Resetting Lady

lieve you, will anything change?”

“And what would change if you believe me?”

Silence ensued once more.
Just as she was about to get annoyed from the waiting, the answer came out right then.

“…Com, fort.”

“What?”

“……”

“No, I couldn’t hear it properly, but I won’t say such nonsense back.
I’m at a loss for words, that’s why.
So, comfort is good, yeah.”

Carynne was dumbfounded by Dullan’s unexpected answer.

So you believe… You’re saying that you believe me here?

It’s true that Carynne asked the question, but she had been expecting the opposite answer to come back her way.

“It would be more reasonable for you to say that this entire family is just insane… But it’s even funnier that I’m the one saying this.”

Even still, Carynne had half a mind that both she and her mother were crazy at the same time.
At least, it’s perhaps at the level that no one else in the world would be able to prove.

It was enough to ask oneself, isn’t it that this world seems like a shadow of an idea? It’s a story that had nothing to do with reality and didn’t any longer cause any ripples that affected her.

But since Dullan was a doctor, a priest, he should have denied her regressions.
Unlike her father, he should be thinking that Carynne was simply delusional—that this was her only life and that she was not repeating it.

She wanted to hear such sweet words.

“You have your own life as well, after all.
Sure.”

If you didn’t, then your life would be nothing but the life of a bred stallion.
It must feel terrible to confirm that you have the kind of life that had only a moderate amount of excitement.

Carynne could guess.
Such jealousy was universal, even if where she was now was different.
What a self-centered, egotistic articulation it would be for a side character to say.

Anyone who acknowledged that, in their own life, they were the main character would actually have made it so that both the lord and madam of this fiefdom were the supporting characters.

“Dullan, do you need comfort?”

So, if I were to choose Dullan over Raymond here, would he become my true love? Isn’t that quite the plausible story, Father? To refuse the handsome, attractive suitor and find true love elsewhere.
Or, for a simple kind of love to become real, like a bluebird in one’s heart.

“Huh?”

Carynne reached out and stroked Dullan’s cheek.

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Rationally speaking, this wouldn’t be a bad deal for Dullan either.
However, emotionally speaking, this was no different from losing what you had once received.
Carynne knew how any ordinary person’s mind worked.

All that greed.
Though it was not originally theirs and had only been lent to them, it was natural for a person to struggle with a sense of loss—that was a human being’s greed.

What’s more, if it’s a man and a woman who’s had relations with each other before.

Carynne wanted Dullan to fight against Raymond.

Prove your love to me.
For the sake of ending this.

“The one who needs c-comfort is you.”

“…Yeah.
You’re right.”

However, Carynne knew Dullan’s ending.

“But I don’t need it right now.”

She remembered.

He wasn’t the answer either.
Her marriage with Dullan was just like that—it provided no answer.
Carynne had already gone through many choices before.
At least, Carynne could now guess why Dullan so anxiously turned to God after they had gotten married.

It was a violation of the contract, of course.
He was a man who had no right to take her away and say that she was his.

She lowered her hand.

“Dullan.
I’m breaking off our engagement.”

Dullan’s expression became distorted at that moment.
But that was all.

“…Alright.”

Again, he was no fun.
If he felt any greed at all for the thing that was given to him yet taken away, then he should stand up and yell out for it.
And yet he had no courage to do so and instead only sulked.

This was the attitude of the side character who could not win against the main character.
Wanting to complain yet not willing to revolt—it was what a criminal would do as he adapted to the role assigned to him.

Carynne took Dullan’s long, pale fingers.
Clasping his hand, which tried to move away, she looked up at Dullan and murmured.

“You know, Dullan.
Why didn’t you just die back then?”

She looked into Dullan’s eyes.
Her own face was reflected in his black eyes.

Carynne could not read anything from those eyes except for her own features.

“Then I would have been able to live a real life.”

You, too.
Me as well.

Dullan’s mouth was no longer open.

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* * *

 

The cold air during dawn cut against her cheek.
Carynne walked through the chilly summer meadow.
The cold air cleared her head.
It was the time of the season that she could enjoy.
Here, an early morning walk at daybreak, as she avoided the eyes of others, was something that delighted her.
Carynne quite liked this time.

“It’s a little cold.”

“……”

Tom’s clothes were thinner than hers, so Carynne no longer complained.
Further into the meadow, there lay the graves of the Hare family.
Even as they were under the sun, it felt colder.

“Is it colder because of the graves, or does it actually feel colder than usual?”

Tom tilted his head to the side.
Carynne wasn’t waiting for an answer anyway, so she continued forward.

Atop the grave she was looking for was a statue, so it stood out.
Once again, she read the name on the tombstone.

“Here lies Catherine, 「 Carynne 」’s… no, maybe my mother.”

Carynne felt sentimental for a moment as she stared at her mother’s grave.
She had never visited it all these years.
The statue’s hair was made out of bronze, there was a wrinkle of a smile, and it was overall quite elaborately sculpted, but it was white and cold.

No matter how good the artist could make out the likeness of a person, the color of the skin had faded, they were still and unmoving, and the person looked different from the memories of those who knew her.

In the fief lord’s mind, what did Catherine look like?

Carynne touched the statue’s cheek.
It was as cold as she had expected.
The statue conveyed death’s touch.

“I want to open the casket.”

Tom approached, however the stone tomb that could be moved by only many strong men would barely even budge from the hands of one boy and one girl.

“…Forget it.”

She lay down on the grave.
The summer sky was clear and the stars that were still there looked as though they had been poured across the expanse.
If she stayed still and stared at the heavens above, those hundreds of millions of blurry stars in the midst of the few bright ones could be seen once more.

A sea of stars.
The cold wind on the ground was nothing more than something to make the starlight shine even more.
It was a starry dawn.

She was enraptured by the permanence of those stars.
They were so beautiful.
The sky and the landscape did not change.
It had been like this for the last century.
Perhaps this world would stay the same in the future as well—this world which was like any other world that’s trapped within a book, so vast and terrifyingly old.

“Mother, it seems you truly have passed on.”

For some reason, Carynne wanted to cry.

“I’m so jealous, to the point of death.”

Lady Nora Catherine Hare.