rose.
rose.
I followed the woman and crossed the corridor of the Rose Palace. If the dragon princess had called me to the rose garden, there was something I had lightly explained a few words to Hilden on the way there.
Did you say that it is one of the most famous places in the imperial palace? He briefly added that if the dinner is over and you have time to spare, tell Princess Rusona to take a look and you will never regret it.
Take a peek first, and if it’s okay, ask everyone to go take a look.
“You can sit here and wait.”
While looking around the Rose Palace, I admired that this and that looked very expensive, and in a moment I arrived at the Rose Garden.
Contrary to the expectation that only red flowers would be full, roses of all colors were in full bloom in the garden. Even though it may not be the season for roses to bloom yet.
Among them, the one that caught my eye was the path of the flower garden made of black roses. It was somehow ominous, yet very beautiful.
I sat down on the chair the lady pulled. The woman who guided me left without a word, just as she had appeared. It’s been a while since I’ve been sitting in the flower garden and smelling the faint scent of flowers.
square square.
No one came to the garden except for the gardener who was tending the trees growing in the garden some distance away.
It’s a little late. Well, Rusona seemed to be very fond of my comrades. Among them, he seemed to like Dacia in particular.
As siblings, do you have similar tastes in appearance?
While staring blankly at the garden, the gardener’s eyes met. The crackling sound soon ceased. After stopping the scissors, he slowly approached me, wiping the sweat from the cloth wrapped around his neck.
Wrinkles all over the face. A good-looking smile. Looking at his old, tattered overalls, he could roughly guess how long he had been doing this. He has probably been cultivating this place for dozens of seasons.
The old gardener bowed his head at me.
“Did you call?”
It seems that he misunderstood that I had called him because he had been absent-minded from earlier and had often made eye contact.
“Oh sorry. It wasn’t that I was looking at it because I had a business. I was just admiring the beautiful flower garden in a daze. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
The old gardener blinked his wrinkled eyes with a slightly puzzled face. Apparently, he never expected that such a polite apology would come from me.
I’m sorry to let him go like this, who was sweating profusely from work. Fortunately, the tea was lukewarm enough to drink.
“How about having a drink while you’re here?”
“How dare I…”
Waiting for the dragon princess to come was getting boring. I smiled and pointed to one of the empty chairs.
“I would appreciate it if you could sit down and talk to me for a moment. This is my first time visiting the Rose Palace, so there are many things I want to ask.”
“I can’t help it, since you’re suggesting that.”
The old gardener meticulously wiped away sweat with the cloth draped around his neck, then carefully sat down and took a sip of the tea. A bright smile spread over his wrinkled face, making even the viewer happy. I filled the empty glass with tea again as he drank it without saying anything.
The old gardener bowed his head and thanked me.
“As expected, a drink to drink after sweating profusely is really good. By the way… are you a noble from another country?”
It seemed that there was a slight misunderstanding because he had left the priestly robe he had always worn in his room and was wearing the formal robe that Lesona had prepared for him.
“no. I am just a priest invited here with the favor of Princess Rusona. So feel free to talk.”
He smiled, uncharacteristically lively, and shook his head.
“Ah, you are indeed a priest. I knew you would. The nobles who visit this place do not recommend that I sit down and drink tea like this.”
Like that, the gardener took another sip and silently admired the flower garden where roses of all colors were in full bloom.
“Isn’t it really beautiful, priest? Even though I come to work every time, I always exclaim in admiration at the beauty of the colored roses.”
As he said, it was the first time he came to this world to see a well-organized flower garden on such a large scale. The other gardeners were not particularly visible, so perhaps the old gardener alone had devoted his years to tending the garden.
“You’ve done really well.”
“ha ha ha! I praised the beautiful garden, but the priest praises my efforts. I really don’t know what to do.”
“It’s a beautiful flower garden. Anyone can praise it, so wouldn’t it be right for me to praise the gardener’s hard work like this?”
“Your words are so sweet. Every word from the priest is like the nectar of a flower.”
He turned his head toward the garden with a smile still on his lips.
“You know what?”
“which…?”
“I sometimes think about this whenever I prune those roses for the beauty of the garden. I wonder what the roses will think when they see me cutting off their own flesh.”
The smile disappeared before I knew it, and only the dark eyes remained.
“In fact, for roses, the beauty that humans feel is meaningless, isn’t it? If you look at the world through the eyes of a rose, I will be seen as a being committing an irresistible tyranny based on an incomprehensible providence.”
The topic was heavy. I thought I was doing well until just a moment ago, but why are you doing this all of a sudden?
