The Old Elden Is Gone
Thud.
The moment after the slap landed, the heroine crumpled to the floor.
She cradled a face steeped in despair, hands pressed over features still reeling from the shock of violence. She had sunk down exactly the way Erincia once had, back in their Royal Academy days.
How in the world had things come to this?
All the transmigrator who had suddenly become a Hupijip character had wanted was to leave in search of rest and romance. All he had wanted was to dodge the Hupijip route entirely. So why did the heroine have to sink to her knees and let out that broken sigh because of him? Why did he have to feel this ugly, mistaken sense that he himself had led her into despair? Why, over one single bystander he could not abandon, was he wrecking every single situation around him?
He could not understand it. He could not accept it.
In the original work she had been depicted as a character of keen insight, cool judgment, and rational thought—someone who saw every free chapter through to the end, who guided and controlled every situation with perfect grace. And yet here they were.
He rubbed his stinging cheek. After the countless slaps he had taken in his previous life, the sensation barely registered.
Truly absurd. Truly ironic. And truly unfair and uncomfortable, too.
He felt exactly like that guy from the American drama Lost, bouncing around a vast prairie and screaming at the sky:
“Nobody understands me!”
“I just wanna live even once!”
“Why can’t this Lee Junuw ever get to liveee?!”
Lumiang’s despair was never something he had intended or desired. He did not have the twisted hobby of savoring another person’s despair. He did not have the rotten temperament to ignore or sneer at someone already drowning in dejection. Even so, he could not reach out a hand of comfort. That was precisely why he had been dodging every bait she cast. He had done it to snap the chains and run free across the open plain—not so he could foolishly turn around and walk back into the barn.
Still.
At the very least, he needed to make it clear that there had never been any malice.
“…It may be hard to believe, but the Elden Raphelion of the past is gone. The Elden Raphelion who cruelly tormented Erincia has been erased—locked away forever in eternal darkness. In all likelihood, he will never again see the light of this world.”
Transmigration. He had never spoken of it before, afraid it would be dismissed as empty excuses to dodge responsibility, afraid it would be taken as mockery of the marriage tournament itself. He brought it up now only because the ending could no longer change either way.
Lumiang lowered the hands that had covered her face and lifted her head. The deathly pale cast of her features looked so much like Deron and Blund’s that he felt a pointless stab of guilt.
“So please, do not make yourself any more miserable over the villain named Elden.”
He prayed she would not keep chaining herself to misery out of revenge.
“Do not crush, with your own hands, the magnificent declaration of war you so boldly flung at the world.”
He prayed she would not stain the name that had finally begun to step out of a lifetime of curses and into the light.
“I simply… wish for Your Grace the Grand Duchess to be happy.”
And with that, he delivered his true feelings. That was the end of it.
He had continued to show his face and remain at the marriage tournament even after declaring his withdrawal solely so he would not abandon the bare minimum of decency. He had done it so that the heroine’s revenge would not be ruined on his account, and so that not a single speck of dust would cling to his gastronomy expedition. Now he had fulfilled that decency, fulfilled every wish he still held, and gathered more than enough justification to leave.
Above all else—
Disappearing is the right thing for me to do.
Like water and oil that could never mix, he and Lumiang were a pair who could not, and must not, stay together. His mere existence was oil poured onto the flame that was Lumiang. If every time they faced each other produced only unnecessary friction, and if that friction always inflicted one-sided harm on one of them, then the proper course was for the other to step away.
“Well then, I shall take my leave.”
He bowed deeply and respectfully toward the woman still seated on the floor. Even though she had slapped him, even though she had tried to chain his freedom, he had no intention of cursing her or looking at her with contempt. She, too, was nothing more than a victim of this contradictory plot. And so he offered what would be his final greeting, filled with sincere respect.
He raised his head. Lumiang’s expression had diluted its despair and rage into something unreadable.
What was she thinking? Had she finally let go of her obsession with a mere bystander? Had she begun, even a little, to free herself from the grip of revenge? He hoped so as he turned and walked away.
And yet—
“…Why did you help the fallen maid? You’re not the kind of person who would do that.”
Lumiang’s voice reached him from behind. The question arrived without context; he needed a brief moment to place it.
Since transmigrating, he had helped a collapsed maid only once—the maid who had twisted her ankle after colliding with him around a corner, the one who had screamed for him to save her the moment he offered a hand. And in the original work, the heroine Lumiang had only one personal maid. No wonder she had looked familiar…
“So that maid was Your Grace’s attendant.”
And that maid had broken her promise with him. Well, it no longer mattered either way.
“…You truly didn’t know.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you help Marien? You’re the kind of man who stands by and mocks other people’s suffering.”
“I only helped her because she was hurt on my account.”
It was the most natural logic in the world to a modern man who had possessed a medieval body. Of course, to the heroine it would sound like miraculous nonsense.
“….”
