The Third Life and Thereafter – 4
“It is a pleasure to meet you. My
name is Iria Il Machisse.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Soleil Van
Nortis.”
On the day
of our first meeting, Soleil lightly tilted his small head and showed a smile.
That greeting that was not directed at me but at my parents standing behind me,
watching over the children introduction, was exchanged very easily. Like him, I
also introduced myself, but I couldn’t help but feel the difference in our
peerage and my countenance became stiff as I was careful of the mood
of the other party. However, I think Soleil’s parents didn’t get a particularly
bad impression of me. “Oh, what a lovely
young lady” said his mother with a smile, and Soleil too turned his sights
toward me. When his smile was quickly pulled up, and his face that became an
elaborate and beautiful mask like a porcelain doll incidentally turned in my
direction, I realized. That person, was wounded. I understood why. I heard that
his fiancé had just pa.s.sed away. That they got along extremely well as
childhood friends. I had never seen the person who died, but I heard the
rumors. Even though she was young, she was intelligent and very pretty. I also
had been told by father to become like that person. He said that if I aimed to become
a lady, then that girl who was closed in age was a good model. Although it was
an unreasonable demand to take someone I had not even the face of as a goal, several
persons who worked as my private tutors had also taught that girl, and each and
every single one said the same thing about her. That girl, was wonderful.
As soon as
that person died, because the position of being Soleil’s fiancé was
unexpectedly dropped on me, it can be said I became her subst.i.tute like my
father told me to be.
The first
meeting that took place in the Marquis’s garden progress very calmly. Because
both our fathers originally had friendly relations and our mothers too were
acquaintances in the high society, the conversations seemed to progress lively.
Regarding Soleil and I, after having exchanged our introduction we both kept
silent, but as I was at a loss, Soleil guided me and nonchalantly taught me what
I should do. For example, he showed me at which timing drink tea, eat pastry,
how to ask for permission to leave the seat when I felt tired; with his gaze or
his gesture, he demonstrated everything for me. That’s why all I had to do most
of the time was to smile and wait for time to pa.s.s. I didn’t know what Soleil
was thinking, but the time spent meeting each other gazes and watching from the
sidelines was not that bad. When our parents allowed us to leave our seat, we
took a stroll in the garden together. I wasn’t accustomed to the dress that had
been prepared for today introduction meeting, and it couldn’t be said the dress
was easy to walk with, but each time my feet stopped, a few steps ahead of me
Soleil was waiting for me. He never said “hurry up” or “not done yet?” He was
simply waiting. When I chased after him in a hurry, the expression in his eyes
that had a trace of sharpness despite its childish features became just a
little bit softer. Before long, his small fingers grasped my even smaller
fingertips and he said,
“Let’s get
along well”. From there on, let’s always, always get along well.
Soleil was
two years older than me. He was only seven, but his eyes were always gazing at
the future. I should naturally be there too, and we planned to become a
harmonious pair of husband and wife.
… … I
wonder where I went wrong.
*
*
I
clearly saw my hand letting go of the cup filled with black tea. The crack made
when it collided with its saucer in a clanking sound, surely, was a
representation of the relations.h.i.+p between Soleil and me. When I raised my
head, my eyes reflected the face of Soleil who was unusually surprised. Next to
him, having shrugged her shoulder after being frightened by the sound of the
colliding porcelain, stood Silvia.
Now,
the two have accomplished their first meeting.
At
that moment, recalled memoires filled my head to the brim. Along with the
frightening feeling that the blood in my whole body flew backwards, various
scenes flashed pa.s.sed then disappeared. My pa.s.sed life. Its previous life and
the one before that, the one before that too, and the one of even before, the
previous one of that. I wondered at which one I stopped counting.
“Iria, what happened…?”
While
looking at Soleil’s doubtful expression, I remembered the lives I went through until
now. I am a human who cannot forget anything and everything. It was supposed to
be like that. From which point did a hole start to appear in the memories I
should be remembering? I remember the previous one, but I can’t clearly recall
the one before that. However, I can recollect the one before it perfectly, and
I’m forgetting the one from even further before. It means I have repeated the same
time that much.
When
I unconsciously looked up at the sky, I saw a small bird dancing high above.
But it was not black. It was not Crow.
“… No, nothing is wrong. My apology.
My hand slipped.”
Al,
who was near me, called the maid and watched her skillfully tidy up the broken
cup. While I felt my pulse was echoes loudly like it was violently rousing up,
my head cooled down and calmly convey the fact that this development was the
beginning. If I leave my seat, if at that timing I slowly rise while saying
“I’m feeling a bit unwell, would it be alright with you if I take my leave
first?”, then Soleil will frown with an increasingly dubious expression. If
other people saw it, it’s not a change big enough to deduce this, but for me
who have only been watching him since our childhood, I perfectly understood
every of Soleil’s emotions. Furthermore, the span of time spent watching him
was not limited to this life only.
“Big sister, are you alright?”
