hiii could you please spoil me from this point until the end of the novel?
It's been a while since I've read the novel, so you might be better off checking the spoiler posted here few comments back. But to spoil it as briefly as possible, basically the mc saved the emperor before the poison killed him. Mc stayed with raonhiljo at a village outside the kingdom but he went back to sleepwalking which was so chronic that at one point he had to nail his doors shut so that he wouldn't roam arround the village at night. Raonhiljo asked him if he should "let him go" and the mc said yes. Before leaving, mc accepted a name from raonhiljo which was only engraved to one of his eyes, probably due to his nature as half-imae. That was basically the end of the storyline between MC and raonhiljo. MC went back to his house at the imae village, he reunited with the emperor but they didn't really get back together instantly, there's a brief courting period in the village before mc agreed to come back to the palace. They work out their relationhip from there on. Mc found out the name that the emperor was "thinking of" and used that as his artist name.
So yeah, he did end up with the Emperor, he was always meant to end up with him. Their relationship had more depth in the novel, I just wish that was reflected in the manhwa.
I know it's not my place to complain since I'm not paying for this, but I can't help but feel frustrated with this adaptation. It started off so well, and the art is stunning, but at some point it just fell off. A lot of the nuances in the novel weren't portrayed in the adaptation, and the pacing is so fast leaving no room to actually feel the development of the MC and ML's relationship. Maybe if I didn't read the novel I wouldn't be cursed with such disappointment.