My Soulmate's Regret
Her expression twisted, and a heavy silence descended.
...In fact, the moment her hand reached toward me, I had already sensed it.
She knew the fiancé she was speaking of was me.
But think about it.
A smile that could bloom just from watching someone, a girl who was already beautiful beyond measure.
My one-sided love, which I had always taken for granted.
The fiancé who had become the very meaning of her life.
When that finger pointed at me and she realized it in an instant, how must she have felt?
A pleasant thrill ran through my heart as I bit back the smile that threatened to rise to my lips.
Then, what on earth had all the nonsense I had done until now, trying to steal her heart from that fiancé, been?
A strange situation indeed.
'What else could it be? All of it was just bullshit and dark history, damn it.'
Even the self-contradictions that instantly came to mind could have easily filled hundreds of blankets.
-I don't know who the hell broke into an empty house, but... I will kill you.
-Thinking of seducing someone who's already mentally drained and stripping them bare? What trash.
-This NTR bastard will never be forgiven.
Every single one of those words was far more vivid than the ones I had thought in my heart.
To Grace.
-It is truly astonishing that such a remarkable person could claim the love of Her Imperial Highness the princess.
To Lily.
-I wonder which part of a man drew the attention of the princess of the empire. Curiosity is at least allowed.
At this point, I was clearly the madman who had waged a war of NTR against myself.
Even the worst crap had its own special brand of crap.
Thus, to give my complicated emotions a moment to settle, I mentioned a word from the broadcast I used to watch every Sunday at 11 a.m., the one that had shown me the most surreal events.
Soul Marriage.
I had only said it as a joke, but now I faced the consequences.
Lily stared at me with eyes that were colder than ice, then broke the silence and spoke to me.
"Finn, that was a joke, right?"
"...Yes, Your Highness. It was just a joke."
"It would be better if you never said something like that again. In my opinion, Finn has no talent for jokes."
"...Understood."
Once more the silence flowed. Perhaps thanks to this silence I could finally organize my thoughts, I simply turned my eyes in various directions without a word.
Why had Grace told me that Lily's fiancé had left her side, and that Lily was grieving for him?
Because the fiancé was me, of course.
And for some reason, when Lily realized that I had sacrificed myself for her, she had come to see me as her fiancé...
If one thought about the personality of that person, it was not an unbelievable story at all.
After once again replaying the shadow boxing I had done, I swallowed the bitter saliva and continued my thoughts.
In the forest of Training Ground B-04, Lily had told me that the fiancé was like the sun itself to her, the only person who had looked at her with the eyes of family and the love she cherished.
That fiancé, who had explained everything with praise worthy of a mass.
'It was me all along?'
If I turned over every single word in my mind, and considered the premise that she had known the full details of the incident and had already begun to cherish me... everything fit perfectly.
The fist I had swung toward the person I thought existed had, by Grace's hand, been swung toward empty air that did not exist at all.
Even more astonishing was that the fist I had thrown now pointed at myself.
Yet several questions remained unanswered.
How had she learned my truth?
And if she had learned my truth, how had she not fallen?
So I asked.
"Your Highness."
"Hmm?"
"May I ask when and how you learned about me?"
"Ah... actually, the moment you left the palace, I knew..."
"Eh? On the day I fell into the ravine?"
Her eyes gazed at me.
The eyes that shimmered with a soft lavender light like amethyst, filled with tears.
Was she remembering the past? The day she had understood everything yet lost me forever?
"Yes... I can tell you, but... will you hold my hand?"
"Hold your hand?"
While looking at me with a somewhat uneasy expression, she extended her hand.
There was no reason to refuse, so I took her slender hand, clasped them together, and looked into her eyes.
Her anxiety passed through the trembling of the clasped hands.
She forced a smile as I tilted my head, and offered me a gentle smile with her eyes.
"When I remember that day... I become so anxious that I might lose you right in front of me again... I want to hold on until the story is over, if only for that."
"If it brings you comfort, Your Highness, I will hold as long as you wish."
"Thank you, Finn."
"Ehehe."
