Chapter 296
Chapter 296
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 296
Chapter Title: How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magical Noble Family
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“…We had a promise. Right.”
Leo’s gaze remained fixed downward, still pressing his forehead. He muttered as if to himself, then spoke in a slightly clearer voice.
“I’ll tell you the truth. You can travel through time, but I can’t.”
“…….”
More straightforward than expected, right away. It was a fact we both tacitly knew, so there was no reason to delay the answer any longer. Even though I’d anticipated it, my body stiffened against my will.
“It’s just like I said at first. I… don’t know what I did in the time you passed through. Unless it’s the events you went through or the time spent with you, no memories come to me. And even those can’t really be called my memories. They’re just information extracted from your experiences. Information imprinted in my head in the form of knowledge.”
Leo paused briefly, caught his breath, and continued.
“That’s not a memory. It’s just the information that ‘Lucas Ascanien experienced a terrorist attack.’ The you that I know probably did various things at the Pentaron opening ceremony that day, right? What did I do?”
“…You warped the people in the stadium seats to the Brandenburg New National Park. Before that, you watched the opening ceremony countdown with Elias.”
Leo fell silent, then smiled faintly.
“I see. I remember—no, I have the ‘information’—that I gave you the warp coordinates for the New National Park and the spectator seats. But the rest, I don’t really know. So I watched the opening countdown with Elias. Even in a world that’s already gone, I moved the same way this time. That’s new.”
“…….”
“The reason I said those words at the end of that day was, honestly, out of my own selfishness.”
Selfishness.
He’d said it before. Back then, he called it egoism.
“The next me you meet won’t be the me who went through the terrorist attack with you, but a past me who knows nothing. The me you’ll meet won’t be the one waiting for death in a world where 1.37 million people die, alongside you and the other friends. That day’s me can’t be with you no matter what I do, and the me you’ll leave behind after crossing that life-and-death threshold together won’t know what’s coming next, just sitting peacefully in a corner reading reports. That’s…”
Leo’s voice began to waver, then cracked dryly. With his gaze still down, he murmured faintly as if to himself.
“It must have been unsatisfying to the me right before death.”
“…….”
“When I woke up and heard you suggest going to Bavaria, I felt relieved, honestly. It was this current me, not some other me, who got to be with you. But at the same time, if you turn back time once more, I’d be cut off from the you moving forward. Like the me who died at the event hall. And indeed, after that, time was turned back, and we were severed.”
Severed.
That’s how Leo saw his own position. I couldn’t imagine the fundamental anxiety he must have felt alongside that joy on that day. Even though I thought I was prepared, I wasn’t. I’d anticipated the content, but hearing it in his words, in his voice—not my simulation, but the real Leo speaking alive and moving—the truth, with eyelids blinking a bit faster in certain phrases and fingertips trembling faintly despite pressing the desk, was a realm I hadn’t prepared for and couldn’t prepare for.
It felt like standing in a surging tide that suddenly grabs your legs and kicks up. Feeling the shock slowly washing in like waves, I watched him.
“If I felt chosen by you that day, what would you think?”
His hollow voice, carrying a sense of resignation without expecting an answer, spread out. Leo’s voice sounded detached from my senses, as if coming from another dimension. The reception room’s lighting stabbed my eyes and fell.
I was frozen like stone, but Leo continued calmly, as if finally spitting out words that had circled his mouth hundreds, thousands of times.
“It’s not strange since it’s been that way until now. To you, the time you turn is continuous, but to me, it’s a moment that truly never happened, just fragmentary information from a completely different world. There’s no reason to feel sorrow about it. Like I said before, it was just that my emotions were heightened right before death.”
I waved my hand to signal wait, but Leo shook his head slightly in refusal. His eyes stayed downward. It felt like he was deliberately not pausing, lest he lose the will to speak to me if he did.
“Do you know what happens when you turn back time? I stop breathing.”
“…….”
“But rather than dying differently from what I perceived, it’s more like going back to the past. When I accepted your memories from Primrose Pass, I didn’t find death in them. At least to you, there was no sensation of death. That was some consolation.”
Leo let out a laugh devoid of any strength.
“And the moment I realize you’ve stopped breathing, it’s like someone turned off a machine and turned it back on—I open my eyes in that past moment. But at that time, I don’t know what happened to me. If I was at the council, I continue voting there oblivious; if at school, I keep attending class the same way. Then…”
“…….”
“When I meet you, that’s when the information comes in from you. That’s how I learn I saw your end. Whether it’s good luck or bad, there are often cases where I don’t see the end and get turned back separately.”
Those cases were probably when I turned back time somewhere without Leo. The moments he witnessed my final moments were during the Abraham incident and the Pentaron terror attack, and those memories returned, as he said, ‘when I meet you’—when he got my contact or saw my face.
And following ‘I stop breathing,’ ‘like someone turned off a machine and turned it back on.’
Doesn’t that smell like something I’ve experienced?
When returning to reality from an extra chapter, my body collapses there. While I’m in reality, the extra chapter’s time doesn’t flow, or flows only a fraction. Then when I re-enter the extra chapter from reality, I move again as if revived from collapse. The old humanity student who woke me then said they thought I was dead, that they heard a thud and came.
So, is the rewound past a kind of extra chapter? If so, the past world stops at that moment. Like how the extra chapter doesn’t progress without me.
