Chapter – 39….
“Could it be love?”
At those words, the second and first aides both wore the same pleased smiles and nodded vigorously.
“It must be love.”
“What else could it be if not love?”
The second aide stared at the closed door with satisfaction—until his face suddenly contorted as though he had just remembered something.
“But Her Highness the Consort is here… and yet there’s a Crown Princess selection?”
“They said it was a Crown Princess selection, did they not?”
“The official pretext is that it’s for the Grand Consort, isn’t it?”
After the first aide soothed him, the youngest aide added confidently:
“It’s fine. The answer is already set, anyway. More importantly, there’s an issue with supplying the young lady’s coffee….”
While the aides were huddled together discussing, Ludwig headed somewhere entirely different from the room where Asili stayed.
A reception room where no one had entered for years except the cleaning staff.
—Bang.
Without knocking, Ludwig pushed open the door.
At the end of his gaze stood a man.
“Ha… Heidel?”
The man lounging on the sofa turned at Ludwig’s voice.
Blue eyes, but unmistakably different from Ludwig’s—eyes of the Bolsheik bloodline.
The head of House Bolsheik, seeing his friend for the first time in years, waved casually.
“Well, if it isn’t His Grace, the Grand Duke of Caliente.”
Depending on who heard it, it was an exceedingly rude greeting—but neither of them cared.
Ludwig Caliente and Heidel Bolsheik.
They were each other’s one and only true friend.
Heidel, who had been sprawled lazily on the sofa staring at Ludwig, soon sprang up and approached him.
“It’s been years, and you still haven’t changed. You stiff fellow.”
His arms were weaker than they used to be, but the way he slapped Ludwig’s back was just the same.
After thumping Ludwig’s back to his own satisfaction, Heidel sank comfortably onto the sofa and gestured.
“Sit here. My neck hurts looking up at—”
Before he could finish the sentence, a distinct smile formed on Ludwig’s lips.
Heidel’s eyes widened at the unmistakable expression—something he couldn’t simply dismiss as a hallucination.
“I thought no one but you would ever say something like that.”
His dry voice spilled out with a faint trace of laughter. Heidel let out an incredulous breath.
“What was that? What did I just see?”
He rubbed his eyes dramatically, as if he couldn’t believe what he had witnessed. Ludwig only shook his head.
“You’re the same as always.”
“You look the same, but somehow… not. What was that just now?”
“More importantly, when did you wake up?”
The natural topic change made Heidel stare at him, but Ludwig was not someone who would answer easily.
And Heidel knew that well, so he gave up on an answer and tapped the back of his neck.
“A few hours ago.”
“How?”
“Well, how did I wake up, indeed?”
A vague smile, an evasive answer.
Ludwig realized Heidel had no intention of explaining, so he didn’t ask further.
“I was worried you’d died under the weight of your responsibilities. Good thing I rushed over the moment I woke up—seems you’re perfectly fine.”
Heidel stood before him laughing and talking as though they had met only yesterday.
But once this news became public, the Empire would be thrown into chaos.
The head of House Bolsheik had awakened after years.
The oldest lineage in the Empire—no, on the entire continent.
A family whose beginning only those of Bolsheik blood could know.
And Asili’s family.
Ludwig, sitting across from Heidel, didn’t hesitate to call for Sebastian.
“Sebastian.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Ludwig whispered a few words in his ear, and Heidel tilted his head.
“So now you have secrets to hide from me? After sleeping a few years, this is how my dear friend treats me?”
“Don’t say it like you never had secrets before.”
“Still refusing to play along, I see.”
Heidel shrugged, but did not pry.
Sebastian left quietly, and silence settled between them.
A calm silence, relaxed enough to make one drowsy.
It had been far too long since they last sat face-to-face like this, but nothing about it felt awkward.
Ludwig was about to speak—but shut his lips again.
He didn’t need to say anything. Heidel would understand the moment he saw Asili.
Time drifted by slowly.
—Knock knock.
“Come in.”
As soon as Ludwig gave permission, the door opened and a draft slipped inside.
Heidel assumed it was Sebastian returning and didn’t bother to look.
Sebastian did enter—but someone followed behind him.
Even after the door closed soundlessly, the figure behind Sebastian could not move, frozen in place.
Seeing this, Ludwig stood.
He reached out his hand; Asili reflexively took it and stepped forward.
She moved as though she had forgotten how to walk—unnaturally, hesitantly—yet one step at a time she approached Heidel.
“What, are you going to have a conversation without me again? Aren’t you treating the friend who came to see you after years a bit poorly?”
Heidel joked lightly, finally turning away from the window—
And groaned softly.
“Ugh, I’ve been lying down too long. My back’s stiff. Let’s see… my shoulder too….”
He tapped his shoulder and slowly turned his head—
And froze.
Asili, who had been staring at him, froze as well.
Like the trembling wings of a butterfly caught in a harsh wind, her blue eyes quivered—and were met by an identical blue.
Asili’s hand, held in Ludwig’s, had gone so rigid that her knuckles whitened.
Heidel stared without blinking.
The uniquely vivid blue that no other eyes could mimic—the unmistakable Bolsheik blue.
And her hair, the same red that swayed at her shoulder—just as impossible to deny.
Two people with the same hair and even more identical eyes faced each other, unmoving.
Ludwig watched them, then spoke in his usual dry, calm voice.
“Let’s sit first.”
He sat right beside Asili, so close their shoulders touched.
Her shoulder was stiff as stone—she was trembling with tension.
Silence fell among the three.
Not the relaxed silence from earlier, but a suffocating one.
Asili opened her mouth countless times, only for her lips to stick together.
What should she say?
She had imagined this moment countless times.
No—she had waited fervently for it.
The head of House Bolsheik…
From the moment she found clues about dimension travel in the history of House Bolsheik, she had waited impatiently for the family head to awaken—her only hope of returning to her original world.
Even Ludwig had been searching for a way to wake him, hadn’t he?
So she must have rehearsed this meeting over and over.
And yet—when the moment came, she couldn’t utter a single word.
While Asili opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish—
Heidel studied her minutely, as if he feared missing something if he looked away for even a second.
He examined her so closely he could have counted the fine hairs on her cheek.
Finally, he broke the breath-catching silence.
“Did I have a daughter without knowing?”
No answer came, of course.
The silence only grew heavier, yet Heidel continued with an indescribable expression.
“No, she wouldn’t be this grown. Could it be—did my father drag in some child he couldn’t recognize? But that man wouldn’t do such a thing. Even on his deathbed, if it were Bolsheik blood, he would have gone himself to fetch them.”
He leaned forward, staring intently.
“Bolsheik blood doesn’t wander outside. Meaning—I should know every Bolsheik that exists.”
His blue eyes were so clear they were almost chilling.
“So tell me. Who are you?”
“I am Asili.”
Whether instinct or reflex, Asili answered.
She rolled the name on her tongue.
Then nodded.
“Asili Bolsheik.”
The name she had in her previous world mattered little.
Here, she was Asili.
The moment Ludwig called her that name—
She became Ludwig’s Asili.
“A… Asili? And a Bolsheik, at that?”
Facing Heidel’s confusion—and the suspicion beneath it—Asili did not avert her gaze and began her story.
Their meeting in a dream.
Her sudden transportation between dimensions.
Everything she had discussed with Ludwig because of it.
And now—this moment.
Her story was neither hurried nor slow.
When she finished, Heidel looked between the two of them and finally spoke.
“So. To sum it up.”
He stared into Asili’s blue—icy blue—eyes.
“You’re saying you came from another place entirely—not another country, not across the stormy sea, not some mystical continent, but another world altogether?”
