CH 87

༺ Promise ༻

“How do you know about that?”

Hearing Serena’s remarks in shock, I questioned her while her hand still covered my mouth. 

“…Who knows?”

She responded the same way she would since childhood.

“Try guessing… hnngh!!”

I poked Serena’s sides as she continued to tease me. Her triumphant face vanished as she began to moan again. 

“…Didn’t you say we had to be quiet?”

“I’ll let out these kinds of noises as loud as I want.”

As I questioned her with uncertainty, she responded with words that I could not discern the meaning of. 

“Here’s a hint, he’s the person you admire the most in the world.”

Thanks to the way she was acting, I began to pout slightly. In response, Serena ceased her teasing and began to speak seriously. 

“…Did my father give it to you?”

Serena silently nodded her head as I responded quickly to the clear hint she had provided me.

“That’s right. But, he didn’t give it to me directly.”

“Then?”

“To understand that, we need to travel back in time a bit.”

Serena cleared her throat and began to speak again. 

“It was when I first got my memory back.”

“When you got your memories back…”

“Yeah, it was right before I went on a trip abroad.”

As I listened to her, I felt a chill up my spine as I recalled the penalty that occurred on the first day I regressed. That was one of the most excruciating experiences I’ve ever experienced. 

“As soon as my memory returned, I was certain. There’s something I hadn’t figured out about you.”

Serena’s face darkened slightly as she spoke.

“So, before I left, I contacted the spy I planted in your mansion.”

“Wait, there was a spy?”

Serena responded with a gentle smile when I questioned her with a surprised expression. 

“She often rode on the carriage…She’s the child who defended the Starlight Mansion until the very end during the previous timeline… Do you remember?”

“…Ah.”

In response to her words, I recalled a maid I had spoken to when I had heard Aria’s screams while at the mansion a few months prior. 

“Well, she was unusually competent.”

“Don’t look so betrayed. You did a lot of terrible things in the previous timeline, so I had to figure out your actions in advance and help resolve them afterwards.”

When I displayed a timid expression in response to those words, she continued her speech immediately with a serious expression. 

“Anyways, I contacted her with a communication crystal and asked if anything had occurred at the Starlight mansion.”

“What?”

“She informed me that the head of the household, Abraham, had unexpectedly fallen into coma.”

Serena uttered those words with a sharp glint in her eyes. 

“And… she informed me there was a large amount of papers left beneath the fireplace.”

Only then did I fully understand the situation.

The moment I returned, my father had his memories erased by the system.

During that grace period provided by the system, my father wrote a letter that made me emotional. 

Perhaps the reason my father passed out at that time was due to the memory overwrite, and what he burned in the fireplace was the information regarding the bank account that he had left for. 

“She stole the papers from the fireplace and sent them to me.”

“Then… did you figure out the password to the bank account? 

“It’s not a big deal, I deciphered it in 5 minutes as a means of relaxing as I travelled.”

Serena’s expression immediately hardened as she continued to speak. 

“In the rolls of paper your father tried to burn, there was a prophecy written.”

“…What?”

“It was very difficult to decipher since it was burned in several places and written in the characters left by the Hero from millennium ago. However, since I decided that there was some hidden meaning, I searched through the ruins of the western continent and slowly deciphered the prophecy.”

“Is that… possible?”

“It wasn’t impossible.”

While I stared blankly at Serena who shrugged, Serena turned serious again and began to organise her narrative. 

“Anyways, the Hero, the system, the penalty, your fate as a false evil… After seeing these words, I was almost certain of your identity. And after that, you know the rest.”

I muttered in confusion in response to those words. 

“Then, what prophetic book do I have? Is my prophecy also enchanted? And… why did my father have it… why did he try to destroy it…”

“Well, you’ll find out when the restoration is done.”

“Restoration?”

“Yes, some of the contents were lost when the prophecy was burned, and the sealing magics became more complicated. So I am slowly restoring it every night.”

Serena spoke quietly while grasping my hand firmly.  

“Of course, you must have determined the reason why I am only able to do it at night, correct?”

“…Yes.”

“I knew you would understand…”

Serena patted my head and smiled through her eyes as she uttered those words. 

“Then… I will hand over the prophecy to you as soon as the restoration process is completed.”

Serena stared at my face for a while after she finished speaking. 

“Hiiii!”

My playfulness arose as I suddenly poked Serena’s side, resulting in her collapsing on top of me with a moan. 

“Ugh.”

Serena smiled mischievously as she slid her arms around and looked down at me. I let out a moan. 

“Stay still for a while.”

“Now what… Eup!”

Serena clasped my mouth shut as she spoke to me with a bizarre expression on her face. She suddenly began to slide her body up and down. 

“Hah…”

“Meowwwww…”

I glanced at her with a horrified gaze as she suddenly released a moan. A mournful cry could be heard from somewhere in our vicinity. 

“Huh?”

“Please cooperate for just a moment…”

Serena slowly began to unbutton the robe she was wearing with an excited expression on her face. 

– Rustle!

Serena removed my coat after having unbuttoned herself. She tossed my coat outside of the blanket and the mournful cry suddenly came to a halt in response. 

– Baaaam!

A roar suddenly broke the silence in the room. 

“Meow! Meow… Meow!!”

After some time, a cat doll climbed onto the blanket that we had covered ourselves with. It began to claw at the blanket with a mournful cry.   

“Hoot!”

“Kyaak!”

The cat doll, which had been scratching the blanket for a while, was overpowered by the owl that dragged it away when Serena whistled.

“…Why is it acting like that?”

