For Eternal Rest (1)
Everything began with a relic I once picked up.
A jewel said to grant one's heart's desire—who could have imagined it would chain me to a life this horrific? All I had wanted was to undo a single mistake. The relationships I had ruined with my own hands, my friends, and even the one I loved.
But reality was never so forgiving. Those who treated me with cold indifference remained unchanged, and chances to wash away my karma were few and far between. I failed and died. I overreached and died.
Yet the relic's power overflowed all the same, and time kept rewinding—but in that endless regression, no hope was anywhere to be seen.
When I first died, I believed things would change if only I acted differently from then on. Show remorse, repent for what I'd done, and everything would return to the way it was—that the people I loved would look upon me kindly again. I truly believed that.
Two deaths. Three. Through dozens of deaths, my mind wore away thread by thread. Sometimes I tried to become a courteous gentleman; other times, a man seasoned in the art of human relations. I became such a master of seduction that my name turned into a byword for lechery, and there was even a life where I flaunted myself and won over the Imperial Princess, making her mine.
In the cycle where I went mad and killed everyone with my own two hands, that same princess took my head.
But in the end, every life closed on a miserable finale. That never changed.
It felt as though the world itself were whispering to me—that the fate I'd been dealt was nothing but ruin, urging me to give up.
So I gave up. Only after a hundred deaths did I finally make eternal rest my goal...
"How liberating."
Above me stretched a ceiling so familiar I had memorized every last pattern in it. Having seen it more than a hundred times, the scene itself was now branded into me like a painting: the clothes I wore, the bed I lay in, and soon after, the attendant who would come to check whether I had risen.
Remembering every detail of a routine repeated countless times over is its own torment. All the more so when you know that no matter how humbly you carry yourself, you will die just as miserably as ever.
Be that as it may, now that I had regressed once more, it was time to decide how to conduct myself. How should I act this round? Until now, I had always acted to "survive"—or more precisely, to live not merely for myself, but together with everyone else.
Even when someone insulted me, I swallowed it against whatever might come. I had knelt and begged; more than once I turned prickly and paranoid, obsessed with stamping out every variable. Of course, a few deaths cured me of such compulsions, and looking back now, it had all been for nothing.
But I no longer needed to live that way. If possible, I would achieve my purpose and then die. Casting everything aside and living for pleasure alone wouldn't be so bad either—though I'd given that a try once before, so even that held little interest for me.
"Living while doing whatever I please doesn't sound so bad."
There weren't all that many things I wanted to do, but I did want to see the sea said to lie in the South. This region sat close to the North and straddled the Central territories; one rarely had occasion to look out over open water here. A glimpse of the ocean, and perhaps repaying my debt to the woman I'd once owed so much to—both seemed like fine ideas. She wouldn't remember it, but in the life that had been, comparatively speaking, my best, had I not benefited handsomely from her kindness?
My goal was the most perfect death possible. If the voice I remembered from the previous cycle hadn't been mistaken... then this death would very likely be my last.
Knock, knock—
Just as I was finishing that train of thought, a few knocks sounded—and the door swung wide open. The one who entered was an aged butler. Renald, was it? The moment I fixed him with a steady stare, a composed voice flowed from his lips.
"You're... awake. I'd assumed you would sleep in again today. I was just about to give the order for your meal—"
"Hey. Butler."
I was well accustomed to the butler behaving this way toward me. My standing within House Taylor was, quite simply, the worst—pathetic enough that even a butler could afford to look down on me. Such was who I was at this point in time. But that didn't mean he ought to actually disregard me.
At my interruption, the butler looked up at me in visible alarm, his small eyes stretched wide. I always thought the same thing: that butler's habits needed correcting. Until now I had let them be, for the sake of surviving by any means—but there was no longer any need for that, was there?
"What is my name."
"...Pardon?"
"Don't make me ask twice. I asked what my name is."
"It is Robert Taylor, Young Master."
At my lowered voice, the butler answered slowly. Yes. My name was Robert Taylor. Call me a wretch all you like; even if my end was a miserable ruin, House Taylor was not so soft a family that a mere butler could slight me and walk away unscathed.
"And yet you insist on treating me as though I were your equal. Is knocking simply too much trouble for you? If so, you may as well remove the door altogether. I am truly curious which nation's etiquette prescribes entering the very instant one finishes knocking."
The family's black sheep. The problem child. Hardly words befitting a man who had been executed two or three times over for dragging the family's name through the mud—and yet the name Taylor worked wonders when it came to bending people into submission.
At my sharp gaze, the butler's body flinched. Yet his voice, when it came, was calm—so calm it startled even me, the one listening.
"If word were to spread that a mere butler came and went from his master's chambers as he pleased, what would become of House Taylor's prestige? And who would answer for that fallen prestige? You—do you intend to answer for it?"
"Th-that isn't what I—"
"Then correct it. Make this mistake again, and I will report it directly to my father."
White as a sheet, the butler bowed at the waist again and again, then promised to bring my meal with far more courtesy than he had shown before. Watching him tuck tail and flee like a man running for his life, a thin smile stole across my lips unbidden.
"...Yes, this really is better."
It pays to keep one's butler in line. A lesson learned over the course of several regressions.
