Chapter 56: Someone said it looks like the sun.

A smile like flowers blooming.
Not the usual image of roses that came to mind with her, but a whole field carpeted in tiny, bright blossoms.

That smile, the gentle touch of her fingers on his cheek, brought back a memory he kept locked away, guarded fiercely so no one could ever break or tarnish it.

The very first thing she had ever said to him, the day they met.

“It’s beautiful.”
Yes, she had said that then, too.

Until that moment, he had hated it.

These eyes, this color that forced him to remember his origins and announced them to the world.
The royal family of this country, who had made him, used him, then discarded him without ever taking a shred of responsibility.
Their symbol: gold.
He had hated gold with every fiber of his being.

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“Fake.”
“Muddy color.”
“Filthy hue.”

Children ripped away the thin veil adults used and hurled the words straight at him.
Being insulted in public was normal.
Being surrounded and hit was an everyday occurrence.

If he had simply been the child of a concubine, no one would have cared.
But the moment these eyes appeared, everything flipped.

A perfectly ordinary inheritance: his father’s eye color, turned into something aberrant, heretical, the instant royalty was involved.

Hating his father, hating people, and eventually hating the entire country had probably been the natural course.

His only salvation was the branch-family couple who took him in: broad-minded enough to see “abnormal” and “heretical” as nothing more than individuality.
If he had been scorned at home as well, his young heart would have died in an instant.

Still, the wounds were deep enough to twist even the straightest disposition.
There was no fixing it now.

He had somehow kept standing, battered and bleeding.

The monsters who used adult grievances as their banner tried every trick to force him to his knees.

If he ever curled up crying the way they wanted, he would be condemned for sins that didn’t exist.
The idiots who thought themselves heroes slaying a demon king for the people would brand him evil and execute him: simply for being different from their version of “normal.”

Fall once, and it was over.
Once he fell, they would beat him until he could never stand again.

He planted his feet, clenched his toes.

He resisted desperately, but could only endure; he couldn’t even defend properly.
That was the most he could manage; counterattack was impossible.

“Don’t lose” was an absurd demand.
This wasn’t a fight; it was unilateral trampling.

All he could do was withstand it.
He knew his heart was being whittled away, yet there was no way to heal.

Someday, when the stress overflowed or he lost his mind, even this stubbornness would end.
He had focused only on enduring, yet somewhere inside he had waited for his heart to collapse and his thoughts to stop.

He had given up.
Nothing would ever change, nothing would end, no one would save him.

He had never imagined someone would come and steal everything away.

“I think it’s beautiful.”

When had she said those words?
He wanted to remember every single memory with Violet clearly, and he did remember most of them, but the moment they met was hazy.
Even though it was a time when he had given up, gone numb, and could only see the world from above, he still felt disappointed in himself for the blur.

Yet the instant her voice reached his ears, that single moment was recorded like a photograph, every detail preserved.

Short hair, formal clothes that made her look like a boy at first glance.
Standing with light at her back in the dim shade of trees and buildings, she seemed almost holy.

Her soft smile contrasted with the imperious, surveying gaze that pinned the entire scene.
The crowd that had been tormenting Yulan: where had all their bravado gone?
They froze like frogs stared down by a snake.

“Ah, sorry for interrupting so suddenly. I heard voices and couldn’t help myself.”

“V-Violet-sama… why are you…?”

“I said I heard voices, didn’t I?”

Violet Rem Vahan-sama.

Everyone knew the name of the Vahan ducal house’s daughter.
Famous, for better or worse. Impossible to miss.

To Yulan, she was a walking collection of everything he feared.

Yet he wasn’t the only one shocked by her appearance.

The ones who had been so confident while surrounding him now gaped like goldfish: ridiculous.

Even Yulan, the supposed victim, felt his thoughts drifting far away.
That must have been why the memory was hazy.

Everything happening in front of him felt like someone else’s affair.
He only realized much later that he was in the middle of being saved.

Back then he had simply wanted time to pass quickly.
He stood frozen, eyes down, heart closed.

“You okay?”

Not with concern or pity: just a plain question, as if she genuinely wondered.

She didn’t offer a hand.
She didn’t speak gently.
She simply asked because she wanted to know.

“…”

“If you’re hurt you should go to the infirmary. Unfortunately I don’t know where it is.”

