What on earth was that just now?
Even things from years ago, he could remember as clearly as if he had just seen them, yet the events from only a moment ago were strangely blurred.
Only the sensation remained, the body that had come into his arms had been so small and soft.
His abdomen, where that fluffy blond hair had nuzzled and rubbed, itched as if he had been bitten by a bug.
Lost in thought as he headed for the Sun Palace, Jeremy’s steps abruptly came to a halt.
He could not remember whether he had roughly torn Isaac away, or gently laid him back down on the bed.
He was sure the court physician had said his body was not yet fully recovered, but what if he had tossed him aside anyway?
But he did not have the courage to go back there and check whether he was all right.
And since when had he ever cared about such things?
As if someone kept pressing cotton candy against his abdomen, he forcibly restrained the hand that kept reaching toward the persistently itchy spot, and once again headed for the Sun Palace.
Before he knew it, dawn was breaking.
The Thirteenth Prince, Isaac, has lost his memory.
It was a story that had been spreading everywhere lately, passing between the imperial palace and the noble houses.
Unlike the past, when Isaac, having supposedly lost his memory, had been shut away in the Ivory Palace, barely seen and barely heard…
Recently he was striding around as if the entire palace belonged to him. On top of that, it was as if the dignity expected of royalty had been thrown away the moment he woke up, because he would beam and greet even the lowly palace staff as he went.
As rumors spread widely that the prince’s memory was unstable because of his behavior after collapsing and waking, Isaac eventually gave up on managing his image.
Isaac was not without grievances.
Having spent a solid six years in an entertainment world where you could get dragged into a personality scandal if you did not even greet staff you passed by, whenever someone bowed to him, he found himself bowing too, greeting them back without even thinking.
Even if no one acknowledged it, he had still been the one who greeted people more diligently than anyone.
These days, he was feeling it in his bones, that an occupational habit is carved not into the body, but into the soul.
“Hi, guys! That looks really heavy. Want me to carry it for you?”
When he approached to help, seeing children who still looked young hauling a huge pile of laundry, the maids reacted as if it were far too great an honor and dropped to their knees on the spot.
Even when he begged them to stand, they kept kneeling with their heads bowed.
Most likely, those kids would only be able to get back to work once he passed by.
Feeling awkward, Isaac whispered, “Sorry. Just keep doing what you were doing,” and headed toward the Ivory Palace.
So what, am I like that department head who barges into the new hire’s work site or something?
Then, all of a sudden, he started worrying about the prince who had gone into his body.
This was a Confucian culture country, so he would have to treat older people with proper respect.
He was not, by any chance, ordering the boss and the manager hyung around with his fingertips, was he?
A sense of guilt swelled up and up for the prince who must have had his body suddenly changed because of him.
He really hoped he was doing well.
From what Isaac had tactfully pieced together while he had been here, six years had passed since Jeremy, the First Prince and his older brother, ascended the throne, yet Isaac was still being called the Thirteenth Prince.
He had heard from a palace official that when a new emperor takes the throne, it is generally customary to send the emperor’s brothers off to grand duchies, pushing them far away from the capital that lies close to power, but he could not understand why he was still in the Ivory Palace.
Could it be that his brother had cherished the former prince that much?
The moment his thoughts reached that point, he became gloomy.
If his brother found out that their souls had swapped, what would happen?
“Hi…”
As a dejected Isaac wandered the palace greeting people, the palace staff grew restless.
The prince who always wandered around with such a cheerful smile would sometimes sink into deep thought by the pond, and sometimes roam around like this, completely wilted.
The sight of a beauty with fluttering blond hair looking drained made many palace staff members’ hearts ache.
Brazenly, attendants hovered around him, as if wondering whether they might offer even a single warm word to their small master.
But when Isaac turned around, they hurriedly composed themselves again and observed proper etiquette.
In truth, the reason he continued living as the Thirteenth Prince without receiving a new title was Jeremy’s intention.
