Lee Han Has Been Demoted
The moment he called up yesterday's memories and the sensations that clung to them, the mind he had worked so hard to clear through training clouded over again.
Klesha.
Desire seized his body, and he grew frantic to feel that sensation once more. But unfortunately—
They call it artificial Ambrosia. A legendary panacea, said to have cured every curse and disease that truly existed in ancient times. Only recently did we succeed in restoring the recipe, and the royal house manufactures it with its own hands. Every ingredient that goes into the making is the sort none but a royal house could ever obtain. A finished dose is something only a royal apothecary can produce, and the greatest investor and director of Ambrosia's restoration is none other than myself. If you simply do as I say, then when a completed Ambrosia is made, I shall see that you receive it first of all. What is there to refuse? It is a gift from your elder sister to her younger brother. You need not decline. Ho ho.
No witch was going to hand over a medicine that easily.
Vicious woman. That was a truly vicious move.
Ambrosia.
That was the name of the liquid he had drunk the day before — an unfinished product, a potion whose effect was no more than one percent of the completed medicine. And yet, on the strength of that mere one percent, Lee Han had witnessed a miracle.
The permanent disability he had quietly given up on was recovering...!
"Hoo...!"
Someone had thrown this much fresh kindling onto a possibility he had gone to such pains to abandon. Of course the affliction followed. Lee Han closed his eyes as if in meditation and forced himself to take a moment to settle his heart. If he failed to quiet the old rage boiling in him, he felt he might run wild on the spot.
Those damned bastards...!
His teeth ground. Smothering his anger was no easy process.
Back in the days when he was being raised as an assassin, Lee Han was fed all manner of poisons. It was to build his resistance, and at the time he was nothing but a fifteen-year-old greenhorn with no memories of his past life, so unlike now he listened dutifully to his elders.
Was it one of those days, in the midst of swallowing poison after poison? Someone took the wrong dose, and there was an accident.
"What the hell is wrong with him!?"
"That poison... I think it's one of the ones they use when they make aphrodisiacs."
"Crazy bastard."
One of the trainees tried to force himself on a female officer and was killed where he stood. After that, the assassins recognized that their trainees' lust might become a problem.
The hunger for sleep, the hunger for food, the hunger for sex. Past life or present, it was the same: the so-called three great appetites became serious trouble inside an organization. Had the organization been an ordinary guild or association, they might have settled the matter with a little flexibility. Unfortunately, the order Lee Han belonged to was an assassin order, where the extreme restraint of desire was taken as a matter of course.
And so it was decided.
"Have them all castrated."
"Shall we cut them?"
"No. They might die if we cut them. Use Curse Poison."
Curse Poison. A poison of Mystery, born of sorcery — an extreme toxin that did no great harm to the body, yet could leave a permanent impairment behind. It was rare beyond rare, almost never used, and if one was shown to a priest quickly enough and cured, its effect amounted to little, so even its value was underestimated. And yet, of all organizations, the assassin order not only possessed that precious Curse Poison, but used it to control its people so thoroughly that they could not move as they pleased.
What followed was easy enough to guess. Lee Han was fed the thing called Curse Poison and had to lie sick for some three days, and most of the children known as the Numbers had their lust "removed."
No. The desire itself still existed. It had simply become something they could not use.
...Because it would not rise.
But at the time, no one thought of this as a problem. The reason? They were children who had never received anything that could be called an education, and they had no notion that it ought to be treated. So, naturally, it remained nothing more than a permanent disability.
Lee Han was no exception. He had never imagined that years later the organization might collapse, nor that by sheer coincidence he would recover the memories of his past life. And the moment he recovered those memories and learned that his body was crippled...!
"Mmmngh...!!"
...Even now, merely recalling it sent fury surging up his throat.
Thirty years in the life before, thirty in this one. All told, he had become an old bachelor who had kept a lonely bed for sixty years. But as time passed and he devoted himself to nothing but growing stronger, he stopped paying the disability much mind. Now and then, when one of his squadmates bragged about a lover or a wife, his chest would ache — and each time he thrashed the bastards... no, he was doing a fine job of improving his mood through perfectly legitimate spars.
And yet now, Lee Han understood. He had not overcome a grueling suffering. He had only been giving up. And now that a chance had appeared, his heart was in turmoil.
A flash—!
"...It would have been easier on my mind if I'd never known. Now that I know, what am I supposed to do with it?"
One thing he simply could not understand was how she had learned his shameful secret at all. Where had the information leaked? He had never told a soul.
"She's a frightening woman, I'll give her that."
Crash!
"Aigoo!"
"...Please stop falling over. Or just stand still."
