How to Perfectly Break Up with You

As soon as the morning sun rose, the Emperor, citing yesterday’s fatigue, announced that today’s formal dinner would be postponed. He also issued an order for the Duke to come urgently to his office.

The Duke didn’t need to think deeply about why the Emperor had summoned him.

‘Why on earth did he do such a thing…’

The Duke, who had been walking briskly, clicked his tongue irritably.

His godson had been sharp-witted since childhood. Even in the face of the former Emperor’s capricious nature, which seemed ready to plunge a knife into his neck at any moment, he had shown a calm attitude and willingly left for the battlefield on his own feet. This was something that even the Duke highly appreciated.

It was literally a gamble with his life at stake. Even if he was lucky enough to survive, he was immediately sent to other battlefields, and this cycle repeated until he became a proper adult.

So at that time, the Duke felt sympathy for him, then admiration, and eventually thought him to be dull-witted.

But yesterday, he finally realized with certainty.

That fellow wasn’t dull-witted at all.

Looking back, it was clear. Declan had submitted to the Emperor almost slavishly, but in the end, didn’t he get everything he wanted? He steadily recovered not only his family, which had been on the brink of extinction, but also the lost family heritage.

Recalling the past, the Duke gritted his molars.

‘I was the fool. Not recognizing that cunning bastard earlier…’

The Duke, who had been muttering to himself while recalling old times, only put his thoughts in order when he reached the Emperor’s office.

The head chamberlain standing next to the door spotted him and gave a slight bow.

Whatever happened in the past wasn’t important now. For the moment, he needed to focus on pleasing the person beyond the door.

As he approached the door, the servants opened it. The Duke, already feeling fatigued, stepped into the room.

The Emperor, seeing the Duke enter, removed his glasses.

“I’m sorry for calling you so early in the morning.”

In the smiling face of the young monarch, the Duke momentarily overlapped the image of an old friend that remained in a corner of his memory he had failed to erase.

Truly, it was the face of the most dull-witted person he had ever known.

****

As soon as the Duke sat down, the Emperor got to the point.

“An envoy from Parma will be coming soon. I think we need to send more troops to Ricata.”

Ricata, located in the eastern part of the empire, directly bordered Parma with only a forest in between.

This was the reason why soldiers remained stationed there even after the Ricata domain was closed. Despite it being a land that only left bitter feelings for the former Emperor himself, it couldn’t be easily left empty due to its geographical factor of bordering the country.

Duke Lowell nodded his head slowly.

“It’s a wise decision, Your Majesty, but may I suggest lifting the closure order on the Ricata domain now?”

While it was a reasonable procedure to confiscate the property of a family that committed treason, closing off the family’s domain was unprecedented. Moreover, Ricata was the most vast region in the east, so even at that time, there was a dominant reaction that the former Emperor’s order was excessive.

Of course, when the former Emperor threatened to consider all those who objected as traitors as well, it quickly quieted down.

“No matter if it’s the domain of a family that committed treason, isn’t the Ricata domain an area that borders Parma? Although soldiers are stationed there, that’s not everything. The morale of those guarding an empty domain must be terrible.”

“As you know, it was the former Emperor who ordered it. What can we do?”

“That was because the former Emperor…”

The Duke, who had been responding expressionlessly, paused for a moment. His wrinkled eyes looking at the Emperor twitched slightly.

“Surely… Your Majesty doesn’t believe those bizarre rumors, do you?”

Joseph, facing the eyes that clearly showed anxiety, smiled softly.

“It’s not superstition, it’s all true.”

The Duke froze at the unexpected answer. He was momentarily unable to continue speaking properly, then raised his voice.

“It’s nothing but nonsensical talk, Your Majesty. I visited Ricata often as a child, but it was never a place for such ominous rumors to circulate.”

“Is that so? I thought that absurd curse worked quite well on the former Emperor, at least.”

Though it was tantamount to mocking the former Emperor, the Emperor’s tone was utterly nonchalant. The Duke looked at him with an incredulous expression.

The bizarre rumors about Ricata had been an orally transmitted superstition from long ago.

The background that allowed the Empire to reign as the largest and most powerful country on the Kralto continent today involved a long history of bloodshed.

Ricata was no exception in this bloody history. The conquest of the Ricata domain was recorded as the most horrific massacre in the Empire’s history.

Before it became part of the Empire, women there were labeled as witches and killed by the imperial army.

The imperial army’s justification for ruthlessly killing them was that they were skilled in black magic. But the Duke thought this was nonsense.

While there was no way to know if they were really a race that practiced magic, the curse-laden last words of Ricata’s final queen were still secretly passed down among the people of the Empire.

