Deliberations (2)
The possibility that the person I'd assumed was a possessor — or a regressor — was in fact not Ethan himself, but someone else close to him.
As a theory, it was entirely plausible.
Ethan's appearance had changed so dramatically, and most of the altered storylines had unfolded around the Blackwood family, to which Ethan belonged — which was exactly why I hadn't considered the hypothesis at first. But thanks to Ethan's behavior by the lakeside, Gehmajosyegigwat had begun giving this second theory considerable weight.
That there was another possessor, one who had possessed someone other than Ethan, and that this person was intervening in the story from multiple directions — including reshaping Ethan himself as a person.
He had absolutely refused to let go of that unmistakably modern turn of phrase he'd happened to overhear two days prior.
“Dude, you bought this?”
A familiar speech pattern, characteristic of a man in his teens or twenties, one he'd heard plenty of in his previous life.
Had an ordinary academy student let it slip carelessly, he might have brushed it off without much thought. But the reason he suspected anything at all, once again, lay in the person who had uttered it.
It was the sight of someone whose appearance and station made it utterly impossible to believe she would ever use such slang — murmuring it absentmindedly, as if she were someone else entirely wearing her skin.
Lilith Rosewood.
No — for whatever reason, the woman now known as Lilith Blackwood Rosewood, a quasi-baronet's daughter, was the most likely candidate for the second possibility.
“Come to think of it, the circumstantial evidence is the most convincing of all.”
There was the fact that Aria, the prostitute dragged off to Silverwood Territory, had been a villainess who tormented Lilith in the original story.
The fact that Lizzy, who should have exited the stage in the original plot, was not only alive but occasionally acted strangely deferential toward Lilith.
And even the fact that in today's announced student council appointments, Lilith — a mere maid — had been formally granted the administrative affairs post.
Not to the same degree as Ethan, admittedly, but Lilith, too, had been following a trajectory that diverged wildly from the original game in any number of ways.
…And yet, one reason remained why she was the hardest person of all to believe a possessor.
“If Lilith is the possessor, then how in the world did she tame that pig of a young master, Ethan…?”
How, while holding nothing but the status of a common maid, had she evaded Harold's surveillance and turned Ethan into an actual human being?
That was the part that made absolutely no sense through the Hero Gehmajosyegigwat's eyes.
The moment Lilith so much as laid a rough hand on Ethan or hurled a single insult at him, Harold would have punished her.
And if her relationship with Ethan had soured even slightly, she would no doubt have shared Aria's fate as a prostitute in Silverwood Territory.
Reforming Ethan's notoriously troubled personality from childhood without violence or verbal abuse was an even more impossible proposition.
That such methods were useless was already confirmed by the future the original Lilith had endured in the game — for the outcome of the original Lilith accepting Ethan's thoughtless advances one by one, without refusal, was the "foolish maid" Lilith who was violated by him in the original story.
“If I could just figure out how she managed that one part, I think I could accept that Lilith is the possessor…”
He wanted, if possible, to speak with her directly — but Ethan was standing guard, keeping him from approaching Lilith on the grounds that the Hero's relationships with women were notoriously loose.
It seemed he would need a little more time to be certain of the truth.
“…There's still plenty of time.”
The finale of Part Two — the event where Ethan lost his life — fell at the end of the second semester of second year.
If he could confirm, through whatever circumstantial evidence presented itself, how the story was being changed before then, that alone would be enough.
“Once I figure it out before that point somehow, I can judge the rest afterward.”
Whether to recruit Lilith for a textbook playthrough of the original game, or to consider a different kind of clear altogether.
There was more than enough time to defer the decision.
The fencing department's marriage/betrothal dormitory. Ethan and Lilith's room.
Having returned to the dormitory I shared with Ethan for the first time in three days, I was greeted with an enthusiastic welcome by one person and two spirits waiting there for me.
“Liliiiiith~!!!”
The moment Isabel laid eyes on my face for the first time in three days, she came sprinting at me with a commotion worthy of the occasion.
‘Lilith, are you okay?! Are you all better now? You're really recovered, right?’
‘…Lilith, you're not… going to die…?’
And — rather surprisingly — I received an ardent welcome from Sally and Sei, who had apparently been genuinely hoping for my safe return.
“Liliiiiith~!! You almost died again this time~!! Why do you keep doing dangerous things, Liliiiiith~!!!”
“I'm sorry, Isabel. I worried you for nothing.”
“It was not for nothing!!!”
Isabel buried her tear-streaked face into my chest and squeezed me tight.
If anything had happened to me, Isabel would no doubt have been heartbroken in any number of ways.
Especially given her circumstances — she'd followed me all the way to Luminor Academy on the ambiguous standing of being the personal maid's personal maid. If I, the bridge between her and Ethan, had vanished, she would have been well and truly left holding the bag.
Of course, thanks to my improbable survival, every tragedy waiting to befall her and me alike had been cancelled outright.
“…I'll go wash up first. You all take your time catching up.”