"Hehe, I can't do that. Her Highness the Princess sent me here to look after you, Sir Knight! I'll work really hard!"
"...You really don't have to."
"Just leave it to meee!"
"......"
Another question. What was her true intention in sending him this empty-headed little innocent?
...Don't tell me she sent her to dig into my past?
Crash!
"Ah, I'm sorry! The bowl...!"
"......"
...It really didn't seem so. Lee Han rose quietly. He still had no end of questions, but if this kept up—
That woman is going to wreck my entire household.
Lee Han ran, to defend his housekeeping.
The White Lion Palace.
Among the royals of Pendragon, a palace in which only the king's heir was permitted to reside. It was also nothing more than a place to stay for a while, until one entered the king's own palace, the White Dragon Palace. And the present mistress of the White Lion Palace, Isis Irene de Pendragon, was personally tending a child.
"Auuu."
"Your fingers are strong. Unlike that walking corpse of a father of yours, you seem likely to be healthy. That pleases me."
"Uu?"
She said, without the slightest restraint, things one ought not say in front of a child, but fortunately the baby could not understand her. It was a mercy that he was only five months old.
But Isis was not the only one nearby.
"Ho ho, Princess. How can you speak ill of his father in front of the child? This Albert worries greatly that the prince may one day learn Your Highness's manner of speech."
"Be quiet, old man. Do not meddle in my raising of my child."
"Ho ho, and is that raising?"
"Of course. The finest woman is doing it, so it is the finest education."
"...Well. Your confidence, at least, is admirable."
"Hmph."
Insolent speech that only a butler who was an Aura User could get away with. That she indulged him in calling her Princess rather than Your Highness, though she was the crown princess, was a special courtesy in its own right. Perhaps that was why private questions were permitted of Albert as well.
"But, Princess. How did you know that Sir Lee Han required Ambrosia?"
Albert was privately curious. Lee Han, that young man, had never once shown a weakness or a shortcoming to those around him. Even the royal intelligence service knew of whom he had been born, that he had been sold as a slave, and into which organization he had been sold — but they had not known he carried such an illness. Which was to say that only the princess knew.
"Hmph. And what is the intent of that question? Do you suppose I shared a bed with my sworn younger brother?"
"P-Princess..."
A remark of unmatched impropriety. Albert sent her a look that scolded her for how a woman could say such a thing, and Isis only drank her black tea as if nothing were amiss. Then, slowly:
"My sworn younger brother, you see, has never once fallen for me."
"...?"
"Not once has he felt arousal toward me. Toward me, beautiful as I am."
"...Pardon?"
Albert thought his ears had failed him. An Aura User's hearing was not the sort to age, yet at this moment he suspected it had. He could not believe so vulgar a statement had left her fair mouth. But she was unabashed.
"My beauty is the finest in the kingdom. That does not change merely because I have grown older. There has never been a man who looked upon me and failed to be undone, and it is only natural that they pant like dogs in heat. And yet my sworn younger brother has never once done so. Seeing no response from him at that young age, two possibilities occurred to me."
That her sworn younger brother preferred his own sex, or that his masculine function had been lost.
"But my sworn younger brother does not like men. Thus I was certain, as a matter of course, that the problem lay in function."
"...Y-you drew such a conclusion from that alone?"
"Of course. My beauty is supreme."
"...Your self-love is remarkable."
"It is nothing but a perfectly obvious fact!"
"...Ho ho."
Albert was dumbfounded. She had uncovered a secret that even the kingdom's intelligence bureau had failed to expose, and for a reason like that? Inwardly, he was beginning to pity Lee Han. How had the man let a woman like that catch hold of his weakness?
...Hmm. Still, he can obtain the medicine, so it is a gain for him as well.
Mutual aid. Each of them could obtain what they wanted, so it would profit them both.
"Ho ho."
Albert gave a light laugh and forced himself to accept her absurd statement.
"But why did you send the one called Layla to Sir Lee Han?"
"Ah. You mean the maid?"
A maid dispatched, out of nowhere, not to the Royal Castle, but to report for work under Lee Han from now on. With what intention had she sent the girl to him? Perhaps she had even cast Layla aside....
"To serve as motivation."
"...Pardon?"
"My sworn younger brother is surely still hesitating over whether to grant my request. But if he lives alongside a young woman, will his body not stir? He will come to see that accepting my request is to his advantage."
"......"
"Her head is a little lacking, but her looks are not half bad, so... heh heh. She will inflict quite enough mental anguish."
"...You are cruel indeed."
Thinking on it again, he felt sympathy for Lee Han. To be caught by a woman like this.... The old butler could only shake his head at the meticulousness, and the wickedness, of the mistress he served.