As she spoke, rubbing the back of my clasped hands with the tips of her fingers, she wore the pure, innocent smile of a child that I had once seen in that old shack.
She said it with an expression of regret.
"That night when I went looking for Dad to scold him for letting you run away... it was a night when it felt like the sky had a hole and rain poured down... the night when lightning struck."
With an expression as if she would collapse at any moment, she squeezed my hand even tighter.
"I heard Dad talking in front of Mom's grave. Probably... because my footsteps were hidden under the sound of the rain."
"The fact that... you took all the blame for me and left the empire..."
The light in her eyes toward me grew even brighter.
"And when I realized what I had done and somehow found you... you were already..."
"Already nothing but torn rags. The clothes I was wearing."
While trying to hold back the sorrow of remembering that day, she breathed out tremblingly and I heard the sound of her swallowing.
She spoke, barely managing to continue while enduring memories that were like a terrible trauma.
"So I made your grave and spent every day there. Eating... sleeping... even when it rained, or sweat poured like rain under the blazing sun... until I lost consciousness."
"I didn't know how to atone for what I had done to you... so I simply lived by endlessly mourning you."
As she faced my speechless gaze, she offered a faint smile.
"But it was never painful. Because I thought you were by my side."
"But apparently, the people around me didn't see it that way. What Dad gave me at that time... was this."
She placed her left hand, which was not holding mine, in her lap and pulled out a familiar crumpled piece of paper.
The tears she could no longer hide burned her cheeks and flowed down, and although the corners of her mouth, now faintly rosy, curved toward the sky, her eyes were lowered, hiding her emotions as she looked at the ground.
"...A letter."
'I never imagined the Emperor would use my letter.'
Given the fact that I had believed she would completely break if she faced the truth, this was an unimaginable turn of events.
In hindsight, it made perfect sense.
Even if this world was a novel, humans inside it were not machines. There was no guarantee that the same stimulus would produce the same reaction.
Yet in a situation with very limited information, choosing the safest direction was not entirely wrong.
The option I had chosen was a safety net based on limited rationality.
She placed the letter on the table and asked me.
"It seems my story is almost over... now can I ask you something?"
"Please."
"Actually, there are many things I want to ask, but I don't have time, so I'll ask only two."
She took my hand with the other hand and asked.
The warmth of her slender fingertips, the softness of her skin, sent my heart into even greater turmoil.
"How did you come up with such a method...?"
"..."
The heart that had been thrumming with pleasant excitement tightened with tension this time and began to beat fast again.
...How could I explain this?
Because the situation she was in was exactly the same as the heroine in one of those Japanese romance novels I had seen, and if this world truly was a romance novel, I had acted on that assumption.
'I can't say it.'
I could not reveal every truth to her.
So I told her a mix of truth and lies.
"In... romance novels, there is a story where a prince sacrifices himself for the princess..."
Unable to meet her eyes, I looked away, and I could feel her cheeks flush and burn.
"Y-yes... so it's a romance novel about a princess and a prince, right?"
I nodded silently, still avoiding her gaze.
There was a brief silence.
I waited for her second question to me.
She, for some reason, hesitated to ask, opening and closing her mouth several times.
Soon she asked me.
"Finn... how could you sacrifice yourself for me...? Since we were very young, Finn has always thought only of me. Even when I... wasn't as healthy as I am now."
Why could he help her?
Why could he sacrifice for her?
Even when she hadn't had such beauty, why could he only think of her?
I could not bring myself to lie to this question.
Because if I answered with lies, it felt as if not only her affection but also my own sincerity would be tainted.
So I conveyed my true feelings without reservation.
This was my first time in my life telling someone, facing their face.
The words I had never been able to speak until the very end.
This time, unlike before, my sincere feelings, free of sadness or tears, were conveyed with a proud smile.
"It was my wish that you would only be happy. In the end, that wish became love without me even knowing. This lowly servant who does not know its place... sincerely loves you, Imperial Princess Liliana."
After experiencing reincarnation, crossing death, and going through regression, years and years had passed... only now could I finally say it.
Along with her name.
I love you.