Emperor’s Alternate - Chapter 81

I used to lose track of time.

In truth, unless I deliberately took a breath and paused to examine what I was doing, the day would vanish before I even noticed. At this rate, I’d blink and find myself at the average life expectancy of sixty, leaving behind an epitaph that read, “Died doing nothing but work and study.”

The sensation of Lecan’s grip on my wrist in the garden lingered. Ever since I carelessly asked him out, silence had begun to evoke thoughts of him. When my mind wandered, it invariably settled on reflections of human relationships. And Lecan, among all of mine, was the most confounding puzzle.

He occupied the lion’s share of my mental space, simply because he was the hardest to unravel. Lecan, to me, was a riddle without an answer. It gave me no end of grief, not knowing how I was supposed to treat him.

‘You casually invited him on a date — are you mad? For all you know, this could be his perfect moment to kill you in the name of a birthday celebration. Should you be planning a preemptive assassination? Or maybe it’s time to open your Mana Gate and start learning swordsmanship?’

‘The House of Grand Duke Rotea, my family, had no intention of rebellion, yet we were wiped out for simply being strong enough to threaten the throne. I couldn’t forgive the ones who orchestrated it, and spent over a decade quietly preparing for revenge. If I were to kill Lecan the same way, without even a shred of evidence, how would I be any different from those who destroyed us? Wouldn’t he be just as wronged as we were?’

The two selves within me argued on, each armed with its own brand of logic, locked in a tight, endless duel. The part of me that believed I should kill Lecan and eliminate the risk once and for all made a certain amount of sense. But then, so did the part that simply wanted to stand on his side — an instinct that, while inconvenient, was still thoroughly human.

No matter how much I pretended to be cold, rational, and above it all, I was human too. That month when I clutched Duchess de Trippé the cat and trembled at the thought of Lecan being swallowed by a volcanic eruption, I was breathing in hell.

The memories from that time are hazy. Even sleep felt dangerous. Just before drifting off, I’d shed a few soundless tears — not out of will, but out of reflex. Like how your nose runs in a dusty attic or your mouth waters at the sight of a lemon. The tears just happened.

‘I wish Lecan would die.’

’I’m terrified he might actually die.’

Both my murderous intent and my fear for his life were real. And the contradiction tore me apart.

After Lecan was formally granted the Duchy of Tenekban, the days that passed in the lead-up to my fabricated birthday were, by all external measures, productive. Work. Study. Efficiency. On paper, I had wasted nothing.

But if I took a step back and considered my life with any breadth, the truth was harder to ignore: I had spent that time not confronting the real issue — just hiding from it, behind the illusion of progress.

I hated the moments when I was left alone with my own thoughts. So whenever I had time to spare, I threw myself into research on time reversal.

‘If I could just master time reversal.’

It wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved by going back, but I clung to that goal anyway, as if sheer stubbornness could make it true.

Even if I turned time back, the marks left on my life wouldn’t vanish. My pain and my turmoil would remain. And if my soul, dulled by years of exploitation, ever rediscovered calm, it might erupt with all the repressed tremors I’d kept buried.

Still, I concluded that time reversal was the only option left to me. Trying to unravel my entanglement with Lecan and arrive at some tidy answer I wasn’t ready to speak aloud — that was a dead end. I just wanted to escape. Back to before the threads tangled. Back to the distant past. To the kind of childhood where I hadn’t achieved anything, and still, somehow, was loved simply for existing.

I wanted to go back.

I dreamed of something gentle and ordinary. A time untouched by pain. A past, present, and future where no one got hurt — and I, too, was spared.

After the day’s duties ended, I left the imperial palace and made my way to the Mage Tower, where my younger brother stayed. It wasn’t because of Lucian’s mana regression treatment. The real reason was far less noble. I was conducting research on a time-reversal apparatus, using materials I’d bought through the underworld.

The parchment drafts scattered around my lab were littered with formulas and schematics so densely fragmented that even the cleaning staff who entered the tower didn’t suspect I was dabbling in forbidden magic.

“Another failure, huh…”

As always, the moment I finished my workday, I had locked myself away in my tower lab, running experiments.

Inside a transparent box, the cup of water had tipped over, its contents spilled. I’d been hoping the device might, even for the briefest instant, reverse time just enough for the water to leap back into the cup. But this combination of materials seemed no better than the last. The cup sat motionless, undisturbed.

I removed the lid and righted the cup with my hand. It was slick with water, slippery against my fingers.

Even after over a hundred failures, I wasn’t disheartened. Time reversal magic — an endeavor countless mages had pursued, never once successfully — was a field defined by failure. And in truth, the fact that I had something to lose myself in at all felt, lately, like a small mercy.