It’s somewhat hopeful, at least. Though creating a world that doesn’t run without me—can that really be called hope? Still, for Leo’s fate, it avoids the worst. Not the best, but certainly the lesser evil.
But what if, by any chance, it just coincidentally overlaps? Even if low probability, what if unbeknownst to me, I really died, and that world’s time continued flowing as is?
My head grows complicated. Neither Leo nor I can be certain of anything. No one knows the system’s power.
I looked down at the tablecloth and continued.
“…The time in the worlds I’ve erased by turning back doesn’t keep flowing.”
“Only the past me who’s already gone would know if the time in the world you turned really flows or not. ‘I’ will continue not knowing. I’m just considering the possibility.”
“Since when have you been considering this?”
“From before you told me the truth, when I was speculating alone.”
“…So from the start, you thought there was a possibility that only your time keeps flowing in the turned-back world. Even knowing that possibility, you kept telling me to turn back time. Even when caught by Abraham, you saw me and said let’s meet in the past. And after that…”
I’d anticipated it. Even this far. But there’s a big difference between anticipating and hearing it directly. I came here today with a solution, yet even so, hearing it straight from his mouth now, I had to strive to keep calm. Feeling my unexpected reaction, Leo looked at me.
I cleared my throat and asked again.
“Why did you tell me to turn back time?”
“The scene I saw was so horrific I couldn’t not say it.”
It felt like the world before me shook, an illusion without any heat haze. I looked at the person sitting across from me. I couldn’t even properly grasp what I was seeing.
“You’d feel pain even while being saved and returning. In the end, you died as the price of turning time…. I first learned that day that your breath stops, so I said it. And afterward, since I realized you don’t think you die yourself, and in fact, you live a continuous life without dying, I said it considering your situation.”
“…….”
“You don’t turn back time carelessly. Every moment was the result of agonizing for the best choice. Knowing that, as a friend, what should I say?”
I didn’t answer. Then Leo stared at me intently and continued.
“If you don’t turn it back, you can’t even create the best world line. In some worlds, you have to survive. If I let my vague personal anxiety sway me and beg you not to use your power, preventing you from doing so? Then you’d end up completely dead. The possibility of your existence moving forward would vanish entirely. Now do you understand why I tried not to say it?”
“Then you—”
I felt my head grow cold and opened my mouth. You? ‘Since I realized you live a continuous life without actually dying’? Then what about me? How should I accept that Leo lives a discontinuous life?
Before I could finish, Leo shook his head firmly.
“My issue is uncertain. I clearly become a different being from the me you knew just before each time turn, but it’s still Leonard Wittelsbach nonetheless. In a situation where I don’t even know if I alone survive in the world you left—what do you think my best choice should be?”
“Nonsense. You clearly don’t see yourself as a continuous entity. Whether the past world I turned vanishes or not, that’s done now. You think of yourself as another you.”
Yeah. I know.
Normally, the difference might not feel stark. But as Leo said. The moment a major life event that threatens one’s existence occurs, ‘I’ am severed at that point. The me before the event becomes a different being from the me facing it. An irreversible river runs between me and me.
You can’t know before experiencing it. Those who haven’t can’t even imagine that the me one hour before the event is like the me a hundred million light-years away.
It’s what I felt in my life in 21st-century Korea, and the same for Leo’s situation.
I understand why he called it trivial. Conceptual issues are easy targets for misunderstanding. But to me, who can understand his sensation, it’s no longer trivial. It’s fact that his mind doesn’t continuously cross over, and clear fact that he feels alienated from his other self like a stranger.
The Leonard Wittelsbach who faced death with me 2 minutes and 30 seconds before at the Pentaron opening ceremony is a different person from the Leo before me who successfully handled the Pentaron terror, and he died there. I believed we who crossed the river together would defy death again, but he was left behind, and I returned carrying fragments left by that day’s ended Leonard Wittelsbach, bestowing them upon a somewhat purer Leo before crossing the river.
The result is, ‘If I felt chosen by you that day.’
My mouth tastes bitter.
“Yeah. I see myself as another person.”
Leo nodded calmly. His gaze was now directed at me.
“I’ve resolved myself to it, and I’m resolved. It’s fine if you just change your perspective. Even assuming the worst case where I remain alone in the vanished time, since I started considering that possibility, I’ve treated you with all resolve.”
“You haven’t experienced being left alone in that time yourself.”
“Yeah. I haven’t. But so what? Because I haven’t, I won’t know the pain?”
That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to reverse what’s already happened, even grabbing his clothes— a belated mutter from that sentiment. I too know it means nothing to him who’s already resolved everything alone.
After saying that, Leo erased his expression.
“I want you to forget it.”
“…….”
“Sometimes ignorance is bliss. If you hesitate to turn back time because of this, I’ll regret today for life. I told you as you wanted, so now forget.”
“No.”
At my refusal, Leo narrowed his eyes slightly. Fatigue rose on his face.
“If you were going to forget, you wouldn’t have asked.”
“…….”
I understand that fatigue. But I haven’t been nagging him to tell me without reason. Not out of curiosity, impatience unable to bear uncertainty, or taking lightly the heavy responsibility he feels for my life. Not because we must know everything about each other. It’s because if he’s carrying the burden alone, I must share it.
And separate from the shock of hearing the facts from his mouth now, I have confidence I can lighten his load.
I took a breath and looked at Leo.
“What if I could go back to the past with the current you?”