Winter Bud - Chapter 96

“Repeating a question when you already know the answer is not a good habit,” Slan answered as he turned his gaze away.

At that cold answer, Stella pressed her lips tightly together. Slan quietly glanced at his sister. Until two years ago, Stella couldn’t endure the distortion when he spoke like this. Her face would turn red and she’d fume.

When she was even younger, she even shouted that she would tell her fiancé. Stella got along extremely well with her fiancé. Ever since she became engaged at nine for political reasons, her fiancé, that is, the Crown Prince of Sperona, always been Stella’s shade.

Maybe because their age gap was about five years. Or maybe because the Crown Prince was understanding. At times, he soothed Stella’s temper so well that even the words “difficult temperament” couldn’t fully express how eccentric she could be.

On top of that, his appearance was excellent, just like his character, and Stella also fell for him at first sight. The Crown Prince truly was a prince on a white horse from a fairy tale. Dazzling blond hair like the sun, and shining green eyes. Skin tanned by sunlight and a tall height as big as Slan’s were splendid enough to steal the hearts of countless girls.

So there was nothing bad about it. About this marriage. Sending his sister off to a neighboring country was also something that made him feel regretful and hollow, but even so, they had things they had to do. So he should be able to grant at least one wish of his sister, but…. Even while knowing that desperation well, Slan couldn’t do that.

Even if he spoke to Empress Mother, she clearly wouldn’t grant it either. In fact, it wasn’t within their authority. So it was something they had to give up on.

“Are you okay, Oppa?”

“….”

“Don’t you miss her?” Stella asked.

She often asked questions like that. Ever since she learned that their mother was alive, she couldn’t calm down at all. She said she wanted to go see her. If she couldn’t meet her, then she begged their father to at least let her see her from far away.

If she’d known it would be like this, she would’ve tried a little harder to be in their father’s good graces. She would’ve become a daughter who didn’t snap, but acted cute and was loved. She even cried saying things like that. One day, she even said she was jealous of Alexis. Because Alexis didn’t remember their mother.

He lost her when he was too young, so he didn’t even know longing. That child…. So even when Stella burst into tears, he only looked on quietly. That he was sad too because his sister was sad was the best expression he could manage.

In truth, they were eight and seven, so their memories could’ve been faint. Even so, in this imperial palace, like a vast sea… to them, in a situation little different from being orphans, their mother was always someone they longed for. Slan gazed at his sister for a long time, not knowing when he’d see her again once she crossed the border.

Their mother was living in the south. Now with a status that was neither Empress Consort nor the emperor’s concubine. Forgetting herself, and forgetting her children. They said she lived calmly and peacefully, like a quiet sea. So even if they went to meet her, they couldn’t reunite with their mother. Such a reunion would never happen in their lifetime.

Because their father decided it that way. Slan recalled their father from one day when he returned to the palace to hold their mother’s funeral. Father was drenched in rain. Mother, without a single wound, was unconscious in his arms.

Her limp, white body filled his mind. With her eyes closed, he doubted whether she was breathing. Father said he would hold Mother’s “funeral.”

“Mother isn’t dead, Your Majesty.”

“Does it look that way?”

His father, who laid his mother down inside the glass coffin the alchemist prepared, said as he looked down at him, stiff with bewilderment and fear. He couldn’t understand why she suddenly returned when she’d clearly said she was going to recuperate in the south. But more than that, what he couldn’t understand was his father saying she was dead when she wasn’t.

Slan stepped forward to his father, risking his life. He didn’t know what he might do. Even usually, his unrefined golden eyes were sharp like a wild beast. He took one step closer. A beastlike raw stench came from the man’s body. Slan realized too late that it was the stench of blood.

So Father was wounded then. He’d somehow stitched the wound up, but the bandage soaked by rain was a mess. Slan trembled and clenched his fist tight.

“Your mother chose death.”

“But….”

“But at the end of death, there’s a new beginning. Father’s going to give your mother a new life.”

“…I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s fine too.”

“Father.”

“Go say your goodbyes.”

Because even if you want to see her, you won’t be able to meet her anymore. Just like dead people usually are…. Orestes turned his head. Slan glared at his father until his eyes were bloodshot because he couldn’t accept what he said. He was afraid and angry. But his father had always been that kind of existence.

Even if he couldn’t accept it, he had to accept it. Because to Slan, he was someone close to a natural disaster. He turned his head and looked at his mother, surrounded by lush flowers. When his father stepped away, attendants and the alchemist came over.

The attendant said that among the emperor’s children, only Slan would attend this funeral of their birth mother. That they would keep it from Stella. Slan thought of his little sister. He nodded. Even he couldn’t accept it, so how could his sister accept it? If it was something she could never see again. If it was something like that, then it would be better to believe she was dead.

Slan took one step closer to his mother’s coffin. The glass coffin, they said was under alchemy, looked like an ordinary glass coffin. They said the beautiful flowers that looked meaningless were also tools of alchemy. He thought of his mother, who would open her eyes again after the funeral.

Her whole life was pain…. She couldn’t recover again, and all she had were wounds that couldn’t be undone. Forgetting herself, and forgetting her children. He looked at the woman who would forget everything. Her unconscious face was innocent and harmless. Like a baby. Slan stared at that face for a long time.

***

“I want to go see her, even if only from far away. Really….”

Stella was desperate. This was her home country, and once she left, she didn’t know when she’d be able to come again. They could exchange letters, but that would be all. Not because Sperona was that far away, but because of the status of Crown Princess.

Even if her fiancé, the Crown Prince, went back and forth to his homeland under the pretext of studying abroad, the status of an imperial princess who’d married out was different. So just as she said, “I don’t know when I’ll come again,” was true. Slan quietly looked at his mother’s portrait.

The woman in the painting was holding him. They said it was painted in the first year after she gave birth to him. Young and beautiful, his mother wore a faint smile. It was a picture-perfect smile, but Slan always felt that smile looked uneasy. In the imperial palace, where she had no one on her side, holding her young son, it felt uncomfortable and precarious.

So he understood his father’s choice in its own way. Even so….

“I miss Mother.”

He recalled his little sister crying in a mess. He got up from his seat and headed for his sister’s quarters. He thought. If Stella wasn’t asleep, he would take her to Andella. But if she was asleep, he would turn back again and wouldn’t think the way he was thinking now again.

“Is the princess asleep?”

Slan stopped in front of his sister’s quarters and asked a maid who was just coming out after opening the door. The maid, who had been bowing her head in front of him, answered, “She’s awake.” Slan stared at her with a heavy face, then opened his lips.

“Tell her I’ve come. That I have something urgent to say.”

At Slan’s order, the maid nodded.

“What could you possibly have to say that you came looking for me this late without even sleeping?”

Stella, sitting across from him, was dressed in her nightclothes. Wrapped in a soft shawl, she had a face that said, ‘So you can’t sleep either?’ Slan smiled a little. Like she was one to talk, since she was awake too. Slan looked at his younger sister yawning and covering her mouth with her hand.

“Is it important?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“Let’s go see Mother.”

“What?”

“You said you miss her.”

Slan said with a bright face. Stella looked extremely shocked. As if her sleep had fled, she was stiff and pale. Slan smiled with a slightly pained face.

“…Is that possible? Oh, have you ever been there, Oppa?”

“No.”

“Then….”

“It’s my first time too.”

“Then how….”

Stella pressed her lips tight. It was almost ten years. Since it happened when her brother was eight and she was seven, a full eight years had passed. Stella lowered her gaze.