Patricia asked while observing Julia’s complexion.

“Do you know him?”

“No, how could I know such a barbarian.”

Julia turned her body sharply and opened a black lace-decorated folding fan.

Barbarian? How can she use such an expression when she’s seeing him for the first time? Of course, Patricia had experienced Bark and even recovered her old memories to know he was barbaric.

Is it prejudice? Without experience and prejudice, people become pure children’s eyes, judging first impressions by appearance. Like how the poorhouse children judge Patricia and Julia.

One of the rules for poorhouse volunteers was to put aside status and titles the moment they put on the large pink ribbon around their necks.

So the poorhouse children didn’t know Patricia was the empress or Julia was a noble lady. They simply judged by appearances including the dresses and accessories they wore.

The children called Patricia “teacher” and Julia “princess.”

Bark was dressed in a white suit with even a white cape, standing out excessively. Moreover, due to the disorderly flying white birds, he looked fantastical as if a mythical figure had torn through a book and emerged.

“Wow, look there. It’s an angel.”

“No, it’s a fairy.”

“It’s the chief.”

“That’s right, it’s Bark, the chief of the Hun hunters.”

The heads of the children sitting at the round table opening their notebooks all turned toward the window at once.

Patricia, standing beside Julia, spotted Bark approaching the learning center through the window and narrowed her eyes in thought. As he came closer to the learning center, young students unable to contain their curiosity clung to the windows.

He must be coming to see me, but it’s a bit embarrassing to meet like this when he appears so splendidly.

Patricia excused herself to Julia, saying she would be away for a moment, then went out to the yard. Bark spotted her coming out of the shaded corridor and strode over with long strides.

“What brings you here, have you come to see me?”

Bark excessively knelt on one knee and greeted with a knight’s courtesy. From inside the learning center window came cheers of “Wow,” followed by voices saying, “But the princess is here.”

“Quickly, stand up.”

Patricia suggested they go to the lounge, but he pointed to the bird perched on his shoulder and said he disliked the stuffiness inside buildings.

“Then, shall we walk a bit?”

They went to the back garden of the poorhouse.

“By chance, do you know Lady Julia?”

Bark hesitated for a moment. He was sick of noble ladies.

He recalled the noblewomen who tried to seduce him, wanting to lure him to their bedrooms attracted by his appearance and body.

If he had seen Julia’s face, he would have remembered immediately. However, he assumed the person Patricia mentioned was one of the noblewomen he recalled and deliberately answered more roughly.

“I may not know the names of noble ladies, but I know their bodies. Many have undressed before me.”

“Hmm, I don’t think Lady Julia would do that.”

Bark was about to say something more when suddenly a clamorous noise was heard.

The sound of hammering iron nails, pounding wooden frames, gravel being poured, shovels mixing sand.

They turned their heads toward the sound. There was a commotion as a building for free education was being constructed.

Passing by piles of red bricks, stones, gravel, and sand, they went through a small path to reach a relatively quiet grassy area.

It was a place Patricia used to visit occasionally with Princess Carolina. Patricia sat on a wooden bench placed under an ash tree.

Bark didn’t sit beside her but leaned against the tree.

“I went to the palace for a round table meeting, and bro- I mean, the Emperor said you had regained your memories, so I came.”

Patricia knew from Harchen that Bark was participating in the round table meeting as the Hun representative.

But why did he tell him I regained my memories?

Although it wasn’t promised, I had hoped only Harchen and I would know for the time being.

Well, Harchen was truly grateful that he saved Patricia’s life and wanted to grant him a title. I heard Bark adamantly refused.

Harchen often spoke about him, but unlike before, he didn’t mix in curses like “that bastard” and called him “Bark, the Hun representative.”

Patricia also felt chills recalling that day. She collapsed while watching the assassin stab Eva’s hand with a dagger. At that moment, if Bark hadn’t come, Eva and herself would have died without even a farewell procedure.

Eva…

‘Eva, are you by my side? This person saved us, saved me that day.’

Patricia had been speaking inwardly for some time now, to Eva who might be lingering beside her as a spirit.

“Tell me in detail what happened that day.”

“When? The day we met naked in the Marcus Kingdom?”

Patricia recalled the valley in the Marcus Kingdom. They had encountered each other then while she was bathing, not even dressed. Her face flushed hot.

It was fortunate that Bark was leaning against the tree instead of sitting beside her on the bench.

“No, the day Empress Pamila died, I did that, right?”

Memories came flooding back all at once, but after striking Pamila with the sword and running towards Eva to confront the assassin before collapsing, the memories didn’t revive. So only clearly perceived memories were revived.

At that time, she had swung the sword intuitively without specific memories of Pamila. While staying in the Hun hunter village, she had even felt guilty.

In a situation where she remembered everything down to her mother’s letter that she had read and burned in the Torun Kingdom, she reconfirmed it was a long-cherished desire.

