A Relationship Like Close Friends
A Relationship Like Close Friends
Match three of the Pan 2 set. The score was a tense 1 to 1. Rosaria had nothing to lose, and Isabella faced the risk of having her desserts confiscated for a week because of one careless word she'd blurted out of pride.
In any case, the match continued without either side giving an inch.
"I-it's my turn, isn't it...?"
Rosaria smiled and nodded. Isabella composed herself, taking a deep breath as she assessed both her own and Rosaria's situations.
There were no monsters on Rosaria's field. Instead, two face-down cards of unknown identity were set, and she had zero cards in her hand.
On Isabella's field stood the strongest monster in the game and her own masterpiece, the White-Eyed Blue Dragon. She had no set cards, and her hand consisted only of the card she was about to draw.
Dreaming of wealth and glory, Isabella drew her card.
What she drew was a rather mediocre Level 5 monster. She couldn't offer the White-Eyed Blue Dragon as tribute, so Isabella had to agonize: attack and finish Rosaria, or pass the turn, wary of whatever trap Rosaria might have set.
'...No, I have to attack and end this.'
Both of their life points were already hanging by a thread. After all, if Lady Rosaria drew a card on her next turn that could destroy the White-Eyed Blue Dragon, the Level 5 knight in her own hand would just be sitting around enthusiastically doing nothing. Better to seize the certain now over an uncertain next draw. That was Isabella the gambler's choice.
"I... I'm attacking!"
It was an attack with a week's worth of happiness on the line. Isabella, who had at some point genuinely immersed herself in the game, was enjoying it as if her actual life depended on it.
'...What should I do here.'
The card she had set was Magic Cylinder—a card that reflected damage equal to the attacking monster's attack power. If she activated it now, Isabella's HP would drop to zero. That would be her victory.
But Isabella's expression wasn't good. She looked close to tears, and she was even praying to God—please let it be nothing, please let it be a bluff, please grant me victory!
"...I've lost, Isabella."
She simply couldn't bring herself to shatter that happiness.
And the moment she declared her defeat, Isabella burst into a cheer of ecstasy and began bouncing around like a live fish.
"Ah... oh! I'm so sorry! My old habits..."
But she immediately composed herself. Truly, the power of the head maid's training. A habit was something one might not even be aware of, yet the head maid's training, carved into her very body, instantly pushed aside her instincts and revealed itself.
"...A promise is a promise, after all. Feel free to enjoy as many delicious desserts as you like under my name, Isabella."
Isabella was so overjoyed she was even shedding tears. If Rosaria had trampled on that joy just now, she felt she'd be too sorry to even eat a meal.
"Thank you! Lady Rosaria's grace, as vast as the sea—I, unworthy Isabella, shall never forget it as long as this life endures, and I will most certainly repay it!"
Isabella possessed a remarkably lightweight life, one that could be traded for a week's worth of desserts.
As she said this, she clasped her hands together, closed her eyes with a smile, and looked utterly blissful as she listed off the names of the new desserts that Pan Ahjussi, the owner of the neighborhood dessert shop, had recently created.
Just then, Isabella's eyes flashed like someone who'd just remembered something forgotten, and she turned her head and asked Rosaria the question that had just occurred to her.
"...Now that I think about it, what were those two trap cards of yours, Lady Rosaria? They'd been bothering me the whole time, but it ended without me ever finding out."
There was no reason not to show her if she was asking. So she revealed the Magic Cylinder that had been set, along with the bluff card she'd placed to deceive Isabella.
"Huh...? If you'd used this, wouldn't you have won, Lady Rosaria?"
The history of the birth of the first Duel King was being marred by match-fixing. Isabella simply couldn't understand why Rosaria had let her win.
"...What good would it do to beat Isabella? After all, buying desserts isn't expensive."
From the very start, Isabella had carried the greater risk in this match. For Lady Rosaria, the daughter of a noble household, the cost of Isabella's desserts was nothing. But for Isabella, her entire week's worth of happiness was on the line.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason.
"And I also didn't want to see Isabella, who comforted me, become unhappy."
It was Isabella who had helped her set down a heavy burden. She didn't want to repay that gentle kindness with unhappiness. Time and again, when she needed it, Isabella had unexpectedly provided great help.
"Th...thank you."
Isabella didn't know what to do with herself.
