Prologue: 44 and 99
Already, it was the forty-fourth loop.
By now, the numbness in my chest had worn past dullness into brittle ruin, crumbling away until not a trace remained. With my heart scooped hollow and emptied of all feeling, I stared blankly into the gray, lifeless reflection of my own eyes in the mirror.
Ah.
The thought struck me unbidden. Perhaps this dry, parched desolation was the very same torment Celia had suffered her entire life within House Sinclair.
Over the years, under the noble excuse of saving her life, I had committed countless atrocities. I had locked Celia in a room, barking demands for the truth. When every road collapsed and no hope remained, I had swallowed poison by my own hand, coughing up blood just to die alongside her.
In the end, it was all my own selfish obstinacy. Under the righteous banner of protecting her, the one who had inflicted the deepest wounds upon Celia was none other than myself.
I'm sorry.
I resolved to be kind to Celia once more. I would return to the fool I was in the very first timeline—that blundering, fifteen-year-old boy who had loved her with the purest heart.
"Celia! Look at this! I caught a huge rhinoceros beetle out in the garden!"
"Ah, Leon! Watch your fingers!"
Shoving down a heart burnt to cinder and soot, I forced the corners of my mouth into an exaggerated grin. Chuckling like an idiot, I hovered constantly around her, deliberately tumbling headfirst into the courtyard fountain just to perform clumsy slapstick. Inside, my soul was rotten to the core, its festering wounds long since hardened into callous scars; yet on the surface, I wore the mask of the happiest boy in the world.
If only Celia smiled, that was enough. For that was surely the only penance I could pay for the arrogant sins of my past lives.
Then, out of nowhere, an odd sense of discord flitted through my mind.
Her birthday.
Through forty-four cycles of life, all I had ever done was obsessively calculate the exact hour she would die. Never once had I bothered to ask when she was born.
I went to her immediately and asked.
"It should be around October twentieth. They never let me celebrate it in House Sinclair, so... I'm not entirely certain."
October twentieth. That was the day right before our first anniversary—the fateful day Celia's gaze would always turn into Dead Eyes.
Could it be...?
Onto the cold ashes that had died within my chest, a small, burning spark fell. Could this be the trigger? If I gifted the most magnificent birthday to a girl who had never known love in her entire life, maybe—just maybe—the ending would change.
I sprang to my feet like a madman, a long-dead fervor roaring back to life within my veins.
"Forget the budget! Empty every single gold coin from the vault if you must!"
"Y-Young Master! A banquet, out of nowhere?"
"No excuses! Track down the finest orchestra and the best patissier in the Wehren Fief right this instant!"
I turned the entire estate upside down. All for Celia. Desperately blowing my own breath into that dying spark.
And so arrived the day of Celia's birthday.
The grand central hall of the sprawling manor was transformed into a fairytale palace crafted for a single girl. From the high ceiling, chandeliers set with thousands of gentle mana stones showered light like the starry swath of the Milky Way. The entire hall was carpeted with her favorite tulips and lilies, until every breath brought a dizzying wave of sweet fragrance. A five-tiered cake as tall as a grown man dominated the center of the room, frosted in pristine white cream and crowned with jewel-like wild raspberries.
And then.
"......Leon. Did you prepare all of this... just for me?"
Celia stepped carefully down the grand staircase. Dozens of seamstresses had labored through the night to fashion her gown—a midnight-blue silk dress reminiscent of the evening sky, pairing dazzlingly with her golden hair. Standing before my eyes was the loveliest, most radiant fairy in the world.
I dropped to one knee and pressed a tender kiss to the back of her hand.
"Happy birthday, Celia."
"Ah...... Th-thank you, Leon."
A sweet waltz played by the continent's greatest orchestra washed over the hall. We danced late into the night, popping sweet champagne to celebrate the very first birthday party she had ever known. Forgetting that my soul was worn to dust, I played the part of the most devoted fifteen-year-old husband purely for her sake, clinging with white knuckles to a frayed lifeline on the verge of snapping.
"Thank you, Leon. Truly...... this is the happiest day of my life."
On the way back to our chambers after the celebration, Celia threw her arms around me in a fierce embrace, smiling radiantly. Tears of overwhelmed emotion welled in her clear, sapphire eyes. The moment I beheld that luminous, crystal light, I was certain.
I had finally done it.
I had broken this wretched curse of forty-four lifetimes with my own two hands. I would be able to see this beautiful smile tomorrow, and the day after that as well.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, I held her tightly against my chest.
And then came the next morning.
The long-awaited day of our first anniversary.
I opened the door to Celia's room with steps as light as though I were walking on clouds. It was a pleasant morning, the festive warmth of the previous night still lingering in the air.
"Celia! Are you awake? Today's weather is really—"
Before the words could even clear my throat, Celia, standing beside the window, slowly turned her head toward me.
"......"
Thump.
My vision warped in a single instant. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say it turned utterly murky.
"D-did you not sleep well because you were tired yesterday? What's with that look?"
The lips that formed the words spasmed violently. The smile I had forced onto my face trembled and shook.
The eyes Celia turned upon me—that lake of brilliant blue that had reflected my face with such shimmer just last night—had dried up entirely. Void of focus, stripped of emotion, drained of every shred of warmth.
It was the horrifying, sickening sight I had faced forty-three times before: her Dead Eyes.
"......"
