#130. What Do You Think About Past Lives?
Tula stifled a laugh as she watched Blanche tilt her head with a faint frown.
Her princess wasn’t slow-witted, nor was she dull when it came to reading others, and yet—she always seemed oddly clumsy in moments like this.
“Your Highness.”
Kneeling before Blanche, Tula gently took her hand.
The princess Tula had raised with such care wore a clear, serene expression.
“It may be presumptuous of me, but… may I say something?”
Blanche gave a small nod of permission, and Tula, holding her gaze, whispered slowly and with heartfelt sincerity:
“Your Highness, you are far more deserving of love than you think.”
She truly meant it.
Even setting aside her own subjective eyes, which had adored Blanche since infancy and found everything she did endearing, Blanche was someone who naturally drew the goodwill of others.
She was beautiful, intelligent, composed in her bearing, and steadfast at her core.
She never tore others down carelessly nor acted rashly. It was only natural that kindness came to her more easily than malice.
“I too love you deeply, Your Highness.”
What Tula couldn’t understand was why her princess seemed so unaccustomed to receiving affection.
She had known Blanche nearly from the moment she herself was born, and Blanche had surely spent most of her life surrounded by love.
“That is why I want to stay by your side, always.”
Of course, Tula’s feelings leaned closer to maternal affection, separate from whether Blanche was objectively worthy of love.
But it hardly mattered—what she wanted to say was the same either way.
She wanted Blanche to know that, aside from what she could offer others, she herself was someone inherently precious and captivating.
Even without offering material gain, Blanche was the kind of person who naturally gathered people around her.
She didn’t need to constantly feel obligated to repay every kindness she received.
That was what Tula longed to tell her.
Nearly five years had passed since the brothers last shared a meal together. Naturally, the first topic to come up was the current state of the northern provinces.
Written reports had been sent every year, of course—but they couldn’t compare to hearing the words of someone who had actually lived there.
Only after the political talk had gone a full circle did Berken finally show his elder brother’s face.
“Well then. It’s been a while—how do I look? Thought you’d forgotten my face, brat.”
His playful voice made Melchizedek pause in thought.
“It feels… as if I just saw you yesterday.”
He meant it.
On his return to the capital, Melchizedek had expected to feel a measure of awkwardness with his brother and sister-in-law. He had even planned to stay a while in the capital, after Blanche left for the kingdom, to bridge the gap.
Yet both Berken and Liana welcomed him as if no time had passed.
Normally, when meeting again after five years, one naturally layered old memories over the present, only to realize things had changed, and carefully re-examined the person before them—comparing the memory with the reality.
But not only Melchizedek—Berken and Liana too skipped that process entirely.
It was as if even if he had traveled to the farthest reaches of the north, it could not have made their reunion feel more natural.
“Really? We, on the other hand, were shocked at how much you’ve grown.”
Liana teased lightly, wetting her lips with wine.
But her voice carried no trace of awkwardness from the years apart.
Not just Melchizedek—even they could feel that the passage of time was powerless against the bond the three of them shared.
“Now you’re nearly my height, aren’t you? Men keep growing even into adulthood—you might just surpass me one day.”
Berken looked over his much younger brother—his heir—with affectionate pride.
The boy he once had to stoop down to see had grown tall. The shoulders he used to pat in encouragement were now broad and firm.
Where once Blanche and Melchizedek had looked like a pair of delicate dolls standing side by side, now their difference in build made them look more like a well-matched pair.
“So? When are you returning to the capital for good? Once Blanche leaves the academy?”
Liana’s words cut through the gentle peace like a blade.
Berken instinctively straightened in his seat, then quickly loosened his posture, realizing stiffening would only make him seem more suspicious.
Melchizedek chewed and swallowed his meat carefully before answering with feigned nonchalance.
“Well, I was thinking of staying here for about half a year. Whether I’ll settle back here fully, return north, or perhaps travel through the other provinces—I was planning to decide slowly. Should I be submitting a report of my plans?”
“Half a year, then. Good. You haven’t visited the Empress Dowager yet, have you?”
“No. I plan to go after this meal.”
“She didn’t say anything, but I’m sure she felt hurt. Tell her you’ll be staying for a while, and act the part of the doted youngest—cling to her a little.”
“Hah. Maybe that would have worked back then, but do you really think this grown, dark-faced man throwing a tantrum would soften her heart now?”
“Why not? To a parent, their child is always a baby—”
Fortunately, Liana didn’t press the issue further, and the delicate subject was dropped.
Still, Melchizedek had to admit her question had pierced straight to the heart of things.
Had he reconciled with Blanche, or not?
Was Blanche staying on at the academy because their estrangement still lingered?
Had Melchizedek resolved his own inner conflicts, or not?
All of those questions were contained within her single one.
She’s as sharp as ever.
Suppressing a bitter smile, Melchizedek deflected with trivial jokes.
Just as Berken resembled Jahongwon, and Rachia resembled Gubian, Liana bore a striking similarity to Yeonnoksa.
She seemed narrow in her view, yet always noticed exactly what she needed to.
And though it was nearly impossible to predict what she truly knew, the truth was closer to this: Liana didn’t fail to know things—she chose not to.
For the sake of those she loved, and those who loved her, she closed her eyes willingly.
She didn’t know that Blanche’s poisoning scandal had been a fabrication.
She didn’t know Blanche had desperately wanted the engagement broken—so much so that she staged that drama.
She didn’t know why Melchizedek, who had always gotten everything he wanted, failed to hold Blanche back and instead left for the north.
She didn’t know why the conflict between two children of thirteen and fifteen had remained unresolved for five years.
But that wasn’t because the problems between Blanche and Melchizedek carried over from a previous life, or because of some unfathomable reason beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
It was simply because Berken, Melchizedek, Blanche, and Rachia all worked to turn her eyes away.
Like Yeonnoksa, Liana was someone who pretended to know nothing—and yet always understood the most important things.
Perhaps, in her ignorance, she stood closer to the truth than even Berken or Rachia, who judged with reason.
“By the way, brother, sister-in-law… what do you think about past lives?”
And so, suddenly, Melchizedek found himself curious about her opinion.
Not that he had any intention of telling her the truth, but still—he wondered what choice she would make if she were in his place.
“Past lives?”
In both the Jin Empire and here, the concept was vague at best.
Berken at least seemed to know the idea, but for Liana he had to start by explaining what the word meant.
After hearing him out, Liana frowned.
“What a strange thing to ask. Is that something fashionable in the north?”
“It’s not a northern trend. I just happened to meet a fortune-teller during a journey in disguise. That fortune-teller told me I had suffered a tremendous failure in my previous life. So it made me wonder—if I lived again, already knowing I had failed before, would anything really change?”
The truth was… even after receiving a second life, Melchizedek had lived it much the same as the first—drifting with the current.
He became the emperor’s heir because he was told to. He picked companions because they seemed pleasant.
The political web was intricate, so he relied on the skills he had honed in his first life to manipulate matters from behind the scenes.
But in the end, the greatest torment of his previous life had been loss, and so he had no motivation to try to change anything.
No effort could extend his father’s lifespan.
And though in this life his family still lived, even if he had known in his first life that his brother and sister-in-law would die, he couldn’t have stopped them from riding to war.
So while others hailed his second life as a miraculous opportunity, he had simply let it flow by like water.
That began to change only when he realized that Baekryeon too had been reborn.
