Chapter 33
Translator: wuttisyun
‘What do I mean to you?’(1)
I thought it would rain but it was a very sunny day. Hannah was dead. He stabbed her and she could not even let out a scream.
Bess fell too. The face of my nanny, whose neck had been sliced and whose left hand could barely cover her eyes, faced my way. That one sentence that I thought about came back to me as a scream and buzzed in my head.
Until when did I have to do this.
Everything happened as expected but I could no longer cry like before even though I had already gathered what fragments of emotion I had left and was looking at such a heart wrenching scene. I watched everything unfold without turning away.
“The daughter of Auresia.”
A golden light flashed across my eyes and unfamiliar hands lifted my face. The one who lifted my head was none other than Castor, occupying my entire view.
“Do you want to live?”
He closed his eyes before slowly opening them. I was not greedy. All I wanted was to live a happy life like any other. Even if we had to part someday, this man was destroying everything I cherished. He was the one who stole everything and was acting as if he would be granting me hope.
‘I’m the only one who can save you.’
‘Shall I save you?’
Clang.
From the pain that the sword brought down and the ache from my wrist from how hard he grabbed it, I realised that my 8th attempt was a fail as well.
My mouth parted. As if I had been thoroughly chewing them, I spat out each syllable.
“Bastard.”
As he laughed heartily, he tilted his head with his sword at hand.
“Oh my.”
With just a sigh, his fascinating voice tickled my ears as it scraped by.
“It was not that difficult to hear.”
Under the sunny sky where clouds would whistle past, as the blood-scented wind blew, the massacre ended. Anyone who was not on his side fell like dust and all that remained was the pool of blood and the mountain of bodies. Waves of anguish raged across the dismal scenery.
Now that it was my 26th death, even that felt like a long time ago.
***
“There’s a lot of food so don’t eat like that. It’s hard to look at you.”
Amor’s handsome face crumpled.
“Huh?”
I shifted my gaze to look at him. The depressions on the bed made by the weight of the tin stew pots, cookie crumbs and fingers stained red were all caused by the fact that I chose to eat with my hands like a savage instead of using a fork. I thought there were a lot of things he could have pointed out but he chose to nitpick that?
“I get it so could you let me go?”
My wrists which had been wrapped around by vines did not hurt but they itched a little.
“Haa. How pathetic.”
It was amazing how he could nag at me so differently from Fleon. If I were to explain how he was like, it was the way he could spit out comments both harshly and calmly one by one.
“I’m eating comfortably only because there’s a lot of food.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
“What’s wrong with what I said?”
I swatted Amor’s hand away.
“No one’s watching.”
Whether it was because it was in the morning or because of what happened last night, Amor was even paler than usual. Well, it was indeed ridiculous for his younger sister to rush over as soon as morning came especially after what had transpired earlier at dawn.
Last night, ah. Calling it ‘last night’ sounded strange, but today was the 9th day. Because I had failed my last attempt, I was currently living these days for the 41st time.
I saved him for the 40th time last night.
“Do you want to go straight to hell or drop that cup of tea right now. Ah ah, stop right there. I know what you’re going to say but put that cup down first.”
I knew what he was going to say since I had been through this before. Amor acted as a checkmark for my regressions. He looked at me before saying.
“What are you doing!”
Judging from how he was feeding me food unlike before, I must have done something to have changed his mind. Come to think of it, I made a mistake during the scuffle with him yesterday and cut my hand on a shattered piece of the teacup. That seemed to have startled Amor.
‘I hadn’t expected him to treat me.’
If I had known I would have gotten his attention like this, I would have gotten hurt in the first place.
“Uh, would you like a bite?”
I mumbled with my mouth filled with strawberry cake before offering Amor some oranges.
“Get rid of that!”
If he was not going to eat it.
“… How could you be so brazen?”
Now whenever I saw Amor, since I personally felt that we had gotten closer, I felt sorry and resentful that he had to use such harsh words to purposefully drive people away.
Why could he not remember anything? I had already saved his life several times now.
They said it was best to forget how much money you had lent people quickly and not regret what you had given them but they would want you to remember.
“I’m not sure. Since when was it… From about a month ago?”
Was it possible for me to have done it from the beginning? At first, I had treated him well with all my heart. As time passed so did the stress begin to build up. My anger was reaching its limits and when it finally burst, I had given up. Now that I was free from any external thoughts, I gave up on befriending him.
I liked him very much. Now, I was tired of doing things that had no effect on the outcome. I only felt obliged to save him because I thought something else might go wrong if I did not (2). Furthermore, I did not care whether or not he survived anymore. It was more like saving Amor had become engraved into me as a habit after saving him repeatedly now.
“Does my brazenness remind you of my father or my mother?”
“… You’re talking about the current Emperor?”
“Well, he is my biological father. What are you looking at? Every baby resembles one parent more than the other. Obviously.”
Amor looked down at me with his arms crossed as if he was tired of nagging at me.
“Who the hell taught you that pathetic way of speaking? I wonder what kind of education the princesses here are put under.”
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you let me in because you thought the way I talked was funny?”
I knew he liked me because he thought I was interesting.
