Let's Play at the Ducal Residence (6)
Before I turned seven.
Those were days I preferred not to remember. I had been a commoner, after all. Before Young Lady took me in, every single day had been a struggle just to survive.
The real problem was why Irene was asking about it. Even she shouldn't know my true identity.
This was the false identity Duke Katram had prepared for me. The Katram Ducal House was called one of the three great ducal houses, but hidden behind that title was a strength the other two could never match. A false identity crafted by House Katram would be nearly impossible to trace, even for the imperial intelligence bureau.
Irene had distanced herself so thoroughly from power that she wasn't even involved in the succession struggle. Even if she somehow used the imperial intelligence bureau, her authority there would be negligible.
But the only line dividing my life before and after age seven was the moment Young Lady picked me up off the street. If Irene somehow knew about my past…
Hoo. Don't think stupid thoughts, Frey. Stay calm. And stop trying to form a mana blade in your hand. No rash ideas.
I forced down the fierce loyalty that insisted I would never bring trouble to House Katram or Young Lady. Then I asked Irene as coolly as I could manage.
"Why are you asking me that?"
"Well… it bothers me."
"What does? And why specifically before age seven?"
I watched her carefully. If she had investigated my background, she would flinch. Even if she hadn't, her reaction would tell me something.
Instead she answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Because the trauma that gets burned in when you're little is the strongest!"
"Excuse me?"
"That's why I asked if you'd been through something rough. Frey, you said you knocked yourself out in the infirmary by shooting illusion magic at your own head, right?"
"I did."
"And you said the illusion was built from the stress you'd experienced in your life."
"That's correct."
"People are still little kids until they're seven. The kind of trauma that wrecks a whole life often forms that early. Passing out from your own illusion magic was way past normal. So I asked. And one more thing."
Irene wriggled under the covers and pulled something out. Was that a binding rope?
"Where on earth did you get that?"
"Does this rope ring any bells?"
"None."
"Tell the truth. One, two—"
"Aaaagh! It's the binding rope from the grimoire!"
Yes. That rope was identical to the one I had used to truss Irene up tight while sleepwalking in the room you couldn't leave unless you obeyed.
I had buried that memory as deep as I could!
"Exactly. Normal people don't tie other people up even if they sleepwalk. I put that together with the infirmary incident and reached a conclusion."
"That I went through something so terrible before age seven that the trauma is branded deep into me?"
"Bingo. Frey, picture this. Someday you get the chance to sleep next to the Katram young lady you adore so much. But you still haven't fixed your trauma, so you tie the young lady you love so much up with binding rope. She wakes up crying and asks, 'Are you… dissatisfied with me…?'"
"Gyaaaaah!"
Just imagining it was horrifying! I would never end up in the same bed as Young Lady in the first place! But there was always the "what if"!
Young Lady looking at me with betrayal in her eyes while still bound? I would have no reason left to live.
I threw away the dark suspicions I'd been nursing earlier and urgently asked Irene,
"Th-then what do I do?"
"Simple. We find the cause of the trauma. First let's confirm it properly. After age seven you never went through anything traumatic, right?"
"Never!"
"Then it's definitely something from before. What do you think it was? Something that makes you stay on guard even while sleeping, something that makes you foam at the mouth and pass out from stress."
"Ummm…"
Her words did make me wonder. Neither of those behaviors was normal.
The problem was that nothing came to mind.
It was true I had lived a hard life before Young Lady took me in. It was true I had fought every day just to survive.
But I had never stayed on guard even in my sleep. At the very least I had a home. Even if it was only a one-room shack, I hadn't been living on the streets.
"Frey? Hey. You can tell me."
"Well…"
"Yeah. I'll do everything I can to help you get rid of that trauma."
"I don't know."
"What?"
"I said I don't know. I have absolutely no idea."
"That can't be! Trauma that deep and you have no clue?"
"But that's the truth. I had a rough childhood, sure, but I have no memory of anything that matches the symptoms you pointed out."
"Really?"
"Really."
Irene stared straight at me. I met her eyes without looking away. She seemed to realize I was telling the truth.
"How is that possible…"
"I don't know either. Maybe it wasn't trauma after all?"
"The sleepwalking I can maybe buy! But fainting was definitely trauma!"
"Well… that's true. It's strange. Why can't I think of anything at all?"
