Chapter 46
The director’s office of the Nisephoriel Temple.
In that still-lavish room, the Emperor and Hazel were in the middle of a conversation.
“It would have been nice if the Saintess had come with you.”
Hazel, seated on the sofa to the Emperor’s right, said as she savored the aroma of the tea.
“The children seemed quite disappointed. These days, it feels like they’re waiting for the Saintess more than for Your Majesty.”
The words were clearly meant in teasing, but thinking back to the disappointed faces of the children when the imperial carriage arrived and only Alend stepped down, it wasn’t entirely unfounded.
“Your Majesty the Emperor, welcome….”
In the past, the children would have bounced around in excitement just because the Emperor had come.
Even after Alend disembarked, the children lingered for quite a while, peeking behind him. When they realized the Saintess was not inside the carriage, their shoulders drooped as they greeted him.
Among them, Noel—who was visibly the most disappointed—looked as though he were about to cry as he handed Alend the flower crown he had made.
Alend awkwardly accepted and placed on his head the pure white flower crown that was clearly meant for the Saintess.
“Thank you.”
“Yes….”
Thanks to the Emperor’s dazzling appearance, the flower crown suited him as if it had been made for him.
“The Saintess has been busy lately.”
Wearing the flower crown crookedly, Alend said this to Hazel, tapping the sofa’s armrest with his index finger.
His blue eyes settled on the blue cufflink faintly gleaming from beneath his shirt sleeve.
“Each of us is just giving love advice!”
She dared to say that right in front of him.
Even while saying she had no intention of ever leaving his side.
Ever since returning from Bonia, an unbearable frustration had been rising inside him from time to time.
It was like that at Lake Deidern, and it was like that on the streets of the capital last time too.
And now again.
He still didn’t know what that feeling was.
“I want to be with Your Majesty’s beauty for my entire life!”
The Saintess said that, grinning innocently as she praised his face.
As the frustration welled up once more, Alend gripped the armrest.
Seeing this, Hazel smiled meaningfully.
“Does Your Majesty not date?”
“I have no intention of doing so.”
The Emperor said this with a colder expression than ever.
As if romance were something that could never happen to him at all.
Even if it could be dismissed as an old person’s meddling, it wasn’t easy to remain still when it was all so obvious.
The Emperor entered Nisephoriel at the age of eight and spent ten years in the temple, then six years as Emperor.
As far as Hazel knew, the Emperor had no lover during those six years. Needless to say, there had been none during his time in the temple either.
From Hazel’s perspective, it was deeply lamentable that someone with such youth and such looks had never experienced love even once.
“Will you not become my hunting dog?”
The Emperor had said that to her that day.
He was not a pacifist, but a ferocious beast that quietly lay in wait for the moment to tear into its prey’s nape.
How fiercely would such a man’s love burn?
Wouldn’t it be quite stimulating just to watch that from the sidelines?
It piqued her interest. Hazel licked her lips inwardly.
“Do the ghosts of the past still come to torment Your Majesty at dawn?”
“…That is not for the Director to meddle in.”
“It seems you are still plagued by nightmares. Perhaps that is why you hesitate to take a lover.”
Hazel took a sip of the tea that had cooled to a pleasant temperature.
Looking at her face wavering in the surface of the tea, she continued.
“The past is only the past. Must it devour all of Your Majesty’s future as well?”
The Emperor and I.
We were both undoubtedly pitiful beings trapped by the past.
Still, I was living the present in my own way.
Wasn’t I freely indulging in my favorite collections?
Unlike the Emperor, I wasn’t offering up my entire present just to resolve a grudge from the past.
But from Alend’s point of view, Hazel was no easy case either.
“That is not something I wish to hear from someone who has imprisoned themselves here out of guilt over the past.”
Twenty-four years. That was how much time had passed since Hazel relinquished the position of Director of the Nisephoriel Temple.
Once a war hero, he had chosen exile out of guilt for failing to protect his own homeland.
Everyone who knew at the time was aware that that place of exile was the Nisephoriel Temple.
Otherwise, there was no way Hazel Royken—who used to go around saying the battlefield was where he would die—would have taken on the position of Director.
Because the Director had to continuously supply a certain amount of divine power to maintain the temple’s barrier, they could not leave the temple for more than two days.
Even that was only theoretically; considering the risk of the barrier being shaken by a potential enemy intrusion, his outings were limited to at most half a day.
And even then, only three or four times a year.
“Still, thanks to the eyes and ears I’ve planted outside, I don’t get bored. Interesting stories reach me from time to time. For instance, that there’s a brown-haired maid in the imperial palace who resembles the Saintess.”