‘The problem was that this interest was stemming from a child who thought tearing the wings off dragonflies were fun.’
He then laughed his head off.
“What a ridiculous amount of confidence you have.”
Anyway, all he was to me now was ink on a piece of paper. Everything around me felt dead.
No matter how much I interacted and built relationships, it all resetted when I regressed.
Since I only had a day or two for another attempt, amidst the gradually increasing regressions and failures, I had gotten used to it.
“Don’t say that and just tell me about the Crown Prince.”
I could not give up but neither could I find the solution. So I had been resting in this fleeting peace I had to kill time.
“Oh right, have you taken your medicine today?”
“How could you be so ridiculous, shameless and brazen?”
“Why? I saved your life so I can do this much.”
Amor frowned, crumpling his forehead to countless wrinkles as if to say he did not think it worked that way.
“How ridiculous.”
I gave a slight smile because I already knew he did not believe that the tea he was about to drink last night was poison. However, no matter how much I tried to argue that it was, Amor’s mind did not change.
“What are you curious about?”
I mumbled incoherently as a response.
Instead of placing the next bite of the strawberry sherbet in my mouth, my eyes widened.
“… So you were eating. Either listen or continue eating.”
“Ah. Uhm, uh, yeah. I was just a little surprised.”
Was there a pattern like this? It was not easy to distinguish between the pasts that have all mixed together. So, I was a little confused for a moment. Then, I realised this was the first time he had ever asked such a question.
“Why are you not saying anything.”
“Well, I had nothing to say since you asked me out of the blue.”
“What do you mean out of the blue? Turn around.”
“Ah. Ah. Hold on.”
In fact, every single time I face that bastard Castor, I would get so flustered I would run away which messed up my plans. I did not have the time to sort out the memories of the recent regressions so I could not remember much. But that did not mean I did not have questions.
“What if someone… What will you do if someone comes to try and kill you?”
“Are you talking about my brother?”
“Yes, well I did not say it was him but yes.”
I nodded my head.
“I’ve already heard you tell me everything about his personality the last time I came. But I’d like to hear it in more detail. Give me examples. It’d be better with examples.”
While I was speaking, I realised something.
‘Didn’t Amor pass me a note before?’
Somewhen in the first 10 days I lived through?
“… How dare you make me your storyteller.”
Amor swept his hair up gracefully and came down to sit next to me on the floor. His lips thinned as he smiled with little warmth.
“If my brother comes to kill me… I think I already know what I’m going to do.”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing else to do but die.”
“Yes?”
“I can’t have such a boring answer.”
Go back. Amor who had just been graded F had been notified of his failure. He stared at me while blinking his eyes in astonishment.
“What, yeah… Since we’re family, we could.”
He seemed to be seriously thinking about it as he gazed absentmindedly at his sky blue hair.
“First, you have to collect all the information you can on what my brother’s interested in because there was no way you could win against his abilities. So that when he comes, that’s what he’s going to pay attention to.”
“Then?”
“Then when my brother is being distracted elsewhere, shouldn’t you just run away from this country and never look back?”
“In other words, I have to buy time.”
“That’s right.”
Amor mumbled while holding his chin.
“That’s your first and last chance. Or to buy some more time, you can just cut your hands and feet in front of him. That’s the way out of this country.”
“Apart from being ruthless, I’ve never heard about him being partial to cripples.”
If he had that much compassion, he would not have killed my maids.
“It’s not really like that. He just likes to watch things wriggle around as they are on the verge of death.”
It had been a long time since I had felt queasy from words spoken so gently. Wow. Did that mean Castor liked blackheads that kept coming back in waves? I could not even say such a comparison out loud. It was an insult to his beauty.
“This is what my brother is interested in. My brother’s decisions are always based on his interests at the moment.”
“… That’s why he finds it interesting. I can live if I can find a good enough answer, right?”
“Yes. For the sake of living a few more days or a few more years…”
Amor’s face chilled over for a moment before becoming lively again.
“If you want to live, you’d have to crawl like a dog before him.”
Even though he sounded harsh, it sounded as if he was talking to himself.
“Although I don’t know much about the details in living the rest of your life as a clown, did you get your answer?”
He did not look my way anymore and instead lowered his eyes and fixed his gaze on the ground. He seemed to be reminiscing about some things in the past.
“Why are you—What are you? Why are you saving me?”
I had no idea why he was being so honest with me now but that was what happened before.
“Even if I live, I can only live like a clown!”
He was telling me how he truly felt. It did not particularly cause a great sense of distress in me. Out of the many times I had seen him already, he revealed the long gashing wound on his heart only once.
‘But instead of seeing him three times in the same day like he thought I did, I’ve already seen him more than 40 times.”
It was rare for me to have done something right.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For telling me something that must have been difficult for you.”
Although he kept his secrets well, this prince would sometimes show what was inside of him. Like what he was doing now.
T/N:
(1): Following was one of her memories when she kept regressing. As you could guess, she was looking back on her 8th death during her 26/27th regression.
(2): Raws said ‘inertia’ but that didn’t make sense to me so I changed it to this.
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