The Emperor Can't Sleep

Chapter 27

“…….”

In truth, Chloe knew what the right choice was.
She could simply live under the identity of “Marie Edant” without revealing that she was actually Chloe Langsher, and it would be fine.

But why was it?
Why did she feel an impulse to tell the truth?

An inexplicable feeling that everything would be alright if she did. It wasn’t a rational impulse, but looking into the silver-gray eyes of the child reminded her of the boy she had easily forgotten in her youth…

“Do you want to know about me?”

Sylvia nodded. Chloe let go of Sylvia’s dress, which she had tidied long ago, and stood up, whispering.

“Your Highness, I am-.”

At that moment, she met silver-gray eyes that weren’t Sylvia’s.

“-!”

With the fluttering curtains and the open window, a long shadow was cast. She swallowed a silent scream.

Reflexively, she pulled Sylvia behind her to hide her.
Did he see? Did he hear? Did he know? How much? What?

“……Anyone would think you’d seen a monster.”

The languid voice had a strangely twisted tone, reflecting displeasure. The emperor’s drowsy eyes slowly found Sylvia standing behind Chloe, then returned to rest on Chloe.

The silver-gray eyes stared at her without blinking.
“…….”

Whether it was a long moment or just a fleeting instant, the strange silence ended when Sylvia clutched her skirt tightly.

“Your Majesty, what brings you here?”

She managed to ask while holding Sylvia’s hand, and the emperor tilted his head as if he couldn’t understand why he was there himself.

“I think I had a dream.”

He murmured as if trying to explain something inexplicable, almost like talking to himself.

“I wanted to come here.”

* * *

There was a grave.
He stared blankly at the plain white tombstone….

【Hello.】

…What am I thinking now?

【How is it there?】

He whispered as he brushed the snow off the tombstone. The sensations were too vivid for it to be a dream.

The cold touch of the tombstone on his fingers, the metallic scent hitting his nose. His cheeks were unpleasantly wet, and when he wiped them with the back of his hand, it came away damp.
Luke Olfenster was crying. Why?

He stood blankly before the tombstone, pondering why he was crying. But despite his contemplation, his hands moved. Kneeling, he meticulously brushed and cleaned the tombstone. Was it mourning? For whom? But this felt less like mourning and more like…

Crack, the tombstone cracked.

A dull pain resonated through his fingers. Slowly, he began to break the tombstone with his bare hands, like a beast unfamiliar with using tools.

As he dug through the snow and dirt covering the black coffin beneath the shattered tombstone, his fingers bled, mixing with the white snow. He leaned his forehead against the coffin, thinking, who was he-

【Come out and tell me. How was it there?】

On a snowy night, the man crouched by the tombstone he had broken, pleading.

【Come back and kill me.】

To whom was this plea directed? A god? A person?
Though he knew how meaningless a prayer with no response was…

Why am I, once again-

“……Ah.”

At that moment, Luke Olfenster woke up. The remnants of the dream quickly submerged beyond his consciousness. And the peculiar sense of discomfort that replaced it made him slowly rise.
The incense burner on the bedside table was still emitting smoke. Without hesitation, he knocked it over. The ashes scattered on the carpet with a loud noise.

“Are you awake, Your Majesty?”

William, the chamberlain, appeared without a sound of the door opening, and Luke kicked the incense burner with his foot, issuing an order. The metal burner dented as it hit the wall.

“Open the window.”

As the windows were flung open, the incense smell dissipated. The emperor sat on the bed with his head in his hands for a long time.

“Shall I call the doctor?”

“…….”

He shook his head roughly without answering.
A few days ago, after nearly jumping out of the window in a hallucination, the doctor had refused to prescribe a new sedative until a skilled apothecary could be found. Ignoring that, he had taken the old sedatives and burnt them. Surprisingly, he had managed to get some sleep, but…

He felt unbearably awful.
His body felt heavier, and his eyes ached more than when he didn’t sleep. His stomach churned as if he might vomit at any moment.

It would have been better not to sleep at all.
Instead of resting, he had only experienced unpleasant nightmares…

He suddenly looked up. Disbelief was evident in his eyes as they roamed the air.

“Your Majesty?”

He didn’t hear anyone’s voice. He stared blankly at the sunlit window. The day was unnaturally clear. The cold air sharpened his senses, but the increasingly vivid awareness forced him to confront one fact.
Chloe was gone.

For the first time, Chloe Langsher had not appeared in his nightmare.

