SPRFG 07

Chapter 7

Prologue (7)

For a moment, everything seemed to move infinitely slowly.

There was not a single piece of furniture in Ritorna’s room that had been placed there carelessly. Everything was not only beautiful and luxurious, but also had its own story.

The table where Ritorna and Aiolia had elegantly enjoyed tea with a three-tier afternoon tea set had originally been a tactical desk used by a king of a distant country to look at maps. It had an iron frame plated with gold, a rosewood top polished until it shone, and ivory decorations.

After the current Emperor, Elderick I, destroyed that country, the table passed through the spoils wagons of Imperial soldiers, a museum storage room, and the auction house of Ilgenisglar before finally arriving here.

Duke Vinkitur was a man who could easily spend the price of a carriage or two if it meant showing off his affection for his daughter. His daughter, Ritorna, had been so proud of the table her father bought for her that no one could say how much she loved it.

But now, a large mark from a chair leg had been left on the tabletop.

Joaiye reflexively tried to stand up and get away, but she lost her footing and crashed into the sofa. Ritorna stepped over the table, grabbed her by the collar, and pulled her up.

Of course, Joaiye did not just take it quietly.

Ah, this was the strength in the arms of someone who could not ride a carriage, walked around the capital every day, and did all the housework herself. It was on a completely different level from someone who had never even tied her own shoelaces—

Joaiye simply grabbed Ritorna’s wrist and threw her aside.

“Miss, you shouldn’t do this here.”

Joaiye spoke in a bored voice as Ritorna was pushed back and crashed into the corner of the opposite sofa.

Joaiye left Ritorna alone, walked around the table, and quickly came out from the other side.

Strangely, she was not afraid.

Compared to everything she had experienced in her life, the existence of a girl who claimed that this world was a novel and that she was destined to become its protagonist was not even a serious concern.

Even though she had lost the most important parts of her previous life’s memories, she was certain of that.

“Die!”

Ritorna shouted again and this time stepped over the table toward her.

Her hair was completely disheveled, and her pale face had only her lips standing out in red, but she was still beautiful.

Joaiye thought that if this world really was a novel, perhaps she would be recorded as the villain.

She certainly was not the protagonist.

She was not smart enough, kind enough, or beautiful enough to become the protagonist. Nor did she possess any other outstanding talent.

She had no right to be loved by many people.

Joaiye accepted that fact calmly, without much regret. She had already come to terms with it a long time ago.

In fact, even she had never loved herself.

“So what…?”

That was why Ritorna could not impress Joaiye in the slightest.

Joaiye merely muttered because her ears hurt and stepped aside.

When the excited Ritorna raised her hand toward Joaiye’s face, Joaiye squeezed her eyes shut.

She thought she was going to be slapped.

Or perhaps scratched.

But what did it matter?

It was not even her original face anyway.

Come to think of it, she seemed to have been slapped quite a lot in her previous world too.

Back then, she could not dare resist the people who hit her, so she simply endured it quietly. After living like that for so long, she had eventually become too exhausted to even think about avoiding it.

What had happened in her previous life?

Joaiye began thinking in order to make time pass faster, and—

Thud.

Lieutenant Kunshi’s back took the blow meant for Joaiye’s cheek.

The blue velvet representing the Empire gave off a soft sheen beneath the moonlight coming through the window.

The Imperial Guard uniform had probably not been made from soft fabric for this purpose, but it fit perfectly against the palm of a certain ill-mannered young lady.

While Ritorna struggled and screamed words no one could understand, two more soldiers approached.

By now, Ritorna looked no better than Joaiye.

“……! ……! …………!”

Ritorna shouted something.

It was Korean.

It seemed she was trying to say—

Why do I have to suffer like this? You’ll all regret this—

Joaiye was helped to her feet by Lieutenant Kunshi.

While Kunshi’s two subordinates, Ari and Gide, each held one of Ritorna’s arms, the maids waiting outside the room threw a blanket over her so that even though her clothes were disheveled, no bare skin would be exposed.

A well-built soldier carried Ritorna away on his back.

He would probably take her to her bedroom.

“She said that she herself killed her. And since she also tried to kill me, I think we have certainly obtained her confession regarding the murder.”

“Yes… Thank you.”

Joaiye dusted off her clothes.

She completely let down her messy hair. Her pink hair, which she still could not get used to no matter how much she looked at it, fell below her shoulders.

She asked,

“What happens next?”

“Once Miss Ritorna signs the statement, her father, His Grace Duke Vinkitur, and the Minister of Justice will discuss the procedures that follow.”

Joaiye nodded.

There were now only two people left in the room: Lieutenant Kunshi and Joaiye.

If she concentrated a little, Joaiye could recall Aiolia’s memories.

From the time when Aiolia was still the ‘real’ Aiolia, she could vividly remember the two of them drinking tea and reading books in Ritorna’s room, playing dress-up, and putting on cosmetics.

Who would have thought she would part with that old friend in such a way, right in this very place?

Joaiye quietly wondered what the real Aiolia would have said to Ritorna.

She asked her silently in her heart.

There was no answer.

Ah, right.

She’s dead.