"No, it's really nothing, so please don't make a big deal of it. Compared to the help Isabella gave me, it's truly nothing at all."
This wasn't empty flattery, but the truth. If not for Isabella's pure goodwill at that moment, she would have continued carrying that heavy burden alone while searching for an answer, only to collapse on her own.
"To think that Lady Rosaria would think so highly of someone as lowly as myself... it is an honor."
Isabella gazed at Rosaria with a dazed expression, radiating the reverence of a believer beholding an angel. Had she sensed divinity within kindness? Or was it thanks to a week's worth of desserts?
"...If you ever have any worries, please, just say the word!"
Isabella thumped her chest and spoke boldly.
"I may not have lived a long life, but if it's for the sake of being helpful to Lady Rosaria, I will overwork my deficient brain to the point of abuse and find the optimal answer for you!"
She even had resolute eyes. Isabella was radiating positive energy to an almost burdensome degree.
'...Worries, huh.'
Come to think of it, Isabella, despite looking like a fool, was unexpectedly excellent at offering counsel. Whether it was because she was an artist who saw the world from a different perspective, or simply Isabella's inborn nature, she wasn't sure. But uniquely, Isabella was good at finding a third option—something an ordinary person, or someone lost in worry, might easily miss. So she began to wonder if Isabella might be helpful this time as well.
"......Actually, I do have a worry."
So, for now, she decided to give it a shot.
"...As Isabella knows, I'm suffering from amnesia."
It was a fact known to every maid in the Bersian Mansion. It wasn't news to Isabella either, so without showing surprise, she maintained a calm demeanor and began listening attentively to Rosaria's words.
"...In that case, how should I act? Is it right for me to live as a new 'me,' without remembering? Or should I face the Rosaria of the past?"
It was a heavy question, one that even someone like Isabella, who lived her life thinking lightly of things, couldn't easily answer. So for a moment, Isabella assumed the posture and expression of someone deep in thought. She closed her eyes, furrowed her brow, and pondered with all her might for about a minute.
At last, with a face that looked as though she had grasped something, she opened her mouth.
"...My words won't necessarily be the right answer. I'm not that clever a person, nor am I the type to think and speak with deep gravity."
She was choosing each word carefully and thoughtfully.
"......So this is purely hypothetical. Hypothetically, I thought long and hard about what I would do if I were in Lady Rosaria's situation."
Isabella was applying the principle of putting herself in another's shoes.
"...If it were me, I think I would face the past. Just because I've changed doesn't mean everyone around me has. So I would try, as much as possible, to become the person those people remember."
It was a side of Isabella she had never seen before—a serious one.
"This might be getting a little deep, but... anyway, there was an old philosopher grandpa who lived in the room next to the cramped studio I shared with my friends, and he once told us something. He said that as you get older, the past keeps slipping from your memory."
And so she quoted a story she had heard in the past.
"But still, he said that because that unremembered 'past' was also his own time, he would somehow remember it, and—within the memories of the people around him who had made his 'present' self possible—within their memories, perhaps even in the 'future' after his death, he wanted to continue existing as the eccentric philosopher he was. So he said he kept struggling to find the past he couldn't remember."
At this point, what piqued her curiosity was Isabella's own past. Just what kind of life had she lived to have gained so many experiences? But that wasn't the important thing—not Isabella's life story.
'...Not just myself, but other people's memories too.'
It was a perspective she had never considered. That was only natural, since humans were self-centered creatures. Most people probably lived their lives viewing the world only through their own eyes.
And so, not even once since coming here had she thought about the Rosaria that other people remembered. She had only thought about how she should live going forward; she had never faced how she had lived in the past.
"...It might be painful. Perhaps it could even be an unpleasant past. But if I were in Lady Rosaria's situation, I think I would try to face that past, like the philosopher grandpa who told me these words—for everyone who made me who I am."
Isabella wore a complicated expression.
"Because the love I receive now, and the love those people give me, is surely given with the 'past' me in mind. So, to repay that love, I think I would set aside the present for a moment and face the me that those people remember. Because only then will my present self be able to find the direction for living going forward."
"Ahaha," Isabella laughed, scratching her head. It was an unusually serious answer for her, and one that felt presumptuous for someone like her to give, so this was likely an unconscious gesture to hide her embarrassment and guilt.
