Edward Lacarte.
Twenty-three. A man who still looked awkward wearing the surname Lacarte. He hadn’t been properly cared for, so there was something rough and unpolished about him—yet that only made his wild charm stand out more.
To be honest, the face I saw the moment I opened the drawing room door was so unexpected I almost slipped up.
The original did say Edward was handsome, but the people around him tended to describe his physique and aura more than his looks.
So I’d assumed he’d be “a decently good-looking guy with an insanely good body.”
My prediction was completely wrong.
If more time passed and Edward acquired the dignity of a prince, he’d become a breathtakingly handsome man—different from Sasha, but overwhelming in his own way.
…Though first, we had to do something about that hair.
“Khh.”
The moment I saw that mane-like mess of hair sticking up in every direction, a laugh almost burst out of me. I forced my mouth tight and held it back.
Was it because his hair was too short, so it sprang up? If he grew it out, would it settle down? Or would it just stick out longer? If he tied it up, would it turn into some kind of… Pippi Longstocking sit—
“Marquess?”
Ah. Caught.
Sasha, who’d paused his work to stare out the study window and watch Edward—remembering their first meeting—flicked his gaze coldly toward the window at the butler’s voice.
“Get that broom-like head of hair out of my sight. I can see it from outside the estate.”
Because of the imperial knight who’d been noisily chased out on Edward’s first day here, Edward’s identity was an open secret inside the estate. They couldn’t truly “remove” him, of course—but they would definitely try, one way or another, to make that hair behave.
Come to think of it, Sasha said that in the original.
Those glittering gold eyes—he’d thought they belonged to some beastlike lowborn.
Turns out it was a predator.
Was that because of the hair, like a lion’s mane? Or did it literally mean that other than the eyes, there wasn’t much worth looking at?
After successfully branding himself as the villain in their first encounter, Sasha had rambled on about how he planned to hate Edward and even why…
But Edward only had to stand there in silence to announce, I’m the protagonist.
His appearance was miserably shabby, yet he didn’t look pathetic—because those eyes stayed clear and unwavering even while being insulted.
The way he didn’t dodge, the way he stared straight through me—that gaze was definitely memorable.
And beyond that, he had plenty of other strengths: a well-proportioned body, tall height, broad shoulders, muscles tempered by every kind of hard labor.
He’d said he’d starved often from how much he suffered growing up—so why did he look even more solid and imposing than Sasha?
Whatever. My face is insane, okay?
Someone might butt in and say, “What’s a man going to do with a pretty face? A real man needs thick thighs and a tight waist like Edward—”
But that was only something you could say if you’d never seen Sasha’s face in person.
If anything, Sasha still couldn’t look properly at his own face.
It wasn’t like before—when it made his mind go hazy—but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of unfamiliarity.
I knew this body was mine now… but the moment I looked in a mirror, I felt a disconnect.
What can I do?
Over eight years, Sasha’s already-exceptional face had ripened even further—until it reached something almost inhuman.
It kept getting prettier before I could even get used to it. What was I supposed to do about that? Maybe once I got older and this beauty finally faded, I’d be able to think, Yeah. That’s my face.
Enough small talk.
After that ruinous first impression, three months had passed.
And in that time, Sasha had been diligently stepping through the villain’s role—darting in and needling Edward whenever he found an opening.
To erase the stench of that beggar-like household as quickly as possible, he’d thrown out all the rag-like clothes and belongings Edward brought—saying that something filthy and foul-smelling couldn’t be kept under his roof.
For Edward’s lacking education and etiquette, he’d assigned the best tutors—saying he couldn’t share a space with anything “low-level.”
And two or three times a week, without fail, he’d gone to see Edward personally—“to confirm” that the servants and teachers were taking proper care of him.
He’s walking around looking like that? The servants only gave him that kind of thing?
Wrong. Are you really being educated properly? I’ll have to check.
Are you doing it on purpose? Is this your protest because you don’t want to?
Smack—!
…Hm. Was striking the back of his hand this morning a bit too much?
No matter how irritated he got, Edward had always been flat and calm—yet this time he yanked his hand back as if lightning had hit him.
Then don’t pick up food off the floor and eat it.
Three-second rule?
That kind of thing would never be allowed in this world—meaning, in the nobles’ world.
Once Edward began living under Ambrose’s roof in earnest, the hardest part wasn’t the physical discomfort.
It was learning the behavior expected of royalty, and filling the holes in his knowledge.
Because he’d lived as a commoner bastard, the standards shoved onto him were even harsher.
And because he hadn’t received proper training under the marquessate, he suffered that much more.
So right now, Sasha was doing two things at once:
Playing the villain faithfully…
…and teaching Edward what he desperately needed, during this comparatively “easy” period before Edward learned the truth of his birth and everything exploded.
Even an earthworm crawling on dirt would look better than this.
Whenever I saw Edward—who, even at this age, hadn’t properly learned how to hold a pen, who looked like he’d grown tall without ever receiving an adult’s guiding hand—I was dragged back to the protagonist’s wretched childhood.
Suppressing pity and sympathy, Sasha reached out to him anyway.
Despite his sharp words, Sasha’s touch was gentle as he pulled Edward’s large hand in and corrected the way he held the pen.
