Chapter 264

Chapter 264

Flowers were actually quite an inconvenient gift.

Since I couldn’t put it in my pocket, I carried the single flower around. Charlotte, seeing me like that, told me to just throw it away. I couldn’t tell if it was because it looked awkward, or for some other reason.

So, I really did throw the pansy she gave me away, into the other flowers.

Charlotte seemed a bit taken aback.

“Wow... you really threw it away.”

“... You told me to.”

“Still, you said even trash from me would be a gift.”

“I was just prioritizing the princess’s command to throw it away!”

“... You’re really something. Why are you like this?”

“Are you upset? If you are, I can pick it up and carry it around again.”

“Listen, Reinhart. The moment you threw it away after being told to, it was already over.”

“I guess I made a mistake.”

“At times like this, can you just learn to say nothing? Now I hate myself more for telling you to throw it away and then complaining when you actually do.”

“...”

“You can at least say ‘yes’!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Charlotte shook her head as if she were tired.

In reality, there was a different reason for why I had thrown the flower away, but I didn’t mention it, just as Charlotte couldn’t tell me why she had given me the pansy.

Thanks to the Cognitive Dissonance spell, no passersby recognized Charlotte.

I had only met Charlotte at the beginning of the year, yet it felt like a distant memory.

The girl who was dying in a prison cell...

I hadn’t known who Charlotte was, and it turned out she was a princess, which was troublesome, but it ultimately allowed me to reach the capital.

‘If I hadn’t met Charlotte, would I have been able to escape the Demon King’s Castle safely?

‘If I hadn’t come to the capital, what would have happened to me?’

Hypotheticals were meaningless, but thinking about what might have happened if things had gone differently left me feeling lost.

I had a vague feeling that I would have either lived as a nobody, or wandered the wilderness until I died.

All of this had begun when I met Charlotte in that prison cell.

Charlotte was my beginning.

“... You look like an old man. What are you thinking about while you’re staring at me?” Charlotte asked.

“Wh-When did I ever stare at you!”

Charlotte seemed startled, as if my gaze made her uncomfortable. As we walked on, still admiring the flowers, Charlotte spoke.

“You’ve always been strange, but you seem even stranger lately.”

“... How so?”

“There’s a precariousness about you, as if I can sense anxiety and restlessness coming from you.”

I was different from Charlotte. I wasn’t good at hiding my emotions. So, if something happened between me and Ellen, people noticed, and if I was worried, they would try to cheer me up.

“I don’t know what’s making you so anxious, but how about relaxing a bit?”

Charlotte was worried about me. She was probably struggling with her own issues, yet she was thinking about me.

‘Is this really the time for her to be worrying about me? There’s something going on with you too, isn’t there?’

I was torn between the urge to ask her that and the feeling that I shouldn’t.

Charlotte sighed deeply. “Why are you tensing up more just when I tell you to relax?”

She walked a little ahead of me, quietly. Since class had just ended, it wasn’t quite sunset yet.

Charlotte’s platinum blonde hair shone brilliantly in the autumn sunlight.

The once-haggard Charlotte seemed to have regained her health. Naturally, she looked much better this way.

“Whoa!”

While admiring the flowers, Charlotte was suddenly startled and grabbed my arm instinctively.

“What, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“It was a bee! Phew...”

Buzz...

Charlotte had been startled by a bee. It wasn’t even a hornet, just a regular honeybee. The honeybee buzzed its way among the flowers and then disappeared.

“Ugh. I thought it was something serious...”

Charlotte glared at me after seeing my reaction. “What’s that? Ugh, you’re really... Sometimes I think you forget that I was raised delicately, you know?”

Raised delicately.

For her to say that was an understatement. For a princess to say, “I was raised delicately,” was in itself already cute.

She had indeed been raised delicately. Despite that, she’d had to go through some rough experiences.

“You like flowers, but you’re scared of bees?”

Wouldn’t someone who liked flowers run into bees often?

“... There aren’t any in my garden.”

‘Does that mean they’re able to micromanage the ecosystem in the Imperial Palace’s gardens to such an extent? Is that even possible?

‘Still, isn’t seeing a bee nothing compared to the rough experiences she’s gone through?’

