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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Memories could never always be trusted.
As time passed, they became distorted, and changed with something unknown slipping in without one realizing.
The same memory could not always be recalled.
Unless it was an intense and shocking memory, perhaps memories themselves could not be trusted.
-Adele, are you going tomorrow?
-Didn’t I tell you yesterday?
I’m planning to go in the morning and return at night.
Just take Bunta and play around appropriately.
-And yet, it seems you had something to say. Seeing as you called me here.
It was a memory that always stopped at the same point.
Finding Robert collapsing and dying in the middle of the snowy field, and bringing him back as a subordinate.
The Robert in the memory seemed desperate about something.
He couldn’t handle the name Taylor as flexibly as he did now.
Rather, he avoided that name and tried to avoid going near the central region as much as possible.
Many things were different, Adele thought.
The Robert in the memory expressed more emotions than now, and wasn’t as indifferent to everything as he was now.
Sometimes he reacted intensely to her words, and sometimes he harbored different emotions on his own.
Adele was no fool.
She had noticed to some extent what emotions the person looking at her harbored.
It was clear what she thought of Robert back then.
She probably had similar feelings.
Because he had been with her for a long time, and was someone who could understand her loneliness.
Overlapping him with her father was the same back then too.
It always seemed like he would disappear, so Adele didn’t like Robert leaving her side and going far away.
-You still won’t let me go far.
-Because I’m anxious.
-Well, I think it’s good too.
Being together is… better, I think. In my own way.
Regression.
The lives of the previous rounds that only Robert fully remembered, not the life he was living now.
It was still difficult to believe even after hearing the explanation.
However, the question was whether Robert had really lived only as long as the time he had spent with her.
Even at that time, Robert had already reached a mature level.
Even then, he shouldn’t have had time to hold a sword, but while dismissing it as talent, she had harbored doubts, and those doubts still hadn’t disappeared.
She now knew that in the life she had spent with him, his death was caused by the Crown Prince.
So that’s why he had warned her like that.
Telling her not to meet the Crown Prince, writing those words in the letter.
Adele smiled bitterly in the cold night wind.
The words she heard from Robert delivered quite a unique shock.
The past memories she held now were also her own emotions, so they were influencing her current self as well.
They had spent 3 years together, and met again in this life and faced each other for a month.
Robert looked even more precarious than in the memory.
It bothered her that he smiled as if he could crumble at any moment, yet acted as if nothing was wrong.
If he had said it was difficult, she would have helped, but it didn’t sit well with her that he acted as if he didn’t need anyone’s help.
Honestly, it was annoying.
The fact that he moved without considering her at all.
What was her existence to Robert?
She knew that he had harbored feelings for her at one point.
It wasn’t one-sided.
They both knew they had feelings for each other, even if they didn’t progress into a relationship, didn’t they?
Yet secrets still existed.
Even though she heard the incomprehensible word regression, and that she and Robert had already been together in a previous life.
She could quickly realize that wasn’t all of it.
If she had persistently asked, would he have told her about the other lives too?
While thinking he probably would have, Adele didn’t ask any further about it.
…It was a feeling.
A feeling that she shouldn’t ask any more, that Robert had a reason for only telling her this much.
The “unremembered favor” she had heard before was probably also derived from Robert’s such regression.
She wanted to know, but there was no way to know.
The gap between Robert and herself was still there, a distance she couldn’t reach no matter how much she reached out.
Adele’s heart, with past and present emotions mixed together, was quite complicated.
No matter how much she exhaled, the stuffiness didn’t disappear.
“I don’t know.”
Adele muttered.
Even as the slowly brightening daybreak cast over the window, erasing the shadows that had darkly tinted the room, Adele still couldn’t fall asleep.
“I don’t know what scenery you’re seeing as you live, what you’re feeling. What kind of existence I am to you… I don’t know anything.”
Why did she want to see him cry rather than always smiling?
Adele’s hand slowly stroked that face.
She wished Robert would cry his heart out.
Then she would feel more at ease.
Because she could just hug him and comfort him.
But if he only showed a smiling face forever, it seemed this uneasiness wouldn’t disappear.
A glass doll that seemed like it would shatter at any moment, that was exactly how Robert felt to Adele.
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A day had passed.
Although I had revealed “some” of my regression to Adele, I didn’t expect big changes from that.
In fact, I hadn’t told her about all 100 lives.
I had only explained about the life Adele recalled memories of and that I had already died several times.
I had no intention of being understood, nor did I want to gain sympathy.
Honestly, to put it bluntly, it seemed to have been quite difficult.
I thought I had been doing quite well after killing Theresa, but as expected, the heart wasn’t something that could easily stabilize.
I ended up spilling out what I had thought I would reveal someday.
The more memories Adele recalled, the more detailed my story would become, but in the end, it was just a story about one life.
If something changed with just that, it would be strange.
Let’s just not think about it.
With that thought, when I stepped out of the room, I coincidentally ran into a familiar face.
“Ah.”
When our eyes met, a voice inadvertently escaped, so I awkwardly scratched my cheek and greeted her.
“…Good morning.”