That the Emperor ruling the Empire would gain infinite glory, but would not obtain what he most desired.

When the Ricata ducal family ruled the domain, these were dismissed as mere rumors, but after the family’s extinction and the domain’s closure, they resurfaced as a topic of conversation among people.

The final image of that woman, which he had forgotten for a while, hazily flashed through the Duke’s mind. And it seemed he wasn’t the only one recalling her.

“Come to think of it, you were quite close with that woman, weren’t you?”

The Duke’s brow furrowed deeply at the Emperor’s casual mutter.

“I’ve heard about it. That you, my father, that woman, and the former Grand Duke used to play together often as children.”

“Who told Your Majesty such an old story?”

“My mother told me.”

The Duke let out a silent sigh at the expected answer.

Emperor Joseph’s mother, after being deposed from her position as Crown Princess, spent her undistinguished final years in a half-mad state due to the shock before dying.

The words that flowed from her mouth while she was alive were always the same. She died cursing the woman who took her place while also resenting her husband who abandoned her.

It was a natural progression for Joseph and Marianne, who grew up hearing this most closely, to despise their stepmother and Sienna.

“I heard that you were the Duke’s godfather. You must have been quite close with the former Duke?”

“We were merely friends who studied together, Your Majesty. I wasn’t particularly close with the former Empress either.”

The Duke, momentarily lost in old memories, drew the line coldly. The Emperor smiled wryly at this.

Once counted among the great nobles of the Kralto continent, both the Monferrato Grand Ducal family and the Ricata Ducal family were swept up in their respective enormous upheavals and reached the brink of extinction. However, the Lowell Ducal family, despite being closest to the families caught in turmoil, always managed to nimbly avoid such dangers.

‘It must be thanks to that attitude,’ the Emperor thought with a cynical smile.

That he alone survived in the midst of the fierce storms created by his father who was obsessed with women must be due to the Duke’s attitude of prioritizing only his own safety.

He was one who had turned a blind eye to his friend’s unjust death, sent his only heir and godson to the battlefield, and remained indifferent to the death of a woman whose family had been close to his. While he was trusted as a loyal subject by the former Emperor…well.

‘If you think about it, isn’t he closer to being a turncoat?’

But unlike the Grand Duke, whose thoughts were utterly incomprehensible, the Duke was a man with clear objectives. He was honest in the face of power.

He understood more clearly than anyone else which side to stand on and what to say to maintain his position or to soar to greater heights.

So for the Emperor, while not entirely trustworthy, he could be a useful pawn depending on the situation.

For instance, in a situation like now, when a supposedly loyal hound had bitten its master’s hand.

“Let me ask you one thing. Did the Grand Duke ever meet that child separately in the past?”

As the topic of conversation shifted from the deceased Empress to the Grand Duke, the Duke, who had been on edge, slightly furrowed his brow.

“I fully understand your concerns, but they are unfounded, Your Majesty. The Grand Duke has been moving from one battlefield to another since he was ten years old, unlike Her Highness the Princess who lived only within the palace walls. There’s no way they could have encountered each other.”

“I thought so too. But lately, I’ve been thinking that might not be the case. It seems there might be a past between them that I don’t know about.”

The Emperor muttered suspiciously.

He had always found it strange. The man who had managed to survive in the mud and even earned the title of meritorious subject showed, for some reason, not the slightest interest in his own marriage.

If his goal was to raise his family, what easier and simpler method was there than marriage? Moreover, the Emperor’s only full-blooded sister had long held him in her heart, so it wasn’t a complicated matter. Yet the Grand Duke was always lukewarm about it.

Unable to stand by, when the Emperor himself pushed his sister forward, the Grand Duke would only treat her with a gentlemanly attitude, never crossing that line.

While inwardly frustrated, knowing that it wasn’t something easily accepted when considering their parents’ affairs, he waited patiently. He thought that no matter how high and mighty he acted, the Grand Duke would know there was no better match on the Kralto continent than Marianne.

However, the moment he witnessed him dancing with Sienna at the banquet, the Emperor realized his thoughts had been utterly off the mark.

‘It’s exactly like being hit on the foot by the axe you trust.’

It wasn’t just the problem of the Grand Duke toying with the Princess. If he had known from the start that he harbored feelings for Sienna, he wouldn’t have entrusted him with the matter of the will.

As he pressed his temples with a troubled face, the Duke burst into a light laugh.

“They are young and both good-looking, so it’s probably just the kind of emotion common at that age. To my eyes, it doesn’t seem like a relationship worth noting…”

“You have your blind spots too, Duke.”

The Emperor laughed coldly.

“That very emotion common at that age might become a significant spark, you know.”