Prologue
In the garden behind the manor, the sun always seemed to linger in a wash of gold.
And when I watched it slip little by little behind the mountain, unable to hide its red face even as it tried, I always found myself thinking of her.
By now, she was only an old lover — someone I would never see again.
I used to imagine that she was living well.
That after running from that murderer, she had asked someone else for help, escaped him, and reached a place of safety.
That she had been sad for a while upon hearing I was dead, but had risen again all the same, gone on with steady steps, and kept smiling brightly — always becoming, in the end, the woman I had admired.
That she would forget someone like me and go on living beautifully, as if nothing had happened.
Whenever I looked out over the garden behind the manor, I always thought of her like that.
Longing for someone I could never see again, I spent my days circling in place.
The weather outside, though summer was still far away, was bitterly cold.
It was still early spring, when not even the leaves had properly begun to open.
“Young master! Where are you?”
And I was the sort of noble boy who had died at the hands of a random murderer, only to be reborn.
********
The sunlight that shone behind the shabby house was always red.
And as I watched that scene, the color deepening little by little until the light slipped over the roof and disappeared, I always thought of the blood that person had shed.
The metallic stench of that blood, the one spilled when they took the knife meant for me and soaked their hands no matter how desperately they tried to stop it, always seemed to brush past my nose.
I imagined it.
They must be somewhere in this world.
Just as I had been dropped into a world I did not know, they, too, must have been born again somewhere in it — and even if they no longer wore the face I had loved, they would still be living on, carrying memories of a past life just as I did.
Whenever I watched the sunset turn red, I always thought of them like that.
I would bite my nails as I thought of the person somewhere out there.
The weather outside, though summer was still far away, was still unbearably cold, but that did not change anything.
It was early spring still, when not even the leaves had properly begun to unfurl.
“Aria! What are you doing out there? Get inside already!”
I was the sort of village girl who had died at the hands of a random murderer, only to be reborn.