I Have Done Nothing — 1
In the days since my regression, a great deal had happened. I had met the Saintess, seen Theresia off, and crossed paths with Adele.
Meeting Saintess Adrian — a woman I should never have been able to meet — had been encouraging. And yet the future stretching ahead of me now, one I was experiencing for the very first time, left me faintly uneasy.
Even so, I felt I would manage, for one simple reason: countless memories still remained to me.
I could handle whatever came. Even if something defied imagination, it would only be a thing I had already lived through once before.
If I harbored any regret at all, it was that a lingering attachment had stayed with me for far too long.
"Young Master, a letter has arrived."
Renald, whose manner had grown markedly more deferential of late, held out a single envelope. Come to think of it, two weeks had already passed since I returned to this summer of my twentieth year. A letter, arriving for me at a time like this.
I accepted the correspondence with a puzzled frown — and the moment I saw the crest embossed upon it, my eyes narrowed of their own accord. I had forgotten. Forgotten that I had cast Theresia aside.
Was that truly all the space she occupied in my mind? How meaningless must she have been, that a few days without seeing her was enough to wipe her away? It was for reasons like this that I sometimes couldn't help thinking my past cycles pathetic.
I used to imagine that if I had simply abandoned everything and resolved myself the way I had this time, I could have brought it all to a conclusion within ten regressions or so. Naturally, I knew perfectly well that such musings meant nothing now. Clinging to a past already gone was the act of a fool.
And yet the wounds left behind from those days still tormented my soul. My unblemished body carried not a single scar, but the marks of torture once carved into me showed no sign of ever fading, no matter how the years rolled on.
A dry rasp — and the letter clutched in my hand crumpled out of shape. Cold sweat beaded on my brow, my vision dimmed, and a dizziness began to close in.
Past memories surged in like a flood, smashing through the levee and pouring out; my breath caught in my throat — I clutched at my chest and let the letter drop from my fingers.
Thinking too deeply about the past often brought on reactions like this. The illness they say afflicts soldiers home from war — though what I carried was crueler than that.
The poison I had swallowed, the arm that had been severed, the legs that had been shattered — they layered themselves over my flesh. Eyes that had vanished without a trace would sometimes abandon me mid-sight. Vocal cords ruined by screaming would now and then forget my voice, and on the rarest of occasions... I would forget my own name.
I saw my hand trembling. Would it crumble to dust and scatter, here and now? No — there had been a time when every one of my fingernails was pulled out. A trivial torture. I had endured tortures of that caliber so often I could accept them with a smile these days.
There had been times I cut off my own arm, and times it simply fell away mid-swing of a sword. My vision flooded red. Colors that had no right to exist — blue, green, yellow — swirled at the edges of my sight.
Countless memories tangled together, and a roar like driving rain bored into my ears; I gritted my teeth. What I needed to remember, right now — to calm the heart pounding itself mad against my ribs, I forced my lips to move. My name. What was my name, again?
"...Robert Taylor."
As consciousness returned by degrees, I slowly wiped the sweat streaming down my forehead. The breath I had been holding came back, and my shrunken lungs regained their elasticity.
I was still holding together, I thought, pressing down on my temples. I soothed the swelling of the vessels throbbing in my skull, ready to rupture at any moment. There was a faint, fishy taste only inside my clenched mouth... but I was fine.
Episodes like this had come often enough. If anything, I had been waiting to see when the next one would arrive. The phantoms called the past, forever tormenting me. I wondered when they would finally let me go — though of late, their grip had been weakening. The mere fact that my nightmares had grown less frequent told me as much: I was no longer taking the past quite so seriously.
Truth be told, I hadn't lived all one hundred of those lives faithfully. Perhaps three in ten had ended by my own hand. Back when I was possessed by the delusion that dying would end this regression, I drove a blade into my own throat — three times, at least, that I remember.
...Pathetic.
It wasn't called a Relic for nothing. Regardless of my will, life would repeat for all eternity until the wish it harbored was fulfilled. And now, didn't even that wish itself yearn for an eternal death?
Once I had wiped away the last of the sweat, I bent down and retrieved the fallen letter.
To my dear Sir Robert Taylor,
"Dear, it says."
Not a word worth so much as a smirk. It was quite rare for her to attach that particular modifier to me. Either something truly urgent had befallen her — or, if not that, she wanted something from me.
Tearing the envelope open with a crooked grin, I found inside a single letter filled with painstakingly composed sentences.
Sir Taylor, I trust you have been keeping well? Were it not for what happened, I would dearly love to call you by your name — but I know only too well how much hurt my mistake last time must have caused you.
...At that point, I stopped reading. Any further, and I couldn't promise the rising fury wouldn't turn my stomach.
Had she truly understood how deeply her mistake had wounded me, she would never have reached out with a letter like this. So the situation wasn't urgent after all? What an insufferably arrogant woman.
"Renald, burn this letter."
At my word, Renald — who had slipped in through the half-opened door — stepped forward, picked up the letter, and tucked it into his breast. Once, I might have wondered whether even this would set his mind wandering, but the Renald of today was performing his role as a loyal butler quite admirably. Judged on the two weeks I had watched him alone... he was trustworthy. One could even call him the only reliable man in this ducal mansion. With the right balance of carrot and whip, there would be no betrayal. I didn't dismiss the possibility outright, but beneath it lay the quiet conviction that treachery from a mere Renald could never touch me.
"And what is my father doing?"
