Da Capo 28

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Chapter 28

Kyle thanked Blair, fidgeting with his hands while smiling shyly. He looked just like a wildflower in bloom. However, that expression didn’t stir any particular emotion in Blair, who had grown immune to Kyle’s face. Helping Kyle was just an ingrained habit. Blair impassively gathered his books and replied.

“It’s nothing. Just what’s expected. And I think you should buy a new book. It seems this year’s edition has been revised. Since he’s a professor who randomly calls on students without warning, it would be better to be prepared.”

“Right. Thanks for the advice.”

Blair gave a polite smile, said goodbye, and left the classroom first. It would be a lie to say he didn’t feel like there was still a line drawn between them despite having had a conversation alone. But Kyle felt somehow closer to Blair. He was quite satisfied with that feeling.

* * *

“Hello, Blair.”

“Hello, Your Highness.”

How did he manage to spot him among all those people? Kyle, who had been surrounded by a wall of people, somehow noticed Blair walking alone and greeted him. As Kyle smiled like a flower and waved his hand, Blair returned the greeting with a reluctant smile, just lifting the corners of his mouth. When their eyes met, Kyle smiled even more brightly.

A beautiful person smiling cheerfully had quite an impact in many ways.

“Still an incredible face,” Blair muttered quietly enough that Kyle couldn’t hear, sounding almost weary of it. To Blair, Kyle looked like a child, which lessened the impact, but viewed as one might appreciate a beautiful work of art, Kyle’s face was certainly a perfect masterpiece. In any case, Blair had no interest in being attracted to children. No matter how brightly Kyle smiled, Blair’s appreciation remained simple: beautiful, and nothing more.

By the same token, his hope of finding a partner at the Academy was crumbling. Somehow, no one appealed to him. It was only natural, as everyone looked like little kids playing house. The students his age here were over a decade younger than Blair had been in his past life.

Ah, what if I can’t get married in this life either? Is it my fate to grow old and die as a lonely bachelor? If he looked for a woman matching his mental age, they would all be married women with a child or two already. He never thought the gap between his physical and mental age would cause such problems.

Blair let out a long sigh. Would he have to live as a bachelor this time too? Kyle, who had been staring at him, flinched when Blair sighed.

“Um, Blair?”

“Ah, yes, Your Highness.”

Kyle cautiously called out to Blair. Blair, who had been lost in thought, returned to reality.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m heading to spear training class.”

At Blair’s answer, Kyle smiled broadly, his cheeks turning red. With each passing day, Kyle’s beauty blossomed and became more stunning. Recently, his cheeks would automatically flush whenever he saw Blair. Of course, Blair, witnessing this luxurious spectacle, simply wondered why Kyle was acting that way, innocently thinking he might have some unknown cardiovascular disease.

“Mmm, I see. Study hard.”

“Yes. Your Highness should go in as well.”

Blair respectfully bowed his head and slowly walked past Kyle. Kyle turned his gaze to follow Blair’s retreating figure.

The young Kyle he was facing now was just a child awkward with interpersonal relationships. Although they crossed paths often due to strange coincidences, each meeting only emphasized the differences between this Kyle and the Emperor he had known.

Blair and Kyle encountered each other frequently within the Academy. Both were quite noticeable in many ways, and both had followers trailing behind them, which made them even more conspicuous. Nine times out of ten, if you guessed Kyle was at the center of a noisy, crowded place, you’d be right.

Kyle was the type blessed with many connections. Thinking back, there were always people around him in the past as well. The fact that Kyle, who had been powerless and without support, could become Emperor was largely thanks to this.

While his own talents weren’t particularly lacking, compared to the talented people surrounding him, his qualities often seemed diminished.

Kyle certainly had an abundance of good people attached to him, almost to the point of being too fortunate. While he had no intention of gilding his own face, objectively speaking, both Blair himself and Aaron were such people. Without Blair’s and House Monetery’s support, Kyle’s chances of becoming Emperor would have been extremely slim. Joshua’s mother, Empress Kalshon, was from a minority ethnic group but was very skilled in political battles. And she burned with ambition to revitalize her minority group. If her son born through her womb became Emperor, that scenario would be entirely possible. For someone from an outside minority group, she engaged in political battles quite efficiently. She recruited influential nobles and high-ranking officials, making them her people.

Just as Empress Kalshon did, Empress Spirenda, mother of the youngest prince Dain, was desperate to eliminate Kyle, who could become a rival in the imperial succession. Of course, Empress Spirenda was even grinding her teeth to remove Joshua, but eliminating the easiest and most common enemy came first. Compared to other empresses, Empress Owentree was just like a docile and ordinary woman from a commoner family. She wasn’t suited for the imperial palace. She was not someone who could even dip a toe into the fierce power struggles among the formidable women.