Word that the butler had been severely dressed down had apparently already spread, for stares bored into me from every direction as I went down to eat. They gossiped so openly it was almost comical. Just how easy a mark did they take me for?
But I no longer had any intention of simply watching them carry on that way. I had nothing left to fear—what was there to hesitate about? I no longer needed to strain to stay alive. If someone tried to kill me, I would almost be grateful. For a man with neither goal nor ambition, perhaps life really was worth just that little.
"Freshly made, I take it."
"It is, Young Master. Upon receiving your orders earlier, I instructed that everything be prepared anew."
Renald, apparently having come to his senses after the earlier incident, was conducting himself toward me quite admirably. No—this was simply the attitude he ought to have shown all along. Proof enough of how foolishly I had lived.
That said, had I not ordered it remade, would he have served me the food cold? It was a question to which I already knew the answer. The meal I would have eaten would surely have arrived stone cold—a slab of meat no knife could even bite into. This time, however, the steak yielded to the blade with ease.
As I savored the food with a satisfied expression, I could feel Renald's gaze flicking over me, gauging my mood. ...What was he playing at, ruining my appetite like this? I set down my fork and glanced at him—and as if he'd only been waiting for exactly that, Renald opened his mouth.
"The Young Matriarch is on her way. How... do you wish to proceed?"
"Hmm."
My own elder sister, and the woman who would inherit the family from our father. In a past life, she had fed me poison—for that, if I had to pick, I was rather grateful. It had seemed the least painful death of them all.
But if I had to look at that face while eating, would the food actually go down? Just as I was about to say I would receive her a little later, the door burst open yet again, and Yuria strode in with heavy steps. Apparently barging through doors uninvited ran in this family. More accurately, they did it because they took me for a pushover.
As I frowned faintly, a frosty voice bored into my ear.
"After what you did yesterday, you're looking remarkably well. Have you given up on even a pretense of remorse?"
"...And what exactly did I do yesterday?"
What I had done yesterday remained vivid in my memory, but I feigned ignorance. Tomorrow had long since lost all meaning amid countless regressions. Whether I knew or not, nothing in the future would change.
At my puzzled echo of her words, Yuria shot me a look of pure incredulity. I had never seen that expression on her face before. Perhaps because this was the first time I had failed to beg forgiveness. My whole life had been one long apology—for acts I couldn't even remember, claiming guilt for sins that were never mine to claim. But I had no intention of living like that any longer, did I?
Step by measured step, Yuria brushed past the butler and closed the distance until she stood before me, her gaze nothing short of murderous. Those blue eyes had always brimmed with contempt and loathing, on the verge of spilling over, and so I had never once been able to hold her stare with ease.
But that was the past. However wretchedly I had lived, the man I was now had committed no great sin—only a transgression worth a single reprimand, a sin too petty to even deserve the name. And so my bearing was unashamed. Still sawing at my steak, I lifted my eyes and met Yuria's where she stood over me.
"Have you grown so shameless that you can no longer even apologize? Just how hideous do you intend to become, Robert Taylor?"
"I have no intention of becoming hideous. I merely judged that if an apology was owed, it was owed to His Grace the Duke."
"Ha. Since when have you ever set such store by courtesy? If it mattered so much to you, then why until now—"
"Since today."
I answered coldly, though my expression stayed placid. It was right to hold no feeling toward Yuria at all. I did not pity her, nor did I hate her. I did not fear her, nor did I dislike her. There was simply nothing there. Yuria Taylor was, to me, my elder sister and the Young Matriarch of House Taylor—that, and nothing more. There was no possibility left, no room at all, for her to be anything else.
Yuria stared at me blankly for a long moment. Those eyes that always shot frost-cold glares trembled, just once—but perhaps that was my imagination, for they quickly recovered their usual light.
"That is what I intend."
"...I'll take it you've lost your mind first thing in the morning. I hear you cursed out and scolded the butler who waits on you. The only soul who serves you with any devotion, no less."
Devotion, was it. I had my doubts about how devotedly a man served who flung open his master's door unbidden and set cold meals before him. Renald's shoulders flinched as our eyes met. So a shred of conscience remained in him after all. Not even a laugh would come. It was abundantly clear that Yuria held not the slightest interest in who I was.
But this once, I could not act rashly as I had that morning. If I made a fuss over the butler here, I would lose the one fool I could still put to use. She would snap at him instead of venting her anger on me, order him out—and then, quite possibly, set her own people to watching me. Enduring that even once would be once too many. And so, to the Yuria glaring daggers at me, I bowed my head with considerable courtesy.
"I apologize for the disturbance."
"What?"
"I should have conducted myself with more care. I committed the fault of stirring up a commotion first thing in the morning. I ask that you look past it with your generous heart."
There was no rise or fall in that voice. Even as I spoke the words, I knew they were hollow—but they had never been meant as sincerity in the first place. It was nothing more than a silent gesture: I will bow this once, so let it go. Why on earth should I apologize for her scolding her own servant?
To her, who could only stare at me blankly, I added a single word and turned my back.
"...Young Matriarch."
In the past, I suppose I would have called her Sister. Such a familiar address no longer suited us. Ours was a bond twisted beyond repair, was it not?
Yuria did not stop me as I walked away, leaving my food untouched behind me. She only watched me go with wavering eyes—and so my steps carried not the slightest trace of regret.