Prologue
After a week, when the video communication crystal finally reconnected, the face that appeared on the other side was covered in dark circles.
Seeing her lover’s pallid, wilted expression—like a flower that had long since withered—Leticia wanted nothing more than to reach through the crystal and pull him out by the hand.
“Ez, what’s wrong with your face? How many days have you been working overtime?”
—“Well… about three days, I think….”
Ez laughed hollowly, without an ounce of life left in him.
He looked less like a person and more like a skeleton wearing human skin.
“This won’t do. You said you’d get off work on time today, right? Come over for dinner. I’ll tell the cook to make your favorites.”
Leticia’s heart burned with a sense of duty—to restore her lover to something resembling a human being again.
“I’ll have dessert ready, too, so don’t bother bringing anything. Just come, eat well, and rest.”
—“I’m really sorry, Leticia… but today too….”
At those words, the smile faded from Leticia’s face.
Even the green sapphire necklace around her slender neck seemed dimmed by the ominous aura radiating from her expression.
“Today too? Don’t tell me that damned Crown Prince ordered you to work overtime again?”
—“Leticia…!”
“What’s it for this time? The budget proposal already went to the Assembly, and the year-end reports aren’t due until next week! What could possibly justify another overtime shift?”
—“…He said we should start preparing materials for next year’s conference….”
“Is he insane?!”
Leticia’s scream echoed through the house.
Her brother, Lennart—finally resting after a long while—heard her from the next room and came rushing in.
“Letty what’s wrong? Why are you yelling like that?”
“Brother, listen to this! That wretched Crown Prince made Ez work overtime again! For a conference that’s not happening for another six months! Can you believe that?”
Lennart, who had just entered the room, tried to make sense of his sister’s furious outburst.
But rather than listen to more of her shouting, he decided it’d be wiser to ask his friend directly.
He safely rescued the communication crystal from Leticia’s hand before she could throw it, then looked into Ez’s pale face inside the crystal.
“Okay, I get the gist. But what exactly happened, Ezekiel?”
—“Lennart… it’s just…”
“Let me guess—it’s because he couldn’t go on a date with Arietta again, right?”
The moment Lennart said it aloud, both he and Ezekiel fell silent—because it was true, and pitifully so.
“If he’s that upset, he should fix his own problems instead of taking it out on Ez! Pathetic!”
It was blunt—harsh, even—but not wrong. The Empire’s future did indeed seem bleak.
—“Still, today wasn’t too bad. I ran into the Duke’s sons, but it wasn’t anything serious….”
“The Avrill brothers again? What idiocy did they pull this time? Did they grab you by the collar and tell you to stay away from my sister? Or maybe—‘stop looking at my sister or I’ll gouge your eyes out’?”
—“…Something along those lines, yes.”
“Ez!”
Leticia clutched the back of her neck in exasperation as Ez nodded with a dead-eyed expression.
“Just quit your job already! Hand in your resignation and come work at our jewelry company. We’ll recognize your experience!”
A few months into what should have been a sweet, blissful romance,
her boyfriend was being crushed under the weight of absurd side characters from the original novel.
This, she could no longer tolerate.
“That pathetic Crown Prince and those idiot duke’s sons—I’ll kill them myself!”
Thanks to Ezekiel’s quick thinking—turning off the crystal just in time—her words of royal treason didn’t travel beyond the room.
Staring at the now-dark crystal, Lennart silently thanked his friend once again for dating his reckless little sister.
“Still… I really don’t get those brothers. Is their sister really that pretty?”
Glancing at Leticia, trembling with rage beside him, he also thought of his other sister—probably busy sketching designs in her studio—and shook his head.
Lennart was close with his sisters, sure, but unlike the Avrill brothers, he didn’t feel the need to worship them.
He simply couldn’t understand how anyone could see their own sibling that way.
Every time he watched his wild sister stomp around like that, it baffled him how this same girl was known in society as “the Queen of Flowers” or “the Rose.”
Not wanting to see more of her “true self,” Lennart quietly shut the door and left the room.
And thanks to that, no one but Leticia herself heard the final words she muttered under her breath—
“My boyfriend isn’t interested in the heroine, okay?!”