“But as you said, if this place were nature, so many roses would not have survived. Those roses must have been able to bloom such beautiful flowers to the fullest because the gardener has been diligently applying fertilizer and caring for them.”
“Did the roses wish for that unwanted favor?”
Why are you doing this to me? The old gardener’s eyes, looking at the garden, became heavy and he looked at me clearly.
“You are asking a very difficult question to answer.”
“Priest.”
Even though I told him that he was in trouble, he still stared at me. The empty old man disappeared somewhere, and in that place a strange sense of weight pressed me down.
“If the priest were a rose in the garden and could poke a gardener who pampers himself with a thorn from his body.”
Jagged wrinkles. low voice. sunken eyes. None of that was from the average gardener. A subdued voice pierced my ears.
“Will you, priest, hold that thorn high and stab that lofty gardener?”
“If I stab you, what will change? Rather, the stabbed gardener will become enraged and snip off my blossoms.”
The strange squeezing was gone. A smile spread across the old man’s lips.
“To stab. Wouldn’t that act itself be meaningful? The choice you dare to become a gardener must be the result of your own choice without a single doubt.”
“Some gardeners cherish flowers out of pure good will.”
“The truly beautiful flowers are not the flowers that grow beautifully in a garden like this, but the wild flowers that you come across while walking on the roadside. Wildflowers that have endured adversity and hardship on their own without gardeners and have grown strong.”
The old man got up slowly. He pulled out a small pouch from his old overalls and handed it to me.
“Do not open it now, but open it when you return to the place you think is home after dinner here today. It probably contains what you were hoping to find here.”
As expected, this old man…
took the pouch and put it on his chest. I looked up at the old gardener and asked.
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
The old gardener replied with a friendly smile.
“I have already answered you undeservedly.”
“What will you do if I say I’m still lacking?”
“The answer is always to find out for yourself. A young and capable priest. And if I give you my answer, I don’t know if you’ll like it.”
“I may not move as you wish.”
“Then I will gladly accept that as well. Then I’ll be gone. Did you come out for a while? You too should go back.”
The old man trudged away so uncharacteristically across the garden. I leaned on his back and asked the last question.
“Can I ask you one more question?”
The upright old man smiled benevolently and shook his head.
“Priest of evil spirits, I will not permit you to ask any more questions.”
After those words, the old man left me and left for the Imperial Palace, which soared high beyond the Rose Palace.
***
As I was walking down the hallway to my assigned room, I bumped into the owner of this place.
“Where have you been? I sent someone to call you, but all I heard was that you were not in the room I had assigned you.”
Two narrow eyes. The dragon princess bruised me with an infinitely light voice without any heaviness.
“Didn’t Princess Rusona send someone to tell me to go to the flower garden? So, I was waiting for Princess Rusona at the flower garden.”
“I? you? If I had something to say with you alone, wouldn’t I have gone to you instead of sending someone? As it always has been.”
And I see. Two golden eyes twinkle. The dragon princess huffed and cleared her voice.
“Besides, even if I had sent someone, I wouldn’t have called you to the flower garden. The flower garden of the Rose Palace is not a very good place to relax or have a chat.”
“Why?”
Rusona shrugged and spoke to me with a small grumble.
“There, the emperor of this country sometimes visits and takes care of the garden with his own hands. If it’s a secret, it’s a secret, so everyone keeps quiet.”
After all, that old man was the emperor of the Northern Empire. So, what he means by tall gardeners and roses…
Two large eyes quickly scanned my face. Soon she came up with an answer of her own. It wasn’t a difficult answer, since very few people in the Rose Palace could use someone without her knowledge.
“As expected, did you have an audience with the emperor of this country?”
“I guess so.”
“Can you tell me what you were talking about?”
“I don’t know for sure because we didn’t exchange a few words to say we had a conversation, but one thing is certain.”
“What is it?”
Yes, only one thing was certain. The old emperor never hid his feelings in front of me.
I opened my mouth heavily.
“The emperor of this country detests the gods of the high heavens.”
***
“Come back whenever you’re hungry. I will treat you to a meal of my own at any time.”
“Really?”
“Really really!”
“Wow!!!!”
After the sumptuous dinner, everyone, led by Jamel with sparkling eyes, chatted with Rusona and said their last goodbyes before leaving.
Taking advantage of that opportunity, I slightly opened the pouch I received from the emperor to check what was inside.
What was in the pocket was as expected.
The last shard of the three-piece key I was looking for gleamed silver in the little pouch.
With this, the key to the place where the vessel of the god is located came into my hands intact.
So much easier than expected.
