The Wedding Blessed by the Dead (2)
"..."
An awkward silence hangs over the VIP seats.
If this were an ordinary party, the nobles would already be crowding around her, scrambling over one another to offer their greetings.
"Ahem."
Most of them simply remain in their chairs, clearing their throats with studied indifference or turning their eyes, awkwardly, the other way.
Is it out of consideration for how she must feel, attending her former fiancé's wedding? Or are they merely trying to keep the sparks from landing on themselves?
"Oh my. Lady Esmela. I trust you've been well?"
As she follows the usher toward her assigned seat, a few young ladies brave enough—or oblivious enough—come up to greet her. But...
A glare, sharp as a blade, cuts over the top of her black fan.
"Th-then, if you'll excuse me."
Every last one of them scurries back to her own seat.
You see, my lord? Who in their right mind would insult the chancellor's daughter—the young lady of a ducal house—to her face?
Cursing the head of the house under my breath, I follow along behind Esmela.
"You may sit here."
The usher bows with perfect courtesy and returns to the entrance of the VIP section. Even while Esmela gathers her skirts and takes her seat, she does not lower the fan hiding her face.
In my previous life, my name was Park Taehan. My hobby was fandom, and if it was romance fantasy I devoured all of it without discrimination—comics, games, anime, anything.
People around me used to sneer and ask what kind of man liked that sort of thing, but what did they know? I liked it. That was enough. And so, in the middle of enjoying a lonely otaku life no one understood, I died at twenty-eight in an unforeseen accident.
...I thought that was the end. Then I opened my eyes, and a man and a woman in the ragged clothes only poor commoners would wear were looking down at me from directly overhead, their eyes full of love.
Yes. I had been reincarnated in another world as Renit, a newborn born between a commoner couple. And it was no ordinary reincarnation. I had been reborn into the world of my favorite game, Romance in Arkesia: Four Jewels!
I still can't describe how happy I was when I realized it at the age of five.
Ah—Romance in Arkesia: Four Jewels, Roina for short, is a romance-fantasy dating sim for women, developed by a Korean indie studio. A commoner heroine enrolls at the Royal Arkesia Academy and romances four male leads: a typical otome game, with one peculiar distinction. The four villainesses were pushed to the very front of the marketing. Following the reigning trend in romance fantasy, each route for the four male leads introduced a different villainess to oppose the heroine. That was the main selling point.
In any case, granted a second life in the world of Roina, I was thrilled at the thought of meeting the game's characters in the flesh. Before long, though, I understood reality, and that thrill shattered to pieces.
Most of the leads of the main story were nobles, elites who had entered the royal academy. I was a poor commoner from an island village. With my station, even hearing news of them was difficult, let alone meeting them.
Even so, I was not about to give up. Determined to see their faces even once, I began training the moment I was old enough to stand on my own. I had no reincarnation perk, no cheat skill, nothing at all, so the only things I could rely on were the training methods I had learned while building my body in my previous life, and the knowledge required to develop physical ability.
Day after day I trained and trained again, setting even my parents' objections aside. On the day I turned twelve, judging that my body had at last been forged into something usable, I went to the Hunter Guild branch nearest my hometown and changed professions. I became a hunter who slew monsters. Among the jobs a commoner could choose, hunting was one of the very few in which talent and results could still buy a rise in the world.
I could have become a soldier... but I hadn't come all the way to another world just to join the army again.
And so, young as I was, I began a grueling life: taking on every quest I could get, clearing odd jobs, hunting monsters, and training in whatever spare moments remained. Around fifteen, my merits were recognized and I managed to climb as high as B-rank on the scale that ran from E to S. I started taking part in large-scale monster subjugations as well.
And at last, on a quest to cull a flock of wyverns—
"You're pretty useful. Ever thought of joining House Herta?"
I caught the eye of Esmela Herta, the former villainess, who happened to be on the same hunt, and was scouted as a butler of House Herta. Well, my life as a butler after that is exactly the story Duke Terid told in my place.
Anyway. If someone asked me what the goals of this life are, I would give them two. First, to die a natural death. Second, after Roina's ending, to watch the main characters live happily, and go on enjoying my fandom even in another world.
The second matters especially. If they aren't happy, then I'll make them happy somehow. I endured all those brutal days on that single resolve.
But the me of right now cannot even make this one former villainess, standing directly in front of me, properly happy.
"..."
"..."
After she is shown to her seat, an uncomfortable silence hangs between Esmela and me for several minutes.
"...My lady."
I hesitate a long while before I finally work up the courage to speak.
"What."
Esmela answers coldly.
"Even now, it might be better if you went back—"
"If you say one more word,"
Esmela turns her head toward me and glares, her eyes terrible.
"you had better be prepared, Renit. Even you."
"My lady."
"Are you telling me to shut myself in a room and cry? Running away would shame me more."
She cuts the matter off cleanly and turns her face forward again. From her point of view, she means she will stand and face it with her head high. But...
You poor lady. What you just said also means that if you were alone in your room right now, you would be sad enough to cry.
Of the four male leads, the one who carries the main route is the crown prince of the Kingdom of Arkesia, Roberje Arkesia. And the villainess who appears on the route to win him is none other than Esmela Herta. The crown prince's route unfolds as romance fantasy at its most classic of classics: a love between prince and heroine that transcends the difference in their stations, and a villainess who interferes by every means she can find.
After I heard the news of the engagement between the crown prince and the heroine, Yuria, I understood that this timeline was the main route—and, within it, the true ending, in which the heroine becomes queen.
