Chapter 117………………………………..
It can’t be.
After picking up the fallen letter and returning to his room, Terrence tried to think clearly and remain rational.
“I don’t know anything about this letter,” said Laura, the maid who served Idel.
“Miss Idel only said she was going to meet someone named Angela, and nothing else in particular…”
“Angela? Who is that?”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I don’t know either.”
“And how did she look when she read this letter?”
“Now that you mention it… I think she had a very serious expression after receiving it.”
In the end, Laura left without providing any significant information.
Terrence brooded. It was true—Idel had been planning to leave the Empire.
He had deliberately tried not to dwell on that fact, but not for a single moment had he forgotten. Not once.
So when the mine in Andala yielded magical stones of the highest grade, he had been secretly pleased.
Even because of the mine, the likelihood that Idel would remain in the Empire increased. In fact, because she had been busy with the mine, she hadn’t mentioned her old plan.
But he knew very well that if Idel truly made up her mind, no worldly obstacle could stop her.
Vineta and the imperial knights followed to escort her, but Idel had Shinsu.
With Shinsu’s power, evading them and running away would be nothing.
Terrence checked the envelope that had been tossed carelessly on his desk, trembling. Inside were what looked like train reservation documents, seemingly enclosed by the sender for Idel.
The date: today. The destination: a port city at the eastern edge of the Empire.
From there, a ship departed for the Kingdom of Soro.
Reason whispered to him: this can’t be.
The Idel he knew would never leave without taking precautions. She wouldn’t have left such critical documents so carelessly on a desk.
Emotion whispered: even if she were to leave, she wouldn’t do it without a word to others.
‘At least leave me a letter…’
Rustle. The train reservation papers crumpled in Terrence’s hand.
Reason and emotion both insisted this was a hasty misunderstanding—but Terrence could not ignore the faint possibility gnawing at the back of his mind.
The worst possibility: he might lose Idel so easily.
“Jack!”
As he stormed out, his aide waiting nearby appeared.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Go to the Central Train Station immediately. Find out if anyone matching Idel’s description has been spotted, and if a ticket has been issued under this reservation number…”
Terrence, about to hand Jack the crumpled papers, bit his lip and shoved them into his pocket.
“Forget it. I’ll go myself.”
“Your Highness?”
“Yes. Prepare to speak. And if Idel returns in the meantime, send someone there immediately.”
Terrence didn’t wait for an answer. He strode down the palace hallway as if running.
It had to be a misunderstanding. Surely it was. But there was no harm in confirming it.
There was no way he could calmly sit and wait for Idel’s return.
“Are you alright?”
Vineta asked when I came to my senses.
“Where… am I?”
I brushed off the blanket covering me and sat up in bed.
“This is a doctor’s house near the orphanage. Angela led you here,” she explained.
“You suddenly collapsed… Are you ill? Some chronic condition?”
Angela, who was also sitting nearby, glanced at me with concern.
“No, I’m healthy.”
The scene from the dream flashed through my mind.
“…It’s just that old memories came back.”
“Could it be… your childhood memories returned?”
“A little. I used to go up the back hill often to pick wild raspberries and play.”
And then the Duke of Cassius had visited the orphanage, offering his sponsorship.
But according to Angela, I had been moved to another orphanage, so I never met him.
In short, if the dream I had just experienced actually happened, it was a memory from my first life—not this one.
‘Idel actually had that connection with Cassius…’
The dream followed on from the one I had before.
It seemed that the time Idel had taken in Riena, who had nowhere else to go, was after graduating from the Academy, when she had become independent from Cassius.
It was fortunate that she had not become Cassius’s adopted daughter, but the situation was still complicated.
Even though I had possessed her body and the circumstances had changed, in her previous life, Idel had been close to Cassius as a sponsored child. In this life, she was married to Riandro—and their relationship had deteriorated to the point of divorce.
Naturally, my thoughts turned to the one responsible for twisting this life so badly.
‘Riena.’
