#49
He was the only witness, and the only reproduction.
Mother must have despaired looking at Sercil.
Though she didn’t express it in words, Sercil knew.
Her silence, the breathing that fell alone each night, the trembling that remained in her shoulders.
It was no different from proof that Lindea had ended, and she must have been so sorry toward her child.
The position of margrave demanded a price.
He didn’t want to make his mother sad.
That was a feeling he had kept for a very long time.
He wanted his mother to smile when she looked at him.
So from the time he became self-aware, he had always maintained appropriate distance from people.
Not excessively affectionate, not excessively indifferent.
He had lived quietly adjusting at that center.
He never approached anyone sincerely, and built walls beneath his smiling face.
That wasn’t self-consolation or hypocrisy.
It was one technique and method for survival.
He still couldn’t forget the terrible things that happened due to that curse when he was young.
The moment when his nanny’s warm touch was stained with blood one day.
Those warm hands bled and grew cold one day.
It was an ordinary morning.
During that period when the people his mother loved disappeared one by one starting with his father, many had turned away from the Lindea family. However, only the nanny had not abandoned them.
The nanny who had said “Young master is no different from my own son” while laughing heartily was found dying one day.
Who had stabbed her, why they did it—that wasn’t important at the time.
He had just thought.
‘Ah, what was to come has come.’
Sercil still recalled every night the last look in the nanny’s eyes as she collapsed without a word.
Sercil slowly closed his eyes.
His eyelids came down slowly, and his eyelashes touched his cheeks.
He exhaled long. Much more slowly than inhaling, as if settling heavily somewhere.
He lightly applied strength to his fingertips to avoid losing balance.
His hands were still neatly gathered on his thighs, and his shoulders didn’t move.
He needed to calm his emotions.
His insides were boiling with complexity.
Thoughts floated around tangled in his head, and he was confused about what to grasp first among them.
But he didn’t lose himself.
As always, he stepped back very neatly. He pushed away emotions and pulled up composure.
‘Let’s organize this. If the hypothesis the Archduke mentioned is true, then Prince Ersen should be seen as neither a simple victim nor a simple hypocrite, but an existence at the center of the problem.’
He organized the order of words in his mind.
It was a speed like slowly assembling words one by one.
He shook off the emotional string that had been tied to the word ‘victim.’
The compassion that word gave wasn’t needed by him right now.
He deliberately swept away from his eyes the expressions that rose with the word ‘hypocrite.’
So, an existence that touches the center of this terrible curse.
That’s a clear position.
Not something to look around at, but a center to aim at precisely.
‘It’s certain that Eris was the subject who cursed our mother. Mother said that only pure-blood demons or half-demons close to them can cast curses that shake emotions.’
Those words were in old memories.
Words his mother had said while cooling tea in front of the fireplace on a day when winter was just ending.
Curses that shake emotions are different from magic. She had said they operate as ‘existence.’
And his mother’s eyes when she said those words were mixed with fear and resignation.
He had not yet heard that there were half-demons beyond Eris in the capital.
The absence of talk might not mean they don’t exist.
But the fact that there had been no clues until now could also be evidence of uniqueness.
‘Then the prince must be killed.’
The end of his thoughts settled heavily.
That word was closer to diagnosis than decision.
He didn’t know what kind of curse medium he was.
Sercil tightened his lips.
He felt cold sweat slowly beading on his nape.
As if his skin was detecting threat on its own, it spread along his spine on a cool energy.
He might not even be a medium. But if that hypothesis was correct, Eris couldn’t have just given birth to the prince.
That was really true.
She was an existence who didn’t act impulsively.
If she was the last pure-blood of the demon race, she would have thoroughly designed ‘birth’ itself.
‘It’s unfortunate, but rather than that, I should focus on how he was used.’
Those words were an incantation he threw to himself.
Let’s withdraw affection and sympathy and maintain objectivity.
He had come this far to break the curse.
This was the path he had climbed to break the curse.
That path was rough and lonely.
He was alone, and had no certainty.
But Sercil silently walked on that path.
The time remaining for his mother wasn’t long.
Because she was both the cursed party and the family Sercil loved most, who had inherited the curse more strongly. Though she had never directly told Sercil, his mother was ill.
Probably with an incurable disease related to mana.
“Young master. Please faithfully receive heir lessons so that the head of the family can leave for recuperation as soon as possible.”
The doctor’s words were very careful.
But that carefulness rather sounded like greater firmness.
Remaining time, remaining seasons, remaining opportunities—all of those were diminishing.
