At last, he'd gotten his vacation.
It wasn't obtained for free. Over the past two days, Luan had been buried in a mountain of paperwork, processing the work like a machine. He skimmed approval documents, slashed unnecessary budgets, and mercilessly wrote corrections in red pen onto any ambiguous wording.
Was it because of all that overwork?
The detox's expiration date is crap-short!
Exactly two days after he'd vomited rotten blood at the temple and reset his body, his physical condition had reverted to the original garbage.
Those two days had been heaven, truly. His body was light as a feather, and his mental gears turned as fast as in his prime—no, even faster. Running that overflowing energy at full throttle, he'd combed through the imperial accounts down to the last detail and tidied up the corruption ledgers of the rotten nobles.
It was only good for two measly days?!
The problem was the difference in environment between the imperial palace and the temple.
This place was the heart of the empire, surrounded by layer upon layer of powerful magic barriers. Those barriers blocked external intrusion while also thoroughly cutting off the flow of divine power inside. Because of that, the vast quantity of divine power generated within Luan's body couldn't be discharged naturally to the outside; it flowed backward through his veins and began to pool again.
Still, this was supposedly a detox bestowed by a god, and it lasted a mere two days? His stomach churned and his joints ached until he finally declared a strike. Perhaps thanks to having worked like a dog for the past two days, fortunately Kirian let him rest without any complaint.
Even just resting, I have to read the room this much. Disgusting, really.
Luan shot up from his seat and staggered out of the study. And Kirian's eyes, chasing that retreating figure, narrowed.
A short while later, at the study window. Kirian was looking down at Luan as he walked through the garden toward the greenhouse.
The crimson eyes staring at that retreating back had sunk deep. It wasn't affection or worry toward a spouse, but the gaze of a hunter scouting out a beast whose true nature was unknown.
“…Kael. How does it look to you?”
At Kirian's low-pitched voice, Kael—the knight who guarded his back like a shadow—took a step closer.
“Suspicious. Extremely so.”
Kael was firm. His gaze too was fixed on Luan beyond the window.
“As you'll recall, the Empress of before was… not someone you'd even know was present, he was so quiet, was he not.”
He was someone who'd spent all day holed up in his room, looking only out the window, or who wouldn't utter a single word even when attending a meeting. His presence was so faint, as if deliberately erased, that sometimes even the attending servants would forget whether he was in the room.
“…”
At Kael's quietly continuing explanation, Kirian furrowed his brow. True. Luan had been a person who lived hushed and quiet like the imperial palace's wallpaper or furniture, there and yet not there. He'd never revealed an emotion or shown a desire.
Kirian suddenly felt a strange sensation.
But… what sort of expression did he usually wear?
He tried to grope through his memory, but nothing came to mind. A faint, white silhouette. That was all. What books the man usually read, what manner of speech he used, what expression he wore.
Nothing came to mind at all.
“I don't know.”
Kirian murmured low.
“There's no reference point. To say that fellow has 'changed,' I'd have to know how he was originally… but I can't remember.”
He'd been a person Kirian was that indifferent to. Or had the man so thoroughly erased himself while living?
Kirian was bewildered. With no past information to compare against, he couldn't even judge whether the Empress before him now was "strange," or whether "this was how he'd always been and I simply didn't know."
What slipped into that gap was Kael's cool speculation.
“But the degree of change is excessive. Look at the speed at which he processes documents. That's…”
Excessively capable and chillingly bold. He took a knife to the empire's budget, and even toward the Emperor he merely observed the appropriate courtesies as if it were a bother, while saying everything he wanted to say. When it came to work, especially, it was as if he held the empire's entire system in the palm of his hand.
Kael lowered his voice and continued.
“It's the movement of a beast that's hidden its claws for a long time and waited for its moment. The silence all this while may have been not incompetence but a thorough disguise to induce complacency.”
“…A disguise.”
“Excessive competence can sometimes become poison. The very documents the Empress is now tidying up may later become the blade that isolates Your Majesty.”
The corner of Kirian's mouth twisted. Yes, that could be the case. It might be part of House Requies's vast conspiracy—to lie low pretending to know nothing and want nothing, then swallow up imperial authority at the decisive moment. Haven't I already experienced it?
“I'll have to confirm it.”
Kirian's gaze gleamed coldly. He may be casting out divorce as bait while hiding something larger.
“Because the true colors one reveals where no eyes are watching are the truth.”
Kirian murmured low.
The imperial greenhouse, where the afternoon sunlight poured down.
This place, filled with the fragrance of rare flowers, was unusually quiet and still today. Luan sat on a white bench where people's footsteps rarely reached.
His damned physical condition had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't possibly sit in the study. No, if anything, it seemed to have gotten worse. With each breath, an agony like swallowing molten iron scraped at his throat.
He felt like he was going to… throw up.
Hold on… let me just catch my breath for five minutes.
Thinking he might be short on exercise, he'd attempted a stroll outside, but the feeble body discharged its battery in no time even over that distance. Luan leaned deep against the back of the bench and tilted his head back. His pale neck was exposed, and his firmly shut lips had gone white, without a trace of blood.
If this is how it'd be, why even let me taste the upgraded version and make a person suffer more? Resentment toward the god welled up of its own accord.
Just then, from the direction of the greenhouse entrance, a very faint presence revealed itself.
