Your Regrets Are Late

As a result, she liked spending time alone in a garden where no one was around.

“Her Majesty Xavi wants to have lunch together. What do you think?”

“…I will come.”

“I see. Then I will tell her.”

“Ah, the garden was a bit noisy… Do you know why?”

“I think it’s because Her Royal Highness Princess Ioella’s playmates entered the palace.”

It was a situation where she couldn’t go to the garden. Coming to the garden was her daily routine, and she spent her time there every time, but she got frustrated that she couldn’t go there, so she wandered aimlessly and got lost. Since it was an empty palace, she went inside and found a greenhouse garden.

Charelize belatedly remembered that she had an appointment lunch with Lanensia Xavi, so she had to leave right away. She walked and walked, but she couldn’t find the exit. Thinking about how she came in, she tried to go back and arrived at the door she was looking at.

She remembered opening the door out of curiosity. What happened after that, she had no memory of how she got there. Her mind was getting weird for nothing, and she wanted to find out if anything else had happened. Because the door was small enough to barely reach her shoulder, Charelize ducked her back to enter.

“…Who is it?”

“…”

“You, do you know where this is…”

Perhaps because he was looking down, he saw someone’s shadow first. Judging from the back of the head with light blue hair, it seemed to be Arensis.

“…”

“…Lize?”

The eyes of Charelize, who carefully raised her head, and Arensis, who turned behind, met. Unlike the greenhouse garden she just saw, she was standing in a flower garden with many things.

She wondered if it was an illusion created by Arensis. She lifted her finger and pinched her cheek. It hurts. Charelize felt a slight sore from how hard she pinched.

“Are… Are you okay, Your Highness?” At that moment, Arensis, noticing a butterfly hovering around Charelize, quickly approached her and asked.

“What are you… talking about?”

“Did that butterfly… by any chance, done something to you?”

Arensis’s eyes were shaking slightly. The moment she replied that something had happened, he looked like he would collapse right away.

“Butterfly… is not a harmful creature, I-I’m fine. By the way… I’m sorry for wandering around. I will leave right away…”

Arensis bowed his head and grabbed Charelize’s sleeve as she tried to turn her body.

“…Your Royal Highness?”

“This place… Do you know where this is?”

“I don’t know. I come as far as my feet can reach. Could it have something to do with my lost memories?”

“This is the first place Your Highness and I met in this flower garden.”

Immediately after listening to Arensis’s words, her heart, which had been beating to its original speed, beat faster again.

“It’s still vivid. In the spring when you were 11 years old, I said, ‘Don’t cry to Your Highness.’.”

“Spring… when I was 11 years old?”

“Like now, this… I gave it to Your Highness.”

Spring when she was 11 years old. He told her he gave a handkerchief to her, who was crying. Was it around that time when they first met? The time when she spent crying every night surrounded by strangers in a foreign place where she knew no one.

“And…”

“?”

“In this place, I erased… Your Highness’s memories.”

The first time they met. Even the place where he erased her memories. Everything happened in this flower garden.

“After this moment, you won’t remember. Instead, I will remember. The day you were with me at the most beautiful moment. The scent you gave me when you first hugged me.”

The day you were with me at the most beautiful moment. The scent you gave me when you first hugged me. The words he said he would remember on her behalf flashed through her mind.

“What are you talking about? Please explain it so I can understand. Aren…sis.”

“Goodbye, Lize.”

He had the face of someone that he would never see again. He looked like he would cry at any moment. Whether it was on the day he erased her memories or the day in her previous life when she chose to die first. Arensis said goodbye like that.

“Why… did you do that?”

It was like she became a bad person who couldn’t remember the memories they had accumulated together. Charelize said with resentment because she didn’t like what he had done.

“I was the first one to say it, but… It was Your Highness who asked me to erase your memory.”

However, in her memory, Charelize told him to explain as if she couldn’t understand what he meant.

“I… Why do… I want to erase it. Why would I say that…” She couldn’t believe it was herself who asked him to erase her memories.

“It was an inevitable choice… for each other.”

“…”

To Charelize, who was confused, Arensis seemed to tell her not to feel guilty. He said it was an inevitable choice for each other.

Arensis flicked his thumb and middle finger together, and the place where their feet stepped was changed in an instant. They came to the spot where there was a pattern of pink flowers on the floor. Charelize was still speechless.

“Your Highness.”

“…”

“…Your Highness.”

