The Saintess Hates the Grand Duke - 4
Memory was never something to be trusted outright. Given time, it warped; something unknown would slip in and change it — was that not simply what memory was?
No one ever summoned the same memory twice. Unless it was vivid enough, shattering enough to brand itself into the mind, perhaps memory itself could not be trusted at all.
"Adele, are you leaving tomorrow?"
"Didn't I tell you yesterday? I leave in the morning and return by nightfall. Just take Bunta and keep yourselves amused."
"And yet it seems you had something you wished to say after all — judging by how you called me here."
It was a memory that always stopped at the same point: finding Robert collapsed and dying in the middle of a snowfield, and carrying him back to make him her own.
The Robert of that memory had seemed desperate for something. He could not handle even the name Taylor with the ease he managed now — if anything, he shied from it, and did everything in his power to avoid going anywhere near the Central Region.
She thought a great many things were different. The Robert of memory showed his emotions far more than he did now; he was not so indifferent to everything. At her words he sometimes reacted with startling force, and sometimes nursed some feeling all on his own.
Adele was no fool. She had a fair sense of what feelings a person carried when they looked at her. And as for how she herself had seen Robert back then — that much was clear. She believed she had harbored a similar feeling. They had spent long years together, and he was the one person who could understand her loneliness.
Even then, she had seen her father in him. Because he always seemed on the verge of vanishing, Adele had never much liked letting Robert stray far from her side.
"You still won't send me far, I see."
"Because it makes me anxious."
"Well, I think it suits me fine. Being together is... nice, after all. In my own way."
Regression.
Not the life she lived now, but the lives of previous cycles — lives that only Robert remembered in full. Even with the explanation, believing it did not come easily.
What lingered was a different question: had Robert truly lived only as long as the time he had spent with her? The Robert of that era had already attained a master's realm. Surely he could not have found the time to hold a sword even then. She could bring herself to accept the word talent — and yet the doubt remained.
And that doubt had never gone away. She knew of the life he had spent at her side, and she knew that his death in that life had come at the Crown Prince's hand.
That must have been why he had warned her so — why he had written those words in his letter: do not meet the Crown Prince.
In the cold night wind, Adele laughed, short and bitter. What Robert had told her had struck her with a shock of an entirely different shade. The memories of the past she now carried were her own emotions too — and so they were already shaping the woman she was now.
Three years spent together. Then, meeting again in this life, a month of facing each other. Robert looked even more precarious than the figure in her memory. He seemed as though he might crumble at any moment — and yet he smiled as if nothing were wrong. That was what grated on her.
If he would only say he was struggling, she would help him. But the way he carried himself, as though he needed no one's help, did not sit right with her.
Honestly, it exasperated her — the very fact that he moved without sparing her a single thought. What was she, to Robert?
She knew she had once harbored feelings for him. And it had not been one-sided. Each of them, toward the other — even if they never took that final step, they had both known, hadn't they?
And yet the secrets remained. She had heard the incomprehensible word regression; she had heard that she and Robert had already been together in a previous life. But she could tell at once that this was not the whole of it.
If she had pressed him, would he have told her of the other lives? She thought he probably would have — and still, Adele asked no more.
...It was a hunch. A hunch that she should not ask any further — that Robert had his reasons for stopping where he did.
Perhaps even that kindness unremembered she had heard of before had sprung from the same regression of his.
She wanted to know. But there was no way to know. The gulf between Robert and herself remained — a distance her outstretched hand could never reach, however far it reached.
With past and present feelings churned together, the inside of Adele's chest was a thoroughly tangled place. No matter how many breaths she let out, the tightness would not lift.
"I don't... know."
Adele murmured. The dawn, brightening by degrees, lay pale against the window, and even as the shadows that had dyed the room dark melted away, Adele still had not slept.
"What scenery you live your days looking at, what you feel. What I even am to you... I can't know a thing of it."
He was always smiling — so why did she long, instead, to see him weep? Adele's hand traced slowly down that face. She wished Robert would just cry, really cry, in front of her. Then, strangely, she thought she might finally be at ease; all she would have to do was gather him into her arms and pat his back. But if all he ever showed her was that smile, she doubted this unease would ever fade.
A glass doll that looked ready to shatter at any moment — that was all Robert ever felt like to Adele.
A day had passed. I had laid 'a certain amount' of my regression bare before Adele, but I hadn't expected any great change to come of it.
In truth, I had not told her of all one hundred lives. I had only explained the life Adele herself remembered, and the fact that I had already died any number of times.
I hadn't counted on being understood, and I had no intention of fishing for pity. It was just that — honestly — it had been rather hard.
I'd told myself I was managing well enough since killing Theresia, but the heart, it turned out, did not settle that easily. The thing I had always assumed I would confess someday had, in the end, left my mouth.
As Adele recalled more, my account would grow more detailed — but in the end, it was only ever the story of a single life. If anything changed because of that, that would be the strange part.
Just don't think about it — and with that thought I stepped out of my room, only to come face to face, of all things, with a familiar face.
"Ah."
Our eyes met, and the sound escaped me before I knew it. I scratched my cheek awkwardly and offered my greeting.
"...Good morning."
"Thanks to a certain someone, I slept just wonderfully — so I can't exactly call it one."