That crying, pleading, the voice whispering love or spewing resentment, none of it was present in the fading nightmare.

Why? Perhaps…

…Will this continue?

He got up from his seat.

As if in a trance, he left the bedroom and found himself in Langsher’s room. He stood there absentmindedly, cleaning the frames of portraits of Chloe Langsher one by one, stopping only when there was nothing left to clean.

Looking down, he saw five-year-old Chloe smiling between her uncles and aunts in the portrait.

Even in the portraits, Chloe was always with others. It was because the Langsher estate had burned down.
Most of the portraits of Chloe were those that the late empress had, so single portraits were actually rarer.

He stroked Chloe’s head in the frame with his finger. The woman holding her shoulders caught on his fingertips.

The empress Lea, Princess Sylvia, the rose garden, Gideon’s wife, that woman…

At the end of a strange stream of consciousness, he recalled the white-haired woman. Her bright yellow eyes blinking slowly, why did he think she resembled Chloe?

Suddenly, he had the baseless delusion that if that woman cried, she might resemble Chloe even more.
She couldn’t smile as brightly as Chloe, but she might cry as sorrowfully as her.

So sorrowfully, as if the world were ending…

“Your Majesty, what brings you here?”

However, when he saw the pale face of the woman holding the hand of the young princess clinging to her waist, Luke realized that he had never seen Chloe cry. The Chloe who cried was always in his nightmares.

“I think I had a dream.”

All the way here, he had thought he would make this woman cry no matter what.

Because it felt like Chloe’s voice, which had disappeared from his nightmares, would reappear.

But now he realized.
He couldn’t make this woman cry.
Because then, in his delusion, Chloe would always cry like this woman. He would imagine Chloe crying like this woman.

He couldn’t let that happen. Chloe Langsher was his sanctuary. He couldn’t tarnish it with anything else.

“I wanted to come here.”

Unlike others who reminded him of Chloe, he didn’t want to see this woman’s tears and pleas. It was okay if she smiled, but not if she cried.

After all, Luke Olfenster lived with all of Chloe Langsher’s smiles shoved into his head. No matter how much this woman smiled like Chloe, it was just a poor imitation reminding him of her.

But crying, pleading, despairing…
…that was not acceptable.
So what should he say?

“…….”

He was at a loss for words, staring at the woman before him. Since becoming emperor, he had never considered speaking in a way that wouldn’t hurt others. He often thought about how to say something that would make the other person feel worse.

“…….”

“Your Majesty?”

The woman’s face, stiffening with the prolonged silence, slowly filled with doubt. She looked at Sylvia soothingly and briefly smiled, to which Sylvia-

“Your Majesty! What brings you here? Did you come to see me?”

-smiled cheerfully and ran to the window where he stood. The child’s attitude, bright and cheerful as if her earlier stiff face was a lie, was blatant. No matter how much she lifted her heels, clinging to the window sill, it didn’t hide the woman standing behind her.

How little had she seen to be so protective?
Seeing this, he remembered the members of the Langsher family who used to shield Chloe, and his mood darkened. Young Chloe hadn’t noticed, but since his childhood, the Langsher family had disliked him spending time with Chloe.

At least the late empress or Troy Langsher tried not to show such signs in front of Chloe, but the others didn’t even do that.

-Do you like Chloe that much?

He still remembered the words of the Langsher family’s black sheep, who used to pat his head. Always drunk, Edwin Langsher grabbed his head tightly as he tried to escape and mumbled.

-Chloe actually hates you. She comes every day saying you’re annoying, that she’s sick of seeing your face and doesn’t want to see you anymore.

-Liar.

-It’s true. Not a lie. Why would a pretty girl like Chloe want to play with an ugly kid like you?

-Chloe didn’t say that. I only believe what Chloe says. You’re a liar!

At his shout, the man laughed foolishly for a long time before roughly patting his blond hair as if to pull it out.

-Stop it!

-You, unlike Lea’s son, don’t resemble her much. Or do you? Since you like Chloe, maybe you do resemble her.

After the incomprehensible muttering, the man stopped his foolish laughter abruptly and brought his face eerily close to his. The sudden change was so drastic that he wondered if the man was mentally ill.

-Chloe hates you. Remember that. Kid. Our princess will end up hating you. So stay away from her. It’d be better if you disappeared.

-No!

-Oh dear. Then our princess will get hurt. Do you not care?

Startled and speechless at the series of questions, Edwin Langsher snorted and mumbled to himself.

-Well, the blood of their parents doesn’t lie.