Ch.1Epilogue

# Chapter 1

When I endlessly traveled back through the past and reached a dead end, my first imprinted memory was the sharp scream of a glass.

“Why is this brat staring at me like that? Just yesterday you were crawling around hiding.”

He was a wastrel with darkness under his eyes that extended down to his cheekbones. Yet his messy, lice-infested blonde hair looked like it would shine beautifully if only washed a little. He was a man of contradictory appearance.

“I’ve gotten so used to your drunken fits that I’m quiet now. Please stop this, I’m begging you!”

“A woman who spreads her legs for anyone is trying to play mother now? There’s a limit to this nonsense.”

The man sneered. The woman clutched her tattered clothes and shouted.

“Anyone else can say that to me, but not you of all people…!!!”

“Why not? You wanted it, so I gave you sex and even made a child, but you’re so greedy…”

“Ha…!”

Speechless with disbelief, the woman was beautiful. She wore cheap makeup products, and was slim without unnecessary fat. At least she had preserved her youthful beauty better than the man.

The woman looked at me with a complex expression. Her eyes seemed ready to burst into tears, mixed with excitement—a puzzling face. Knowing nothing, I innocently tilted my head.

“Let’s go out.”

The woman’s firm command. I had no right of refusal, and wasn’t even aware I could exercise such a right.

Creeeeak.

The front door made a noise as if squeezing all the world’s distortions, and a putrid smell greeted me. It was the slums in every sense. Though not far from luxurious residences, we were sewer rats while humans lived beyond the boundary.

The woman carried me as she gradually moved toward the human district boundary. Though I wasn’t too young to walk, she seemed to cherish me. Meanwhile, she looked at me with eyes burning with obsession.

“My goodness, how can you be so beautiful? I hate to admit it, but you’ve strongly inherited your father’s blood. Of course, my blood plays a part too. Especially these blue eyes, rippling like the sea. Marquis Aquileum used to subtly seduce me, saying my eyes reminded him of aquamarine. Of course, I told your father everything.”

The woman stroked my head as if intoxicated by past memories and continued.

“And this blonde hair. Though your father is in terrible shape now, he was once the most handsome man in the Empire. On clear days, when walking by the fountain, rainbow colors would reflect off his blonde hair touched by water spray. Many women desired him. Because of that, much blood stained my hands.”

Once started, her stories of the past continued endlessly. It was a passionate reminiscence, constantly reaching toward a brilliant era that could never return. But I saw her as a pitiful woman stretching her hand toward the moon reflected in a lake—knowing she could never reach it, yet bewitched by blind beauty.

And finally, like disturbing the moon’s reflection in water, she emphasized one truth to me.

“Never forget. You are a child who carries the blood of the legitimate Emperor of the Bellonin Empire. You’re not meant to rot in this cursed sewer. Neither am I, your mother. So remember this. Wherever you are, your bloodline represents the Empire’s most noble sun.”

As if to prove her words true, the sun shone intensely in the blue sky. Though we had only approached the boundary of the bustling area, I felt as if the world’s saturation had changed. At that moment, a bang! The sound of fireworks shook the surroundings.

“The Emperor and Empress are passing through!”

Several guards shouted at the top of their lungs. Behind them, a grand parade followed in succession.

The most noticeable part was in the middle of the procession—the parade’s main figures. In a large, open jeweled carriage, a couple and a young girl waved with bright faces.

The woman gritted her teeth. She glared at them with obvious contempt, as if wanting to kill them. Of course, amid countless onlookers, a wretched woman’s glare meant nothing.

“I should have killed her for sure at that last tea time…! It’s all because of that wench. Damn it, how did she know? No, it’s always been like that. That poor baron’s daughter has interfered with me at every turn as if she’s lived another life.”

The woman’s paranoid monologue was endless. After slandering the elegantly adorned woman, it was time to curse the dignified-looking man.