She gave up waiting for an answer almost immediately and continued talking to herself.
She was simply… alien.

Anyone else would have made a scene the moment he stayed silent, as if they had caught him red-handed.
No: before that, no one ever spoke to him in the first place.
Being treated like something contagious was the better outcome; more often he was showered with insults for crimes he never committed.

“…You don’t… hate them?”

“Hm?”

“My eyes… people say they’re weird, fake… that just looking at them makes them sick.”

Everyone said so.
No matter how much the people who raised him affirmed him, the stones thrown by strangers carried far more weight.
Being sniped at from hiding places was nothing but terror for the target.

That was how his self-loathing had piled up, far beyond mere complex.
If these eyes weren’t part of his body he would rip them out right now.
The balance could tip from vision to loathing any day.

If they were going to abandon the child named Yulan, they should have taken these eyes too.
If they were going to strip him of everything, they should have torn them out by the roots.
If he was going to be stolen from, he wished they had just killed him.
If he was going to want to die this badly, he wished he had never been born.

He never wanted this color.

“They’re not fake.”

“…!”

His shoulders jumped at the strong voice.
Self-defense: he had reacted to the tone, but it wasn’t anger.

When he looked up, he met fierce eyes that seemed to glare.
Yet he didn’t find them frightening; because that expression looked on the verge of tears.

They were sharp not because she was glaring, but because she was holding back tears.

“People can’t become anyone else.
They can’t be someone else’s fake.”

Slowly, as if making sure he understood, she wove the words.
Painfully, sadly, as though crushing her throat and spitting blood: the words he had always longed for rained down.

“You are the real you.”

“…Ah…”

Before he knew it, he was sitting on the ground.
Violet crouched, finally bringing their eyes level, and only then did he realize his legs had given out.

“I’m Violet. What’s your name?”

“I… I’m…”

The words broke.
His voice tore.

Name. His name.
He hadn’t forgotten, yet he couldn’t form it.

Fakes didn’t have names.
“Yulan” was a lie.
To everyone but him, “Yulan” was the name of a fake.

The softest, most precious part of his weak heart.
He didn’t want it hurt anymore, didn’t want it dirtied, didn’t want it denied.
The name stuck in his throat, refusing to become sound.

Fear and wariness tried to protect tiny Yulan’s tiny heart.
There was no room left for courage; it had withered in the memories of the past.

What should he do?
The more he panicked, the worse his mouth worked.
If he kept her waiting too long, he would turn back into a fake.
Even the person in front of him who had called him real: Violet: might decide after all that he was fake.

He didn’t want to cry, but heat gathered behind his eyes.
He had clenched his teeth against any malice, yet that resolve was crumbling right now.

It was frustrating, painful, sad.

The moment the pent-up tears spilled over:

“It’s not fake. Tell me your name.”

She smiled like flowers blooming.

Despite looking like a boy, despite speaking like one, her smile was sweet, gentle, and beautiful.

Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.

A Mother Goose rhyme he had heard somewhere.
Maybe from the woman who bore him, maybe from the mother who raised him now.
He no longer remembered the voice, but that fragment had remained in a corner of his memory.

The moment he recognized it, Violet became, for Yulan, the one and only “girl” in the world.

“Y-Yu… lan… Yulan Kugels…”

“Yulan, then. I was about to go eat: would you like to come?”

“…I can?”

“Of course. I’m the one inviting you… unless you don’t want to.”

“I do…! I’ll go!”

He stood and chased after Violet walking ahead.
Smaller than his peers, his legs and stride were shorter too; the distance kept opening.

But every time, she looked back and waited for him.

He only realized it was love much later.
Back then he had followed her like a little brother trailing an older sister.
He had probably been far too attached, but the feelings had spilled out unconsciously.

Older sister, savior, girl, and first love buried deep in his subconscious.

He just wanted to be near her, wanted to be together, crashed into her every time they met and clung like a burr.
She accepted him with a smile, so he wanted to be closer, closer, and ended up glued to her side.

He loved her, adored her; Yulan’s shape of love was Violet herself.
He wanted her to know even a little of his love, wanted her to accept it; that was all he could see.

“You can’t be anyone else’s fake.”

He had never noticed that the very words that saved him were, at that moment, tormenting her.