On top of that, his black hair — a perfect contrast to his pale skin — was combed back without a single strand out of place, and following the neat hairline down past his straight forehead, one could see slightly upswept brows, a straight nose, and a clean jawline. All of it was impossibly unreal.
Hidden now beneath his eyelids, his irises were anything but ordinary. Those clear, vivid violet eyes, like beautiful gems — whenever Avelos’s violet gaze fixed itself on Yuri, Yuri always had the strange illusion of standing naked before him.
“If you want to look at my face, you’re welcome to come closer.”
Avelos had opened his eyes at some point and was watching Yuri. Caught in the act of sneaking glances at Avelos’s face, Yuri felt his composure slip — he ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip.
Avelos’s gaze seemed to briefly land on the red tip of his tongue, which Yuri had slipped out to wet his suddenly dry lips in his flustered state.
Yuri turned his head to the side and answered, as if making an excuse.
“No. I was just distracted by something for a moment….”
Then he turned his back and quickly resumed what he had been doing before Avelos arrived. Turning away and cutting off a conversation with the emperor before being given leave to do so was plainly rude. But Yuri didn’t seem to realize just how discourteous his behavior was.
Far from being angry at Yuri’s actions, Avelos simply watched him with a look of quiet amusement.
Swish — swish —
In the study, with just the two of them, there was no sound at all aside from the faint noise of Yuri’s cleaning.
T-this is uncomfortable.
Yuri regretted having started cleaning with his back to Avelos. He should have said his goodbyes, told him he’d clean later, and let Avelos rest in peace.
But it was too late for regrets. He couldn’t stop a cleaning he’d already started. It would have wounded his pride to say now, belatedly, that he couldn’t continue because Avelos’s gaze was too much to bear — and he worried about what Avelos might do if he showed any sign of being self-conscious around him. With no other choice, Yuri ignored Avelos’s stare and kept silently at his work.
Like a bidder at an auction appraising the condition and value of an item on display, the gaze that swept slowly and thoroughly over Yuri’s body was unmistakably palpable even without turning around.
So relentlessly did it rove over him that the back of his head prickled. Under that persistent stare — one that felt like it could wear him down and bore straight through him — Yuri flinched and shuddered every so often as he cleaned.
If eyes alone could strip a person of their clothes and mount and violate them, it might already have happened by now.
Just as Yuri thought he had to say something and was about to open his mouth, Avelos spoke first.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
Yuri’s brow furrowed faintly at Avelos’s question. It was a rather absurd thing to ask. With the emperor staring at one’s back like that, what slave in the world could possibly work at ease? Setting aside the uncomfortable nature of their relationship entirely — it simply made no sense.
Looking into Avelos’s eyes, it seemed clear he held Yuri in contempt — and yet on days like today, there were moments when those eyes looked less like hatred and more like something filled with dissatisfaction, as though some desire had been left entirely unresolved.
He always hovered around Yuri with this same ambiguous manner. It was rare enough that it couldn’t quite be called concern — yet calling him indifferent to Yuri would be just as inaccurate.
Sting.
“Ngh.”
He had been paying too much attention to Avelos and had nicked the tip of his finger on a decorative sword — a thin, shallow cut. More than the pain at his fingertip, Yuri was flustered by uncertainty over how Avelos behind him might react, and darted a glance at him.
Will he tell me to be careful? Or will he get angry and say I can’t even do my work properly?
“Oh.”
Avelos slowly lifted himself from where he had been lounging against the sofa.
“I forgot I had a lunch appointment with the finance minister.”
He had been gazing steadily at Yuri, who was pressing one hand over the cut, when Avelos let out a quiet, breathy laugh.
“Don’t slack off just because I’m gone…. I’ll see you at the next branding.”
Avelos said only what he had to say, then walked straight out of the parlor. Yuri stared at the door through which he had left for a moment. The tip of his finger, cut by the decorative sword, stung.
“You’re back early today. Done for the day?”
Someone called out to Yuri as he was making his way back to the barracks. He turned to find Alec, one of the imperial palace guards. It seemed today was his rotation for guarding the slave quarters — a role that was closer to monitoring the slaves than actual guard duty, but that was what it was called regardless.
“Hello, Alec.”
