episode_0196

A roar!

Every sight felt like a painting.

Like an oil painting hung in the quiet hallway of some sacred city.

Petals falling like snowflakes, and the raised arms of the cheering crowd.

Even my heart.

Everything stood still, pointing to only one.

The King. Their Queen—.

Tia.

When I saw her face, I felt it with trembling skin.

That this world was no lie.

It wasn’t a nightmare, dreamt with a trembling body on a gloomy night. Nor was it wandering on the brink of death, caught in the evil spell of a demon.

It was reality.

I had met Tia.

She was greeting me with the same bright smile she had worn when she opened the pharmacy door and came to find me.

“Tia.”

I reached out a hand towards her.

Though the distance between us was so vast, I gritted my teeth and responded to her shy gesture.

I’ve come. I’ve arrived.

Amidst the thousands of arms waving like waves—did Tia see me?

If she had seen me, she would have surely recognized me.

Because we remembered the look in each other’s eyes that recognized one another.

“Whoa!”

“Long live!”

…But I couldn’t see her.

Countless hands, outstretched as if to touch Tia on the distant red castle, tore us apart.

Through the gaps between the backs of hands and fingers, her figure flickered in and out of sight, until it was finally swallowed up.

And then—someone gripped my shoulder tightly.

“Ritsu Oppa!”

It was Marie.

The child, with her small body, was sweating profusely from pushing through the crowd.

“……”

I looked back once more.

Tia was no longer there.

* * *

“Tia Unnie became Queen……”

Marie, too, lowered her head as if unable to believe it.

It was understandable. The events we had just experienced were difficult enough to comprehend.

We had been through countless things. For me, having seen all the memories, it felt like a long time had passed, but for Marie, it had only been two months since we left Breezedon.

We had fiercely pursued Tia without a moment’s rest.

And yet.

Tia appeared before us, having become ‘Queen’.

Marie asked.

“Now… what do we do?”

Until now, I had thought that all we needed to do was find Tia. I believed that if I punished Fosao with a single stroke and told Tia everything, this long, agonizing pain would finally end.

But reality was different.

Tia had become Queen.

She had become the monarch who ruled this country from the red castle.

What did that mean?

It meant that I. I, myself, could not meet Tia right now.

We, who were merely commoners from the mountains, could not enter the Royal Palace.

Even if Tia were to come out of the Royal Palace, armed soldiers would always be heavily guarding her side.

The Queen’s escort also applied equally to Fosao, the King Consort.

The moment I drew my sword for revenge and approached that pig bastard, I would become this nation’s archenemy, forced to fight thousands of knights alone.

What should I do?

I was just as confused as Marie’s question implied.

I hadn’t even anticipated that things would get this complicated.

“I don’t know.”

No thoughts came to mind.

I had desperately clutched this heart, torn into tatters like a rag, and somehow walked all the way to Deseo.

As if to mock my journey, God had erected another barrier: the ‘Red Castle’.

The woman you seek is there, so try to reclaim her.

“Ritsu Oppa, do you want to reclaim Tia Unnie?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t… give up, right?”

I lifted my head.

Marie’s sky-blue eyes were transparent. So transparent that I still couldn’t read them.

Why did she bring up ‘giving up’ now?

Was she saying that the path to reclaim Tia was too long and arduous, and that we should stop here?

A choked breath escaped me.

“Marie. If it’s too hard, you can stop and go back.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not hard.”

Marie clenched her fingers tightly over her chest.

“It’s… harder for Ritsu Oppa than for me. I want to help you, Oppa.”

“……”

Clang.

I firmly gripped Roseshabel, which had been leaning beside the bed.

My expectations were wrong. My hopes were shattered.

But even so, my wish hadn’t changed in the slightest.

“I have no intention of giving up. Even if it means climbing the castle walls myself with these hands. I will reclaim Tia.”

This was, after all, a personal vendetta.

But now… it was no different from declaring rebellion against the nation.

I was not unaware of the weight of those words.

“It will certainly be difficult. But somehow, I just need to kill Fosao, meet Tia, show her that I’m alive, and tell her the whole truth. That will be the end of it.”