"His Grace departed for the capital this morning, saying there was business to attend to there."
"About time, then. So it's only Yuria left here?"
"Yes, Young Master. The Young Matriarch remains on the estate."
No doubt it was for the Full Moon Festival, soon to arrive. As one of the Empire's principal celebrations, even the festival set to unfold across the whole of the Empire required my father's presence in the capital. The ducal mansion would likely grow noisy before long. And of course, I had to keep myself quite busy through it all.
There was one person I had to save — someone who had served as my finest ally in nearly every life I'd lived. For a man who needed more information than even the most capable information guild could sell, there was surely no one better suited. The alchemist Jay. Saving him — a man fated to die at this festival — was the most pressing of all the problems before me.
"How would you like your meal served, Young Master? Shall I have it brought to your room?"
"No, I'll eat in the dining hall. There's no need to take my meals in my room anymore."
Before the regression I had often eaten in my room, but since returning, I made a point of showing myself at the table. Sharing a meal with my father or Yuria was anything but comfortable — yet unless I showed my face like this, even they might let the memory of me slip away.
If there was another reason, it was the strangely contorted expression Yuria wore every time she laid eyes on me. Her reactions of late had been odd, hadn't they? Out of nowhere she insisted she had never been indifferent to me — did she perhaps feel some guilt? It was laughable.
If everything she had done to me truly amounted to nothing more than a twisted form of "attention," then I would never again have been able to think of her as kin of any kind.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, Yuria happened to be walking toward me from the corridor beyond. Perhaps she had come to eat as well — she flinched briefly at the sight of me before arranging her features into composure. Then she passed me by and was gone... only to stop short and call me back.
"...Robert Taylor."
"What is it you need? I've done nothing wrong — unless there's some offense I've committed without knowing, one that demands an apology?"
I answered with a barb, but Yuria's gaze merely cooled by a degree; nothing more. She studied me in silence for a moment, then moved her lips in a low voice.
"My calling for you doesn't always mean I want an apology. Since when have I ever ordered such a thing?"
"Then perhaps you'll tell me why you did call, Young Matriarch."
At the title, her pupils wavered — ever so slightly. It was that reaction I found amusing. Why respond at all? It was an emotion beyond my understanding, and so all I did was regard the Yuria of today as though she were some curious specimen.
She was welcome to find the man I'd become through regression strange. But being shaken by my choice of address now — that I could not fathom. Yuria was the one who had always bristled when I called her sister. Shouldn't she be pleased to receive exactly what she wanted? Her reaction now could only be read one way: as someone who found this title a burden.
After a moment's silence, Yuria opened her mouth, brow furrowed in irritation.
"I only meant to ask whether you'll be attending the Full Moon Festival. If you are, I have to report it to Father. Don't get any strange ideas — just answer."
"I will attend. There are things I must do."
"Things you must... no, never mind. I'm busy, so I'll be going. Eat, do as you please."
She had started to ask about that business of mine, then turned her head away on her own and swallowed the question. And then — her errand apparently concluded — she spat out the last of her words and vanished.
Click, click. I watched her heels ring down the corridor until she disappeared, an unreadable expression on my face — then I turned my back as well.
She's just acting strange for a moment, that's all.
It was hardly the first or second time I'd witnessed such erratic behavior from her. A passing mood, surely. I soon wiped Yuria from my mind and took my seat in the dining hall.
While Renald directed the servants to bring out one dish after another, my thoughts drifted back to the letter from Theresia. There was only one reason she would send such a thing now. Her brother's illness must finally be making itself felt.
It couldn't be serious yet — more the level of a weak cold he caught now and then, a cough escaping him on occasion. Sensing the omen, she must have written to apologize. Watching my reaction while quietly sounding me out about her brother... that was likely the full extent of her game.
And so I had not the slightest intention of answering her overture. If she grew desperate, she would reach out again. What I had planted in her was a seed called doubt.
I would do nothing at all — but her doubt would take root in her mind and turn every circumstance uneasy. At first, she would tell herself it was mere coincidence. When misfortune strikes, people are quick to lean on luck.
But let the situation shift just a little, and she would fixate obsessively on whatever might be the cause.
At the moment, that would be me.
And if I refused to respond? If I answered with nothing but silence, not a single word — how far would that suspicion spread? I doubted it would take long. Two weeks at the outside; I would be able to watch the whole process unfold before the Full Moon Festival began.
"Your meal has been brought, Young Master."
Just as I set my knife against the plate laid before me, Renald drew near and murmured something at my ear.
"...Letters have arrived from House Violet, one after another. How shall I handle them?"
"Burn them."
"You won't look them over?"
"The contents are obvious. Burn them properly — no one is to lay eyes on them."
"As you command."
One after another. The phrase drew a dry smirk from me. No doubt some new symptom had surfaced right after she sent that first letter. But my answer would not change. If all she could do was keep sending letters, then the only service I would render her — laborious as it was — was to burn each one in turn.
The knife sank into the steak with a satisfying resistance. I speared the tender morsel with my fork, brought it to my mouth, and savored the richness of the meat and the sweetness of the sauce.
Soon enough, the day would come when the seed she carried swelled and bloomed. That doubt would consume her — and with her, devour House Violet entire. But none of it would be my doing. Everything would trace back to the woman who chose to doubt, the woman who would ruin it all with her own suspicion.
Let me say it once more.
I intend to do nothing.
Nothing at all.