Between the two who had touched each other’s sore spots, a brief war of nerves arose.
But knowing that getting heated with each other would be pointless, it ended quickly.
Hazel spoke first.
“If you intend to hide it, you’d better hide it well. If you wish, I can give you advice anytime.”
“Like your collections, Director? I don’t intend to keep things that way.”
Hadn’t he said he would let her live as she wished?
It was a firm resolve.
Yet apart from that, a shallow sense of impatience and anxiety—ones Alend himself did not recognize—was stirring in a corner of his heart.
“Then you must protect it well.”
“I will.”
“I’d like to stop you, since it seems you’re choosing a difficult path, but you’re no longer a child of the temple.”
After the aimless conversation ended, Hazel brought up the main point.
“The subject you wanted monitored has moved.”
Though she hadn’t fully decided to become the Emperor’s hunting dog, Hazel granted his request.
The prey whose nape the beast was aiming for was enormous.
It seemed she wouldn’t be able to resist stepping into that hunting ground herself.
“Moved?”
At Alend’s question, Hazel smiled faintly.
Unlike the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a youthful vitality had returned to his amber eyes.
“It seems Duke Derachi and Marquis Rangdet have grown quite close.”
By the pond on a fine afternoon.
Right now, I was kicking away my own luck with my feet.
“Delcan. You know I like you as a friend, right?”
My heart felt like it was being torn apart.
Even though I had already made up my mind, seeing that face made it feel like such a waste.
A handsome boyfriend like this.
Where would I ever find one again…!
In the time I hadn’t seen him, Delcan’s outer skin looked even more worn.
Damn it. He’s still handsome even like that.
Sitting on the bench, I lightly scraped at Delcan’s shadow with my foot as he stared at the sparkling pond.
Since I couldn’t fidget with the person himself while rejecting his confession, I was clinging to his shadow instead.
“……”
Whether because Delcan’s heart was heavy, or because I was full of regret.
An awkward, heavy atmosphere lingered between us.
To break the uncomfortable silence, I started rambling.
“I thought a lot after your confession, and I do like you, and I like your face too, you know…? But I don’t have romantic feelings. If I said let’s date like this, who would that even be good for?”
Obviously, only for me.
I couldn’t put Delcan through a painful long-distance relationship where the other person didn’t share the same feelings, just because I wanted to have a handsome boyfriend.
“That would just be forcing a sacrifice. I don’t want to use you.”
“…I still like you.”
Delcan murmured softly as he turned his head to look at me.
“Even that kind of relationship, I like.”
Oh my god.
He really seemed blinded by love and not in his right mind.
If I hadn’t been the one he confessed to, I would have smacked Delcan on the back repeatedly.
Get a grip, you idiot…!
Yeah. At least one of us had to be sensible.
Because the end of this relationship would surely be nothing but wounds…!
“Delcan, you get told a lot that you can’t tell faces apart, right?”
“…How did you know?”
“How did I know….”
I’d been so shocked the last time I happened to see the two of them pass by each other.
But Delcan had walked on with a completely clueless expression.
Even after that, several times.
His Majesty and Delcan crossed paths, but Delcan never recognized His Majesty at all, to the point that my constant worrying felt pointless.
“Ugh….”
I bit my lower lip.
If I was going to reveal a secret I’d been hiding from him for so long, I had to say it all at once.
Otherwise, I’d never be able to say it.
Inhale, resolve. Exhale, confession.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you until now. I’m actually the Saintess.”
I had already received His Majesty’s permission.
After saying it, I waited quietly for Delcan’s reaction—but Delcan let out a short laugh.
“Lily, you’re the Saintess?”
“Yeah….”
“There’s no way.”
He seemed to think I was joking.
A bitter smile formed on Delcan’s lips.
“Am I really so insignificant that you’d tell such an absurd lie?”
Delcan, no matter how much of a lying identity-hiding fraud I am, I’m not the kind of person who lies just to reject a confession… sob.
“It’s not a lie.”
As he carefully examined me sitting beside him, Delcan’s gray eyes began to waver little by little.
“But the black hair is—”
“This is dyed—”
“And back then, that husband—”
“That was identity camouflage—”
……
Delcan asked questions in a trembling voice, as if he couldn’t believe it, and I lowered my head more and more as I explained each doubt one by one.
At some point, it seemed he had finally accepted that I really was the Saintess, because his questions stopped.
“So that’s why we can’t….”
I glanced at Delcan, gauging his mood.
In the meantime, Delcan—his face pale as if his world had collapsed—murmured,
“Why are you the Saintess…?”
