To My Gentle Dictator – Chapter 032

Back in those days, the reason Sasha never touched eggs was simple: she wanted to give them all to her younger brother, even if they only got to eat them once in a while.

It was clear that a growing boy like Kiril needed them more than a fully grown woman like her.

Still, she hadn’t expected Kiril—who had always acted like he couldn’t care less about her eating habits or anything else about her—to bring that up now, of all times.
‘Was my acting unnatural? Did he notice how flustered I got when Ulrich touched my knee earlier?’

She wasn’t just surprised—she was thrown.

She couldn’t tell Kiril here and now that she had just been holding back for his sake all those years.

But at the same time, she couldn’t outright deny what Ulrich had said either.

Claiming her tastes had changed wouldn’t help much either—especially since she’d been eating egg dishes at Ulrich’s townhouse without a fuss all this time.

So in the end, Sasha went with the next best option.

“Not everything with eggs tastes bad, you know? It depends on how it’s made.”
She spoke casually to Kiril first, then looked up at Ulrich with a soft smile.
“You remembered that?”

Her lilac eyes sparkled with a fluttering warmth.

Even if they were just acting, part of her really meant it.

She hadn’t expected Ulrich to remember something that small.

“Of course I did,” he answered gently, wrapping her hand in his with affectionate ease.

Sure enough, the small hand he clasped was drenched in sweat.

She was nervous—holding it together just barely.

But aside from the clammy palm, not a trace of that tension showed on her face. Just like back at Tremlyn.

His blue eyes narrowed slightly.

‘Not bad.’

He had guessed that after days of silence and coldness, she’d be on edge by now.
And just as he expected, Sasha had become far more desperate and earnest, even presenting herself flawlessly during the meeting with Kryuchkov.

Her attire, her tone, her expressions—everything had been perfect.

Even for a fallen imperial, she was still unmistakably regal. A perfect promotional piece.

But that wasn’t what had sparked his interest again.

What had stood out to him most was how, even in front of Kryuchkov, Sasha had been hyper-aware of Ulrich’s every move.
Like a dog begging desperately for affection and approval.

It was so predictable, it was almost boring.

She was no different from the rest—just another one of those who would wring out every last drop of their soul for his recognition.

At least someone like Vasily was predictable and amusing.

Vasily had been downright comical, watching them in silence from the parking lot at Tremlyn.

‘She doesn’t look bad, and she’s got plenty of use—but she watches me way too closely.’

Even when they’d arrived in Nebroski, Ulrich had still been trapped in that same stale impression.

Sasha’s anxious, fawning behavior had always rubbed him the wrong way, and the fact that it got worse after a few days of cold treatment only made it more tedious.

‘Maybe I expected too much. She’s not all that interesting, not really.’

At that point, he’d already decided: aside from being a display piece at the townhouse, he wasn’t going to expect anything more from her.

That is—until Kiril showed up.

More precisely, until just before Sasha spotted her brother.

Up to that moment, she’d clung to him like a scared little girl.
Then she did something completely unexpected.

In the middle of a crowded street, she let go of his sleeve and ran to her brother.
Ran full speed, threw her arms around him, and smiled so brightly—like she was proving, beyond a doubt, what truly mattered to her in this life.

It was a smile she hadn’t even shown when he gifted her a brand-new dressing room.

And it wasn’t an act.

What startled Ulrich wasn’t the scene itself, but the emotion he felt while watching it unfold.

A strange emotion he had never experienced before.
Complicated like a tangled skein of thread, prickly like thorns—an unfamiliar sort of discomfort with no clear origin.

It was different from the irritation he’d felt when he learned Sasha had followed Vasily on her first day at the townhouse.

Back then, his reaction had been disappointment—disgust that she turned out to be just another bland, predictable person, far from what he had hoped.

Like mistaking a seal caught in a net for a rusalka.

But this time…

‘Didn’t I feel something similar a few days ago?’

He recalled a faint flicker of it the day Sasha had come to his office—so brief and hazy that he’d brushed it off when she’d gone back to being irritating right after.

But this new discomfort was far more intense.

‘What is this feeling?’

Ulrich was confused. No matter how he tried to name it, no answer came.

He had never felt anything like it before—from people or animals or anything else.

‘This is… confusing.’

What followed was a twisted sort of thrill.

‘Interesting.’

In that electric surge of emotion, Ulrich reaffirmed something he’d almost let go of.

Sasha really was interesting.

The fact that even he had nearly misjudged her only served to raise Sasha’s value in Ulrich’s eyes.

The way she unknowingly switched his interest off and then back on again—it was far more than he’d expected.
‘Why didn’t I see you for what you are sooner?’

His mood soared higher, and to top it off, Kiril was putting on an entertaining show of his own.

That little brother who, all this time, had turned a blind eye to everything Sasha had endured and sacrificed for him—even with it staring him in the face.

The moment he saw his sister, dressed in fine clothes and arm-in-arm with Ulrich, Kiril had clearly become restless.
As if he were suddenly afraid of losing her full attention, afraid that he no longer had any sway over her.
Unable to take his eyes off her, he’d been tense and reactive ever since—oscillating between defensive and aggressive.

Just like the boys in the Winter Palace garden, back in the day.

‘How pitiful.’

Ulrich had to suppress a strong urge to laugh out loud.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this thoroughly amused.

He’d already noticed that Sasha glanced briefly at the breadbasket only to turn away from it completely—and he had instantly grasped the true story behind the whole egg situation.

You only had to look at the siblings’ faces to understand.

Kiril, ironically, had no clue about the parts that really mattered.
While he was exhausting himself with misplaced worries, he was only making things harder for Sasha.

And Sasha—who had learned to sacrifice herself for her brother as easily as breathing—clearly had no idea about the bizarre insecurities Kiril was harboring.

“It’s like you two were into each other from back then or something,”

Kiril muttered under his breath, jabbing at the saltimbocca with the tip of his fork.

Then he shot Sasha a sideways glare and grumbled,
“But weren’t you already engaged back then? How would the Director know something like that?”

‘Is he this dumb because Vasily rubbed off on him, or is it just in the blood?’

Ulrich swallowed his dry amusement and turned to Sasha to see how she’d react. He could already guess, of course.

“Kiril.”

Clang!

The sharp clang of metal cutlery striking the table rang across the surface.

Sasha had set down her silverware with a jarring clatter and was now staring hard at her brother, her expression frozen.

A faint line of sweat shimmered along her temple, where a pale blue vein stood out.

“If you’re going to keep acting like this, you can leave.”