Yuria Taylor — 1
"You're not saying that without knowing what it means... are you?"
Jay. Her true name was Arwen Tarsila.
To a woman who had betrayed the Empire and lived as a fugitive, how would the words I will kill the Crown Prince be interpreted? I already knew the answer to that question. If I had to name the one thing she and I had in common, it was the Crown Prince himself.
This was far from the first time I had stood face to face with her, so there was no sense circling around it from the start — better to drive straight to the point. It might have been rather startling from where she stood, but speaking this way had always reached the heart of the matter a little faster.
Her rabbit-like crimson eyes wavered all the same. She wanted to sound out my true intentions, yet whatever I had shown her moments ago seemed to have robbed her of the nerve.
"...You did say you'd kill him, didn't you? The Crown Prince."
"That's right."
"I don't know how you learned about me, but I can't give you an answer right away. I know of you — but this is the first time we've ever met face to face."
Arwen held my gaze for a long moment, then gave a single nod and continued. Apparently, she needed time. Our encounters were always abrupt, but this one was a different case entirely, so I could hardly blame her.
"I need time to think. I'm grateful that you saved my life, but if it involves the Crown Prince, I can't decide so easily. Above all, I don't even know whether that's truly what you're after."
"Understood. If you change your mind, you need only send word to wherever I am."
I stole a glance to the side and felt that Adele had drawn quite close by now. I had never expected this meeting to lead straight into business anyway. The deal would likely be struck a few months from now — a month at the earliest. Even so, one thing was certain: in this cycle, too, Arwen had lived. As long as the possibility remained open, calm and measured action would bring its harvest in time.
Before long, footsteps rose from below, and Arwen's eyes narrowed as she looked at me.
"Is that your companion?"
"You may think of her that way. I told her to wait, but it seems I've kept her waiting too long."
A survey of the room showed that the corpses and bloodstains had vanished without a trace. The scent of blood lingered, but perhaps that much would be enough to veil the carnage.
Then the door burst open and Adele strode in. Her eyes found mine, and for a moment she scrutinized me from head to toe.
"There you are. I did tell you to wait."
"Did it go all right? You were taking so long that I came up just in case..."
With that, her gaze shifted to Arwen.
"So she's the one you were trying to save. What is she, a lover you've been hiding?"
"I don't have tastes like that."
"If that were true, I'd have killed you on the spot. The world has no use for men like that."
She gave a sly little laugh, then closed the distance in a few long strides. After studying me in silence for a moment, Adele reached out and began carefully running her hands over me — patting here and there as though brushing off rainwater, smoothing out wrinkles as if that were her very aim, checking every last corner of my body. Then she stepped back and added:
"Not a scratch on you. With skill like yours, getting hurt anywhere would be the stranger thing."
"...Was that you checking?"
"I once knew a man who hid a wound for nothing and died when it festered. If you're injured, don't hide it. There's no shame in a wound."
When I only stared at her, Adele whipped her head around toward Arwen. Arwen, for her part, clearly knew who Adele was. Of course, there was no one alive who didn't know the name Adele Egret — but more precisely, she must have known Adele's past. The tyrant Adele, who had cut down countless people in slaughter bordering on massacre.
Still, there was no need to tremble like that. Watching her shake so pitifully, I let out a small sigh.
"I think it's time we were going. She needs her rest, after all."
"Is it already the small hours? Fine. Nothing to be done."
At Adele's look, Lotos bobbed his head and slipped away on his own — presumably to collect the subordinates sprawled outside. Adele would not linger long either, so I doubted we would meet again before I made my way north. Arwen, reading the mood, hurriedly gathered up the shattered beakers, and I too had to return to the ducal residence.
Arwen's gaze touched me, then dropped away just before our eyes could meet. No doubt the image of what I'd been earlier was still overlaid on my face. I bore her no ill will, but having felt her life hang in the balance, she would likely keep that distance for some time.
If I wasn't going to see Arwen or Adele for a while... then it would be Yuria and Theresia I ran into now and again. Names that soured my mood just to think of them.
I was running a hand down my haggard face when I realized that Adele, halfway out the door, had stopped short. She looked back at me, and at last her lips moved, quiet.
"Aren't you coming?"
"I'm coming. Just a moment — my head hurts."
It felt liberating. And yet, I couldn't call myself untroubled either. I had saved Arwen — but wasn't that always the very first thing I did upon regressing? I'd thought so much time had passed, and yet all I had managed was a single step. If I failed to see this cycle through as well, I wasn't sure I could keep my grip on my mind. That was why I had tried striking out on an entirely different path — but would it actually work?
I shook the thought from my head and moved to follow Adele, who was walking on ahead. My head ached. I winced at the pain boring into my brain, then forced a wry smile. If time would only pass faster, perhaps this pain would fade. If only this end would show itself before my eyes — my honest wish was to die even a single day sooner. Forever. Never to think again.
After saving Arwen, I always walked back to the ducal residence through this alley. I was always soaked in blood by then, and this was the only way to hide it. I kept spare clothes stashed for the purpose, but this time things had gone smoothly enough that my exterior was clean. Who would have thought Arwen would wake in the middle of all that commotion? She had never once stirred before... probably because I had used mana.