The emperor’s siblings sometimes continued using the honorific of prince or princess, but most became grand dukes or received positions befitting them, and were called by those titles.
Jeremy, however, deliberately gave Isaac no position whatsoever.
That number, thirteen, which always clung to Isaac’s title of prince, made the nobles involuntarily recall the half brothers Jeremy had killed.
Even when handling state affairs, Jeremy would be the first to refer to Isaac as the Thirteenth Prince.
Isaac, merely by existing, served to remind people once more of their fear of the emperor, so up to now Jeremy had not granted him any office.
Of course, the present Isaac had no way of knowing that.
Perhaps the Sun Palace’s name was not an empty boast.
The imperial crest carved into the study window gleamed as it caught the sunlight. The carved emblem reflected that light, sketching a dragon across the interior of the study.
It was a palace built through expansion with even the midday sun calculated to the finest degree, a palace that truly held the sun within it.
In that palace, a man with an indifferent face twirled a pen and stared fixedly at documents.
“Where is he right now?”
“I heard a report that he took a walk near the Ivory Palace this morning. Shall I go find his current location as well?”
“No. Step out.”
Even at the sudden question, the adjutant answered as if he had been waiting for it.
But Jeremy frowned, as if even that displeased him.
Right after, he waved his hand to send the adjutant outside.
There was still so much state business to review, yet all kinds of thoughts kept getting in the way.
It was not only today, it had been continuing for the past several days.
“Now that I’m sitting on the emperor’s throne, I guess I’ve grown full and complacent.”
With a self-mocking laugh, he rose and left the stifling study.
To breathe some rest into his throbbing head, he walked through the garden, and the roses in full bloom proudly displayed their beauty, holding the sunlight and the dew that had fallen overnight.
Seeing them, his thoughts naturally turned to the Rose Palace where his mother resided.
Of all the palaces, Magrellita had chosen the Rose Palace the moment she married into the imperial family, and afterward she was the only royal who had never changed palaces even once.
Even Jeremy sometimes stayed in places other than the Sun Palace, but Magrellita spent every season, all year long, only in the Rose Palace.
When he later asked the reason, Magrellita had answered with a bitter smile.
“In the Sun Palace garden, roses are never absent. I chose this place thinking that even if the late emperor lost interest in me, if he walked through the rear garden and saw roses, he might think of me. I failed spectacularly, though.”
Damn roses, damn Agbad. Even the breath he drew in was mixed with the scent of roses in full bloom, so how could he have seen this and still been so indifferent to his mother?
“Go to the Rose Palace.”
He headed for the Rose Palace where his mother was, accompanied by attendants, and laughter, bright and cheerful, rang out even beyond the palace walls.
He had come to avoid that bastard who had been grating on him these days, yet the very cause was there again, right where he was going.
But he could not even blame anyone.
These days, no matter where you went, everyone was talking about Isaac anyway.
He dismissed the female attendant who was about to announce his arrival and stepped inside, and there he saw his mother, her cheeks flushed red from laughing, and Isaac.
“Jeremy. You’ve come?”
The Empress Dowager, who had always looked depressed these past years, now lightly held her stomach as if her belly hurt from laughing so much.
At that sight, the moment Isaac had woken and run to him and thrown himself into his arms suddenly came back to him.
“I was wondering what you were doing without even sending word. It seems you’ve been doing well.”
As he dropped into his seat, that fellow who had been glued to his mother’s side, playing cute, kept glancing around and could not keep his body still.
It was irritating in its own way, so when Jeremy gave him a slight glare, he felt the Empress Dowager’s hand gently take hold of his arm.
“Jeremy. He’s your only brother now. Can’t you treat him a little more warmly? If I’d known he was such a lovable child, I would’ve brought him to the Rose Palace long ago and kept him as company. You kept him so tightly wrapped up in the Ivory Palace that I only found out now.”
It was the first relaxed smile he had seen on his mother’s face in years, after she had suffered from a mild depression.
