For a moment, Harchen thought it might be a dream. He brushed his bangs up and looked around the bedroom.

He squinted at the morning sunlight pouring onto the wooden floor of the bedroom, with the double curtains drawn. He was certain it wasn’t a dream.

“Haa, me? Harchen Eint Carl Berk, Patricia’s husband.”

“Pa… Patrick!”

Patricia called out Patrick’s name in a sharp voice. As if caught by a strange man, she pushed Harchen away and shouted only for Patrick.

“Patricia, calm down. You’re a bit hurt. Let me explain.”

As Harchen tried to pull her shoulder to embrace her, she screamed even louder.

“Don’t, don’t come closer. Patrick, Patrick!”

“Haa, what… this is.”

Harchen was stunned that Patricia couldn’t remember him, but he was also angry that she kept calling for Patrick.

To call for that bastard as soon as she regained consciousness.

He irritably pulled the bell cord. The butler entered immediately.

“The empress has woken up.”

“Ah! Rising morning sun, I greet Your Majesty the Empress.”

“……”

Patricia wrapped herself tightly in the white sheet without responding to the butler’s greeting.

“But there’s a bit of a problem. Call Claudine, the Heun tribe old woman, and Patrick.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

After the butler left, an awkward silence fell between Harchen and Patricia.

“Patricia, don’t you know who I am? Don’t you remember?”

“No, I don’t know who you are……”

“This is really maddening. Do you remember who you are?”

“Me? I am Patricia Calian Evas. But why are you in the same bed as me?”

Patricia looked up at Harchen with her large blue eyes wide open, biting her lower lip. It was the expression Harchen usually liked. He barely restrained himself from just embracing her outright.

Haa. What am I supposed to do when she looks at me like that in this situation?

Harchen shuddered at the feeling of rough and strange emotions stirring in his chest. He got up and got off the bed.

“Patricia, we slept together because we’re married. We got married last week.”

“Ah, what? Are you saying that I… got married?”

Harchen sat in the chair by the bedside where he had been sitting for several days and nights. Though anxious, he looked at her with a calm gaze, suppressing his emotions as much as possible.

“We went to the Kingdom of Torun for our honeymoon and were on our way to the capital. You were hit by an arrow shot by a Heun tribe hunter while riding a horse by the lake.”

“I! I don’t remember anything, no, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

At that moment, there was a sign of Patrick, Claudine, the Heun tribe old woman, the butler, and Calip entering the reception room.

“Can you get up? I think we need to go to the reception room.”

Harchen held out his hand to Patricia. She stared blankly at his hand as if it were that of a stranger.

Then she slowly lowered her gaze and put on the indoor slippers placed under the bed. She got up, carefully fastening the front of her nightgown robe.

Haa. How should I deal with this emotion?

Harchen ran his large hand over his face.

As soon as the reception room door opened and Patricia saw Patrick standing there, she approached him.

“Risha!”

She flung herself onto Patrick’s neck.

Patrick, thinking her consciousness had fully returned, embraced her with tears in his eyes.

“Patrick.”

Harchen glared fiercely at them, then turned to the imperial physician and spoke coldly.

“Claudine. It seems there’s a problem with the empress’s memory. She doesn’t recognize me.”

Harchen clenched his fists, feeling strangely irritated.

“Your Majesty, there have been cases where people exposed to poison temporarily lose their memory after being unconscious.”

The Heun tribe old woman, squinting and examining Patricia with the whites of her eyes, spoke carefully.

“Unconsciousness and memory loss… Is recovery possible?”

“I understand it was mostly a temporary phenomenon.”

If Patricia had run straight ahead without looking back at Harchen in the Red Forest, the arrow would have pierced her thin ribs and lungs.

An arrow through the lungs would have driven her to death regardless of the poison. Harchen felt dizzy imagining that moment.

However, Patricia lived and woke up. That fact alone made Harchen willing. He could breathe at the Heun tribe old woman’s word ‘temporary’.

Calip also found it difficult to accept this situation.

“Rising morning sun, Your Majesty the Empress. I am Knight Calip, do you recognize me?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know.”

She shook her head with an awkward expression at Calip’s greeting.

Claudine asked her various questions as Patricia sat on the sofa. She had completely lost her memory of everyone, not just the emperor. The only person she remembered was Patrick.

“It seems to be obsessive partial amnesia. Due to excessive shock or trauma, the attachment is concentrated on one person. Often, there’s no interest in anything else besides this.”

Harchen was relieved that she had regained consciousness and woken up. But her memory was gone.

If she had equally forgotten all memories, it would have been a matter of trying to find them. But obsessive partial amnesia, haa.

So, my wife, Empress Patricia, doesn’t remember me but only remembers Patrick, that bastard.

Harchen was so angry that even spitting out a question felt irritating. He silently gritted his teeth as a lonely sensation that dug into his angry chest washed over him.

“Perhaps because I’m her only blood relative and there’s been a recent matter causing Patricia severe mental pressure.”

Patrick wondered why he was explaining as if making excuses, but seeing Harchen’s cold gaze that could cut through iron, he spoke to smooth things over.

And he calmly explained to Patricia her situation, the royal marriage, and being hit by a poisoned arrow during their honeymoon.