So before that, he had to break the curse that had fallen on his family.
That was his final mission.
If he couldn’t do that, his mother would disappear without ever smiling in the end.
He decided to put down emotional things and focus only on that one fact.
Only then could he endure.
Only then could he maintain balance within this cruel formula.
Now there were only two beings he loved in the world: his mother and his sister.
The two most precious people.
Affection beyond those two was luxury. Dangerous luxury.
If he lost either one of them, he felt he would go mad. He wouldn’t be able to… calmly compose himself like this anymore.
Therefore, the composure of this moment was his only defense.
If it collapsed, it would be the end.
Sercil relaxed his facial muscles again. And with a fairy-like innocent and cute face, he sighed softly.
His cheek muscles slowly rose, and the corners of his mouth curled roundly.
His eyebrows smoothed gently, and his expression returned to the harmless Sercil of usual times.
He inhaled, then let it out very cutely.
“Ah, my fate.”
His voice was more cheerful than ever, light like a deflated lament.
I don’t want to kill you, Your Highness. I really don’t hate you.
That was sincere.
It’s just that there’s no choice.
Ersen had always been kind to Sercil.
He always smiled, threw out words that weren’t heavy, and showed not a single uncomfortable sign.
No malice showed through at all.
That made it more painful.
The voice that called him ‘fairy-nim,’ the face that smiled while placing a hand on his cheek, things like affection that subtly showed through his playful speech.
Black hair and pale gray eyes had at first seemed only cold and dark, but as time passed, they began to give the opposite impression.
The texture of those eyes that revealed themselves little by little each time light touched them seemed somehow soft after removing the initial coldness.
Eyebrows that stretched like straight lines bent more easily than expected, and his gaze was often directed downward rather than straight ahead.
The black hair that settled on his nape swayed slightly each time he bowed, and from certain angles seemed to reflect emotion before his eyes did.
Even fox-like smiles sometimes looked like doting smiles.
Each time the corners of his mouth rose, it was both sharp and softly curved at the same time.
The corners of his eyes bent long following the shape of laughter, and each time he tilted his head, the force of the smile became even fainter.
It was an expression just before playing some prank, but at the same time seemed like laughter brought out from liking someone.
‘No matter how many bad things the demon’s son has experienced, he can’t be good. I was naive.’
Even while thinking this, Sercil often forgot that thought.
No, he might have pretended to forget.
If not that, there was no reason for his organized judgment to keep getting disturbed.
He postponed all those suspicions saying ‘let’s organize this again later’ and focused on one trivial expression happening before his eyes.
But things like the corners of eyes that softly curved each time he looked at Sercil and mischievous but affectionate laughter couldn’t be fabricated.
Those were reactions that couldn’t come out without sincerity mixed in.
It was warmth absent from the face of someone trying to harm another.
Pretense leaves consistent patterns, but his expressions were always irregular.
That irregularity gradually dulled Sercil’s wariness.
All of that had honestly gradually broken down Sercil’s guard.
Even if he spared words, expressions didn’t lie.
Sercil knew this, yet repeatedly warned himself while reorganizing his solid outer shell.
But he couldn’t deny that such gaps had existed.
‘…It would have been good if we hadn’t met in this kind of relationship.’
A somewhat choking feeling arose.
He slowly lowered his gaze and quietly curled his fingertips as if making a fist.
As if regret he couldn’t speak was seeping into his palm.
He puts on a young expression that looks like a boy.
The prince often did that.
Lowering his face slightly and raising his gaze upward—.
Sometimes he looked like a child waiting for someone’s permission.
An expression full of worry, as if he had run over stamping his feet.
That expression was hard to fabricate.
The focus of his pupils was clear, and the corners of his mouth were turned down.
Subtle movements that couldn’t come out without truly worrying.
Looking pure enough to make anyone want to comfort him, Sercil had melted into their midst.
In the blade-like space called the imperial palace, he was uniquely round.
That roundness disarmed other sharp ones, and with an attitude that seemed indifferent yet affectionate, he could cross anyone’s boundaries.
Crown Prince Theodore too, Sir Marcus, even that sharp-edged Archduke.
None of them clearly guarded against him.
There were those who monitored, but emotionally they didn’t greatly guard against him or keep distance.
Rather, they tended to keep him close.
Even if they considered Sercil insignificant, they didn’t consider him dangerous.
And that was the most advantageous environment for Sercil.
Lowering himself, making himself perceived as a small, harmless existence—.
That was the survival method he had chosen in this place.
That was one of the weapons Sercil possessed.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
