When I woke from the mana breathing I’d repeated all night, the estate had already fallen silent.
"Everything’s ready, Butler."
"Tommy, did you pack everything without forgetting anything?"
"Yes, Butler."
"Then let’s go."
Listening through the door to Paul answering with nothing but stiff responses instead of a friendly greeting, Philip dressing up his words in a strict tone but still failing to fully hide his tension, and Tommy’s voice sounding inexplicably bright, I looked into the mirror.
Even after the three sets of footsteps grew distant and disappeared, I couldn’t take my eyes off the mirror.
It wasn’t a mistake. My right iris had turned a deep reddish brown. In stark contrast to the green iris on the left, it was such a dark reddish brown you could mistake it for black at a glance. A typical East Asian eye color—familiar to me—but in a place where light eyes were the norm, it was rare instead. It was the same color I’d had when I was Han Jae.
I definitely had seen my body’s eye color change before. It had been such a brief moment I could’ve called it my imagination, but still.
When I finally dragged up the memory that had been jammed into some corner, I let out a sigh. A little over a year ago. Not when leaves were falling like now, but when the foliage had just started to turn—that was what I remembered. The day I experienced it for the first time, the day the prince’s rut began.
Was it a coincidence that my eye color changed again on the day the prince’s rut began again?
The face in the mirror was smirking. Like it was asking whether I really believed that half-assed excuse—“just a coincidence.”
Yeah. There was no way it was a coincidence. Was it because of the prince’s pheromones after all? I wondered if this was the backlash of how I normally wasn’t affected at all, showing up like this.
Like how the prince’s eyes turned red when he used his pheromones strongly.
I didn’t know anything about my own body. And there was no one I could ask.
The prince had advised me—hide it, desperately.
Maybe there really was a secret I had to hide. Even I, the one using this body, didn’t know what it was.
This body had been a scrawny, filthy child. When I opened my eyes, it had been buried in a stinking pile of straw. Wearing rags too pathetic to even call clothes. Even those sleeves and pant legs were riding up awkwardly.
Proof that it hadn’t been cared for properly was everywhere.
Even though there had been an empty bed, my body had been lying in a pile of straw. That bed hadn’t been a sanitary place to sleep either, but it still looked far better than the straw.
The house had been full of the sour stench of vinegar. Liquor that had fermented too far and turned into vinegar.
The broken branches rolling around on the floor were damp, freshly cut wood that hadn’t even dried. They weren’t usable as firewood. They clearly had another purpose, and it wasn’t hard for me to guess what they’d been used for.
There were multiple long bruises layered over my limbs. There would’ve been similar marks left on my back, too, where it had throbbed.
So I hadn’t gone out of my way to look for the hunter who’d supposedly vanished along with the sound of wild beasts. Even now, I don’t think that choice was wrong.
A truth nobody knows can’t become a secret. It just gets forgotten.
I watched as my right iris slowly returned to green. The estate was still sunk in silence, and the change in my body reflected in the mirror faded away.
At lunchtime, I finished the meal given as my portion cleanly, then prepared the prince’s meal. After I poured hot coffee and set it on the tray, I headed out.
Walking down the silent hallway like that day a year ago, my wrist kept vibrating nonstop. The watch the prince had given me was squeezing my left wrist hard enough to hurt.
My employer was excellent at keeping promises, but it seemed like one thing still wasn’t complete.
Recalling the voice that had said he’d protect me even from himself, I stopped the watch that was shaking like it could burst at any moment.
The bedroom door was, just as I’d expected, tightly shut. The prince, who’d locked himself in, was letting out occasional weak moans so faint I could barely hear them even with my ear pressed to the door.
I lifted my hand to knock, then hesitated. Even with its function shut off, the watch still sat on my wrist in a beautiful form, heavy with weight.
This too was probably one of a kind in the world. Like the prince’s watch.
My employer had been rich to begin with, and now he was making even more than that, but there was a part of me that quietly worried he didn’t know much about how the world worked. What kind of employer pays out incentives straight up to an employee who brought the company profit? In Korea, that would never happen.
This watch was the same. If I put this up at auction—or no, if I opened the watch, copied the magic circle he’d added himself, and then showed it to another watchmaker—what would he do then?
The profit I could gain that way would be nothing compared to the profit I already received every month, but still.