Thank you.
Maybe it was just Sasha’s nature—those eyes he was born with—but even though the words were plain, the gaze landing on Sasha’s face was intense.
Was he admiring Sasha’s looks, like in the original?
I deliberately met his eyes, but Edward didn’t avert his gaze.
Instead, as if he’d been waiting for it, he examined Sasha’s eyes closely—down to the smallest detail.
Why did I suddenly remember that post I’d read?
In this dry, ruined world, it said—the only time spring breezes blew for Edward was when he looked at Sasha with his mouth closed.
I wasn’t in any position to pity anyone, but I kept my mouth shut anyway, letting Edward look his fill.
And Edward didn’t take his eyes off me even once—until Sasha rose first at the butler’s call.
So why, today, was he looking at Sasha with such shaken eyes?
Was it that shocking that something not even worth a punch had hit him?
And to avert his gaze first, on top of it.
Do you know how hard I’m trying?
Even in the middle of all this, I was leaking Edward’s existence to Duke Grenville—the man who would become Edward’s greatest ally in the future.
The sooner Edward met the duke, the sooner he could begin preparing for what was coming.
To summarize:
In the original, Edward had three enemies.
One was his father—the Emperor.
Two was the Emperor’s half-brother, Edward’s uncle: the Grand Duke.
And the third enemy…
…was Sasha.
Ugh.
Pushing aside the mess that was “next year” even thinking about it caused, I recalled the current power structure in the imperial family.
The reigning Emperor Randolph: first child of the late emperor, ascending the throne only at thirty, married four times, with two imperial princesses as children.
Grand Duke Patrick: born to the late emperor’s second empress, successfully married for love to the only daughter of House Snow, with two sons under him.
Their rivalry truly began last year.
To restrain Patrick—who was growing his influence and threatening the throne more and more—the emperor brought Edward, an illegitimate son conceived while he was still crown prince, into the capital.
The emperor is forty now, so the age when he…
I gave up on thinking too deeply.
Anyway.
His Majesty the Great Emperor couldn’t accept that the reason people flocked to his brother was his own lack of ability.
He decided it was simply because he had no son.
He wasn’t trying to put Edward forward as heir—he just needed someone to fill the vacancy temporarily until the new empress bore him a son.
That was why, even after giving Edward the surname “Lacarte,” he kept Edward’s existence quiet and hid him in Sasha’s estate.
As for why Sasha had obediently accepted the emperor’s request—there were reasons.
But thinking about it now made my head hurt, so I’d skip it.
The truth was: the one who turned Edward from a mere chess piece into a serious imperial candidate…
…was Duke Grenville.
The duke didn’t want the burden of overturning the entire rotten imperial family. Then he found Edward—royalty by blood, yet not raised as royalty—clean.
And he formed an ambition: I’ll make him the perfect emperor.
It was also the duke who publicly declared Edward as the emperor’s child.
On top of that, Duke Grenville quickly became genuinely taken with Edward—so much that he truly followed him.
There was absolutely no reason for them to meet late rather than early.
The longer Edward stayed at the marquessate, the more his hostility toward Sasha would deepen.
For my own survival, this was the best possible move.
God. Complicated.
All that dull thinking made my head ache.
I wanted to rest like this today, but there were still stacks of documents piled high on my desk.
…And come to think of it, the butler was still standing there.
“What is it?”
“…A guest has arrived.”
A guest? Was someone scheduled to come today?
“Eddie—!”
Oh.
There was.
The people I’d thought were gone for good—after Edward learned the truth of his birth and went up to the capital with the emperor’s knight—
His adoptive parents and family, who’d been surviving off Edward’s sacrifices, had stormed House Ambrose.
“It seems they are guests of Lord Edward.”
“…Should I call them welcome guests?”
“Pardon?”
A dry laugh escaped me at the emperor’s “gift”—sent because he feared Edward might develop vain ambition.
Did the emperor understand?
That by sending that noisy family, information about the “guest” staying at the marquessate would leak outside…
…and Duke Grenville would realize who Edward truly was?
“His Majesty must think very little of me.”
I yielded once, and now he’d forgotten moderation.
At the very least, he should have sent me a letter before sending them.
Even he probably thought I wouldn’t accept this much.
And yet he sent them anyway.
That meant his shamelessness hadn’t gone anywhere.
And the same went for that couple—who barged into a noble estate without permission, shrieking Edward’s name.
They’d already worked a child who was only “big in body” to the bone, under the excuse of being his adoptive parents.
Then they’d taken a thick payment from the emperor—calling it compensation for “raising him.”
They blew through it in three months…
…and now had the audacity to drag all their children and crash House Ambrose.
My reputation can’t be that different among commoners.
The rumor that the Marquess of Ambrose possessed an angel’s face and an ice-cold temperament was widespread among nobles and commoners alike.
People like that—of course they would’ve tried to swagger into the palace even after Edward became emperor.
It wouldn’t matter to them that because of them, Edward’s path to the throne became several times harder.
Recalling the countless disasters they caused in the original, Sasha’s expression hardened with cold disgust.
I need to dump this on the duke as soon as possible.
Whether it was Edward…
…or that noisy family.