"If it were me, unless I planned to cut ties with everyone and live alone, I think I would try, first of all, to find out. Because it's only right to give back as much love as you receive. And, though it's just a hypothetical, wouldn't it be possible that if you kept thinking about it like that, your memories might come back?"
And with that, she finished by comforting and cheering Rosaria on.
'...That's an answer worthy of Isabella.'
It was an answer quite different from her own, which had only ever been about running away. Isabella was saying she would look at that past not just to receive, but to give back what she had received. Shamelessly, Isabella, who lived with thoughts she couldn't manage, suddenly seemed rather admirable.
"...I wish I had a friend like Isabella."
It was because Isabella, for some reason, gave off a familiar feeling. She wondered if she and Isabella had been friends before she lost her memory, but Isabella clearly had her own definite past, didn't she?
So she simply thought of her as someone she just happened to get along with well.
"...Though it's presumptuous of me, if I had a friend like Lady Rosaria, I think I would have been truly happy too."
Embarrassed, Isabella blushed and lowered her head.
"...Why is that? I'm not helpful to Isabella, after all."
Come to think of it, hadn't she only ever received from Isabella? Even ordinarily, Isabella cleaned Rosaria's room in her place, and ever since their last outing, Isabella had been the one humoring Rosaria's unreasonable requests, the one who helped her when she was struggling.
"H-how could that be? Thanks to Lady Rosaria, I'm living happily, dreaming again a dream I'd put away. And on top of that, you buy me the desserts I love every single day, and you keep believing in and relying on someone as inadequate as myself. It is I who am at a loss for how to express my gratitude, Lady Rosaria."
Isabella expressed her thanks with utter sincerity.
"...Then I suppose we're like the closest of friends who rely on each other."
Of course, Rosaria could never become Isabella's outward friend. After all, the wall that class difference erected in this medieval era was far too high. But still, she thought, couldn't they become friends who felt an inner closeness?
Strangely enough, looking at Isabella even gave her the odd feeling of seeing a friend she had known long ago.
"...Anyway, thank you for the advice, Isabella."
"Not at all. I could do this all day, so please don't worry about such things."
Isabella spoke like an American hero in a blue bodysuit. With those final words, she carefully tucked the one-week dessert free-pass she'd received from Rosaria into her apron and departed.
Left alone in the space Isabella had vacated, Rosaria pondered by herself.
"...I'm learning a lot."
The past she couldn't remember was still her own. And, regrettably, what the people who loved her now remembered was that past self. Even the love they gave was ultimately because that past self had existed—she was living a present in which she was loved based on those memories. Once you heard all that... wasn't it the case that she could no longer run away?
And so, this time, she steeled her resolve. This time, without shame, without running from fear, she wanted to learn about the past Rosaria she didn't know.
She spent the remaining time with that thought, and after sleeping and waking, she waited for the Saintess to come.
*
And so, as soon as the next day arrived, she stiffened her resolve and greeted the Saintess.
"......Rosaria."
However, the Saintess, who had entered through the door, wore a considerably sulky expression. She looked as though she found something deeply unsatisfactory.
"I, too, being your lover, could offer you that sort of advice for a lifetime, Rosaria! So why do you not ask me such things? I want to help my beloved Rosaria as well, so why won't you ask me those sorts of questions!"
The Saintess, who had eavesdropped on the conversation using the divine power of the Lord God—who had no respect whatsoever for privacy—was thoroughly pouting, merely shaking her clenched fists up and down.
"Th-that is, well, Canaria..."
There weren't many options for breaking out of this awkward situation. Nothing could be the right answer except apologizing as much as she could and stroking the thoroughly sulking Saintess's hair to soothe her, so Rosaria executed those options exactly as prescribed.
"...In any case, next time, I am to be first. From today onward, any worries or pains Rosaria has—you absolutely must tell me before anyone else. Promise me. So that I, too, starting today, can compile a list of the most perfect answers for when that day comes."
The Saintess extended her pinky finger, demanding a promise. Refusing might cause the Saintess's condition to change in who-knew-what way, so for everyone's safety, Rosaria swore yet another vow after the marriage vow, completing a double vow.
"...I'm sorry. From now on, I'll definitely come to Canaria first."
In the end, it was only after the trinity—the pinky promise (of great weight), the sincere apology, and the all-out hair-stroking—had converged that she barely succeeded in calming that wrath.