YMPDKMA Chapter 35

While walking, Rupert muttered numbers under his breath, then pointed out a particular shop with a jerk of his chin to Max, who'd been following us. Mostly shops whose merchants had shown fear at seeing him. Then Max would enter the shop Rupert had singled out with an attitude triumphant and arrogant, showing off his massive frame, and utterly destroy it.

Under his rough kicks, the dishes the merchant must have carefully stacked shattered and scattered across the floor like petals blown from a cliff. Max's rampage ended around when the flustered merchant clung to Rupert. I quickly lowered my eyes, not wanting to see the ugly mess of tears and snot on an old face.

The image of the crying merchant and Rupert looking down at him with cold eyes intensified the hatred I harbored. How had the child who tormented me over one dumpling become so quickly close to the Emperor I knew? How was the cruel future I knew so unchangeable that it crashed down like a wave I couldn't even muster the courage to stop? I sighed involuntarily.

Suddenly, Rupert's usually indifferent face grew rapidly larger. He became the red, cold, beautiful Emperor, glaring at me. I stumbled backward with trembling body and squeezed my eyes shut. Someone firmly caught my flailing arm as I fell.

"What are you doing?"

When I opened my eyes, Rupert was supporting me with a strange expression—that is, a face ignoring me. A boy's face again. I forcibly pushed away the hallucination of dying blackly and stood properly before him. Rupert looked only at me, as if the merchant trembling and crying beside him didn't exist. I answered hurriedly.

"I—I misstepped."

"Talented."

"Pardon?"

"The talent to fall on smooth, flat ground without a single stone."

Rupert smirked and straightened me, then finally turned toward the merchant. He seemed to have broken some sense that humans should naturally possess—the ability to detect and understand others' tears and pain—as he slowly shook off the merchant clinging to him.

"Bring it."

"Oh my, why are you doing this! Why! Is there a problem with the ledger?"

At the merchant's wailing, Rupert sighed. He groaned with irritation as if all of this were bothersome, then suddenly changed his attitude and grabbed the merchant's neck, slamming him onto the display table outside the shop.

"Bring it."

"Wh-what?"

"The protection badge you received from Fassbender, the exempted fees, and whatever you got from Gorten."

Though he was still a growing boy whose strength shouldn't be tremendous, the merchant groaned under his pressure, unable to move forward or back. Only then did Rupert slyly release him.

"I haven't received anything! I don't know who told you what, but I..."

He raised an eyebrow but didn't touch the old man further. Instead, he gestured to Max, encouraging his rampage. The merchant immediately turned pale and ran inside.

"Take what he brings. I'm going to rest."

Rupert truly looked tired. He buried his face in his weary hands and dry-washed it, then turned his back and started walking.

I alternated between looking at the collapsing shop, Max laughing as if enjoying the sanctioned violence, and the merchant screaming like a crow, then chased after Rupert. This was my fate. Following Rupert was the only path laid out before me.

He didn't stop me from following. I quietly trailed him, then couldn't hold back and opened my mouth.

"How did you know?"

"What?"

"How do you know whether that merchant is innocent or not, Your Highness? If he's truly innocent..."

"I said one question was the end."

"Your Highness, but what if that person is blameless?"

Like our father.

What if that old, shabby merchant is completely innocent? Why are you so merciless to the weak? The merchant's crying face kept catching at the edge of my vision, suffocating me.

"Your Highness, if he's innocent..."

"Do you think there are merchants who falsify ledgers even when they have nothing to hide?"

"...Ledgers? The ledgers were falsified?"

"Yes. So either shut your mouth and follow, or keep chattering and get lost."

Rupert growled low and turned his back again.

Rupert loved to warn me. Warnings. Always only warnings. I felt a kind of disconnect and provoked him once more.

"How do you know?"

"Tsk, stop being annoying."

"How do you know? How can you be certain it's falsification?"

I moved my mouth fearlessly.

Rupert stopped walking, bit the tip of the finger I'd bandaged earlier, and smeared it on the wall. As I watched the red brick wall melt like gilt and form a hole, he grabbed and threw me through while answering slowly.

"I'm not certain. Only idiots do that."

"Then, Your Highness! If there's even the slightest possibility that merchant is innocent, shouldn't you refrain from punishing him?"

"What if I get hurt instead?"

Rupert whispered clearly, as if teaching a child to read, as if carving his words into my ear. Because he kept drawing alchemy circles with his other arm, I felt uneasy, as if he were casting a spell on me, and shuddered.

"Answer me. What if I get hurt instead? What if that worthless caution becomes something that strangles me?"

Perhaps because he'd drawn alchemy circles consecutively, Rupert's white face was paler than usual as he urged me on. His sun-bright golden hair flowed down his straight forehead. His glass-like green eyes were vivid beneath the moonlight.

What if he got hurt?

That would naturally be something I'd welcome with both arms raised, wouldn't it? But I couldn't actually answer that way, so I fell into thought. A case where a person in power doesn't punish a traitor out of caution for the weak and suffers harm?

It wasn't a common story. All the people in power I knew were desperately wary of the weak. The Emperor toward Father, Gorten toward those beneath him. Everyone except my father.

Only then did I understand Rupert's words just a little, if only with my fingertips. Because that had been my father's downfall, I couldn't not know.

"Still, those in power must be cautious, Your Highness."

I didn't want to deny Father. At my words, he laughed quietly. Not mockingly, but really, as if I'd made a joke.

"But I'm not in power."

"..."

"Unless you're really seeing the future."

At Rupert's calm voice, I stepped back slightly to keep from trembling. Beyond the wall he'd broken through was a residential area near Fifth Avenue. I looked around, worried Riche might pop out.

"In the future you see, am I in power? In the future I see, I'm usually a corpse."

Having left Fifth Avenue, it was already deep night, and the temperature at this hour close to dawn was significantly lower than during the day. So I thought the white fog pouring from Rupert's mouth was his breath, but only after I turned completely toward him and examined him carefully did I discover Rupert was smoking hwea.

Hwea!

Dried hwea that needed no special tools had only been imported to Belnerny after Rupert became Emperor. The import source had been Fassbender, so there was no need to be surprised anymore.

Rupert leaned against the wall in the residential area lined with elegant mansions, no longer looking at me, but I answered obediently.

"Yes, Your Highness. In the future I see, you're the Emperor of the Belnerny Empire."

Buried in smoke, he looked satisfied with my answer, so I was relieved. Cold wind blew toward me, and a handful of hwea smoke entered my open mouth. Cough, cough. Rupert stared blankly at me coughing, then threw the hwea he'd been holding onto the ground.

"Beatrice Gorten."

"Ah—achoo!"

"You know her, right? She's your friend."

"Yes, that's right."

"Meet her and get some information..."

"Ah—ah—achoo!"

The smoke was gone, but I kept coughing. Only then did I realize I was dressed inappropriately for the cold weather. It seemed the same for Rupert, as he frowned his handsome brow and irritably removed the frock coat he was wearing.

I hurriedly waved my hands.

"No, no! I'm Your Highness's maid. It's not proper!"

Cough, cough!

Contrary to my refusal, labored coughs kept pouring from my mouth. Rupert twisted his face as if annoyed.

"Taking someone like this around as a maid—what a master I am."

He clicked his tongue and draped his removed coat over my shoulders. I was horrified and took off his coat.

"W-cough! Wear it!"

"Shut up. Cough in front of me one more time and I'll rip your throat out."

I covered my firmly closed mouth with my hand at Rupert's terrifying words. The threat came first, the coat placed on my body came second. I found his coat pressing down on my shoulders heavy, disturbingly strange, and incomprehensible.