Seeing her like that, he could no longer treat Isaac coldly.
After lunch, as Magrellita chatted excitedly with Isaac, she seemed to be getting tired and blinked her big eyes a couple of times, and Jeremy, watching her, roused Isaac to his feet.
“Isaac. Mother is about to take her midday rest, so get up now. Follow me.”
At those words, Isaac flushed even redder than before and nodded vigorously. His soft looking hair swayed widely, like dandelion fluff.
It bothered him, strangely.
He could not clearly say what part he disliked.
His heart felt tight, and it made him irritated for no reason.
The way he pattered along as he ran over had no decorum, and that mindlessly fluttering blond hair was unpleasant to look at too.
Unlike Jeremy’s own hair, heavy with the colors of gold and the sun, Isaac’s blond was sweet and light, like honey. From that soft hair that looked as if it might drift away like a dandelion at any moment, the scent of roses rose up.
Was it because he had spent so long in the Rose Palace, or was it Isaac’s original scent?
There was no way to know.
Jeremy was simply bothered by the faint rose fragrance that kept lingering at the tip of his nose.
The moment they left the Rose Palace, Isaac gently grabbed the hem of his clothes.
“Hyung, where are we going?”
The touch was so careful he might not have even noticed it, but the way he spoke was extremely familiar.
Hyung
It was a form of address he had heard exactly twice in his life. Once when this brat woke up, and once now.
The sheer lack of boundaries in his tone was enough to leave him speechless.
They said the master of the Ivory Palace had lost his memory, but it looked like he had even forgotten hiding under the reception room chair, sticking his rear up and trembling like a leaf.
He barely swallowed the sigh that threatened to spill out and opened his mouth.
“Is your body all right now?”
“Ah, yeah! Mom brought me lots of medicine, and big aunt also gave me all kinds of stuff saying it was good for my health, so I ate all of that and now I’m totally fine.”
“Big aunt?”
“Yeah. Your mom.”
Jeremy fell silent and stared blankly at Isaac.
Who in the world called the Empress Dowager of this great empire by a name like that?
But he did not have even an ounce of energy to argue with someone who had no idea what he had done wrong and was smiling so brightly.
“Go back to your palace now.”
“Hyung, weren’t we going somewhere together?”
The disappointed expression on Isaac’s face, seen the moment Jeremy turned, hit him hard.
That same unexplainable irritation surged again.
Would it have been better to kill him back then, together with the rest?
Even though it was a small voice, almost a whisper, it was hard to just ignore.
The white fingers that had been holding his hem only moments ago were now clutching his own sleeve.
Seeing that, he even felt a petty desire to hurt him more.
If he spat out sharp words, just how much more wrinkled would those clothes become?
But strangely, it felt like if he did that, it would not be the clothes but the child’s expression that would crumple more.
And if he saw that crumpled expression, then for several days, he would not be able to focus on state affairs again.
It was an instinctive certainty.
“If you have nothing to do, then follow me. The rear garden of the Sun Palace has as many roses as the Rose Palace.”
“Huh? Yeah!”
As if he had never looked disappointed at all, Isaac quickly reddened his cheeks, beamed, and grabbed Jeremy’s collar.
“Hyung, do you know why big aunt was laughing like that earlier?”
His chattering voice rang out brightly along the path toward the Sun Palace.
Behind Jeremy, the knights and attendants who had been standing at attention were exchanging frantic glances with each other like mad, but Isaac, talking his head off with flushed cheeks, and Jeremy, listening only to Isaac’s voice, had no way of knowing.
Even though the study had felt stifling when he left, now his heart felt at ease, as if he were returning to a nest.
Maybe because his head had cooled, or maybe because one more person had been added along the way.
He forced himself to erase the thoughts that were swelling up again, and listened to the clear, ringing voice.
It was a peaceful midday.
T/N: Finallyyyyy, they’re heeeere aaahhhhh
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