”
At least he wasn’t bothered by ‘Eldon you son of a bitch,’ so that’s fortunate.
“That is, well… I must have said nonsense because I was so surprised.”
“No, you were sincere.”
Are you a lie detector? I wanted to be sarcastic at his firm declaration, but unfortunately, it wasn’t wrong.
How do I get past this? I was desperately thinking of excuses when he completely pulled back the blanket covering my body.
“Ugh.”
Just the friction of the blanket moving was enough to make my back arch, swept up in sexual desire. What is that Elegy bastard trying to do!
“Shall I comfort you?”
“What?”
“I’ll get rid of the drug’s effects.”
“It-it goes against etiquette to have relations with someone you’re not married to!”
“That’s etiquette made to protect the bride’s chastity. It doesn’t apply to Rosenthal Chendewden who’s been rolling around vulgarly.”
Eldon’s hand grabbed my penis. It was an action that ignored the imperial etiquette he had obediently followed until now. His intention was obvious. He meant to make me confess the truth. I gritted my teeth. If I endured, he wouldn’t go all the way.
However, the moment Eldon grabbed my thighs with all his might and pried them apart, burrowing into the center, I had no choice but to surrender as he intended.
“Don-don’t! I said it’s my first time!!”
The hands that had been spreading my legs as if to tear them stopped. As if satisfied to hear the answer he wanted, one corner of Eldon’s mouth rose.
“I knew it.”
“……”
I closed my mouth and swallowed my curses. But Eldon’s mouth, which had been rising with satisfaction, twisted strangely.
“But how is that possible? Did all the people around you dream it all?”
“Th-that is…”
I operated my brain at full capacity. I hadn’t desperately racked my brain like this since the college entrance exam. And among numerous thoughts, the most plausible excuse crossed my mind.
“I lost my memory!”
“Your memory…?”
Ah, damn my shabby imagination. The best I could come up with was a makjang drama scenario.
But Eldon propped his chin with a serious expression and fell into thought. Perhaps because he normally didn’t encounter makjang dramas full of memory loss, this shabby excuse seemed to work.
“…Since when?”
“When Your Highness came to visit me when I was ill. After suffering from fever for ten days and waking up, all my memories had disappeared.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. I have vague memories of being a slave when I was young and being sold, but nothing else…”
“Are you saying you really don’t know anything?”
“My body remembers etiquette and horseback riding. There are a few fragmentary memories remaining, but they feel distant like reading a book.”
I shook my head, saying I didn’t know anything except for Rosenthal’s relatively detailed childhood memories from his past. Actually, I don’t know much anyway.
“You said you fell for me and loved me. Was that a lie too?”
“No. When you returned to the palace, you were magnificent, and because I know I fell in love, I said so.”
“With a memory distant like reading a book?”
“…Yes.”
Eldon gave a hollow smile. Surprisingly, he seemed to have given great meaning to what I said.
“What about the Third Prince?”
“I know that we dated before the engagement.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes… But his continued pretense of intimacy was burdensome, so I told him goodbye.”
“I see, that’s what happened. So that’s why you changed. I thought it strange that the ambition burning in Rosenthal’s eyes had disappeared.”
“I lived as a slave and woke up to find I’d become a noble. Actually, every day still feels like a dream to me. I’d be happy just painting in a small mansion in the forest, yet to think I’m the Crown Prince’s fiancé despite my station is too much.”
“So that’s why you kept saying you’d break off the engagement?”
“Yes… Besides, the palace is a scary, difficult, and frightening place that doesn’t seem to suit me. I’m not qualified, and I don’t have the ability to handle it.”
I slowly brought my legs together. How long are you planning to sit between my legs? This is so embarrassing… I wiggled my fingers toward the blanket Eldon had pushed aside to cover my body even a little, and Eldon grabbed the blanket.
He brought my legs back together and covered me with the blanket as before.
“You’ll get better by morning, so rest well.”
It seemed he was going to believe the common memory loss repertoire that would only invite ridicule in South Korea. I bowed my head in relief.
“I am deeply grateful.”
“And I didn’t know that situation would occur. Normally Ryrium is a safe monster, but that one must have been a mutant species. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“No. It was my mistake.”
“I’m sorry.”
He apologized twice. Fatigue washed over me, centered on my tongue that had concentrated all my nerves on suppressing moans. The Eldon in the original work never apologizes to Rosenthal even once. So perhaps I’ve moved a little further from the gruesome death ending.
Along with relief, as the tension released, my eyes began to close.
***
Eldon looked down at his fiancé with his arms crossed. Though he exhaled hot breaths because of the heat from the Ryrium sap, he looked relatively comfortable.
Should he believe the claim of lost memory?
Eldon didn’t trust people. Even to the subordinates who had served him until now, he had never completely opened his heart.
Because of hasty trust, he lost his mother, and all the palace servants died too. Foolish trust rather erodes those around you. But perhaps because of the wall of suspicion, he hadn’t properly seen the person called Rosenthal Chendewden.
In fact, there was a strange crack between the Rosenthal Eldon had thought of and the real Rosenthal. It was a gap that opened because of the wall Eldon had forcibly erected.
The man who trembled at his stepbrother’s treachery in the carriage and honestly confessed his past. Even after stimulating Eldon’s sympathy, he declared breaking off the engagement without even thinking to use it.
Even when he suspected a relationship with Arleigh, he was terrified and trembled just from having a finger inserted.
He was also skilled at serving. Originally a theater slave, he must have attended to actors. Having forgotten all of his life at the duke’s estate, those memories would be relatively vivid.
Eldon looked at Rosenthal exhaling hot breaths with gasps.
He knew his appearance was outstanding, but was he this delicate? Once free from the shell of a human defined by viciousness and schemes, he saw gently closed eyes, eyelashes extending long like a painting, and reddened cheeks. Eldon wiped Rosenthal’s sweat-stained forehead.
“Mm, Harry, thank you…”
Rosenthal murmured in a clear voice. Why is he mentioning that suspicious butler bastard? A vein bulged on his forehead as Rosenthal tossed and turned.
“Harry, meal… I need to give Forti food too, does it not have to be meat?”
He couldn’t open his heart to the vulgar bastard who had mingled bodies with the Third Prince before coming to him. So he kept his distance.
Wondering if perhaps he was attracted to men, he took Seha to the south. But it was useless. And it was also a pointless thing to do.
He brought the confused Rosenthal who had lost his memory to the annex palace. He kept him by his side. It was an opportunity to make him solely his possession, but with unnecessary suspicion and stubbornness, he gave other bastards a chance to cling to him.
“But there’s no food. Apples… Wide. Your Highness, don’t kill me. I’ll pick apples. Please save me. I was wrong…”