It was Kirian and Kael. When Luan entered the greenhouse and vanished from sight, the two had finally chased after him. It was to find the true colors he'd reveal in a moment when no one was around.
The two of them hid their bodies behind a massive foliage plant and watched Luan, holding their breath like beasts stalking prey.
Look at that, Your Majesty.
Kael signaled with his eyes.
He seems to be waiting for someone. Could he be meeting a secret envoy?
Kirian watched Luan in silence. One of Luan's hands was clenched tight at his chest. It was a force strong enough to crumple the fabric. To Kirian's eyes, that action looked as if he were checking an important secret missive hidden in his breast, or perhaps poison meant to harm someone.
Tension hung in the air. The moment Luan pulled something from his breast, he planned to storm the scene and interrogate him. What is the conspiracy you're plotting? What scheme is driving you to push yourself this far?
He's taking it out.
Luan's hand moved. Kael put his hand on his sword hilt, and just as Kirian was about to lift his foot—
“…Ugh.”
Breaking the silence, a suppressed groan burst from Luan's mouth.
It was neither the sound of calling someone nor the sound of chanting a spell. It was closer to a scream bursting out from pure agony.
Cough—!
It was instantaneous. Between Luan's lips, dark crimson blood gushed out.
“…!”
The bodies of Kirian and Kael, watching from hiding, froze like stone at the same time.
Luan hurriedly pressed a white handkerchief over his mouth. But the amount that had already poured out was too much. Red blood seeping out between his fingers ran down Luan's chin and soaked the neatly buttoned collar of his shirt. Onto the white marble floor, red droplets of blood fell—drip, drip—like flower petals.
Conspiracy? Secret envoy? Treason?
There was no such thing. Only the agony of a person who was dying was there.
Ah, damn it. It finally went off.
Apart from the two men's shock, Luan was filled with grievance. I knew I felt like throwing up, but I didn't know it'd be blood. Wasn't the detox supposed to be a one-and-done? How am I supposed to let it go off in the middle of the imperial palace with nothing but a single handkerchief? I have no idea how I'm supposed to clean up this mess.
This is marble, so if blood soaks in it won't come off easily. There won't be anything like wet wipes either, damn it.
Luan looked down with trembling hands at the handkerchief soaked red with blood.
He was dumbfounded. It felt like he'd been scammed by a trial version. I thought they'd gifted me a healthy body as a VIP package, and it was only good for two measly days?
Indignation and emptiness washed over him like waves. This cursed body's cost-performance ratio is too low, way too low.
“…Haah.”
A deep, dry sigh leaked from Luan's mouth.
“Just… this much?”
His low, bitter voice rang through the quiet greenhouse. I spilled all that blood at the purification rite, and before the blood I spilled can even regenerate, I'm vomiting again. That rite wasn't free either—there's no budget waste like this. The cost-performance ratio is just abysmal.
But to the two men hiding behind the foliage plant and watching the sight, those words sounded with an entirely different meaning.
That's… what does that mean?
Just this much. To Kirian's ears, those words felt like a final soliloquy toward his own guttering life.
Is the time I can hold out, the lifespan left to me, really only this much? It was a forlornness that seemed to ask just that.
Kirian's pupils shook as though an earthquake had struck. Kael, too, couldn't close his mouth. All those actions he'd been condemning until just earlier were rapidly reassembling in his head.
Was the way he processed documents so quickly not ambition but the desperate struggle of a man trying to fulfill his duties in what little time remained? Was the indifferent silence not a disguise but the wrenching endurance of one swallowing his agony?
“…”
As the two men's thoughts tangled up, Luan, with practiced ease, wiped away the bloodstain remaining at the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. Then, as if nothing had happened, he crumpled the blood-stained handkerchief deep into his pocket and leaned against the bench again.
As if vomiting blood were merely a daily routine. With an attitude as if enduring this agony alone were a matter of course.
That flat, composed action hacked at the Emperor's heart.
“…Your Majesty.”
Kael's voice was trembling.
“What in the world… was I thinking…”
Kirian couldn't answer. The sharp wariness and suspicion he'd held until just earlier shattered into pieces, and in their place an indescribable whirlpool of emotion took root.
While he'd been tailing the Empress like stalking prey, suspecting him, the man had been spilling blood here alone, taking the measure of his remaining life.
“…Kael.”
Kirian opened his mouth as if wringing out the words.
“We… saw nothing.”
“But, his condition—!”
“If the Empress is trying to hide it to that extent.”
Kirian's gaze fixed on Luan's small, precarious back.
“For us to step forward now and act like we know is only to give him greater misery.”
Kirian clenched his fist. His nails dug into his flesh, but he felt no pain.
“…Let's go.”
Kirian turned as if fleeing. For fear that if he approached, he'd expose the secret Luan had so desperately tried to conceal and shatter the pride the man had so wanted to protect.
The two men slipped out of the greenhouse without a sound.
But in their heads, Luan's pale profile, the blood-stained handkerchief, and the sad, self-mocking voice were branded in, never to be erased.
Only Luan, who knew nothing, felt his insides settle a little more comfortably and thought.
I'll have to file another after-service request. Only the blood-spilling part being left over is definitely a defect, right?
Never dreaming in the slightest that this was the start of a colossal misunderstanding that would shake the entire imperial palace.