Aiolia had already been dead long before Ritorna tried to kill her.

It was a truth known only to Joaiye across the two worlds.

“Please exclude the attempted murder of Aiolia from her crimes.”

Because I am not Aiolia.

Perhaps misunderstanding what Joaiye meant, Lieutenant Kunshi gave her a lengthy explanation as he led her outside the room.

“Even so, she will not be able to avoid confinement. Since you are the daughter of a noble family, you will not be sent to prison or forced labor, but… you will be confined for the rest of your life.”

“Confined? Where, for example?”

“Somewhere like a monastery.”

“Ah.”

Contrary to Lieutenant Kunshi’s misunderstanding, Joaiye had no sympathy for her old friend and no remaining affection for her.

Joaiye did not care what happened to Ritorna.

If Ritorna received a light punishment instead, Joaiye might actually have been shocked and thought, As expected, this is a crazy country where nobles are above the law.

Just like when they had come, Kunshi and Joaiye took a carriage again.

As promised, Kunshi told the driver to take the carriage toward Repauté Street.

Joaiye, who had been nervously worrying that she might suddenly be escorted to the Almadellcore ducal family—the original home of Aiolia—was greatly relieved.

On the way back in the carriage, Joaiye had two certainties.

First, if the assumption that this world was inside a novel was correct, Ritorna had completely exited the story.

There was no need to question the novel that was this world.

Ritorna had been expelled from herself.

She had lost the printed words and moved into the spaces between the lines, never to return to the story again.

Every character in a story is born standing before several possible paths, but only one ending remained before Ritorna.

She would be confined in a room without windows in a monastery until the day she died, living the rest of her life in the margins.

There were not many patient readers who would continue reading a story with no possibility of change.

That was the price Ritorna would pay.

Second, Joaiye was certain that she would probably never meet Lieutenant Kunshi again.

He seemed to think she was shivering because she was afraid.

Lieutenant Kunshi covered Joaiye’s shoulders with his uniform jacket and sat facing forward with his teeth tightly clenched, as if he were not cold at all.

The military cloak that had been in the carriage was placed over Joaiye’s knees.

He was the very model of chivalry.

Perhaps he was reciting Sir Clarinus’s epic from legend in his head.

Joaiye gladly accepted his kindness.

After all, she really was cold.

The winters of Ilgenisglar were cold.

Especially for someone like her, who wore only one set of clothes all year round.

But after learning that even the fierce Imperial Guards wore nothing more than thin shirts underneath their bluish uniforms, she found it a little strange.

Even these Imperial Guards, whom the Emperor and Crown Prince treated like their own hands and feet, were, at least, human beings just like her.

Whether they thought of her as ‘a human being just like them’ was another matter…

“Please let me get off here. I’ll walk home. If the carriage goes in, the baby on our floor will wake up again.”

Joaiye said this at the entrance of Repauté Street.

Lieutenant Kunshi looked at her as though this world were nothing but complete darkness, and as though a beautiful, innocent, and perfectly pure woman like Joaiye would become stained the moment she placed even one foot into that darkness.

He asked again and again in an almost obsessive manner.

Joaiye smiled and shook her head.

“No. Besides, a woman’s natural caution teaches her to be wary of people she meets for the first time. The fact that you already know where I live… I’ll consider that a minor issue. You are a gentleman who understands honor, so I trust you will forget it soon.”

“Ah. Um…”

Joaiye recited something that sounded as though it had come straight from a scripture describing the virtues of a married woman.

It worked.

Lieutenant Kunshi opened the carriage window and said something.

The carriage stopped, and Kunshi jumped down first.

Joaiye got down without taking his hand.

It was simply a mistake.

Until just a year ago, Joaiye had never had anyone, especially a strange man, help her get into or out of a carriage.

“It’s dark.”

“There are two moons.”

There were always two moons.

There could not be fewer or more than two.

Lieutenant Kunshi, who knew nothing of a world where there was only one moon, blinked and said,

“Even so… it is dark.”

“There are many stars too.”

The woman who had been lost in thought suddenly gave a small laugh.

Everything was truly out of place.

People called her Aiolia, but she had abandoned that name a long time ago.

The stars, each shining in a different color—red, yellow, even blue—looked down upon the earth from among the ranks of eternity.

And on that earth, people who lived from one day’s earnings to the next were lying down their tired bodies and falling asleep.

A woman who looked like nothing more than a laundress, a laborer, or at best, a wandering maid from a moderately well-off household was having a conversation with a highly respected Imperial Guard officer.

The time was three in the morning.

“I should go back and sleep. Tomorrow, I have to pick up the textbooks I left at the printing shop. I may not look like it, but I’m a private tutor. Thank you. Goodbye.”

Joaiye said this.

Lieutenant Kunshi bowed according to the etiquette of a gentleman.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Will there… really be a later?”

Joaiye had been about to turn away when she unconsciously asked this in response to his formal greeting.

Perhaps the early morning and the starlight had bewitched her.

While she was already regretting what she had said, he answered without thinking.

“Probably…?”

Joaiye bent her knees and gave him a small bow before returning home.

And then she fell asleep.