When I thought of my childhood, Mother fell ill and I went out to do hard labor.
If I tried to go further back… hmm?
"Huh?"
"What is it, Frey? Did you remember something?"
"No. I just… can't remember any further."
"Haaaah. Really?"
Irene grumbled, clearly disappointed. I left her to it and sank into confusion.
I have no memories from before age six at all.
Of course I had been very young. But not a single fragment coming back was unnatural.
I didn't like to brag, but I was proud of my sharp mind. I almost never forgot anything I'd seen once. The fact that I knew Young Lady's body measurements was… ahem.
Think of my memories from age seven onward as a landscape painting on a canvas.
Everything from age six and earlier looked like someone had spilled black ink all over that canvas. Completely black. Nothing came back. Why was I only noticing this now? It was as if those earlier memories were never supposed to be recalled…
"Irene."
"Hm? Did it come back?"
"Please help me."
This was serious. I was the head butler of House Katram, currently attending the Academy under a collateral-branch identity. For something this unclear to be happening to me?
Whether the memories had been erased or sealed, neither was acceptable.
A short while later I was sitting on the floor while Irene sat on the bed and took hold of my head. She asked in an uneasy voice,
"I still don't really get what we're doing."
"Remember how I extracted information from your head and recreated imperial cuisine? Think of it as something similar."
"You can't just spring that on me all of a sudden."
Irene fidgeted with her fingers. Since she was still holding my head, it tickled.
"Don't worry. Even if you mess up, I won't end up a vegetable."
"Saying that just makes me more nervous, you know? Frey, you have zero consideration."
"Call it a joke between friends. Listen carefully."
I explained it to her.
Right now my memories from before age six were painted solid black. In the sense that no information could enter or leave, it was similar to an Unobserved Area.
Conveniently, Irene could create Unobserved Areas with her mana. Something very much like whatever was covering my memories. That meant she should be able to interfere with it.
If I tried to interfere myself, my own mana might cook my brain, or I might touch whatever this seal-or-erasure was and trigger some new disaster. In the end, Irene—with her stable ice-attribute mana—was the right person for the job.
"I'll say this first: I'm going to lock down everything except the pre-age-six memories completely. You are not allowed to look. And even with the pre-age-six memories, the moment any shape starts to form, you pull your hands away immediately."
"Do I look like the kind of person who peeks at other people's memories for fun?"
"You did dig into my background for several days after the entrance ceremony."
"That was—!"
Irene made a little pii sound and shut her mouth. See? This was why people needed to live clean lives.
"Then please do it."
"Okay. You trust me?"
"I trust your magic skill."
No matter what anyone said, she was skilled enough to cast magic even inside a Mana Blockage Circuit. She might be a step below me, but Irene was still a once-in-a-century genius.
"Here I go!"
"Yes."
Irene poured her mana into my head. At the same time, my consciousness went dark.
I never expected things to turn out like this.
Exploring inside Frey's head… this got a lot more complicated than I planned.
Part of me really wanted to feel the emotions Frey had toward me nice and thick. But that would be betraying him.
More importantly—his memories from before age six were sealed or erased? I thought Frey was just a commoner.
"Right?"
[That's right.]
Even little Aileen, my young personality, agreed. Frey had no hidden background of any kind. Just looking at the pure way he acted as a child made it hard to believe there was anything else.
Since this concerned our Frey, I would give it everything I had. He was being weirdly wary, but even so, there was no mental barrier a member of the imperial family like me couldn't break. Erasure would actually be more of a headache than a seal. You can't restore what's been erased.
"Is it over there?"
I descended deeper and deeper through his memories until at last I met the "blackness" that rejected everything.
It was a wall similar to the spatial rift I had caused in the infirmary. It neither released information nor allowed any in.
A wall that existed as if to declare that you and I would never meet in this lifetime, as if to insist that this side was a space that simply did not exist.
The moment I touched it, I understood.
"No way."
I could not dismantle this barrier. And more than that—
"How is this even possible?"
This was a mental barrier that should never have existed here.
It was the mental barrier magic passed down only within the imperial family. If that were all, there was a vanishingly small chance it could make sense. Some passing imperial could have cast it on a commoner as a prank.
What was impossible was the strength.
This magic was far larger and far more solid than every mental barrier currently placed on every living member of the imperial family combined.