“And what about that man? Every time, every single time, he saved her like fate at critical moments…! Unlike him, he was unrealistically perfect. Who would think he was a beast from the North? No, from the beginning, your father had nothing better than that guy except looks and bedroom skills!”

Her bloodshot eyes turned to me again. Her blue eyes, mixed with obstinacy and obsession, were pretty. But I didn’t know how to comfort her. Having never seen people comfort each other since birth, the child of a vagrant emperor and a prostitute knew nothing but their glittering past.

“Whew, since we’re out, we might as well buy some food. I may not have money to support that good-for-nothing, but I have enough to feed you.”

The coin purse jingled. The inside of the very thin purse seemed quite empty. That made the jingling sound seem to boast its resonance more clearly.

The woman, putting on a lovely pretense, came out to the street amid people’s unpleasant stares. People cursed her as if overlaying her beauty with some past history. Naturally, not a single person was kind. It seemed all the world’s curses existed to be heaped upon us.

The moment when the woman’s turbulent past was completely trampled came in an instant.

A man who refused to make way pushed us with his large shoulders contemptuously. Losing her balance, the woman fell onto the road where the parade was in full swing. Then, a ruthless cracking sound brushed my ears.

In that moment, I was safe only because she threw me with all her might. I sat there stunned for a long time after barely grasping what had happened. Though it was a tremendously dynamic experience in my world, most people didn’t seem to think so.

A guard dragged her blood-stained body away somewhere. That’s how my separation from the woman who gave birth to me occurred. Despite countless eyes witnessing it under the sky, it was merely an insignificant incident that quickly lost interest.

“That wicked woman finally dies.”

“For someone who once manipulated the Empire, she’s quite foolish.”

“Her face was pretty decent, so I was planning to visit her soon… Sigh! What a shame.”

“Well, when else would I get to sleep with the Emperor’s woman?”

“I really wanted to see her lying under those she once treated like flies, taking money for it…”

Vulgar gossip circulated. But even all the statements defaming the woman heated up and cooled down quickly like the organs below their pelvises. Such was the death of a woman who once manipulated the world at will.

I took the coin purse—the only thing she left behind—and returned the way we came. Going back to the slums, I felt nothing. Perhaps I was too young to accept my mother’s death, or maybe I truly felt no emotion. If it was the latter, I was clearly born broken like their child.

With each step, I received mysterious glances from women both old and young as I sought my shelter. They seemed to want to say something but restrained themselves. At that time, I thought it was because I had inherited both parents’ looks, as my mother said.

The numb truth came to me with a sneering face. The first thing I witnessed upon returning home was thugs emanating a menacing aura. Beyond them, a blonde man with blood flowing from his head was trembling, dying.

The darkness extending to his cheekbones looked particularly intense. The last word he managed to utter with labored breath was “fuck.” This was my father’s final greeting.

“They say there’s no debt that can’t be collected.”

They giggled. The intruders who had driven the former emperor to such a miserable state were debt collectors.

“If raised well, she’ll be worth more than our investment with men.”

“Lucky you inherited good things from both your father and mother, right?”

“But won’t this cause trouble? He was an emperor after all.”

“Idiot! Can’t you see the state of this house? They set it up so he’d die of shame.”

“Those high-ups are always more cruel. Maybe they use what they’ve learned effectively.”

“Enough, let’s take the child first.”

Their predatory hands gradually approached me. Like the hands of the dead craving life force, they flaunted their concentrated desires. As the thug’s hands reached for my shoulder and hand, what came to mind was my mother’s frantic instruction.

[Never forget. You are a child who carries the blood of the legitimate Emperor of the Bellonin Empire.]

The blood of the legitimate Emperor. As I pondered its meaning, the world turned monochrome. The creaking desk with protruding thorns and every single cobweb claiming its territory on the ceiling came into clear view.

Then, black mist shimmered like a mirage. Along with it, the certainty that I could control it at will seized my consciousness. Faced with this clear anomaly, the men stepped back, but unfortunately, the house was too small for them to escape.

Terrible screams echoed.

At the age of five.

That was when I first took human lives.