The Prince didn’t move, as if he’d turned into a stone statue. Only after a long while did I manage to think of the question I actually needed to hear an answer to.
"Have you ever actually torn a beta apart and killed them?"
Maybe my question caught him off guard, because the bitter smile vanished completely from the Prince’s face.
"I didn’t kill them, but."
His expressionless face urged my next question.
"Did you hurt them?"
"Yeah."
"And that beta approached you when you didn’t want them to?"
"It wasn’t their will, but their actions were."
The Prince answered every question immediately. That unhesitating attitude solidified my decision.
"If I get hurt, make sure you treat me. And pay me compensation, too."
My words changed his expression. It was a face I’d never seen before. The Prince, who’d been slick and unflappable despite being so young, looked genuinely shocked.
"You’ll regret it."
I let out a short laugh. This time, I’d been openly rude, but no one pointed out my attitude.
The fact that he only gave me a proper warning after I’d received my third paycheck let me see my employer’s shallow little scheme. Still, the fastidiousness he couldn’t hide to the end, and the faint expectation he held toward me, made me laugh.
Maybe I could take it lightly because it was a phenomenon I’d never experienced. Of course I didn’t want to get hurt. And I wanted even less to be torn apart and killed.
Even so, despite him saying he wanted to tear someone apart and kill them, I felt like I could believe that he hadn’t actually done it. In this era, the Prince was clearly an unusually lenient employer.
The fact that the wages I’d received so far had been extremely generous was probably part of it. Actually, that was the most important reason. Now I had to prove my price. The Prince was paying me a nontrivial amount of money with the expectation that I wouldn’t get swept up in his pheromones.
"Fine. I’ll make sure you’re treated, and I’ll pay compensation, too."
The Prince, looking a little tired, stared at the empty cup. The butler handed over the newspaper he’d finished pressing. With every page the Prince turned, the disorder in his expression faded little by little. It felt like an empty bottle being wrapped up in pretty packaging.
Eighteen years old. Maybe the fact that he was still too young to run a family was part of the reason, too. I knew it was meddling on my part. The Prince was already a skilled manager and born with a silver spoon. He wasn’t someone I had any business pitying.
Still, I couldn’t help remembering my own situation, when I inherited a jewelry shop at twenty-three. Back then, I hadn’t been as good at hiding my expressions as the Prince was now. Only after three years did I become able to smile in front of customers even on the anniversaries of my entire family’s deaths.
The Prince didn’t have parents, either. His older brother was the king, but… well. Would that king really be nothing but pleased about a younger half-brother who was more popular than him?
No. I needed to stop pitying him. Shoving sympathy onto someone by saying I wasn’t the only one who’d been unhappy was something I shouldn’t do—to him or to myself. The Prince was clearly a strong person. Maybe when that thing called rut really came, I’d end up crying and regretting it, asking myself why I’d bothered with pointless pride.
After reading even the serialized novel all the way through, the Prince’s face returned to normal. But I knew. He hadn’t read a single earlier installment of that novel. What he needed was time. In that short span, the Prince completely settled the mind that had been shaken.
As if erasing the conversation we’d just had, he spoke to me again.
"Philip said your learning ability is extremely high."
"Did he."
Matching my employer’s change of mood was probably part of what an exclusive attendant did. I also responded as if I’d forgotten the talk about rut.
"He said you’ve already become proficient at reading and writing."
"I learned the letters of the language I’m speaking. If it were a foreign language, I’d probably still be learning greetings."
"And you’re good at arithmetic."
"Philip taught me the basic principles well."
"Do you want to become a scholar?"
"No."
I flatly rejected it, face serious. The reason my learning results were so good was because I already knew how to study. And I was learning basics, too. I hadn’t exactly attended diligently, but I had gotten into college—I wasn’t about to get lost at an elementary level.
"To be honest, Philip even said he thinks you might be a genius."
Kh-hm—there was a cough like a big fishbone had gotten stuck in someone’s throat. It was Philip. He also had a rarely seen flustered expression. Proof the Prince’s words were real.
"I’m not a genius."
If I was being honest, I was trying to look capable. I had to raise my price. When else would I ever get to play the prodigy while learning basic arithmetic, linear equations, linear functions, and plane figures? I was a craftsman who had to cut polyhedrons at perfect angles. It was partly to save labor costs, but I’d worked the floor myself. The notation style of numbers and formulas was basically all I truly had to learn.
"How can you be so sure of your limits?"
"It’s something I heard somewhere—people say a genius is someone who pioneers unknown territory. I can learn quickly, but I don’t have the ability to create a new field."
And the word genius was more than I could carry. It was a lie that would get exposed fast.
"Another cup of coffee, please."
With an inscrutable expression, the Prince held his cup out. Since my employer liked hot coffee, I had to boil water again. I touched the ruby, pushing in the mana I’d gathered on my fingers like I was feeding it in.
The water came to a boil in an instant, steam bursting up thickly. I’d thought I was getting control of it these days, but the moment my composure wavered, it snapped right back. I acted like it was nothing, but it was obvious the talk about rut had affected me.
At the ridiculous sight, the Prince laughed out loud. I put my full care into the dripping. I set down the coffee I’d brewed until the cup was full, but unlike usual, he didn’t even glance at it and called my name.
"Jay."
"Yes."
"How many people do you think can sense mana and use magical items in just a week?"
His mouth still wore a gentle smile, but there wasn’t a shred of laughter in his eyes.
"For reference, it took me three days."
It was the kind of statement where I couldn’t tell whether he meant my talent was decent or terrible.