Adele's complexion was not good. Had she been up all night, then? Apologetic, I gave a small smile — and Adele, her lips following mine into a smile, strode straight up to me.
The approach was so abrupt that my back met the wall. It was a closeness that would have invited misunderstanding in anyone else's eyes, but Adele simply stood near and studied me, unblinking.
With the difference in our heights, she ended up gazing up at me — yet there was nothing remotely amusing about the mood.
We stared at each other without a word; then Adele brushed my cheek lightly, just for a moment, and let out a soft laugh.
"So it isn't a dream."
And with that she put distance between us again. She had apparently wanted to confirm something.
Judging by her verdict — not a dream — perhaps she had half-wondered whether I was some apparition. When I touched the spot her hand had grazed, Adele's gaze settled on me.
"I touched you just now. I thought what I was seeing might be a dream again. You did show up in my dreams often enough."
"Did I appear in your dreams again today, then?"
"No — I couldn't sleep. I thought what I was looking at right now was the dream."
Adele was surprisingly matter-of-fact. I had expected her to be thrown into confusion, but she seemed to have swept her thoughts into clean order, in her own way.
I couldn't help wondering what lay behind her gaze. Not that I could simply come out and ask.
When I only looked back at her in silence, Adele turned slightly and made a place for me at her side.
"Let's walk, for a start. You were headed to a meal anyway, weren't you?"
The dining hall lay quite a distance off. Adrian, for her part, had the acolytes seeing to her, and joining her was always an afternoon affair. The mornings were free — which meant they belonged to Adele.
So why did even this walk feel awkward? It was my own fault for speaking of the regression, I knew — but I was still turning over what I ought to say first.
It was Adele who broke the silence.
"I've decided not to think about what you told me yesterday. Not for a while."
"...Is that so?"
"It's a past life either way. Nothing changes just because I know it now. In the end, all I heard was that then and now are two different things."
There was nothing wrong with what Adele said. She was right. It was a past life, and remembering it changed nothing in this one — just as, no matter how much I recalled the past, I could only ever fix my eyes on the present.
It was simply remarkable how cleanly she had closed the matter. How long had it taken me to reach that same conclusion?
Perhaps because of that, I found myself looking at her — and Adele frowned and spoke.
"You look like you have some complaint?"
"Not at all. I'm just marveling, that's all."
"You're the marvel. I can hardly believe you've died over and over — and the fact that you're standing here, like this, amazes me more."
In those water-blue eyes, worry pooled faintly. Her voice was a touch curt, but I knew perfectly well that Adele was worried about me. She had been like this since the moment we met in the corridor — all of it, worry.
I found myself thinking that walking like this wasn't so bad. Come to think of it, how long had it been since the two of us walked alone together?
We kept a hair's breadth between us the whole way — close enough that the backs of our hands barely grazed. Now and then our steps would fall into rhythm, only to slip out of it again. For no reason at all, I grew conscious of the way Adele walked. Matching my stride to hers. Turning my feet to the angle of hers.
I had a feeling I used to do this often, back when we walked together. Did Adele remember it now, too?
These were feelings from the past. Even if she had recovered those memories, what she felt then and what she felt now could not be the same. I had died dozens of times more since then — and Adele was not yet fully ready to accept what she remembered.
Only when our strides fell perfectly into line did I realize that Adele had been watching me all along.
"...How long have you been watching?"
"From the beginning."
To my question, Adele answered with a perfectly flat expression.
I might have been a little embarrassed. If Adele had remembered the habit, perhaps not — but if she hadn't, then I had simply been making a spectacle of myself.
Then a clear voice reached me.
"There's no need to be embarrassed. I've been watching you walk since a moment ago myself."
"That's—"
"It means it's no longer only you who remembers. I remember now, too."
However carelessly we walked, our steps overlapped completely. I had not been the only one doing the matching. Adele's foot would falter for a heartbeat, then carry forward again, falling in behind mine.
Adele had been watching my steps, too. When I realized it and turned to look at her, she turned her head away, lips flickering.
"Every now and then, you can come to me and talk about other things. Tell me about the memories only you know — or if I've recalled something, tell me about that instead."
"You might find it confusing."
"It doesn't matter. I'm the one who recovered these memories too, after all. So when your head aches, come find me. You don't have to say a word — just stay a while, every once in a while."
Our eyes met once more. Our steps had come to a dumbstruck halt somewhere along the way, and before we knew it we were simply standing there, the temple at our backs, doing nothing but looking at each other.
"You can lean on me."
Adele huffed a soft laugh and went on. There was something eased about her expression. As if my fear that she might be lost in confusion had been nothing more than my own misreading, Adele — yesterday's hesitance cast off entirely — spoke.
"As I said, I won't think about your affairs for a while. But there is one thing I should say."
"And that would be?"
"When it's just the two of us, call me by my name. So... like before."
The before she spoke of could only mean the memories of the past. I smiled briefly and nodded. Calling her by name was no hardship. If anything, it came easier to me — certainly easier than Grand Duke.
"Adele."
When, after so long, I set that name upon my lips, Adele smiled. It was a smile so warm, so unlike her, that I could almost hear the beat of my own heart.
Louder than usual.