I
noticed that the cup I dropped when Soleil was exchanging his greetings, had
cut apart the gentle mood that was flowing between them. My little sister has
not sat down yet. “Soleil-sama, please take care of Silvia.” When I said that,
his expression immediately slackened and he turned to face my little sister.
“I apology”, he said and, in my stand, he lowered his head and pulled the chair
for her. “No, that, it is I who should apology” replied my little sister who
has become fl.u.s.tered and whose cheeks have been dyed red. While her beauty has
s.n.a.t.c.hed away everyone eyes, when I urged Al with my gaze, he took my right
hand to escort me. I didn’t think that him, as my escort, would do such a
boorish action in front of Soleil who was my fiancé, but in this situation even
Soleil probably wouldn’t rebuke him. Besides, there is no doubts he was no
longer paying me any mind. While keeping Soleil who was fixedly staring at the
round cheeks of my little sister at the corner of my eyes, I left my seat. Not
knowing how many times I saw that scene that kept being repeated, I dropped my
gaze. When Al whispered “My lady” in my ears, I realized my feet had stopped.
As
I grasped my heart that was a.s.sailed by pain similar to a strong cramp, I felt
like I could have carved out my chest with a knife. Why am I like this? Why
don’t I tire of being hurt again and again?
When
I saw the worried face of Al who was looking at me, I suddenly remembered. In one
of my previous lives, I took his hand and eloped. At the beginning I stubbornly
rejected his hand, but, after experiencing lives where I got relentlessly
corned over and over again, I felt into a clear despair and took his hand at
last. If it has been a romance novel like the ones that are flouris.h.i.+ng among
the commoners, it would have become the kind of love story all young maidens
were reading with captivation. A forbidden love with an escort, it would be
narrated under that perspective. However, Al and I were not in love. Al was
just feeling pity for me. Moreover, he was a person who would carry out his
loyalty.
Right,
loyalty.
I
knew that if I run away from my parents’ home before marring Soleil, I could
never come back. The fact that in each life, we got married after I graduated
from the academy was neither out of I nor Soleil’s own volition. Everything was
controlled by the marquis house. The earl’s daughter called “Iria”, seemed to
be much more capable that what she herself thought, and when she was attending
school, other families had tried to b.u.t.ted in and prevent her for joining the
marquis house. Due to the reason their peerage didn’t match, there had been
houses trying to tear up the engagement with Soleil and tie a new marriage
connection with him. That why, before things got more troublesome, the marquis
house hastened to take me in and it became a ceremony that had been coercively
and hastily advanced under their arrangement. However, I didn’t harbor any
particular dissatisfaction with that. Rather, I was delighted to become
Soleil’s wife as soon as possible. So, even if I didn’t do anything, the
preparations for my marriage with Soleil favorably moved forward.
I
wonder why I abruptly thought that if I must flee, it was now or never. I
think, I just thought that I had to flee. “My
lady, please state your wish. Please, chose to take this hand.” Was it his
sincere gaze that moved my stubborn heart, or had that time simply come? Because
Al told that I was more important than anything else in this world. I may have
thought it wouldn’t be bad to believe these words. Or maybe, my heart had been
worn out by those repeating lives and could not make the correct decision. When
Soleil’s heart started to incline toward Silvia, I chose to get away from them.
Even though I thought I could never do such a thing, but after having made up
my mind, all that was left was to polish a plan. It should have been a plan
carefully prepared. But an unexpected situation occurred. What Al and I lacked,
was probably the ability to ascertain every and any single details with a
discerning eye. We run away together in the middle of the night, borrowing the
help of several people, we tried to leave the town, and were surrounded. When I
learned those people were the proteges of the marquis, I was already in a
situation where I couldn’t move. They were thoroughly prepared and payed no
attention to mine and Al’s resistance. That’s was natural. They were the
so-called marquis’s intelligence unit. The dark side of the nation. Such a
thing as capturing Al and me, for the unit mainly in charge of a.s.sa.s.sination,
it was even easier than twisting a baby’s neck. It’s not that Al was weak. He
worked as an escort knight. His real ability was guaranteed simply by the fact
he was serving my earl house. But he couldn’t fight equally with humans from
the dark side whom had been killing people as a living.
As
if it was natural, Al stood before me. To protect me. As if to say it was his
duty as an escort. And then, in front of me, he was slashed and died.
“At this late hour, if you abandon your
obligations, I’ll be troubled.” The marquis’s wife who came to visit me
after I returned home said that with the same calm smile she had the first time
we met. “It’s not like you’ve grown up
this far by yourself, right? It’s not just your parents who have raised you to
become the next marquis’s wife. For that purpose, our house has also devoted
its power, hasn’t it? Most of your education expanses were burdened by our
house. Did you know that?” The marquis’s wife who only stated facts in a
detached tone leaned her face that looked at lot like Soleil’s toward me and
added, “You have to properly understand
that there is no replacement for you.” Indeed, I never thought that the
unit called the marquis’s dog would move simply to search for me. In the end,
I, who couldn’t foresee that far ahead, had been too swallow. The bride of a
marquis eloping was a big scandal in the high society. The aristocratic society
was most concern about appearances and dignity after all.