“That cat, was it summoned with black magic?”

“Uh, how did you know?”

I blankly observed as the situation unfolded. When I replied to Serena’s question with one of my own, she began to speak again with a smile on her face. 

“It’s a magic that I know very well.”

“Really?”

“Yes, children with black magic that animate objects like that have insecurities regarding jealousy. That’s why that cat doll behaves like that.”

“Huh…”

I nodded as I listened to Serena, who had a bright expression on her face. I worriedly questioned her. 

“But then… Isn’t that doll too pitiful?”

“…Pitiful? I’m just repaying her for what I’ve suffered while the sun was still up.”

“Huh? What?”

When Serena heard those words, she quietly mumbled to herself, making me question what she was uttering. She quickly leapt into my grasp and raised her voice. 

“Ha… I love it, Frey.”

“Meowwww…”

Serena began to slide her body up and down as she uttered those words. A mournful cry could be heard from the distance again. 

“…Frey.”

“Yes?”

Serena continued to slide her body up and down animatedly. She spoke once her hazy gaze landed on me. 

“Instead of this, how about doing it for real?”

Serena’s face flushed bright red as she uttered those words. 

“…Gulp.”

Seeing her current state, I carefully nodded my head. Serena smiled brightly and spoke as she dug herself deeper into my embrace. 

“Then, teach me.”

“What?”

Serena timidly averted her gaze as I tilted my head in response to her nonsensical statement. 

“Even for me, I don’t know how to do something when I have no prior experience.”

Serena immediately glanced at me with a pure expression and spoke.

“So, please guide me well from start to finish.”

Serena was unbelievably beautiful today.

It was difficult to see since it was night and she was under the enclosure of the blanket. 

Despite this, her moonlit eyes and lavender hair seemed to shine vividly.

– Slip…

“Oh.”

As I thought to myself, I slowly reached out to Serena, but she suddenly grabbed my hand while raising the corners of her lips and whispered.

“…I was joking.”

In response to her words, my expression became hollow, and Serena burst out in laughter.

“I’m sorry, but because of the curse of ‘Familial Subordination’, I can’t help it.”

“Curse of  Familial Subordination?”

Serena spoke with sadness when I seriously inquired. 

“Yes, the curse of subordination is designed to make people into weapons without emotions. So, originally, ‘love’ cannot be expressed at all.”

“But… why…”

“Why can I love you? It’s… For some reason the curse of Familial Subordination is weakening for me.”

Serena’s eyes trembled momentarily as she replied. 

It seemed that Serena’s subconscious feelings that she experienced during the second ordeal were real. 

“Anyways, that’s why I can love… but I can’t do “that”.”

“…Ah.”

I debated whether I should ask about the ‘memory’ that surfaced in Serena’s mind. I was swiftly disappointed upon hearing the words that she spoke. 

“So, I promise you one thing.”

Serena raised the corners of her lips gently as she read my expression… 

“The moment you succeed in killing the secret head or breaking my curse…”

And whispered with a tickling voice near my ear.

“…I’ll do it until you’re satisfied.”

I stared at her blankly for a moment upon hearing her words, then responded quietly. 

“I’ll mobilise the Demon King’s army beginning tomorrow.”

Serena grinned in response to my words, then she hugged me tightly and muttered.

“Let’s sleep like this.”

“…Alright.”

For some reason, I think I will be dreaming about an owl tonight.

.

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“Ugh…”

Meanwhile, at the Imperial Palace at the same time. 

“What… should I write?”

Clana sat in her own room and groaned as she held her quill in her hand. 

Frey, why didn’t you reply to the letter I sent you last time?

“…No, he would only be able to reply regarding the slave market case.”

After contemplating for what felt like an eternity, Clana incinerated the letter that she had barely written on with solar mana, before retrieving a new sheet of paper. 

Frey, tell me what you did to me.

“Wait, this is displaying my ignorance. No.”

Clana sighed after she had begun writing with a great deal of effort. She incinerated this new sheet of paper as well. 

Frey, I know what you’ve done. Confess.

“…If I write something like this, what if he questions me back?”

After a repeated cycle of writing and burning the letters, Clana realised that she was subconsciously writing something. 

“W-What is this…”

Clana gazed down at the letter with a mystifying gaze. Her expression became bewildered when it finally dawned on her what she had written. 

“W-Why are my hands trembling again…”

Her hands began to tremble again. Clana bowed and murmured to herself in response to the constant occurrence of anomalies. 

– Knock! Knock

“AH!”

She hastily spewed out solar mana to burn the letters when she heard the knock on the door. 

“My hands are trembling again…”

However, for some unknown reason, only a faint light radiated from her hand.

It was a symptom that occurred immediately after a nightmare, and made Clana tremble with anxiety.

“Lady Clana, I’m here to clean up.”

“Yes… I’m going to take a bath for some time, so please take care of my room for me.”

Clana eventually burned the letter with a candle in her room instead of using her solar mana. She spoke in a calm manner to the maid who had entered her room as she clasped her trembling hand in an attempt to stop the tremors. She stood up as she hid her hands behind her.

“Hoh.”

The maid gazed in Clana’s direction as she left the room, to ensure that Clana was gone. She quickly approached the trash can where Clana’s gaze had been prior. 

– Rustle…

“This…”

Moments later, the maid found a charred letter in the trash can. She unexpectedly used recovery magic to restore the letter to its original state and raised the corners of her lips and as she muttered to herself. 

“…I should report this to the 1st Princess.”

In the letter she held, the following words were written:

You won’t leave my mind, Frey.