The Riena I saw in my dream had been a miserable child who longed for others’ love, to the point of envying rabbits.
‘Maybe it’s only because I’m not really Idel that I can think this way…’
Honestly, even if Riena had once been returned from adoption and selfishly stolen a good opportunity at Cassius, I didn’t want to blame her.
But her later actions were incomprehensible.
She had left her friend trapped in the Wallace family for over ten years, then married her eldest brother off to seize the mine for herself.
The same brother who could have been a sibling figure in her previous life.
Perhaps, in Riena’s mind, marrying off her unhappy friend to her brother and bringing her into Cassius was a kind of “good deed.”
Even if so, Riena had only watched me, ignored, while I suffered in Cassius.
She had used cowardly methods to prevent the divorce and had recently even tried to forcibly seize the mine.
Meanwhile, she assumed that if Idel remembered the past, she would understand her.
I could not fathom Riena’s logic or thought process.
‘And this is a minor point, but…’
There was one more thing about Riena that didn’t make sense.
“Teacher Angela.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Riena… didn’t she speak a bit unusually as a child?”
“Unusually?”
“‘Annyonghatteyo, I’m Riena Katiute.’ I think she used to speak like that.”
“Riena?”
Angela made a strange expression.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. I had made a childish example, even though I was a grown adult.
‘But in the novel, she clearly spoke that way!’
Riena had used that speech pattern from the very beginning, from the scene where she was adopted by Cassius.
My dream took place before her adoption—so of course, she should have spoken that way.
While dreaming, I had felt an inexplicable sense of dissonance—the source of that feeling was this.
“Oh, now I remember!”
Angela, deep in thought, suddenly exclaimed.
“Just before she was adopted by Cassius, she started speaking that way. Maybe she had hurt her tongue or something?”
“…I see.”
If that were the case, surely none of Cassius’s many skilled physicians could have missed it.
‘It’s not like she would suddenly develop a lisp after returning from a previous life.’
Had she intentionally changed her speech?
I paused, considering why, then shook my head.
A young Riena’s way of speaking didn’t matter.
What mattered more was how I should act going forward.
“I’ll be back after a quick trip to the restroom.”
Using the restroom as an excuse, I left the room to be alone.
After confirming that no one was around, I quietly spoke into the air.
“Miela.”
No response.
“Goddess Miela, please answer me.”
No voice echoed in my mind.
“Before I fainted, you mentioned something about sealing my memories… What does that mean? Did you seal Idel’s memories from her previous life?”
Still no response. She hadn’t answered before either, yet she had appeared in my dream and spoken freely.
“Miela! Are you really going to do this?”
I huffed and muttered meaningless words a few more times, then gave up and returned to the room.
“It’s late. Let’s go.”
“Really? You collapsed earlier. Why not stay here tonight?”
Angela said, but I wanted to return to the Imperial Palace as soon as possible.
“I feel uneasy in unfamiliar places. I’d like to take the night train back.”
“If you’re okay with that… Do you not want to see more of the orphanage? You haven’t even gone inside.”
Even though Angela suggested it, I checked the orphanage building once more, just in case.
But nothing from Idel’s previous life resurfaced.
I kept only the bitter impression left by the ruins and headed to the nearby station.
There, I unexpectedly ran into someone.
“Idel!”
Terrence, who had been speaking with a station attendant, saw me and ran over.
“Your Highness!”
Startled by the sudden appearance of the prince, Vineta and the imperial knights stood at attention.
Terrence ignored them completely and focused on me.
His sudden arrival here clearly wasn’t trivial.
“Your Highness, over here.”
I led Terrence a short distance away so we could speak privately.
“Is something wrong? Trouble at the Lucivius mine? Or the Michael faction…?”
“Luckily…”
His unexpected response surprised me. Terrence looked at me with eyes full of relief.
“…Because you haven’t changed.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I was just imagining foolish things. But thanks to that, I realized one thing for sure.”
He took my hand, gloved as always. Large hands that were always reassuring.
“I can no longer remain just a friend to you.”