“Thanks to someone, I slept so well that I can’t even say hello.”
Adele’s complexion didn’t look very good.
She must have stayed up all night.
As I smiled slightly, feeling sorry, Adele, who smiled back at me, approached me in strides.
It was such a sudden approach that my back touched the wall.
It was a gap that others might misunderstand if they saw, but Adele came close and stared at me intently.
Due to the height difference, she had to look up at me, but the atmosphere was by no means trivial.
After staring at each other silently for a while, Adele, who lightly caressed my cheek, snorted.
“Is this a dream?”
And then she distanced herself again.
She seemed to have wanted to confirm something.
Seeing that I answered it wasn’t a dream, she must have mistaken me for an illusion.
As I touched the place where her hand had brushed for a moment, Adele’s gaze fell on me.
“I just touched you for a bit. I thought I might be dreaming again seeing you. I must have seen you often in my dreams.”
“Did I appear in your dream today too?”
“No, I couldn’t sleep. I thought what I was seeing now was a dream.”
Adele was unexpectedly calm.
I thought she would be confused, but she seemed to have cleanly organized her thoughts in her own way.
I couldn’t help but be curious about what she thought of me when she looked at me.
But I couldn’t ask her directly.
As I just silently looked at her, Adele slightly turned her body and made way for me.
“Let’s walk for now. You were going to have a meal anyway, right?”
The distance to the dining hall was quite far.
Adriana was taken care of by the priests, and I always joined her in the afternoon.
The morning was free, so I could spend it with Adele.
But why did it feel awkward walking like this?
Actually, it was my fault for talking about the regression, but I was pondering what to say first.
The one who broke that silence was Adele.
“I decided not to think about what you said yesterday for the time being.”
“…Is that so?”
“In the end, it’s a previous life anyway. Even if I remember now, nothing will change. It just sounded like you were saying that time was different from now.”
There was nothing particularly wrong with Adele’s words.
They were correct.
In the end, it was a previous life, and even if she remembered, nothing would change in this life.
Just like no matter how much I recalled the past, I could only focus on the present in the end.
It was just surprising that she had easily reached that conclusion.
How long did it take me to reach such a conclusion?
As I looked at her with that thought, Adele opened her mouth with a frown.
“You look like you have complaints or something?”
“It’s not that, I’m just surprised.”
“You’re more surprising to me. I can’t even believe that you’re repeating deaths, and it’s more surprising that you’re here like this now.”
Worry was faintly forming in her eyes that were blue like water.
Her voice was a bit curt, but I knew well that Adele was worried about me.
From the moment we ran into each other earlier, she acted like that towards me because she was worried.
I thought walking like this wasn’t bad either.
Come to think of it, it had been quite a while since we walked with just the two of us.
We walked, maintaining a barely touching gap between our hands.
Sometimes our steps matched, then fell out of sync again.
For some reason, I was conscious of how Adele was walking.
Matching her stride, matching the direction of her feet.
I think we used to do this often when walking before too.
Would Adele remember that now?
It was a feeling from the past.
Even if she recalled that memory, the feelings from then and now couldn’t be the same.
I had died dozens more times than then, and Adele wasn’t fully ready to accept the memories yet.
When our strides matched perfectly, I finally realized Adele had been quietly looking at me.
“…Since when were you watching?”
“From the beginning.”
When I asked like that, Adele answered with a nonchalant expression.
It might be a bit embarrassing.
If Adele had recalled memories about this, that would be one thing, but if not, it was just me acting foolishly.
To me like that, a clear voice was heard.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed. I was also watching you walk since earlier.”
“That’s-”
“It means you’re not the only one who remembers now. I also remember now.”
No matter how carelessly we walked, our footsteps overlapped perfectly.
It wasn’t just me matching them.
Adele’s foot stopped hesitantly, then stepped forward again following my steps.
Adele was also matching my steps.
Realizing that and looking at Adele, she turned her head again and moved her lips.
“Sometimes you can come to me and talk about other things too. You can talk about memories only you know, and if there’s something I recalled, you can talk about that too.”
“It might be confusing for you though.”
“It doesn’t matter. In the end, I also recalled these memories. Just, when your head hurts, you can come find me. You can just silently look at me, and sometimes.”
Our eyes met again.
Our steps that had been walking like that stopped standing still, and before we knew it, we were just looking at each other with our backs to the temple.
“You can lean on me.”
Adele, who snorted, continued speaking again.
Her expression looked a bit refreshed.
As if my thought that she might be confused was just my misconception, Adele, who had completely shed yesterday’s appearance, opened her mouth.
“As I said earlier, I won’t think about your situation for the time being, but there’s one thing I should say.”
“What is it?”
“When it’s just the two of us, call me by my name. Like… before.”
The “before” she was talking about must have meant the memories from the past.
I smiled for a moment and nodded.
Calling her by name wasn’t difficult.
It was more comfortable for me that way.
At least more so than calling her Grand Duchess.
“Adele.”
When I called that name for the first time in a long while, Adele smiled.
It was such a warm smile unlike her usual self that somehow I felt like I could hear the sound of my heart beating louder than usual.
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W. Thx