As if to prove the point, no further voice came. He was about to start walking again when her voice once more seized his ankle.
“What about my wounds?”
“…?”
“The wounds you left on me—why won’t you help those? Why do you keep turning away…!”
A childish, furious cry latched onto him. Unfortunately, the Elden Raphelion who ought to have answered that tantrum had already been sentenced to eternal darkness and exited the stage.
“If you need ointment, I will bring it. If you need support to stand, I will give it. But accepting Your Grace’s proposal of marriage is something I cannot do.”
He stated it firmly, shook off the clinging tantrum, and walked on. No more voice reached him. No more voice tried to hold him back. He did not know what expression Lumiang wore, but he hoped that from this moment she would focus on the people who remained—and that at the end of that path she would hold a grand betrothal ceremony with one of them and be freed forever from the scars of the past.
And so he walked out of the great hall.
Still…
Tsk. At least Brother Heungbu walked away with a rice cake after getting slapped.
He left the hall with a lingering regret that he should have at least snatched one of those cooling monster dishes—the grilled wyvern fin—on his way out.
He stepped out of the great hall. He had spoken his final words to Lumiang, yet it was still too early to set off on his gastronomy expedition.
That very morning, old Rendler had told him: with the Grand Duke away in the capital and the heir away suppressing the remnants of the northern demi-human tribes, every decision of the marriage tournament now rested with the Central Aide, Gelwood. Since he needed to play the hand he had carefully gathered and deliver his ultimatum, he first headed for the annex to collect those cards.
“Let’s go, Rachel.”
Rachel, waiting outside the hall, looked startled the moment she saw him.
“What is it?”
“…You were struck?”
“Ah.”
It had only been an ordinary slap that left a brief sting; he had assumed it would not show. Apparently it did. He absently touched his cheek.
“Something came up. It’s nothing.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“What?”
He opened the hand that had been stroking his cheek. …Blood. Her nails must have caught him. Still, for the sake of a clean escape, a little bloodshed was barely worth noticing.
“Hmm. Her Grace’s nails must have been rather long.”
He joked lightly and started toward the annex, only for Rachel to pull something from her coat pocket and hold it out. It was a thin iron cylinder.
“?”
“Apply this.”
“What is it?”
“An ointment especially effective at closing wounds. It even keeps lacerations from scarring.”
Oh-ho. He had always wondered how someone who had walked such a rough path could have a face without a single small scar. So she had been carrying a premium ointment like this all along.
He took it and immediately twisted the lid open. A white, semi-solid paste. He scooped some onto his index finger and smeared it on his cheek.
Smear, smear.
Yet Rachel’s gaze as she watched him looked thoroughly dissatisfied.
“What?”
“You’re applying it in the wrong place. A little higher.”
Hm. He scooped another dab and applied it a little higher. Her gaze remained unimpressed.
“What?”
“A little higher still.”
Scoop! He applied it a little higher again. Her gaze did not change.
“…Too high now.”
“Ah.”
He was about to scoop more when Rachel snatch the tin away in a flash. His descending index finger ended up poking his own empty palm instead.
“Give it here.”
She had already taken it.
“…Is it expensive?”
“I will apply it for you.”
Apparently it was expensive. Well, in a medieval era where medicine was undeveloped, an ointment that left no scars would have to be costly.
He wiped the paste still clinging to his finger on his clothes and tilted his head slightly toward her. Rachel stepped close. Then she scooped the ointment and began spreading it carefully across his cheek.
It was the first time he had felt a woman’s touch like this—the warm, gentle care that Lee Junuw of his previous life had so desperately longed for. That must have been why he found himself staring straight at Rachel. Why he was unconsciously watching the woman who was applying the ointment like an older sister.
“…W-why are you looking at me like that?”
Ah. He hadn’t meant to.
Rachel finished applying the ointment and hurriedly put distance between them. Feeling awkward, he rubbed the treated spot and said,
“But if I remember right, I’ve been beaten until I bled more than a few times. You’ve been hogging this good stuff all to yourself, haven’t you? What a stingy master you are.”
It was a dry joke tossed out lightly. Because of the original Elden’s battle-maniac setting, his knuckles had carried thick scars and his jaw a thin one. Digging through those memories, he recalled fighting hard enough to draw blood even right before entering the marriage tournament. Rachel had been there then, yet she had never offered ointment. She had never even mentioned the wounds. He could not begin to guess what wind had blown to make his blunt master suddenly apply the salve with her own hands.
“….”
Yet Rachel could not easily answer the casual jab. A faint flush rose on the cheeks of the woman who hesitated.
“L-let us go.”
She stammered and strode ahead. But…
He hadn’t even told her where they were going.
Seeing her head right, was she aiming for the training grounds? It was far too late for training. He had to hastily correct the path of his master, who was marching boldly in the completely wrong direction.
“Rachel? To the annex.”
Whip—
His master executed a sharp course correction and set off toward the annex.