"You don't look well. Did something happen back there?"
"Does it show?"
"You look like you're about to be sick. I'd assume something did happen, but..."
Perhaps remembering what I'd called a secret earlier, Adele swallowed the question and pressed no further.
Come to think of it, I wasn't walking alone tonight. I had crossed paths with Adele by chance, taken in the Full Moon Festival at her side, and then met her again right before saving Arwen — and now here we were, all this way together. Who could have predicted that a meeting at the last ball would carry this far? I didn't much care for the word coincidence, but it didn't seem my bond with Adele would break easily in this cycle.
My heart was a tangle. I simply couldn't tell what this meeting was supposed to mean. All I had ever witnessed across my previous cycles was the same sight: everyone bound to me by fate turning their backs on me. Family. My fiancée. Even my friends. The lover I sought in my fiancée's place ended by driving a blade into me, and the one I'd believed a friend had been, in truth, the very architect of my ruin, leading the charge in breaking me.
I remember that twisted smile. The face that sneered down at me, asking how I could ever have believed someone like me was a true friend. How could I possibly feel nothing, recalling that? Betrayal was an emotion one never grew accustomed to. The sensation of my heart shattering, my veins twisting, every drop of blood in my body draining out through the bottom of me — all I could do was force my lungs to keep breathing.
That was why I hated it. When I walked this street alone, I used to run, hating the way those memories hounded me.
"I'm fine right now. Far better than usual, in fact."
Thanks to you — those words, I couldn't bring myself to say. It was too embarrassing. I had never known that merely having someone at my side could ease the symptoms. True, I called it a secret and hid this and that from her, but those eyes that never once scorned me were comfort enough.
Adele studied me for a moment, then turned her gaze up to the sky. A night sky stripped of every light never failed to draw awe from whoever beheld it. I didn't know how different it was from the skies of the North, but starlight in that kind of stillness had a way of stirring the human heart.
It was a little later that Adele, who had been gazing blankly upward, finally spoke.
"I'll be heading back soon. We probably won't meet again until you come north."
"I imagine not. Once autumn comes, that's when I'll come find you."
"...By then, do something about those eyes. They unsettle me every time I see them. You look like a man about to drop dead any moment."
"Is that why you were worried? Afraid I might truly die and be gone?"
I had expected her to snap back a denial, but to my surprise, Adele said nothing at all. Those blue eyes rested on me, as if trying to see straight through to what lay beneath. Our eyes held, and a long stretch of time passed that way before she answered with the faintest of smiles.
"For a moment, I was. I wondered if you really had died."
"...What?"
"So don't die. There's nothing I hate more than hearing that someone I know has died."
Adele turned her back, her cloak billowing out behind her. Blended into the darkness, only her white hair — where the moonlight touched — gleamed cold and brilliant. And then she looked back at me. As if she had one more thing to say, her eyes returned to me again and again before her lips finally parted.
"...This time, come. Don't run."
"I will. I have debts to repay, after all."
Her letting it slide when I called it a secret was already a great debt. If she turned my behavior over in her mind, I must have looked like nothing but a suspicious man to someone who knew nothing. Even so, she had chosen to trust me — I would have to repay that somehow. Recalling what she'd said to me yesterday, I answered by borrowing her own words.
"You'd be disappointed if I didn't come."
At that, Adele laughed. It was the same smile I remembered from some cycle or other. Wasn't that a mercy — that in this world, the only thing that had changed was me? If everything had kept shifting, I might never have endured this long.
Having apparently said all she meant to, Adele melted into the shadows of the night and was gone. I alone remained on the empty street, and the moment I realized it, something came surging back up.
...I walked to forget it. Down the pitch-black alley without a single lamp, quickening my pace to scour the thoughts away, walking forward with nothing but the moon overhead to light the way. I didn't even know whether I was headed in the right direction. I simply walked, trusting that my body remembered.
Only after a long while did my composure seem to find its way back to me. Wiping the cold sweat from my brow, I slowly lifted my head — and the building that met my eyes was, laughably enough, the main gate of the ducal residence. Everyone within would long since have been asleep. Among the many darkened rooms, a single window still glowed with light. That would be Yuria, then. She must be busy. It was her first time managing the Full Moon Festival, so there would be no end to her tasks. Which suited me perfectly. Nothing pleased me more than her having no attention to spare for me.
She won't notice. She can't.
It was rare for Yuria to still be awake at this hour. We won't cross paths, I told myself — and the moment I stepped through the gate, a low voice bored into my ear.
"You're finally here. It's past three in the morning — the festival ended ages ago."
A woman stood at the entrance, watching me. That gaze of hers, cold as ever, taking in my appearance — it was nothing like Adele's. Her eyes brimmed with nothing but contempt and every other ugly thing. So I smiled wryly, and Yuria went on.
"I can't imagine what you were doing all this time. Did you not know I've been searching everywhere for you?"
I had thought my luck today wasn't bad. Had that, too, been my mistake? Looking at Yuria, still glaring at me with icy eyes, I let out a small sigh.