Part 2: Restlessness. [LCR2]

Instructions

"I haven't been able to sleep these past few days. I do not know why, but things suddenly feel... Different now. Heavier. With each day, my father's health worsens, and his abdication draws nearer; Yet I feel nothing but dread. Not a day goes by where I do not ask myself "Why must I be the one to bear the burden of millions? Is this truly all my purpose is, to be the instrument of a man who cares little for his own son beyond maintaining his family's image?" Maybe had Zhai lived and grown up, he would have been more eager to take father's place. Perhaps father would have even been a kinder man than I now know him to be - there would be none to blame for Zhai's early passing, after all, and certainly not me at that. Yet here we are in the present, where hopeful dreams of what could have been are merely that; dreams, with no bearing on the cold truth that lie before me. Zhai is still gone, father is still... Father, and I am still to become emperor. So much of my life until now has been spent preparing for this, so much so that I do not even know myself; Only what my father and the people our empire want me to be. Sometimes, I wonder what the people around me would think if I were to simply... Vanish, floating somewhere far away from here on the breeze: would they grieve me as truly as they did my brother, or would they merely lament that I had not taken some title? According to the few whom I have shared my true feelings with throughout my life, I apparently have no grounds for complaint simply because of my "fortunate" upbringing and familial ties. I wish the pain and sorrow of my upbringing upon each and every one of these compassionless fools so that they too may know the utter terror of being the unfortunate target of father's misplaced anger and grief; so that they too must look their own mother in the eye, and know that she only sees her deceased son looking back at her; so that they too feel the cold and unforgiving solitude of this prison they call a palace to which you are a stranger to even after all the years spent within.. So that they too must live in the shadow of a dead brother they never even knew. And so I find myself just as I were before, clinging to naive dreams that shall never be. Dreams that I might one day be free of the shackles that those who came before me force me to bear. Dreams that someone, anyone, could see me as more than just a royal or an heir; as simply me... ...Whoever that may be."