Marie asked.

“What if we try going directly to the Royal Palace?”

“Then it would reach Fosao’s ears. Fosao might even act before it reaches Tia. It’s too dangerous.”

“Writing a letter wouldn’t work either, right?”

“Impossible. All letters entering the Royal Palace undergo thorough inspection. If the sender is unclear, they are discarded.”

“What about asking that drunk knight from yesterday? Didn’t he say he was on Tia Unnie’s side?”

“No. He’s also under Fosao’s thumb. In fact, if it becomes known that we contacted him, we’ll be in trouble. That’s why we don’t have much time left either.”

Fosao also has the ability to read memories, just like me.

If he were to come into contact with Robert again… he would see that I ‘read Robert’s memories.’ And he would realize that I am in Deseo.

If that happens, the one holding power will undoubtedly strike us first.

Fortunately, however, we didn’t have to worry about that yet.

That was because Robert had taken a leave of absence and wasn’t planning to return to the Royal Palace for some time.

So, before Robert returns to the Royal Palace.

We had to finish everything within one month.

Without Fosao noticing.

“Marie. Remember this. There’s something we need to do before we reclaim Tia.”

“Huh?”

“We have to kill Fosao.”

I had made this judgment based on all the memories I had seen so far.

“He’s no longer the ‘general store owner’ we knew. He’s a ‘demon’.”

Until now, the impression everyone, no, every person, had of Fosao was wretched.

He was so unpleasant, smelly, fat, ugly, stammering, indecisive, and even lazy, that no one wanted to be near him. No matter how much you wanted to see him in a good light, you simply couldn’t.

Still, his character wasn’t bad. That alone allowed him to open a small general store near Breezedon and live there.

But that wasn’t it. It was everyone’s misconception.

That pig bastard’s character was also sinister.

He laid hands on young Tia, stole Tia, and tried to kill me.

There was no guilt in any of his cruel and ruthless actions.

Literally, he was a man who would do anything to make Tia his own.

Therefore, he must be eliminated.

He must be made as if he never existed in this world.

Because that is the only… salvation Tia and I can receive.

“Then we’ll have to hide our presence here.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ll have to enter the Royal Palace quietly.”

“That’s right.”

It seemed Marie also understood that what we had to do was not much different from assassination.

She turned her head and looked out the window.

Even from this small inn room, the Red Castle was clearly visible.

“What if we ask someone who knows a lot about the Royal Palace?”

“That doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Approaching an insider itself is very dangerous.”

“Even if Tia Unnie became Queen, the Royal Palace hasn’t changed, has it?”

“And…?”

“We can ask someone who used to work at the Royal Palace. If there are any secret passages.”

Someone who used to work at the Royal Palace ‘before’?

‘Before’ would mean the King before Tia became Queen.

In other words, they would be associates of the former King, who is now exiled from this country.

But most of those people fled to foreign countries during the war, and those who were captured were either imprisoned or executed, I heard.

“I don’t think such a person would still be here. More importantly, I don’t know anyone from that side at all.”

“……What about the person who treated you, Oppa?”

“What?”

Marie explained in a calm voice.

“The Teacher-nim who treated Ritsu Oppa when he was injured by the bear. My Oppa said that Teacher-nim was ‘the King’s physician’.”

“Ah.”

“Then he must have met the King frequently, so wouldn’t he know a lot about the Royal Palace?”

“…Right. You’re right.”

The court physician.

Why hadn’t I thought of him?

The King’s health status was a strict secret that shouldn’t be known outside, and thus, the court physician’s visits were also made in secret.

In other words, the ‘court physician’ was the one who knew the structure and passages of the Royal Palace better than anyone.

If only I could meet that physician, infiltration wouldn’t be difficult…

The problem was that he had been captured by Grand Duke Piolo a few days ago.

His whereabouts after that were unknown. But what was certain was that unless he was killed, he was somewhere in Deseo.

“Thank you, Marie. Thanks to you, I remembered what we need to do.”

Marie smiled faintly.

“As soon as day breaks, let’s go find that physician.”