...And of course I also knew that the villainess Esmela lost a duel of honor against the heroine before the eyes of the entire academy, and had her engagement broken by the prince.
She obstructs, by any means necessary, the heroine who has chosen her fiancé. She fails. In the end the engagement is annulled, the sins she has committed until now come to light, and she is condemned. That is a villainess's inescapable fate.
But living in the same world of Roina as a person named Renit—her equal—and working at her side as a butler of House Herta, what I came to feel was this. A human being named Esmela Herta must not be left as nothing more than a character who is judged and then written out of the story.
In the end, more than anything, I wanted the villainess left alone after that ending of condemnation to have a new life as well. And so, when heaven's own luck let me serve as Esmela's butler, I honed myself even more strictly than before. I handled every kind of duty and learned the manners expected of a servant in a ducal house, and I studied whatever might help in a fight without picking and choosing—swordsmanship, magic, all of it.
Every bit of that effort was for Esmela Herta: the condemned villainess, my dearest favorite, a living person and not a character in a game. I wanted to stay beside her and help her walk toward a new happiness.
But I am only a butler. I have no way to comfort a duke's daughter grieving at her former fiancé's wedding. I thought I had worked hard all this time, yet the wall of reality stands far too high to clear on fan devotion alone.
If You were going to reincarnate me, could You not at least have had me born the eldest son of some noble house with a decent background?
Then I would have had more choices than hunter or butler. I invent, entirely on my own, the hypothetical god who must have reincarnated me, and find myself resenting that imaginary god for no reason at all.
I am sunk in such thoughts when a great horn sounds across the square, long and low. Esmela bites her lip. It is the call that announces the start of the wedding.
The blast drags on for what must be three full minutes before it finally ends. The crowd that had been clamoring in the square, and the people seated in the VIP section, all fall quiet and wait for what comes next.
Then, in a sudden flare of light, an enormous black screen rises into the sky above the square. They must mean to relay the wedding to the people in the square through image magic. The screen brightens and shows the wedding hall.
The viewpoint looks down from on high at a dais carved with splendid ornament and pattern, where two thrones stand and a priest will officiate. The long red carpet laid across the floor, embroidered in gold thread, is for the crown prince and the crown princess.
The king and queen are seated on the thrones.
The angle looks down from above, so their faces can't be seen, but their dress and the crowns on their heads are enough to tell. The enormous screen holds that overhead view of the two figures on the thrones, and then—
...!
The viewpoint turns and catches the crown prince and his bride walking in from the opposite side. As the couple advances toward the thrones, the view descends with them, until at last the screen shows the crown prince and crown princess from the front.
Crown Prince Roberje Arkesia, in a splendid white tailcoat. Silver hair that catches the light, and silver eyes to match it. Those confident eyes hold a royal's nobility, a genius's pride, and the flutter of a man in love, all at once. Well over six feet tall, he matches his stride to the bride's and still never loses his bearing. He is, to the letter, the handsome-prince archetype that romance fantasy cannot do without.
And beside him, arm linked through his, a bride in purest white.
Yuria. The heroine of Romance in Arkesia: Four Jewels.
The white veil she wears only makes the glossy black hair gathered into a low bun stand out all the more. The ornate white floral ornaments laid horizontally across the dress at her collarbones blend with the line from her neck to her shoulders and lend her a noble beauty. My gaze follows the white wedding gown up to the bride's face, hidden behind the thin veil.
I always feel this, but I can never agree with that stock phrase in shoujo manga—the one that insists the heroine has an ordinary face.
Eyes that shine like emeralds, and lids that curve gently around them. A nose that settles softly and yet makes its presence unmistakable. Lips pink as flower petals. I can only lament that I cannot find words worthy of that beauty.
Bride and groom, as though they have claimed all the beauty in the world for themselves, make their procession toward the thrones, the two of them alone. And at last the crown prince and his bride arrive before the thrones.
As a fan of Roina, this ought to be a truly moving scene. The protagonist couple who swore their love in the true ending. And four years later, the two of them at last receive the blessing of the whole world and bind themselves in an eternal tie. A moving sight that no one who merely played Roina knows—one that only I can see with my own eyes.
I'm glad. How could I not be glad? And yet, at the same time, my heart is heavy, because Esmela's expression has changed into that of someone barely holding back tears.
As a fan of Roina, I am happy for the two of them. As a fan of the villainess Esmela, I ache for a love that will never be returned. Those two feelings tangle hopelessly together and churn in my chest.
Unable to watch any longer, I turn my eyes from the screen—and happen to see Esmela's face. From her eye, a single tear is falling.
"...!"
I tear my gaze from Esmela as well. In the end, trying not to look at the wedding or at her, I have no choice but to stare at some far corner of the square.
I am forcing myself to look at the crowd packed tight below, my feelings a miserable knot, when—
...Something's wrong.
The movement of the crowd is unnatural. Near the southern entrance of the square, the mass of people suddenly begins to heave. Far from settling, the disturbance only grows as time passes, rolling inward across the square like ripples spreading over water. By the time those ripples have spread nearly to the VIP seats—
"Kyaaaa!"
"Aaaagh!"
Faint, but I definitely hear screams. People flee the disturbance, running madly deeper into the square. I look back against the flow of bodies to see what they are running from.
...Corpses?
At a glance they look like people too, but the figures chasing from behind are not human in shape. A development I never expected. My mind can't keep up, and my thoughts freeze—and in that instant, with a soft pop, an interface I have never seen before appears in the empty air before my eyes.