The Second Memory
After the wyvern breathed its last, it didn’t take long for magic to start working again.
Loxia closed her eyes, as if she could feel the mana flowing through her body once more. She stayed perfectly still.
“Mana’s back, and magic works just fine now….”
Guess that settles everything.
“Try to live a good life from now on.”
With that thought, I turned to head back up the mountain. The moment I did—
“Wait. You there.”
“Tsk… Weren’t we having a nice, heartwarming farewell?”
I had been casually trying to slip away, but Loxia stopped me in my tracks.
“This test is a survival exam.”
“Yeah.”
“And thanks to you defeating that wyvern, I can use magic again.”
“…Yeah.”
Damn it. Is this a fight?
I placed my hand on the sword at my waist, ready to spin around and block an attack the second things went south.
“…”
“…”
A short but heavy silence stretched between us, the tension thick enough to cut.
“I’ll try to remember.”
“…What?”
An unexpected line came out of her mouth. Remember? Remember what? Was she about to roast me with magic and wanted me to say some last words? Like she’d remember them for me?
“Your name. Ashen. Or… Aseng? Ashon?”
“Ah.”
She was talking about my name. Good thing it wasn’t a last-word situation.
“The first one you said was right.”
“Grilled fish?”
“…You really went there.”
Her thought process was on another level. Was that the kind of brainpower you needed to be top of the department?
“It’s Ashen. Ashen Serdis.”
“Ashen… I’ll remember it.”
“Good. Nobody ever remembers the third place, so do me a favor and remember me, Miss First Place.”
“Okay.”
“…Wait, but if you’re smart enough to be number one, how do you forget a single name?”
I wasn’t being sarcastic—I was genuinely curious—so I asked Loxia directly.
“Other names… aren’t worth remembering.”
“Ah, I see.”
The answer that came back was exactly what you’d expect from the top student. Yeah, why would the greatest mage bother memorizing the names of us lowly commoners?
Everyone remembers the first place. The first place remembers the second place. But apparently she doesn’t even bother with second place.
Still, the fact that she’s remembering my name means I win, right?
I managed to do what even Revia couldn’t. Thinking about it that way put me in a surprisingly good mood.
“Do you have any other names you remember?”
“Me, and my master.”
“Whoa… I get to be in that lineup?”
“Yes. You’re… quite unusual in many ways.”
“I’m honored.”
When she said “unusual,” it felt like she might have meant it in a slightly different way, but I decided to chalk it up to my imagination.
Still, getting added to the short list that only included Loxia herself and her master? That was pretty cool.
“At least you’ve got a conscience. You didn’t immediately attack me even though I saved you.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I figured the second your magic came back, you’d blast me with a spell for the exam. With your level of magic, I wouldn’t have any way to block it.”
“…Ashen, are you an idiot?”
“What.”
Sudden, pure slander.
“Why am I an idiot?”
“A wyvern that nullifies magic appeared during the exam. You killed it. What do you think happens after that?”
“Uh… you thank me?”
“The exam gets suspended and the faculty rushes in.”
“Ah.”
She was right. I really was an idiot. Especially since this was a fantasy academy—now that everything was over, the professors were probably sprinting out here in a panic to secure the students’ safety.
Any minute now, faculty would be showing up on our side too—
-Rustle.
“Ah, looks like they’re here.”
“It’s a student’s mana.”
“Oh… is that so…?”
She could even tell people apart by their mana. As expected of number one.
I can only sense that someone’s there.
Detecting presence through senses sharpened by physical training, and sensing that a person is nearby through mana. Those were the two things I could do. Distinguishing exactly who it was with mana felt like hitting a wall.
I was laughing in disbelief when a student burst out of the bushes, looking extremely tense.
“Ah, it’s you?”
“…You know this kid?”
It was Rui.
She looked incredibly nervous, which worried me, but I figured she’d be fine again soon—
“Huk…! Ah, ugh…”
“…? Hey, hey Rui! What’s wrong?!”
“I-I… ugh, sorry!”
“Rui!”
I thought she’d be okay, but her condition was worse than I expected. Her breathing was ragged, like she could barely get air in, and then she spun around and ran away.
“Ha, shit… Why is she suddenly—”
I was about to chase after Rui immediately when—
“Just let her go.”
“What? Did you not see the state Rui was in just now—”
“Rough breathing, abnormally racing heartbeat, trembling fingertips. I saw all of it.”
“…So you do actually look at people?”
“I look. I just don’t remember. Anyway, that… Lu, Lu…”
“Rui.”
“Ruin was terrified.”
“It’s Rui.”
“Ruru seemed to be terrified of me, but… you were included too.”