“If you want the truth, I’ll tell you. Your sword cut the Empress’s neck but missed. Blood flowed spectacularly, but if someone other than me had found her and given first aid, she might have lived.”

Bark detached himself from the tree he was leaning against and walked to stand in front of Patricia.

“I finished your long-cherished wish, sister.”

Bark took Patricia’s hand and pressed his lips to the back of it.

“Sister… what do you mean?”

“I wanted to ignore the filthy bloodline and completely drain out the blood, but I saw Emperor Kazan riding over his fallen son in a puddle of bloody water.”

Patricia also thought that memory – the betrayal and fear of blood relatives that felt bone-chillingly cold – could never be forgotten. But she had forgotten the memory.

When she forgot the memory and regained it, only the memory remained. The pain, suffering, and sadness of the moment experiencing it were peeled away one layer.

“I went to see the crown prince with the vile father and met sister coming out of the valley.”

“I… never thought that.”

“I immediately went to find Amir who gave birth to me. I learned the twins were my blood relatives.”

“Ah, the Hun old woman.”

“I wanted to tell you earlier, but brother ordered silence saying it would be confusing before your memory returned.”

“Brother? Somehow it doesn’t suit you. Does Patrick know this fact?”

“That bastard doesn’t know.”

“Why ‘that bastard’? He’s your brother.”

“That’s how men are with each other originally.”

“Patrick won’t be like that, he’ll be kind to you too.”

Patricia felt awkward but looked into Bark’s eyes. When she first saw him, she thought his gaze was rude but trustworthy. Looking closely, he seemed to have a similar atmosphere to Patrick.

“Let’s go to Tane. He’s said to be on his last legs after being stabbed by Eden Patterson’s dagger, we should go see the end, our father.”

“Eden Patterson? So Eden did it after all.”

Patricia hadn’t heard that Eden was the one who stabbed the vile emperor with a dagger after the sword duel with Harchen.

She had heard about the summary judgment for the Imperial People’s Assembly several times from Calip, Bern, and Harchen, but no one mentioned Eden.

“That bastard is cunning. His eyes were on fire looking at you, sister.”

“What happened to Eden?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go to Tane and ask that bastard Patrick.”

If he had attempted to assassinate the emperor in front of people, he would have been arrested on the spot and it was a serious crime. Even Patrick couldn’t act recklessly.

“Let’s go back now.”

Patricia quickened her steps walking towards the poorhouse learning center. Her heart was urgent and anxious.

*

Crack, crackle.

Julia bit her thumbnail.

She was checking homework at the round table and instructed the children to write Karsik, Riswan, Emperor, and the emperor’s name Harchen Eint Carl Berk 30 times in their notebooks.

She wanted to write her name beside Harchen’s name, but it wasn’t the time.

Crack.

It was him. One of the white birds flying chaotically around his head urinated on Julia’s face.

She was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by his tough and violent subordinate. Dangling from his hand like a rag doll, she was dragged to the old man in the Oro alley and confessed to lying and begged.

It was the first time in her life she experienced such a dirty and humiliating act.

Moreover, she had requested him to kill Patricia, the princess who came from Tane.

The moment they met, he was someone she would blurt out about.

What Julia really wanted was to pay him back as much as she received and watch him die before her eyes. However, there was no way to kill him. It was also far-fetched to find an assassin who could kill him.

That fellow knelt on the dirt yard wearing white clothes and gave Patricia a knight’s greeting. They were clearly in an intimate relationship.

An affair? How? When did they meet?

Julia didn’t have the leisure to plot including the lover.

She ignored the children running around messily and stood up from her seat.

“Princess, no, teacher. I finished writing.”

A well-behaved girl stood up from her chair, holding out her notebook open, blocking Julia’s path as she rose from her chair. For a moment, Julia’s inner nature rose and she struck the girl’s arm with her fan.

“Ah, it hurts.”

The metal edge decorated with black pearls grazed the girl’s arm as it brushed past. A red line was drawn on the tender arm.

Julia was more urgent about her own anxiety than the wound on the tender arm.

She glanced at the arm streaming with dirty water, then left the learning center.

After notifying the poorhouse volunteer coordinator that she would leave early due to a severe migraine, she hurried out to the yard.

As she walked towards the Leak ducal family carriage waiting in front of the poorhouse, she kept looking around the poorhouse yard and surroundings.

Fortunately, neither that bastard dragging clouds of white birds nor Patricia were in sight. Julia quickened her pace and arrived in front of the carriage. Two white horses were standing beside the carriage.

“John, open the carriage door, hurry and depart.”

“My lady. John disappeared a while ago, and I’m Billy.”

The man who had been leaning against the purple carriage body talking to the coachman turned around.

That man was the owner of the white horse standing beside the carriage and Bark’s subordinate. Above all, he was the one who had grabbed Julia’s nape and shaken her in front of Old Man Chen.