Charlotte clicked her tongue.

“You’re so transparent. Bees are an unknown fear to me. I’ve never been stung in my life, so no matter what I’ve been through, it’s natural to be scared of something I don’t know. Got it?”

“Well, I can see you have a lot to say.”

“You really speak your mind without any filter, don’t you?” Charlotte said as she burst into laughter as if she couldn’t believe it.

Despite her words, she seemed to be in a good mood.

Charlotte liked flowers, but she was afraid of bees... That was something I learned. Although there were many beautiful flowers along the Irine River, as soon as she saw the bees, Charlotte kept a slight distance from the flowers.

Charlotte must have grown up in a garden with only butterflies.

I sometimes forgot how delicately she was raised, but such moments reminded me of it.

Charlotte seemed to find it amusing that she couldn’t approach the flowers she liked because of a mere bee, and she laughed weakly.

“Reinhart, have you ever been stung by a bee?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“How painful is it?”

“It hurts like hell.”

“Is it that bad?” Charlotte asked, looking at me wide-eyed.

“Well, you know, it’s not like it’ll kill you. It just hurts for a bit and that’s it.”

There were cases where anaphylactic shock could occur, which would be dangerous, but generally, it just hurt and that was all.

“Should I try getting stung?” Charlotte said as she moved closer to the flowers.

“Why would you do that on purpose?”

“Oh, should I not?”

Charlotte scratched her cheek and laughed a bit foolishly. She watched the honeybees buzzing among the flowers from a distance.

Unlike the trams that serviced the Temple, there were no handles for standing passengers, and the interior was luxurious, with only a few seats.

Anyway, Charlotte and I rode the tram without anyone bothering us, and I was taken around a tour of the Imperial Palace.

That morning, I hadn’t imagined that by evening I’d be inside the Imperial Palace for the first time.

The Imperial Palace felt different from the Temple. While the Temple had a lively atmosphere, thanks to the presence of many students, the Imperial Palace was solemn and quiet.

The people passing by all had serious expressions, and were clearly all important figures, whether nobles or officials.

Charlotte, having initially said no, seemed to have decided to give me a tour since she had brought me along.

“See that? That’s the Tetra Palace, where His Majesty the Emperor resides.”

Charlotte pointed to a palace beyond a vast garden and fountain: the Tetra Palace.

Instead of feeling luxurious, the palace gave off a more solemn and rigid air. In terms of splendor, the Royal Class dormitory was more extravagant.

However, the large, solemn, and dignified palace seemed a good representation of the authority of the empire.

It seemed to say, “I don’t need to be flashy.”

As the residence of the supreme ruler of the continent, it exuded a sense of prestige that did not require self-adornment. The description in my mind was even more vividly realized.

The tram circled around the central Tetra Palace.

“Do you know much about the Imperial Palace?” Charlotte asked.

“Of course,” I replied.

‘How could I not?’

The imperial city, Emperatos... The Gradias empire had poured all its efforts into the construction of the imperial city.

Numerous magical barriers were laid out, embedded into the ley lines, and the walls were designed to repel not only external invasions but also infiltration by hostile forces. Both the walls and the ley lines were covered with hundreds of layers of complex magical barriers.

“There are four main palaces centered around the Tetra Palace, one for each cardinal direction: north, south, east, and west. There are other palaces as well, but those four are the largest ones, aside from the Tetra Palace. They are called the Spring Palace, the Summer Palace, the Autumn Palace, and the Winter Palace,” Charlotte explained.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.”

“Do you know why they are named that way?”

“No. Is there a reason for it?”

“Yes.”

Of course I knew, but Charlotte seemed to enjoy explaining it herself, so I shook my head.

“In the early days of the empire, they were very concerned about the safety of the imperial city. So, they laid hundreds of layers of magical barriers over the entire area.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Because of that, the ley lines were disrupted somehow, and the mana around here became unbalanced, causing strange phenomena.”

“And then?”

“The imperial city ended up having all four seasons simultaneously.”

“... Really?”

“Yes, really.”

It was a side effect of the immense magical power applied to the area.