“What?”
Rui was terrified when she looked at me?
“That doesn’t make any sense. She’s known me for over ten years.”
“But it’s true. Lupo was trembling in fear at both you and me. So don’t chase after her.”
“What if something happens to her?”
“The faculty should be out in full force searching the forest right now.”
“…That’s true.”
Yeah. Since the incident had just ended, it was unlikely another massive threat would suddenly appear and harm Rui. And… if Loxia was right, maybe me not following her was actually the better choice.
“Sigh… I’ll trust you this once?”
“Smart decision. Let’s wait until Luing calms down.”
“It’s Rui…”
“…I’ve seen too many people run away in fear to bother remembering their names.”
“Ugh.”
The final. The Saintess Loved at the End.
The Saintess Loved at the End.
“Aaaagh…!”
My head was a mess. It felt like forgotten memories were constantly rising up and stabbing into my brain, causing a splitting headache.
The same words kept flashing through my mind, but parts of them were obscured by noise—sometimes I couldn’t see them, sometimes I couldn’t hear them.
One of the strongest forces in the aca@emy, Loxia Astra, was attacked by a wyv$rn that nullifies ma[]ic and fell into a cri&^%cal state.
“Aaaargh!”
Thanks to the desperate battle between the knight department professor who had been patrolling the for##t and the beast, the wy%&@n fled. However, the magic department had lost its top%% force.
What the hell is this memory…
It was a memory that shouldn’t exist. No—it was a memory that had existed but had been lost.
The fragments of those lost memories suddenly floated to the surface.
Why?
Ashen. My longtime friend. No, it wasn’t because of him.
Loxia. Loxia Astra.
Loxia Astra was saved by Ashen.
Loxia Astra was not saved.
There had been a wyvern’s corpse next to Ashen.
After fighting the knight department professor, the wyvern had fled.
Why was Loxia Astra saved?
Or rather, was there any reason she shouldn’t have been?
Amid the whirlwind of disorganized thoughts, Rui kept running. On and on.
As she ran, lost in thought, the scenery before her eyes began to overlap with another scene. It looked exactly like someone had opened a novel right in front of her.
“The final, love, saintess, romance… fantasy…”
Muttering the incomprehensible words appearing before her, Rui gradually picked up speed. Unable to see where she was going—
-Thud!
“Ugh?!”
She slammed straight into a tree.
And at that exact moment.
“Ah, aaaaagh…!”
Along with the pain of the collision, something flashed inside her head.
“Ugh! Uwaaaah…!”
The feeling of knowing something she shouldn’t know. The feeling of having forgotten something she must never forget.
A torrent of memories surged through Rui’s mind, and finally—
“This place… is a RoFan world.”
She uttered a word that no one from this fantasy world should have known.
“The title is The Saintess Loved at the End. It wears the mask of a romance fantasy, but all the main characters are women… so quite a few guys read it too.”
The sky-blue eyes of Rui regained their clarity.
“I am Ashen’s servant, Rui. And….”
A transmigrator.
“Jeong I-yeon.”
She had regained the memories she had lost.
Once she did, the strange physical condition she had been suffering from until now returned to normal.
“Ah… just how painful must it have been.”
The reason Rui had lost her memories was because she had been captured by a black mage in the back alleys and subjected to all kinds of experiments.
Even though she was a transmigrator, she hadn’t received any special perks. Transmigrated into the body of a powerless child, an orphan at that, she had endured every kind of brutal torture with the fragile mind of a modern person.
“Still… I’m glad I got my memories back now, at least.”
Formerly Jeong I-yeon, now Rui.
Having collected herself, she leaned against the tree and went over her memories once more.
She had transmigrated into the RoFan novel The Saintess Loved at the End as the character named Rui. After losing her memories, she had been taken in by Ashen.
She hadn’t realized it until now, but… Ashen was undoubtedly a transmigrator—or perhaps a regressor. He was a character who had never appeared in the original story.
Well, he had appeared once. She remembered seeing the name listed as third place in the magic department.
But the current him?
He was third place across all departments, and unlike the original character who had no particular traits, his current personality went far beyond Power E and straight into full-blown lunatic territory.
There was no telling how many plot points would be twisted because of him.
The future was incredibly uncertain, and she had no idea how the story would unfold.
Yet instead of falling into despair, Rui felt joy.
Many bad things had happened, but now she could hold onto hope.
“…In novels, childhood friend is the icon of defeat, but with this much…”
Rui fumbled at her own chest.
He—no, she—felt the texture of the bandages wrapped around her chest and murmured.
“With the crossdressing heroine trait… maybe there’s a chance after all…?”