"If I taught you magic, would you be willing to learn?"
Reflexively, I ended up staring hard at his face.
"You really… can teach me?"
"You look motivated. It’ll feel worth teaching."
The thought that I might be able to learn magic had never even occurred to me. I knew that just learning a breathing method from the butler that let me feel mana, and becoming able to handle magical items, already meant I was receiving special treatment. But me learning magic? And directly from the Prince?
The Prince’s eyes curved softly. I felt my heart thumping—right up until a calm voice cut into our conversation.
"Today is the day the merchants of Pisto-ga come for their regular report, my lord Duke."
The person who reined me in before I got too carried away was the butler. I tried hard not to show disappointment. Unlike the old me, this body I had now sometimes didn’t cooperate with my will. I forcibly pulled up the corners of my mouth that wanted to droop.
"Ah. Right."
The Prince slightly pinched his brow. He glanced up at me standing in front of him, and the shape of his lips—curling into a quiet snicker—stood out clearly. Apparently my face was fairly worth looking at.
"Then how about after breakfast tomorrow? Philip, is that fine?"
The Prince’s words were directed at the butler, but his eyes were on me. And those eyes, before I knew it, were holding a mischievous smile.
"Yes. There is no fixed schedule tomorrow morning."
"Jay, you heard that, right? Once today’s work is done, train your mana breathing. Tomorrow’s lesson will be easier."
I nodded before I even spoke. Even if Philip scolded me for it, there was nothing I could do. My body was too honest.
That night, I stayed up like I had the first time I felt mana. I did mana breathing like the Prince told me before bed, and before I knew it, the sky outside the window had turned bluish.
I had to admit I was pretty excited. What kind of power was magic. Could I shoot fire from my hands and pour water out of thin air, like in the cartoons I watched as a kid? To me, magic was an unknown power I couldn’t even properly imagine.
After I settled my breathing, it was earlier than usual, but instead of taking a short nap, I chose to get up early. I made the bed and changed clothes. As I adjusted my appearance, I lifted my head. The mirror on the wall was covered with cloth. That had been my doing.
Ever since my first day here, I’d been deliberately avoiding mirrors. But in a place where everything shone, I couldn’t completely avoid seeing myself. Imagining my face from warped reflections in windows or marble floors was an even more ridiculous sight. Only now could I admit I’d been doing something stupid.
My hand trembled as I pulled the cloth away. The moment gray hair reflected in the mirror, my grip tightened without me realizing. The cloth covering the mirror slid down before I could even prepare myself. A face that looked even more unfamiliar than usual was in the mirror today.
Pale gray hair like the color had been washed out. Green eyes. Colors Han Jae had never once possessed.
For a long time, I stared into the mirror. The me in it had a blank expression. I slowly lifted the corners of my mouth. The smile I’d practiced countless times looked awkward.
I let go of that forced smile. I felt something different from unfamiliarity—something like wrongness.
The color of one eye was strange. The right eye—the one I used when I worked with the Appraisal Loupe—looked darker. It seemed closer to black than green.
My heart dropped. I wondered if something was wrong with my eyes. Eyesight was one of my precious assets. It had been in the past, and it probably would be in the future, too.
Startled, I blinked. I had to have seen it wrong.
When I opened my eyes and looked again, the colors of both eyes were the same. I let out a breath without realizing it. The mirror fogged over with a hazy mist. I grabbed my sleeve and rubbed the mirror clean—hard enough it squeaked. Only after confirming again that there was no difference between my eye colors did I finally manage to take a step back.
I felt like I’d gotten a little taller. Flesh was slowly coming back onto a body that had been nothing but bones, and my shoulders that had been hunched seemed to have straightened, too.
Suddenly, my own face gave me a sense of déjà vu. Like I’d seen it somewhere before. Was it in a dream. Or my reflection in a stream.
I’d tried to avoid it, but whenever I felt that kind of déjà vu, I ended up looking back. My self-awareness clearly said I was Han Jae. If so, had I stolen this body from someone? Where did the original owner of this body go?
I couldn’t shake the thought that this body, too, had been mine from the start. The more I thought about how a body with habits completely different from Han Jae’s hadn’t felt strange at all, the more certain I became.
Had living as Han Jae been a dream? Even then, I couldn’t say no. Han Jae’s experiences and emotions were too vivid.
Had I had a fever and lost my memories of this world, like I’d told the Prince? And instead, started remembering a life as Han Jae?
Or maybe… hadn’t Han Jae actually met real death?
I didn’t know what this body’s name had been.
One thing was certain. My body and my consciousness were mine. My name was Jay.
Facing the mirror, I tied my gray hair back into one bundle. I checked that nothing was sticking out, straightened my shoulders, and planned a new routine—neither a jeweler in Jongno, nor an unpaid back-alley inn clerk, but a new everyday life.
I’d steeled myself in my own way, but the moment I opened the door and stepped out, goosebumps rose. After just one step, I felt like I’d been dropped into a strange world all over again.
The air settling on my shoulders felt heavy. The quiet hallway felt alien. It was a time when people should have been busy moving between the main house and the annex.
"Jay!"
What broke the silence was a voice calling my name. The one calling me loudly was clearly the butler, Philip. Even if the main house caught fire, he looked like the kind of man who would calmly evacuate the Prince, secure valuables, and then dismiss the servants according to procedure—yet here he was, disheveled and flustered, running toward me.
"What is it?"
The butler panted harshly.
"...Rut."
"Excuse me?"
"The Duke… has entered rut."