He smiled. Not arrogantly. Gently. "Yes. That’s why I keep it." The days passed.
But let me tell you the story beneath that quiet sentence. — the hollow age . That’s what the historians would later call it. Not because nothing happened, but because everything that mattered had been flattened into routine. The Emperor’s face was on every wall, his voice in every announcement at 7 AM and 7 PM. Citizens bowed to screens. Nobody remembered the last time they’d spoken a word that wasn’t pre-approved.
Because living with Jō-sama — arrogant, impossible, beautiful Jō-sama — had taught you the deepest story of all: Sometimes the person who seems hardest to live with is the only one who shows you how to live at all.
And then there was .
You were assigned to live with him. Not by choice — the Housing Harmonization Bureau matched citizens based on “psychological complementarity,” which was bureaucracy for we don’t have enough space, so deal with it .