And
then, Al, as the person who had lend his hand for the elopement, was labeled as
the main criminal for instigating the whole affair. In the first place, Al’s
direct employers were my parents. Al, who tried to release me betrayed the earl
house. That’s why he was mercilessly cut down and sacrified. I was not allowed
to express the slightest vindication. It was too late to say that I was the one
who planned everything, that it wasn’t his fault. Because he had already died.
“Because he died protecting his master, he
fulfilled his long-cherished ambition as a knight, right?”
The
marquis’s wife laughed with an extreme satisfaction. Her words were right in a
sense. Because, he had wished to live as a knight and die as a knight. His
wages were indeed paid by the earl house, but he had said that I “was his only master.” He said he had no
intention to obey anyone else. In my former life, it had also been the same
when I requested him to protect my little sister rather than me. Because it was
my command, he reluctantly protected Silvia while gritting his teeth. Since he
did it while showing a frustration that came from the bottom of his heart, I
think I ended up misunderstanding Al’s kindness. Before I knew it, I came to
believe he was existing for my sake. I lost him in my first life, after that I
exerted myself to keep him away. Perhaps it was because I had foreseen I would
lose him someday. That’s how my former self used to be. And yet, I took him
along with me.
“… … I’m Alfred’s fiancé. No, I was his
fiancé.”
A
few days after that runaway drama, I, who had naturally been restrained, had a
visitor. It was a young woman. From her clothes I could tell she wasn’t from
the aristocracy, but probably the daughter of a merchant. Their design was
trendy and they were decorated with many frills that were all the rage with
town girls recently. However, none of that suited the dark color of the cloth
that reminded of a mourning dress. No, it was wrong. That woman was definitively
wearing a mourning dress. The reason why it wasn’t clear whether or not they
looked like mourning clothes, was because that woman was still his fiancé and
had yet to become his legal wife. In other words, she was still a stranger who
was only scheduled to become a family member. It was different from grieving
over the death of one’s own family member.
“Were you aware of my
existence?”
She
was still a young maiden with adorable features. Al is older than me by five
years, so she may have been around the same age as I. She should be 17 or 18.
Despite it, she was exulting a composed air. It was maybe because of her deep
grief. Her little face scattered with freckles stared at me fixedly. It seemed her
pair of eyes which contour was tinged with red was blaming and sentencing me. Even
though she had asked me if I knew her, she didn’t wait for an answer before she
said,
“Alfred and I had planned to get together
once your life had settled down. We had such a promise.”
She
said she didn’t know how many years it would take but she intended to wait,
then she covered her eyes. Her tears gently felt on her hands that were tightly
grasped on top of her knees. She took in consideration both my situation and
Al’s, anything and everything, yet how deep must have been the determination of
the young girl who still decided to wait? Even if she didn’t have the
appearance of n.o.bles, from her clothes I could guess she was from a wealthy
family. A woman born in such a family bears the duty of connecting two houses
through marriage. Al and her probably got promised to each other to gain such a
tie. But Al chose the path of running away with me. Because I wanted to. It was
impossible for him to reverse the decision of the one and only master he chose.
That’s why she also must have made her own decision. She had no other choices
but to decide. She planned to choose Al, she planned to abandon her family. That’s
how much thoughts and feelings she put into it.
Ah,
dear Lord. I, what did I, do? What the earth, did I do?
I
knew that words such as “I’m sorry” held no meaning. I was always on the side
of those who got things stolen from them. That’s why I knew such words would
not provide her the slightest bit of relief. “Can it be that you, you think that you’re the only one unhappy… … ?”
At that moment, I remembered Crow’s words.
“Alfred was pitiful. Because he made you his
master, he died……”
Although
her tears that kept trickling down looked transient, the strong gaze aimed at
me pierced my chest. I didn’t know. I didn’t know the slightest thing. I was
not even aware of the fact Al had a fiancé. No, it’s wrong. I didn’t even try
to know. Because Al knew everything about me, I was under the impression that words
were not needed between us. And then, I rested on my laurels and took Al’s
gentle words for granted, and I relied on the hand that must absolutely never
be grasped. Because of that, Al died. I stole Al from her.
Ah,
I wonder how foolish I am.
…
… What happened after that, I don’t remember it well. Just that the high society
wasn’t particularly kind toward a n.o.ble woman who had attempted to elope once. Even
though I intended to lay low, before I knew it I was in a bed of thorns, and
worse than that, the att.i.tude of Soleil who didn’t hide his disappointed look
never ceased to hurt me. His cold eyes no longer reflected my appearance, and
our line of sight never met. I couldn’t reach out for his hand when we were
walking, our fingers didn’t even touch each other’s.
I
recall his voice when he said, “Even
though I’m the one that was abandoned, why are you making such a pained
expression?” I think in this life, Soleil and Silvia didn’t remain married
for life. But, as expected, I can’t remember well.
…
… The next one, the next one for sure, I have to carry through by myself. That's what I thought while thinking back on my previous life.
And
so, in my life that turned back once again, I planned my elopement.