I Won’t Accept Your Regrets

The place of our first meeting was in a field overgrown with weeds, which did not fit well with the surroundings of the colorful imperial palace.

This was my first time visiting the Imperial Palace.
I first met Raymond when I got lost in the labyrinths of the imperial garden as a child of ten.

I squatted and whimpered.
I wanted my dad to come and save me as soon as possible.

And then someone suddenly took my hand.

“Are you lost? Don’t cry, get up, hold my hand.”

When I raised my head, a black-haired guy with a bruise on his cheek was staring at me.

It was Raymond.

Oddly enough, the moment I looked into Raymond’s jet-black eyes, I stopped crying.

When I stood up, holding his hand, it seemed to me that the huge palace was no longer so terrible.

His thin body and bruises on his cheeks were worth seeing.

From that moment on, Raymond, my hero, sank deep into my heart.

Fate itself told me to fall in love with Raymond.

He took my heart before I even had time to recover.

From that day on, I thought about him constantly.
When it came time to debut, I followed my father to the imperial palace and there I met Raymond.

At that time my father was a count who worked at the court and often visited the palace.

I could easily have come with my father on the pretext that I was too bored in our estate.

My father cared very much about me.

In my attempts to meet Raymond, I went so far as to fully study the maze map.
So I met him one sunny day, and we began to see each other from time to time.

Every day I found him in the place where we first met.

But one day Raymond didn’t show up.
I waited for him until the last, and when the sky was already obscured by the sunset, I went in search.

After long wanderings around the palace, I came to the oldest part of it, a small house on the outskirts.

The building was so small that I thought it didn’t belong to the palace at all.
After all, the main part of the palace was covered with shining gold, and this building was overgrown with moss and vines.

“A prince born of a commoner.
Shame.
Why doesn’t your father even know what treasures are kept in this palace?”

The guy who was about a meter taller than Raymond spat to the side and punched him hard on the cheek.

Raymond didn’t respond.

“What a shame that this empire has such a worthless prince.
Live as if you are already dead.”

Raymond just bowed his head.

At that moment, I bit my lip hard, but there was nothing I could do about it.

The black-haired boy who bullied Raymond was none other than Prince Astor, Crown Prince of the Agrita Empire.

I studied the portraits of the imperial family, from the moment I learned to speak, so I could not help but recognize his face.

After a while, when the prince left this old place, I held my breath when I saw Raymond with his head bowed.

My naive heart ached so much because of this sight.

My sobs escaped, and then Raymond noticed me.

“Don’t Cry.
Everything is fine”.

Raymond, with bruises on his cheeks, just like the day he first saw me, smiled calmly at me.

I cried in his arms, because I felt sorry for him, and he could not even shed tears.

He doesn’t even know what it’s like to be a child.

* * *

It was my sixteenth winter when I realized that I love him.

On the day that even the weeds were frozen, Raymond smiled at me for the first time with a quivering smile.

“I met a very beautiful woman.
I think about her every day.
She’s so…”

My heart pounded in my chest, but I smiled at Raymond.

I wished him happiness.

Since then, he talked a lot about her.

What is happening to her, what she talked to him about, and how hard his heart beats at the sight of her smile.

I knew him for a long time, but for the first time he was so happy.

But ironically, the more he rejoiced, the more sad I became.

It was too late when I realized that the reason I was upset was because I loved him.

I realized that I love him, but I could not admit it to him, because he was already staring at someone else.

It was the day of the ball at the Imperial Palace, the day marking the beginning of spring.

On a warm spring day, when e