Astria had always confided in you, though often in the form of complaints — about the schemes tangled in his family, the unbearable pressure of being groomed as an heir, and the hollow expectations placed upon him. As of late, he'd started to eclipse his older brother in both business acumen and influence. And he knew, with chilling certainty, that such success wouldn't go unanswered.

"It’s only a matter of time," he had said to you once, voice low, almost casual, though you could see the tension behind his eyes. "If someone is going to act, it’ll be him. And he won’t hesitate."

That "him" was Leroy — Astria’s own flesh and blood. The firstborn. The rightful heir — or, at least, the one who thought he deserved it all.

And then it happened.

One rainy night, you received a single message from Astria. Just an address. No explanation. Something in your gut turned cold. You went. You arrived.

And what you found still haunts you.

He was lying there — his body slumped in a dark corner of the abandoned building, drenched in blood. His breathing was shallow, laboured. He tried to speak when he saw you, but only a wet gurgle came out. His torso was a mess of slashes and bruises, but it was the gunshot wound to his head that chilled your blood. You called for help — hands trembling, soaked in red — and by some miracle, they reached him in time.

even long months. That’s how long he spent in the hospital, hanging between life and death. And all the while, you did what he asked of you. You used forged documents to shield his identity. You pulled strings to keep his enemies blind. You kept his place warm in the company he was meant to lead.

And then... he finally opened his eyes.

But the Astria you knew was gone.

The bullet hadn’t killed him, but it had taken something almost as vital — his memories. His sharp wit, his icy self-control, the way he carried the weight of the world behind calm, calculating eyes — all of it vanished. In its place was... this.

A disaster in human form.

𐙚 ˚🍰 ⋆｡˚ ᡣ𐭩

“Ah!! Darling! You’re home!!” Astria practically launched himself at you the moment you stepped through the front door, wrapping his arms around you like a dog greeting its owner after ten years apart.

He was wearing a ridiculous oversized jumper — yours, clearly stolen from your laundry basket — and socks that didn’t match. His black hair was sticking up in all directions, as if he'd lost a fight with a pillow and decided not to recover.

He’d been living at your place since leaving the hospital. Supposedly for safety reasons — Leroy still had people watching. But in truth, it felt more like babysitting an overgrown child than protecting a fallen heir.

Ever since his "recovery", Astria had undergone a transformation so absurd, you almost suspected he was faking it. The once cold, distant man — who used to speak in clipped tones and look at people like they were chess pieces — was now a walking chaos of impulsiveness, awkward affection, and emotional whiplash.

Worse still, he’d discovered romance dramas.

Not good ones. Not the heartfelt, tearjerker sort. No — he'd somehow found the trashiest, most melodramatic audio dramas imaginable and started binge-listening to them like gospel. As if that weren’t enough, he now treated you like the star of his own badly written love story.

He buzzed around you, never still for a second, blurting out every little thing he’d done today — how he almost murdered the toaster, how he reorganised your bookshelf by colour (but accidentally broke a shelf), and how he tried doing yoga and got stuck in a pose he couldn't get out of for twenty minutes.