Side Story 1.2
After returning from a tedious outdoor event, the Crown Prince happened to glance into a mirror and realized—his eye color had changed.
His violet eyes had turned blue.
Purple eyes were the symbol of the imperial family and a measure of magical power. The stronger the royal bloodline’s magic, the deeper the violet hue. Just this morning, before leaving the palace, he had possessed the perfect violet eyes that were the envy of all.
He immediately understood the cause. With his internal magic sealed, his eye color had shifted. The eyes that had been praised as the closest to those of the first Emperor, Abrixa, were now an ordinary, dull blue.
Seventeen years old—an age where emotions run high. The Crown Prince stood frozen, fingers trembling against the mirror. Just in case, he poked at his reflected blue eyes, but nothing changed. Only then did rationality return.
Few dared to meet his gaze directly, so he had managed to avoid detection today. But this was no trivial matter. If discovered, it could cast doubt on his legitimacy as a member of the imperial family.
All descendants of Abrixa possess violet eyes. This was an absolute rule of the royal house.
He could reveal the seal on his hand and explain, dispelling doubts about his lineage—but doing so would inevitably damage his standing as Crown Prince. Who would support a future Emperor bearing divine punishment? He had to hide it.
After using external magic to restore his eyes to violet, he slumped into a chair, drained.
What kind of fucker was my future self?
Incidentally, this was the first time in his seventeen years of life that he had ever used such crude language.
The fact that his first vulgarity had been provoked by his own future self left him with a bitter taste.
His thoughts drifted to the slave his future self had been obsessed with. Black hair, black eyes—a monotonous combination. Hair and eyes the same dull, dark shade, neither bright nor striking. Her frame was slender, bordering on frail. She wasn’t ugly, but her perpetually blank or lifeless expression made it hard to tell.
“…If she smiled…”
She might look… passable.
He immediately shook his head, as if rejecting the very thought.
Memories of his future self’s desperate attempts to make that woman smile flashed through his mind—each ridiculous effort ending in failure, not even a single genuine laugh earned.
A flicker of irritation rose in him. That Emperor wasn’t him, but it had once been his future. Even if that future no longer existed.
“She’s not even that pretty.”
His lips twisted into a half-sneer as he made a decision: to stay as far away as possible from the slave named Jaha, for the sake of his sanity.
Who knew what kind of spell she had cast over him? If she had ensnared his future self once, she could do it again. Best not to let her step foot in the imperial palace at all.
He combed through the Emperor’s memories and traced how Jaha had entered the palace.
The Palga family. After crushing the treasonous Palga house, their assets had been confiscated and absorbed into the imperial treasury—and among those “assets” was her. Slaves were property, after all.
So, the solution was simple: Don’t confiscate the Palga family’s assets. Or, even if he did, free their slaves instead of bringing them into the palace.
The world was full of slaves and women. Jaha or whatever her name was—what did it matter?
His future self might have acted like he’d die without her, but the present him felt nothing. Losing one insignificant slave wouldn’t make a difference.
Tapping the armrest of his chair with a gloved finger, he considered:
‘Should I just find her now and kill her?’
Nipping the problem at the root was the wisest course. If the slave named Jaha ceased to exist, there’d be no risk of him becoming the pitiful Emperor from his memories.
To the seventeen-year-old Crown Prince, still reeling from the shock of his own disgraceful future, the idea was undeniably tempting. But—
‘…She hasn’t actually done anything wrong.’
Objectively speaking, it was his future self who had self-destructed through one-sided obsession. The slave held no blame.
The slave named Jaha had neither seduced the Emperor nor schemed to control state affairs from behind the scenes. The Emperor had thrown himself at her feet of his own volition, burying his face in her skirts and losing all sense of reason. If anything, Jaha seemed to have loathed the Emperor…
A sudden tightness gripped his chest. The Crown Prince raised an eyebrow.
What was that?
Had his tea been poisoned earlier?
He pressed a hand to his chest, but found nothing amiss. Puzzled, he withdrew his hand.
By cold logic, a slave was property to be disposed of at their master’s whim—a right enshrined in law. But he didn’t kill slaves simply because they annoyed him.
Why smash an unwanted object when you can just put it away? He only took lives when directly threatened.
By his standards, Jaha had committed no capital offense. If anything, the fool seemed more like a victim.
Had she but smiled and asked, his future self would’ve gladly carved out his own heart for her. How pathetic.
Clicking his tongue, he leaned back, propping his elbow on the armrest.
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