“Ah, Young Master Ethan. Your change of clothes—”
“I'll see to them myself, so don't worry about it. Rest well through tomorrow, Lilith.”
-Click.
With those words, Ethan gathered his underclothes and nightshirt and disappeared into the changing room.
Which left me on the receiving end of nearly ten solid minutes of Isabel's worry-laden nagging.
“…So don't do dangerous things, Lilith. Why do you keep running off somewhere and nearly dying when you're supposed to be a fellow personal maid like me?”
“I'm sorry. I have no excuses.”
“…If you go and nearly die doing something dangerous again next time, then I really will cut ties with—”
“…….”
“Ah, no… cutting ties might be a bit much. S-so… I won't talk to you for a week….”
Whether it was because her heart was too soft to actually say she'd cut me off, or because she panicked and downgraded the punishment mid-sentence, worried that I'd pull another stunt no matter what she said —
It was a strangely adorable declaration, but either way, all I could do was bow my head and apologize to her.
She was, after all, the one bond I'd had since before I recovered my past-life memories — the only connection from this life's beginning. A future where my relationship with her grew cold was not one I wanted, either.
‘Lilith. Lilith.’
“Ah, Sally. What is it?”
‘Can we, eat your mana now, Lilith? Or do you need to recover a bit more…?’
‘Me too. Lilith's mana. Want to eat….’
“Oh.”
Now that I thought about it, it had been three days since I'd last fed these two, hadn't it.
Admittedly, our contract didn't require them to subsist solely on my mana. They could maintain the mana essential to their survival just fine from the ambient mana in the atmosphere.
It was simply that if a spirit couldn't regularly feed on its contractor's mana, its affinity stat and growth values would stagnate — which was why a steady supply mattered.
The crisis that had nearly killed me was fully behind me now, and my body had already made a complete recovery yesterday besides, so there was nothing wrong with feeding my two spirits right away.
“As much as you like, Sally, Sei. I haven't properly taken care of you in three days, so help yourselves to your hearts' content.”
‘Jackpot~!!’
‘Okay. Eating well….’
At my answer, their faces brightened, and the two spirits latched onto my right and left hands respectively and began siphoning my mana.
With a high-ranking spirit and an intermediate spirit draining me simultaneously, I could feel the mana flowing out of my body — but for someone who'd shot up from level 12 to 16 in one leap, pushing my maximum mana past three thousand, the drain was comfortably within my reserves.
‘Lilith! Why does your mana concentration feel even richer than before?’
‘And tastier. Mmmm….’
“Well, it might be because I got stronger in the process of taking down the kraken.”
‘At this rate, you'll be ready for a formal contract with me in no time! Hurry up and get strong, fast and hard!’
“It's not as easy as you make it sound, you know. I only won this time because circumstances happened to align perfectly for taking down a kraken. And if I'd made even one real mistake, I would've nearly—”
“Mmmm…,”
“…Well, I didn't. The point is, it was a razor-thin win. I'd rather not do any more life-or-death battles if I can help it.”
“…Whew.”
Honestly, meeting Isabel's worry-filled gaze head-on hurt in a strange way. Especially knowing her reaction didn't come from petulant anger, but from genuine concern for me.
When someone as loyal and kind-hearted as Isabel got angry at me, it was my fault nine times out of ten.
If I'd made my closest friend worry herself sick, then accepting the consequences was the least I could do.
“By the way, now that I think about it — you two were surprisingly well-behaved, Sally, Sei. I fully expected you to come hunting for me the moment I left the room.”
‘You told us to wait quietly, Lilith. We were a little worried, but we waited. We could sort of tell from the other humans' conversations in this room that you'd at least survived.’
‘With a contract, you can tell if someone's dead or not. …It was, a little, scary, when it, went dark, for a moment.’
So contract spirits actually did listen to what their contractors told them, apparently.
Either way, it was a blessing that these two hadn't gone wandering off in search of me.
They could have gotten lost somewhere ridiculous, or — if Sally and Sei had gone after me at the academy church — my recovery might have been delayed by the extra fatigue.
…Still, thinking back on this kraken subjugation, I'd better bring at least one of them along no matter what, from now on.
“Lilith, the bath's free now.”
“Ah, thank you, Young Master Ethan.”
Midway through these reflections, I answered Ethan as he emerged from the bathroom, picked up my nightshirt and underclothes, and headed for the dormitory changing room myself.
After a long-overdue soak in the dormitory's well-appointed bath, I returned — and was immediately confronted with a brand-new problem.
“Lilith, how about we start getting ready for bed? You've got classes in the morning tomorrow — so do I.”
“…….”
“…Lilith?”
“…Ah, yes. Th-that's… right…. Just as you say, Young Master Ethan, we should… turn in soon. Yes….”
The double bed. The bed where Ethan and I slept under the same covers, just the two of us.
The bed I'd drifted off in without a second thought every single day somehow felt unbearably foreign tonight.