Except for the central area where the Tetra Palace was located, the areas around it experienced either spring, summer, autumn, or winter, at the same time.

“Of course, a lot of time has passed since then, and quite some maintenance has been done, so those strange phenomena have disappeared. For a long time, though, they struggled to rectify it. So, instead of their original names, the palaces were called the Spring Palace, the Summer Palace, the Autumn Palace, and the Winter Palace, based on the seasons that those areas were experiencing. Eventually, even the imperial city officially adopted those names.”

The strange phenomena had disappeared, but the habit of calling them by those names remained, and had replaced the original names.

The tram continued to move, and as one of the palaces came into view, Charlotte pointed to it.

“That’s the Winter Palace, where Vertus lives.”

It was a palace with a dignified appearance. It gave off a rather cold and desolate air, perhaps because it was called the Winter Palace.

Of course, it was much more elegant compared to the ancient castle of Epiacs.

The palace seemed like a bastion of strength, but still gave off a lonely air, perhaps because of the person living there.

Vertus, plotting schemes in the Winter Palace... It seemed somewhat fitting.

Although the strange seasonal phenomena had disappeared, Charlotte looked at the Winter Palace and then back at me.

“Isn’t it a bit of a shame?”

“What is?”

“Wouldn’t it have been amusing if Vertus had to live in the Winter Palace, shivering all the time?”

‘Well... How am I supposed to respond to that?’

Seeing my bewildered expression, Charlotte covered her mouth and giggled.

“I’m just kidding. If that were the case, Vertus probably wouldn’t have chosen to live in the Winter Palace in the first place.”

Although it was called the Winter Palace, it was in the midst of autumn, just like the rest of the city.

However, despite it being autumn, it still felt like winter. It wasn’t because of the palace itself, but the garden.

‘Didn’t I describe these details?’

The vast garden in front of the Winter Palace... There wasn’t a single flower in sight. The grasses and shrubs were turning brown, but there wasn’t a single flower.

‘Strange. It’s been a while since I described it, so I don’t remember it clearly, but was Vertus’s Winter Palace garden always this desolate? I don’t think I ever described it like this.

‘I vaguely remember mumbling something about it having flowers and flower beds. But why is it like this now?’

Noticing my expression, Charlotte spoke.

“Desolate, isn’t it?”

“... Yeah, kind of.”

In a way, though, it suited Vertus. It felt neat and orderly without being flashy.

“Still,” I continued, “it’s supposed to be a garden, so it seems odd that there isn’t a single flower bed.”

Charlotte crossed her arms and clicked her tongue.

“It’s childish, isn’t it? Because I like flowers, he had all the flowers in his garden removed. When I heard that, I wasn’t even angry, just dumbfounded.”

Apparently, Vertus had a childish side to him that I did not expect.

Charlotte liked flowers, and for Vertus, that was reason enough to hate them.

So, my memory wasn’t wrong. The reason there were no flowers in Vertus’s garden was because Charlotte, who loved flowers, was still alive.

In the original story, the Winter Palace garden had flowers because Charlotte, who loved flowers, was already dead.

Once he had no reason to hate flowers anymore, he was okay with them being in his garden.

Was that it?

If Charlotte died, flowers would bloom in Vertus’s garden.

It was childish, yet it ultimately spoke to the deep-seated hatred and animosity between the two, making it a chilling detail. This must have been another backstory that I wasn’t aware of.

Charlotte smiled grimly. “You should have seen his face when I replanted all the flowers he had removed into my own palace garden.”

Vertus wasn’t the only one who was childish. Charlotte was quite childish too.

“Oh, we’ve arrived.”

The tram had arrived at the northern part of the Imperial Palace. Charlotte pointed out the window.

“That’s the Spring Palace, where I live.”

The Spring Palace...

Even from a distance, even without knowing its name, it was obvious.

It was more appropriate to call it the Palace of Flowers rather than the Spring Palace, since the garden was so filled with blooming flowers that it seemed like a festival was in full swing.

Not long ago, someone had died there, in the imperial city of Emperatos, where everyone should have been safe. Someone had lost their life in the most secure place in the capital.

I was more curious about what was hidden behind the blooming flowers in the garden.