“What? What happened to your hand?”
“Ah… I hurt it a little while cleaning.”
The cut he had gotten while with Avelos — he had wrapped it loosely with an old scrap of cloth — seemed to have been noticed right away. Alec’s expression darkened, as if the sight of that crude bandaging was hard to look at.
Yuri studied Alec quietly. The young man, with his chestnut hair and slightly sun-darkened skin from training, was always the first to say hello to Yuri. The third or fourth son of a rural baron, if Yuri recalled correctly — and yet he was one of the rare few who treated Yuri, a slave, with genuine kindness.
“Have you seen a physician—”
“I’m fine. It bled a little, but it’s not a serious wound.”
Alec, who had mentioned a physician without thinking, closed his mouth with an awkward expression. No matter how much better off imperial slaves were compared to others, there was no way a slave could receive treatment from a physician. Seeming sorry for the slip, Alec reached into his pocket and held something out.
“Take this. It’s something I carry for emergencies, so you don’t need to return it.”
“…Thank you.”
Yuri accepted the unfamiliar powdered medicine Alec offered without hesitation. This was a world where medical technology had not advanced far. What little magic had existed was long since nearly gone, and even if it hadn’t been, there was no medical system or magical treatment available to slaves.
There were occasionally physicians who could channel a faint degree of divine power, somewhat like the original novel’s main companion — but that too was as good as nothing for Yuri, who was a slave. In this world, slaves were worth less than the horses or hunting dogs a noble family might need.
Though the powder was of unknown origin, even that was something to be grateful for in a slave’s position. Yuri tucked it away, guessing it was probably something akin to Korean hemostatic powder or tiger balm — and found himself missing the many medicines that had been stocked in Uriel’s manor before Avelos had taken him. Those were the days.
The original Uriel had been quite an obsessive person. Had he lived in the modern world, he might well have been diagnosed with OCD, depression, PTSD, and any number of other conditions. In any case, Uriel had cared deeply about his own body — obsessively so — and had compulsively brewed medicines using his own magic.
If I could stop by the manor even briefly, I could bring some back — the wistful thought crossed his mind before Yuri gave a small shake of his head. Given that he couldn’t leave the palace grounds, it was a pointless fantasy.
“Alec, may I head back now?”
Since Alec, a guard of noble birth, had been the one to call out to him, he needed Alec’s permission to go back to the barracks.
“One moment — I had something I’d been meaning to give you. Take it with you.”
That was what I called you over for in the first place, Alec added with an awkward smile. In his hand was a small pouch containing dried meat and rye bread.
“The rations didn’t look like they’d be enough, so I put this together. You’re… too thin. I thought you’d need to eat well to grow like the other young men your age, so take it upstairs.”
Alec was half right and half wrong. The slave rations being meager was true enough — but eating more wouldn’t make Uriel grow any further. Uriel looked, at most, twenty-one or twenty-two — or even younger if one was being strict. But Uriel’s age, while not precisely known, had long since surpassed a hundred.
The eight rings formed within his heart had halted the growth and aging of his body. Yuri said nothing and held his tongue.
He bowed his head low and offered a quiet word of thanks. Alec smiled, warm and easy, and gave him a nudge on the back, telling him to hurry in and get some rest.
Yuri went back to his room and set the pouch on the rough wooden table. He was hungry, but it felt too precious to eat up all at once. Dried meat and rye bread — back when he had lived in Korea, he wouldn’t have given them a second thought, but right now they were more valuable to him than almost anything.
He sat on the creaking old bed, staring at the pouch for a moment, then pulled his knees up to his chest. I failed to die in one blow, and I got taken by Avelos and made a slave — but this isn’t the worst it could be. He supposed it was something, at least, that he hadn’t had his limbs torn off and been burned at the stake like the original Uriel.
The mana filling his body erasing his scars and forcing him to be re-branded at regular intervals was agonizing — but the pain never lasted more than about two days. Bearable enough, all things considered. But… today, for some reason, felt unbearably heavy.
The cut on his finger would be fully healed by tomorrow. This kind of wound wasn’t something that truly worried him. It wasn’t a wound someone else had inflicted on him, and he told himself there was no reason to feel sad — yet his mood had sunk in a way he couldn’t quite explain.