The moment Patricia regained consciousness, words like Patrick, failed plan, assassination, etc., strongly came to mind.

She thought she had called for him because Patrick was in danger. She wanted to have some time to think calmly alone for now.

“Patrick. Sorry, I want to wash up a bit.”

Patricia’s indifferent voice was exactly the same as usual, causing those who heard it to look at her with confused expressions.

As the butler instructed a maid to assist with the bath, Annie, who had been wiping away endless tears in a corner of the reception room, sprang up and supported Patricia into the dressing room.

Those left in the reception room, like shattered glass fragments, remained motionless in their places in silence. The clear morning sunlight falling through the window settled on the silence.

*

While Annie was preparing the bath water, Patricia washed her hands at the sink.

For a long time, she had hated Patrick, whose face she didn’t even know. On some days when she swung a heavy sword and cut her flesh with the blade, she clearly despised his existence.

Eleven-year-old girl, Patricia.

She stood on her tiptoes and clung to the sink.

She made soft white bubbles with the rough soap. Even after making so many bubbles that her small hands were buried in them and washing them away in running water, the iron smell wouldn’t disappear. Wiping her hands with a towel dried crisp in the sunlight, she called his name.

Patrick Calian Evas. The shining crown prince like the sun. I am the shadow princess of darkness.

She had hated him so much, but the moment she met him, there was a pull of blood ties.

Like coarse salt dissolving quickly when thrown into water, the hatred disappeared. Like the salty taste left in the water, the cause hadn’t vanished. But like the disappeared salt grains, the resentment was gone.

Seeing Patrick’s bones thinner than her wrist made her heart ache. When he would collapse at the slightest exertion, she wanted to make him healthy even if it meant shortening her own life.

When Patrick becomes emperor, I’ll go to the seaside kingdom.

But Patrick was honest and clean. He didn’t know the reality and end of corruption and evil, or endless greed. Patrick declared he wouldn’t attempt a rebellion through assassination.

Patricia decided to assassinate three people on the eve of the empress’s birthday when she and Eden would announce the enactment of the entrance exam law. Among the three, the empress was Patricia’s share.

Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, Patricia was engrossed in that thought.

In the midst of this, a poisoned arrow from the Heun tribe flew and lodged in her shoulder. The nerve connecting her shoulder and carotid artery ruptured. At that moment, all memories disappeared, and only the memory of Patrick, whom she had been obsessed with, remained clear.

There was no headache, but her mind felt like it had melted into mush.

Someone’s hands touched her body and wiped it with a towel. At the feeling of moist lips touching her cheek, her mind, which had been flowing like water, solidified.

She focused her nerves, exerted strength, and opened her eyes.

Green eyes as deep as a rainy forest looked down at her. Below the green eyes were a sharp nose bridge, thick eyebrows, a straight forehead, and black hair falling down.

Who, who are you?

*

Bathroom, bath additive, rose water, towel, dress, maid and empress, Tane Empire and Karsik Empire. Patricia associated the words that came to mind.

She tried to visualize objects by naming things like sky, clouds, black horse, white bird, sword, flowering tree, etc. It was possible.

Patrick. My twin blood relative, the kin I must assist to become emperor, memories of riding horses together and wielding swords instead flashed fragmentarily.

Patrick’s method would fail. The certainty of failure and preparation of countermeasures. Assassination of the empress.

Karsik Emperor, Harchen, husband…?

Only the face of the handsome man she saw in the bedroom came to mind.

Was he tall, how old? How did we end up in a royal marriage? How can I not remember someone who’s my husband?

Patricia furrowed her brow to concentrate all her nerves.

“You said your name was Annie? Stop crying.”

“Your Majesty. Sob, sniff… I’m just so worried, wah.”

“Enough, we’ll talk slowly later. This dress will do. Tie the ribbon in the back.”

Annie couldn’t accept that the empress had forgotten her memories. Even while assisting with the bath, she tried to explain Patricia’s situation and environment between sobs and words, but it was incoherent and her emotions only intensified, eventually leading to more crying.

Even while crying, Annie observed Patricia carefully. Patricia was calm to a frightening degree. The atmosphere was different from before. Her eyes had changed. Many other things had changed too, but Annie couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, which was frustrating.

Unlike before, Patricia now chose her underwear and dress herself in the dressing room. While she used to be passive about dressing up, now she actively directed Annie.

When Annie and Patricia came out of the dressing room into the reception room, the emperor, who had been leaning against the window wall looking outside, turned around.

Patricia sat down in a single-person sofa.

“Annie, I’m thirsty, give me some water. Yes, lemon water would be nice.”

“Sniff, Your Majesty the Empress, you always used to drink lemon water after bathing.”

Annie poured lemon water into a crystal glass from a mobile tray, her shoulders still shaking with sobs.

The emperor slowly walked towards Patricia. Patricia glanced at the emperor while receiving the glass. Despite the high ceiling of the castle, he was so tall he seemed to almost touch it. As the emperor approached, Annie bowed her head even lower.

“Go out.”

The emperor ordered Annie to leave and sat across from Patricia. He sat down at an angle, crossing his long legs.