Arensis kept calling, worried about her like that.

“I know it’s rude. I have one thing to check… Can you show me… your forehead?”

It could be an illusion that there was no mark that he was blessed with flowers. She brought it up to make sure she properly checked him. After thinking about it for a long time, Charelize’s mouth finally opened.

It was a sudden request, but Arensis didn’t even ask why. He didn’t even refuse. He swept through his hair immediately and remained as she wanted.

There was nothing on the forehead of Arensis, who tilted his head slightly and wondered.

“I have seen a person who has refused the blessing of light, which made them blind.”

“…”

“Your Royal Highness… Could it be that you refused it?”

Charelize was anxious that Arensis’s eyes would be blinded in the same way.

“…Ah.”

After understanding the situation, Arensis looked dumbfounded.

“It is generally correct that the mark of being blessed with flowers usually appears on the forehead. If you refuse the blessing, something will happen to your body.” He smiled brightly enough to show his dimples.

“Usually…?”

Embarrassed by his sudden action, Charelize narrowed her eyebrows.

“On rare occasions, a person could be born with two blessings at the same time.”

“Two blessings…”

“Maybe it’s because I received both the blessing of light and the blessing of flowers at the same time, the marks are engraved on my back.”

Charelize was embarrassed that she asked him as she worried he might be blinded.

“Even if the cost of it will make me die, I won’t refuse them.”

“…”

“Because if I go blind… I will never see the face of someone dear to me again.”

Arensis said with a smile that there was nothing wrong with saying something embarrassing. He was staring straight into her eyes, so Charelize knew he was talking about her.

“Did you hear what happened in this room from Baroness Azwell?”

“…A little bit.”

It reminded her of the words that Arensis cut off the tongues of the servants who recklessly entered and that he didn’t let it slide easily.

“This is my mother’s room.”

“…Ah.”

She had heard that his mother was a maid belonging to Empress Sione’s palace. She also knew that he had already lost his mother at an early age.

Not knowing what to say, Arensis opened the door and entered the room himself. Hearing that she could come in, Charelize slowly moved her steps. On the desk in the corner, there were framed photos of Arensis, which started when he was just born.

“The last picture is from when I was just 10 years old. When my birthday was near, my mother would take pictures of me herself.”

“It looks like Your Royal Highness didn’t like being photographed.”

Charelize looked at the picture of Arensis puffed his cheeks, and turned her with a worried look on her face.

“It’s because that day… my mother was playing with my hair.”

Arensis’s face turned red in an instant.

“The picture at the end, how old were you?”

“I remember it was a week before my 10th birthday.”

“You remember in detail.”

It was a picture of his childhood, but it was amazing to remember it in such detail.

“The day before I turned 10… she died.”

“I’m sor—”

Realizing that she had asked the wrong question, Charelize immediately tried to apologize.

“Royal Prince Edenberg and Empress Sione died, and the imperial people accused my mother of being a witch.”

“…”

“Rather than protecting my mother, my father ordered to burn her at stake… She was burnt to ashes, so I couldn’t even properly bury her… Marquis Disellon, who adopted my mother, immediately disowned her.”

Arensis, along with his mother, being accused as a witch. Her mother was burned to ashes, to the point he couldn’t even bury her properly. He explained the reason why his mother was remembered as a maid in Empress Sione’s palace because she had been disowned by Marquis Disellon.

“My mother…”

“…”

“Even though she lied because she was afraid I would be upset… until the moment she died… She still loved His Majesty Father.”

* * *

“Since that day… He has been looking for alcohol and medicine quite often…”

“…that day, are you referring to the time when Her Majesty the Empress passed away?”

“Yes, His Royal Highness. Please forgive me for not being able to give you a definite answer that his physical condition has deteriorated because of that, and I don’t know when he will come to his consciousness.”

A body with various chronic diseases accumulates from a bad lifestyle. The opinion of the imperial doctor was that they weren’t sure when his father would be able to wake up.

Empress Sione hanged herself, and his mother was burnt to ashes. The former was contributed by him. The latter was ordered by him. It was all because of His Majesty Father.

However, Arensis couldn’t understand his father’s regret and longing when everyone died and disappeared. He wasn’t saddened to hear that his father was in critical condition and that he might never see him again. Rather, he felt as if his revenge had been taken away from someone else.

How did mother meet His Majesty Father?

Rumors that his mother had seduced the emperor to enter the palace had spread throughout the palace through servants’ mouths.