Thinking nonsense like that, I sat down with my back against the door.
"Duke, you didn’t read the morning paper today, did you? There was a pretty interesting article."
At the deliberately brightened tone, everything beyond the door went quiet. I focused every nerve on the ear pressed to the door. I thought I heard a low breath. I could picture the prince on the other side, frowning hard and glaring at the door.
Soon, a long exhale came through. It sounded like a mix of a moan he’d been holding back and a sigh.
"Jay, you really aren’t scared of anything."
A voice hoarse to the extreme rumbled low, like he was trying to intimidate me.
"It’s thanks to the watch you gave me, Duke."
"……That thing is protecting you?"
"Yes."
I nodded with a business smile. Twenty-eight-year-old Han Jae hadn’t been a master salesman, but I’d at least been an experienced one. So there was no hesitation in my answer.
At that moment, hhh— the sound of someone swallowing pain rang out. It was so loud it felt like it drilled straight into my ear. Instead of asking if he was okay, I held my breath and waited for the sound to settle. Like he wouldn’t want me to act like I knew he was hurting.
In the hallway, where all sunlight was blocked and it felt like a dark cave, I couldn’t feel time passing. Like time had stopped in place, just like the watch I’d stopped.
"You……."
The prince’s voice moved time again.
"You’re good at… a lot of things, but you really can’t… lie."
It was a harsh evaluation of the sales skill that had once pried open the wallets of newlyweds who’d been hesitating because of a budget overrun. But I couldn’t refute it.
It felt like he’d seen through the fact that I’d ended up pitying the boy beyond the door.
That night, I dreamed. In the dream, I was a child even smaller than I was now, so skinny my bones practically showed. In that unfamiliar body, I still recognized myself as me.
The dream was vivid. Like I’d actually lived it.
The child—me—desperately hid.
Up until dinner started, the hunter had been doing a decent job playing the role of a blunt father. At some point, he’d turned into a drunken beast. The household things I’d barely fixed were smashed under his hands and rolled across the floor.
When there was nothing left to break, he threw his liquor bottle. A vicious reek of alcohol made my head swim.
The hunter who’d destroyed the very liquor he was going to drink collapsed to the floor and started crying.
《Young Master…….》
I didn’t know who the young master was—the one the hunter called so mournfully. I only knew that I absolutely couldn’t let him see me right now.
If I showed myself when he was longing for that young master, I would be punished with the switch I’d snapped off with my own hands. Because everything was my fault.
It’s because of you. If you weren’t here. Everything is your sin. So you need to reflect.
Those were the words he said as he swung the switch. I had to become a bad child. Without even knowing what my sin was.
I desperately waited for the hunter to fall asleep, drunk on liquor and his own emotions. I hadn’t even been able to get half a potato into my mouth before I had to hide in the straw. Afraid my starving stomach would make noise, I clutched it with all my strength and didn’t move until the feeling left my legs.
Only after the hunter, who’d been crying and calling for the young master for a long time, finally started snoring could I slip out of the straw.
Ignoring the tingling pain in my legs, I swept my hand over the floor. Mashed potato and hard, tough pieces of meat were rolling around on a floor covered in spilled liquor and dust.
I ate it all in a frenzy, still trying not to make a sound, checking over and over to make sure the hunter stayed asleep.
I remembered that desperate sensation.
That child was me. Another me that Han Jae had never known.
This body… was mine.
※
When I woke from the dream, I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
My heart was still pounding violently, like my body was trapped in the time inside the dream.
I consciously exhaled slowly. The blue light of dawn came in through the window. Everything was quiet, like being underwater. It felt like I was submerged alone.
Chirp!
What shattered my mood was the cry of an unknown bird. Once I became aware of the sound outside, cheep, chirp— the noisy cries filled my ears.
A laugh came out on its own.
Where I was wasn’t underwater, and it wasn’t some hut in a far-off fishing village. It wasn’t Korea, either.
The light coming through the window gradually brightened.
Just because I’d remembered another me, the sky didn’t fall. Just like how nothing happened even when I came to pity the prince.
More than anything, it was already over. That “young master” might be one of my birth parents, or I might have been born a beta from an omega and abandoned, but there was no way to find that “young master.”
And I didn’t want to.
Family you didn’t spend time with couldn’t become family. I knew that fact well.