Chapter 2
Prim’s eyes flew open at the cold sensation of marble pressing against her back and the back of her head.
“—Hhk!”
The breath that had stopped rushed back all at once, and suddenly everything felt sharp and painfully vivid.
The acrid staleness of dust-filled air in an old, timeworn temple.
The faint scent of early-summer sunlight, slightly warmed.
The fragrance of tender green shoots sprouting somewhere deep in the distant forest—all of it surged over her at once.
Yet nowhere could she sense the fragrance she had created last.
Each individual note of the ingredients she had personally chosen, even the lingering afterscent they had produced together, remained vividly clear in her memory—yet at this moment, she could feel none of it.
The inquisitors who had come to escort her were nowhere to be seen either.
Only the dry, bloodless, perfume-free chill of ancient marble against her back awakened her to reality.
Barin had shown her two branching paths, and she had chosen.
She had achieved what she desired.
Even without looking into a mirror, she could tell—she had returned to a time when she was barely ten years old.
“Ah.”
Her own youthful voice sounded strangely unfamiliar.
She hadn’t run even once since being cursed in Rogien’s stead, but she imagined this must be what it felt like to finally stop after running for a long, long time.
When she looked down at her smaller body, her heart suddenly began to pound fiercely, and an agitation she had never wanted surged within her.
As if she truly had become a child again, she felt inexplicably miserable, overwhelmed, exhausted, and worn out.
It felt as though all strength had drained from her body, leaving her unable to move. Prim ended up collapsing back down.
“Just a little rest…”
She had spent her life chasing wealth and glory to escape poverty and deprivation, endlessly selling fragrances, exploiting her friend’s guilt to drain him for years.
Only after losing him had she regretted it. And now that she had finally returned, she wanted to stop all of that—to live with at least a little ease…
— Hey, hey, no, no, no! Wake up! You’ve still got thirty million petals’ worth of road ahead of you! There’s no time to rest!
Prim froze her thoughts.
A hallucination?
— Oh, how heartless. Have you already forgotten my voice? I even let you defy time!
Prim pushed herself up again. Having reverted to a body of about ten years old, the low altar was now perfectly at her eye level.
A dried bouquet placed atop the altar was trembling.
It was an offering set there by Priest Marceria, who tended this temple, meant for the god. At first it had likely only been slightly wilted, but with the priest busy caring for children, it had dried up completely.
The withered bouquet hummed and quivered, emitting a faint glow. Its discolored leaves crumbled into powder.
Prim recalled the voice—the one she had spoken with until the very brink of death. Forgetting it would have been far harder than remembering.
Yet back then, it had sounded like dozens of bells ringing at once, like a hundred-stringed instrument being swept in a single stroke. Now…
“…Barin?”
— That’s right, it’s me! Me, Barin!
The moment she recognized him, a violent reaction burst forth, and half the bouquet crumbled away.
Barin’s voice now sounded like an impatient sparrow chirping frantically.
Prim blinked. The bouquet shook again.
— Ha-ha, surprised? Anyway, you don’t have time to rest here!
The words of a god were called an oracle. At death’s door, she had been certain it was an oracle—radiant sights and sounds, miracles shimmering in every sense.
But now, there was only a twitching old bouquet. A trembling bundle of dried flowers atop a crumbling altar in a shadowed temple…
Sensing the look in Prim’s eyes as she traced the gap between then and now, Barin squawked loudly.
— The power I gained from the fragrance you offered exists in the future that no longer is! You chose to return to the past, so the power I had in that future vanished as well!
“Oh, I see.”
Seeing how eerily calm Prim remained even after reversing time, Barin shrieked again.
— I’m using the scraps of power I have left after sending you back, squeezing out whatever scent remains in this bouquet just to speak to you—so listen carefully. You must become Perfuma Aetheria again.
At the word again, Prim replied flatly.
“Barin, I wasn’t Perfuma Aetheria before either.”
Only a perfumer who passed three trials, received the blessings of the Twelve Gods, and was acknowledged by both the Emperor and the High Seat could bear the title Perfuma Aetheria—the greatest perfumer on the continent. Only twelve people in the Empire were ever granted that name.
The trials were held once every ten years. When Prim was fifteen, her circumstances were too tight to participate. When she would have been twenty-five, she died and returned to the past before the trials ever began.
— No, you were already Perfuma Aetheria in all but name! You created a fragrance powerful enough to make me use the art of defying heaven itself. If not you, then who could be called the greatest perfumer on the continent? No one has ever done such a thing!
Prim listened in silence—not because she agreed, but because she lacked the will to deny it.
She no longer wanted money or glory.
Her fragrances had once fattened the gods and drawn down their blessings.
Those miracles sharpened the swords of knights who fought magical beasts, and made her wealthy like a star in the heavens.
All that time, she had never set foot on the ground, clad only in soft, beautiful garments like angel feathers.
Then she was given an unexpected second life. She intended to help Rogien claim the wealth and honor he had rightfully deserved—and that was all.
As if reading her thoughts, the bouquet shuddered violently, and the remaining dried petals crumbled away.
— Oh, my little lily of the valley! Such nonsense. You must create a fragrance like the one you offered me again.
“I still remember the formula, so if I recreate it exactly—”
— That fragrance won’t do anymore! It must be a new scent. A fragrance that has never existed before—one that not even the gods have ever smelled. If you do not create such a scent and offer it to me before the day you died…
“…?”
— ……
“Barin?”
At that moment, every last petal disintegrated into powder and fell away, and Barin’s voice abruptly cut off.
Prim blinked, staring at the bouquet reduced to nothing but stiff stems, and called the god’s name again.
“Barin…?”
The brittle stems clattered, and even the linen string that had bound the bouquet rotted away, falling apart as the stems scattered. A cloud of pale dust rose.
Prim blinked rapidly, utterly flustered.
The god had vanished mid-sentence.
And it sounded as though he had been about to deliver something crucial—some dire warning or vital information. But the completely crumbled bouquet remained silent.
The bouquet trembled one last time, desperately, its bare stems quivering—then stopped.
What happens if I fail to offer the fragrance by the deadline?
How could she continue the conversation, hear that oracle again?
“I’m using the scraps of power left after sending you back, squeezing out the scent of this bouquet to speak to you.”
That was what Barin had said.
If the bouquet were a well-balanced harmony of scents… could Barin speak longer?
Prim turned her head to look outside the decrepit temple.
Early-summer sunlight streamed in through the half-open door. Prim looked down at her legs—no, at her feet.
She lifted her gaze again, looking outside. The warm air of early summer awaited her.
Prim murmured softly,
“Still a life of thorns.”
Her life had become a “path of thorns” at an even younger age than this.
Prim and Rogien—two orphans cut off from the world—had met on the streets. Rogien looked like a stray dog, hiding hair as red as magical beasts’ blood beneath a worn, tattered sackcloth. She herself must have looked much the same, a mangy, miserable creature.
They had no strength left even to bare their fangs, so they leaned against each other as if using one another for warmth instead of coats.
Their parents had abandoned them. The scraps of food they managed to scavenge vanished the moment they hit their mouths. The money they pickpocketed was stolen again by others. Yet the two of them were never taken from each other.
And so, to protect one another—to protect the only family they would ever have—there was nothing they would not do.
Even something like shoving Rogien out of the way when they were caught fleeing a back-alley brawl, right at the moment an unknown curse came crashing down upon them.