If the Emperor had lived longer, Kyle would never have even come close to the throne. Instead, Dain and Joshua would have competed, with Dain eventually becoming Emperor. Both Empress Spirenda and Empress Kalshon were greedy. Joshua’s advantage was his much greater age and higher position in the line of succession compared to Dain, while Dain’s strength was his mother’s family. But with the Emperor’s sudden death, the situation changed completely.

At the time, Dain, who was only five years old, was too young to participate in the struggle for imperial power against his two brothers, Kyle and Joshua. When the Emperor died, Kyle was twenty-three and Joshua was thirty. Neither would allow a brother young enough to be their son to interfere in the succession battle.

Of course, even after the Emperor’s sudden death, Joshua still had the advantage in the power struggle. First, Joshua was Kyle’s elder brother and significantly older. The nobles recruited by Empress Kalshon also supported Joshua. As a result, Kyle was openly pushed to battlefields where death was expected. Looking back now, being sent to the military was a blessing in disguise for Kyle. Thanks to this, he gained the military’s support while struggling on the battlefield and seized military power.

Under Blair’s direct command, Kyle secured military authority and successfully carried out several territorial recovery wars, finally enabling him to compete with Joshua for imperial power on equal terms. And the winner of that fierce competition was Kyle, who had won the people’s hearts. In the process, a great deal of House Monetery’s gold flowed to Kyle as military funds. It was thanks to Blair’s support.

Kyle had been like that since childhood. Perhaps because his face was so beautiful that people naturally flocked to him, he had remarkably many people around him despite his personality. In fact, Kyle himself wasn’t the type to attract people easily. Still, there were countless people desperate to be close to him. While there were many useless people around Kyle, there were certainly also many intelligent people who could be helpful. Blair and Aaron were such people. Led by these two, talented individuals helped seat Kyle on the throne.

In truth, Blair didn’t think that highly of Kyle as Emperor. It was one of several reasons why Blair, who had returned to the past, wasn’t actively trying to place Kyle on the throne again. If Kyle were to become an exceptionally good emperor or leave remarkable achievements, Blair would have walked the same path again, even going to extremes for the prosperity of the empire and his family.

But if Kyle would remain just an ordinary emperor, Blair didn’t want to go to such lengths again. Getting his hands stained with the blood of countless people and directly causing wars was enough to experience once. Unless he was a bloodthirsty murderer, it wasn’t something he wanted to repeat. War is terrifying and painful. It often delivers the same despair to both winners and losers.

Blair narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly. In Blair’s view, Kyle might have gained the throne, but he wasn’t exceptional enough to become a great emperor. Of course, Blair couldn’t know for certain since he didn’t know Kyle’s future self. But the Kyle that Blair had seen until the age of thirty-five was like that. Of course, with his good fortune with people and talented individuals around him, he might be evaluated as a decent emperor.

But if one were to question whether Kyle would occupy a significant portion of the “History of the Crassia Empire” class he was currently taking, Blair would firmly answer no. The content that would feature Kyle would obviously focus on his time as a prince during the imperial succession dispute. Of course, the territorial recovery during his time as prince could be attributed to Kyle.

Rather, the person who would leave a significant mark in the history of the Crassia Empire would be himself. Blair thought this with shameless confidence. From beginning to end, the territorial expansion was entirely Blair’s achievement.

Of course, Kyle was intelligent, and since his innate character wasn’t ruthless enough, he wouldn’t become a tyrant. But having a character that wasn’t innately ruthless was a double-edged sword. In fact, someone like Kyle who seized imperial power needed to clean house at least once.

In the past, Blair had half-jokingly mentioned that disposal after use was necessary. If a hunting dog tries to bite its master’s neck, naturally the dog must be killed. Of course, Kyle wasn’t the type to do that. Blair didn’t see the emperor’s mild temperament as an advantage. An emperor was different from an ordinary person. The position of emperor required decisiveness and ruthlessness.

Blair, who felt deep fatigue and disillusionment with politics and power, voluntarily relinquished his power, but people who would act like him were extremely rare. Power often behaved like a living organism. There were hardly any people who would give up power and wealth once they had it. And it was common for greedy politicians to evolve into cunning old raccoons causing corruption.

Unless they were an unusual type like Blair, most would become old, tough, and distasteful political raccoons.

The power hunger of those surrounding Kyle would continue to grow, and more people would manipulate him to exert greater influence. This would be especially true for Kyle’s generation, who became emperor with the help of those around him. Blair’s voluntary relinquishing of power was partly intended as a warning to nobles who were secretly harboring ambition.

He didn’t want to think that far ahead, but perhaps in the future, Kyle might be enchanted by a favorite like Lord Leonard or a beloved catamite and give away power or wealth. The Kyle that Blair had seen clearly didn’t cross the line, but human greed tends to grow over time.

[To be continued in the next part…]