Somewhere deep within my ears, something snapped with a quiet, dull twang.
"......Ha, haha...."
Gazing at her with hollow pupils, a soft, broken laugh slipped past my lips. It felt as though an entire bucket of freezing ice water had been dumped mercilessly onto the last ember of hope flickering in my chest.
The perfect birthday banquet.
Her smile, bright as if she held the entire world.
None of it had mattered in the slightest. Even this blind spot, uncovered after forty-four desperate trials, had failed to budge the gears of this cruel, vicious fate.
Ah.
At last, I understood.
No matter what I did, no matter how desperately I struggled, she was going to leave me. Only when I vanished would she be allowed to live.
Like a crumpled sheet of parchment smoothing out, every trace of expression wiped clean from my face. The fake smile I had plastered on like a circus clown, the reckless venom born of a desperate desire to keep her breathing—both vanished into thin air in an instant.
"......Right."
I muttered in a dull, sunken voice.
The hell of forty-four cycles endured through gritted teeth. The vow to protect her a hundred, a thousand times over. I, by my own hand, finally severed that desperate, stubborn lifeline of salvation.
"You never change, do you?"
After gazing at her once more with empty eyes, I turned away without a single shred of hesitation. It was the moment the beast of Waldemar surrendered his eternal wish, hurling himself into the bottom of the abyss.
"Take care of yourself."
The morning of the forty-fourth anniversary.
And the forty-fourth time witnessing the life drain completely from her eyes.
In that instant, something snapped inside Leon's mind. There was no thunderous crack, no agonized scream—only a quiet, absolute severance.
Leon had finally let go of everything.
The needle-thin thread of hope.
The sickening, clinging obstinacy.
Even the fighting spirit that had burned like hellfire.
Like sand slipping between open fingers, every emotion scattered futilely across the floor.
Leon Waldemar.
Without regret, he resolved to cast even that name into the dirt. Along with everything attached to it.
A fool who had boasted of shielding her from every danger in the world, yet failed to save a single girl in the end. A coward who broke his own vow to stay by her side a hundred, a thousand times. A loser like him had no right to wear the noble name of a highborn lord. It was his self-reproach for failing to save her, and his own bitter indictment for breaking his solemn oath.
Leon stripped off the luxurious silk tailcoat without hesitation. In its place, he pulled on a worn, coarse linen shirt and the faded trousers of a commoner.
A humble bundle scrounged from the manor, and an old iron sword strapped to his waist.
It was a pathetic sum of belongings for the price of forty-four lifetimes of struggle, yet Leon slipped out of the manor with quiet, steady steps. His feet carried him toward a deserted stretch of the rear perimeter wall.
Pushing aside a pile of rubble revealed a small opening at the base of the stone. In this forty-fourth loop, playing the fool just as he had in the first, he had spent the entire night digging that crawlspace simply to show Celia the world outside.
How Celia had laughed, covered in dirt as they slipped through together, nibbling on sweet skewered meat from the street stalls. Yet Leon merely stared at the hole with numb, hollow eyes before dropping flat against the earth to crawl through.
This time, he did not reach for Celia's hand. All alone, he emerged outside the wall, void of any feeling.
Brushing the loose soil from his knees, Leon slowly lifted his head. The massive manor cast a long, chilling shadow in the early morning light.
His gaze crept upward toward the third floor—toward the tightly shuttered window where Celia would be. Though he had abandoned everything, a faint glimmer stirred from the depths of his pitch-black, hollow eyes. It was a beast's stubborn, foolish instinct, longing to burn even her mere silhouette into his sight one final time.
Yet Leon quietly closed his eyes and opened them again. He ruthlessly crushed that pathetic ember of lingering regret beneath his heel.
I was happy.
He reflected calmly on the forty-fourth loop. As if bowing to fate, he had burned his final flame playing the fool. Thanks to that, he had seen Celia's bright smile after so long. Clad in that navy dress, wrapped in his arms, the warmth of her body as she leaned against him and whispered that it was the happiest day of her life...
That was enough. For a shell of a man who would wander like a nameless ghost, clinging to life without dying, that single memory would suffice. Even feeding on nothing but that warmth, he could endure the remainder of his days.
"Get out of my sight."
"Stop clinging to me. It disgusts me."
Leon let out a dry, deflated scoff. Was that not the very wish she had cried out for across an eternity of regressions? He was merely granting that desperate plea at last, after forty-four lifetimes. He no longer held any reason, nor any right, to remain by her side and torment her.
Leon turned his back. Toward the border of the Wehren Fief, he began to walk in silence, without looking back even once. With hollow steps bound for no destination, carrying neither hope nor despair, Leon walked and walked endlessly toward anywhere that would take him farther from Celia.
Swallowing even a parting word of apology.
Swallowing only the happy memories.
Even if a forty-fifth loop were to begin anew, Leon pushed forward toward a world where she was not.
"......"
Toward the place where his forty-fourth story would begin.
Inside the manor Leon had left behind.
Beyond that tightly shut window on the third floor he had gazed upon only moments before.
Past that dark glass, Celia stood motionless.
Her sapphire eyes, which should have been unfocused and hollow, completely took in the shrinking silhouette of Leon's retreating back. Until Leon's figure faded entirely over the distant hill, left all alone, Celia remained standing there, watching him.
Watching the ninety-ninth Leon.