The Path You Must Not Take
I could sense Kaspar von Eisenmarck approaching from afar.
He had not come to participate in this charity work.
He had come here today specifically to meet me.
That expression. That gait. Everything was exactly the same as before.
This was not the past.
The timeline was identical to the present.
Then when exactly was the day I remembered from within that memory?
It must have been before he experienced regression.
I stared blankly as the memory resurfaced.
That day, Kaspar appeared before me in a crisp officer’s uniform.
It was a face I had never seen before.
Without a word, he said he had come to help with my charity work and assisted me.
And just as the event was drawing to a close, he requested a private audience.
At first, I was suspicious.
Even if he was an illegitimate child, he was still a member of the Eisenmarck family.
At the same time, because he was illegitimate, I thought he would surely despise Heinrich—the Northern Grand Duke and usurper.
The moment our private meeting began, he spoke.
I answered calmly.
He truly hated the man named Heinrich von Eisenmarck.
Perhaps even more than I did.
Because he was a bastard, he could never become a true member of the Eisenmarck family.
Because he was a bastard, he had been dragged to the battlefield at the tender age of nine and had survived there for twelve years.
And just before he could reach the rank of Sword Master, Heinrich had him forcibly discharged. The reason was that if he became a Sword Master, even without Heinrich, the other noble houses would have no choice but to acknowledge him.
So he wished to become my blade.
With that blade, he would kill Heinrich.
I accepted his resolve and used him as my sword.
Three years later, we succeeded in killing Heinrich.
Kaspar immediately dethroned the puppet king and placed me upon the throne.
We fell in love.
I soon married him.
I thought that was the end of it all.
I thought everything would go well from then on.
But three years after Heinrich’s death, the Nicator Kingdom could not withstand the Empire’s invasion and fell into ruin.
……Yet even then, Kaspar’s life did not end.
His existence continued onward.
Even in death, he regressed.
Back to the day he returned from the Argea Front to the capital.
In that first regression, he once again became my blade.
Because I could not remember his regression.
And in Kaspar’s first regression, he betrayed me.
With those words, he betrayed me, protected Heinrich, and eventually lost his life at my hands.
I could not understand it.
And the shock I felt when I later accepted his memories was just as immense.
How on earth had he endured thirteen regressions?
No one acknowledged him.
Everyone poured hatred upon him and refused to believe a single word he said.
And among those people was me—Adelheid von Nicator.
Today as well, he waited until the charity event was nearly over.
He requested a private audience with me.
I already knew, naturally, what words he would utter first.
Those words were—
I knelt on one knee, glared at Princess Adelheid, and asked.
At my question, the princess made an expression that looked troubled.
Why?
She should clearly despise Heinrich, the man who murdered her father.
The princess answered with an expression I could not read.
She continued slowly.
I answered immediately.
Just as I was about to speak the words I had prepared, the princess raised her hand.
The completely unexpected answer left my mind blank for a moment.
I quickly regained my senses and asked again.
The princess’s own lips turned pale as she spoke those words.
Her incomprehensible statement left my mind reeling.
No, this would completely ruin the plan.
With a sorrowful expression, the princess looked down at me and continued.
Wondering if this was some kind of test, I drew the dagger from my chest and sliced my thumb.
Blood began to flow from the cut.
Startled by my action, the princess tore a strip from the hem of her dress.
She wrapped the torn fabric around my bleeding thumb.
It wasn’t even a test.
Then why was Princess Adelheid rejecting my proposal?
The princess gazed at my thumb and shed tears.
Her face looked as if the sky itself were collapsing.
There it was again.
She was saying something strange again.
Both Adelheid and Elfriede were acting oddly.
They were clearly seeing me for the first time, so how could they know anything about me?
Was there another version of me somewhere in this world that even I myself did not know about?
I could not understand.
So I stood up.
I threw away the strip of dress she had wrapped around my wound and staggered away, still bleeding.
The princess did not try to stop me, nor did she call out.
She simply stood there and watched me leave.
I did not look back.
If I did, I feared I would see that same expression on her face—the one that looked as if the sky were collapsing.
For some reason, I did not want to see that expression.
The moment I returned home, I poured liquor down my throat.
I thought it would go down easily.
But it didn’t.
I kept recalling Princess Adelheid’s words.
What could that possibly mean?
If a single dictator’s death was enough to destroy a country, shouldn’t it have collapsed long ago?
“Fuck. Fuck.”
The more I drank, the less the cut on my thumb showed any sign of stopping.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I didn’t know.
Since I didn’t know, I decided to just keep drinking.
“Kaspar!”
Just as the alcohol was starting to take effect, Hans showed up.
He was holding a bottle in one hand, so it seemed he had come to drink with me.
Hans walked over, saw my thumb, and shouted.
“Hey, what the hell is that blood? How did you get hurt?”
“Tried to write a blood oath and failed.”
“What?”
“I told the princess we should kill that bastard Heinrich together, and she shot me down immediately.”
“……Do you seriously want your head on a pike in the Royal Plaza the day after you were discharged?”
He stepped outside for a moment, then returned and applied ointment to my wound before wrapping it tightly with a bandage.
He looked at me with worry in his eyes.
“Kaspar.”
“……What.”
“You know you’re not in your right mind right now, yeah?”
“……Yeah.”
I answered and took another swig.
Tears began to spill.
“Fuck… what the hell am I supposed to do with my life then……”
“What the hell happened?”
Right. If it was Hans, I could tell him everything.
“Looks like I forgot something. But I have no idea what it is.”
“You forgot something? You’ve been living on the battlefield since you were a kid.”
“Exactly, fuck! But you were at the ball too. You heard what the princess said.”
“That’s true… Her Highness did say some weird shit.”
“Right?”
Hans patted my shoulder a few times, trying to comfort me.
Then he popped the cork off his bottle and clinked it against mine.
“Cheers.”
He took a long drink himself.
After swallowing, Hans spoke.
“If it’s a memory problem, I know a good alchemist.”
“Alchemist? Not a mage?”
“Yeah. Apparently alchemy’s better than magic for that kind of thing.”
“Come on, isn’t that just a quack?”
“It’s not.”
He thought for a moment, then answered.
“Her name’s Luise Senne. I heard it from my parents. She’s a doctor and alchemist who’s unbelievably good at fixing mental or memory-related issues.”
“Definitely a quack.”
“She treats traumatized soldiers from the front lines for free.”
“……Is she an angel?”
“That’s why I brought it up.”
Hans clinked his bottle against mine again.
“Anyway, I’ll ask my parents for the address tomorrow, so let’s call it a night on the drinking for today.”
“Thanks a lot, Hans.”
“No problem.”
And so I stopped drinking once I reached a moderate buzz.
If there really was something wrong with my memory, I just had to find out what it was.
Then I would know what the problem was.
I decided to focus only on that.
The next day.
When I went to the address Hans had given me, I found a small alchemy workshop with a modest sign hanging outside.
“Is anyone here?”
“Yes, yes! I’ll be right out!”
I waited in front of the door, and soon it opened. A small girl wearing a pointed hat appeared.
The moment the girl saw me, she gasped in shock and uttered my name.
“Hup! Kaspar…!!”
“……Do you know me?”
It seemed I had come to the wrong place.