Volumes 1-4 + Side Stories of DMS are available uncensored on ko-fi! ※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

II.

A rumor that the Crown Prince suffered from mysophobia quickly spread throughout the imperial palace. His habit of never removing his gloves was the proof.

The Crown Prince did not bother to clarify and let it be. Baseless gossip meant little to him. It wasn’t even damaging enough to be considered a scandal. In fact, it wasn’t so bad—it made those who constantly tried to cling to him wary of falling out of his favor. Even when handing him a glass, the types who would desperately try to brush their fingers against his now held back, reducing his discomfort.

Truthfully, he disliked physical contact with others, whether with s****l intent or not. That tendency remained unchanged even after a decade, and the future Emperor avoided unnecessary touch as much as possible. The only exception was a slave named Jaha. With her, he was the one who burned with the urge to reach out first.

Why was that? What made her so special?

Had some evil spirit possessed him?

If not some kind of bewitchment, it was an inexplicable phenomenon. A curse, brainwashing, charm magic… The problem was that a mage of his caliber would never fall for such petty tricks.

Finding no answer to the mystery, the Crown Prince shook his head.

‘A divine prank.’

A prank of the gods: something beyond human comprehension or refusal. There was no other way to make sense of it.

His gaze drifted down to the back of his hand, concealed beneath a glove.

This hollow emblem. Though it sealed his magic, it was nothing more than a gilded husk, failing in its true purpose of confiscating his power. In a way, it was a laughably insignificant restraint. Yet, no magic could conceal it.

Illusions couldn’t hide it. Perception-altering spells couldn’t blur it. Removal magic was useless. In frustration, he once carved out the flesh where the mark was and healed it with magic, only for the emblem to reappear. Even at the level of the Emperor, a mage who had succeeded in reversing the world’s time, this mark remained untouchable.

‘Well, a god is still a god, I suppose.’

In the end, he had no choice but to resort to a primitive method of concealment. That was why he could never remove his gloves.

He didn’t particularly dislike gloves, but being forced to wear them all day was another matter. The discomfort went without saying, and they dulled his senses compared to bare hands. Even though he had commissioned the finest craftsman to make perfectly fitted gloves from the softest silk and enchanted them to maintain cleanliness, he still wasn’t satisfied.

As the Crown Prince frowned slightly at the white gloves, the man sitting across from him cautiously asked,

“……Then, if Your Highness permits, shall we proceed with this matter? Would that be acceptable?”

He lifted his gaze. A middle-aged noble was waiting for his answer while dabbing his temples with a handkerchief. With the Emperor’s memories, he knew exactly what this was.

“I’ll consider it.”

It was a trap.

He already knew everything that would unfold—who his allies, enemies, and betrayers were. Which choices would benefit him and which would bring loss. All of it.

He stared at the noble with indifferent eyes, willing him to leave quickly.

The noble tried to persuade him with a few more words but, realizing it was futile, hastily retreated. The Crown Prince closed his eyes.

‘How tedious.’

An exam with the answer sheet already in hand held no excitement. Moreover, having suddenly gained the magical comprehension of his future self from over a decade later, he now found himself with too much time on his hands. There was no need for political scheming or magical training.

Staying idle didn’t suit him, so he began learning swordsmanship. Yet even that left him with spare time, and whenever idleness crept in, his mind unconsciously wandered back to the vanished future—or, to be precise, to a certain enslaved woman within it.

He had likened the Emperor’s memories, which had abruptly flown into him, to a book. He read it, reread it, and read it again. It was unclear whether it was voluntary or not—whenever he had even a moment to spare, the book in his mind would open on its own. If those memories had a physical form, they would have been tattered from how often he flipped through them.

How many times had he repeated this? At some point, he stopped merely reading the listed facts and began scrutinizing the subtext—wondering what that slave had been thinking, how she had felt, what the meaning behind her gaze had been. Meaningless ruminations.

The advantage of rereading is that elements you didn’t notice the first time come into view, and things you couldn’t understand before become clear. He was confident that he knew the slave named Jaha better than the Emperor ever had. What use is there in not handling a slave properly?

The Emperor… was pathetic. So much so that it was hard to believe they were the same person.

‘If you like someone, you shouldn’t treat them like that.’

“Please… f**k me… until my c**t is loose… ngh.”

Why force her to say such unnecessary things when it would only make her resentful? Even he, at seventeen, knew better—so why couldn’t the older version of himself figure it out?