BY the time my negotiations with Emperor Ishnad were finished, he agreed to let me stay in Wolfvarte.
We agreed that Princess Ileze’s slumber was either an unfortunate accident or some sort of sudden illness. It was the dozing princess they would take back with them to Ringrard instead of me.
She was still a princess, even in her comatose state. We didn’t know what to do with her, but it seemed she had value to Ringrard. Though I felt bad about how Princess Ileze ended up, she was the one who decided to resort to wrongdoing first, so I felt comfortable using her as a factor in our negotiations.
Both countries drew up and signed a new agreement.
We decided to announce that the Ringrard Empire had flown their Flying Dragon Knights up to the castle as a mere military exercise. In exchange for our forgiveness over how they’d stormed the royal capital without permission, we had them agree to abstain from invading or antagonizing our country for the next five years.
Fortunately, their military was mostly comprised of Flying Dragon Knights, so they barely butted heads with the Wolfvartian military at all on their way to the royal capital—there were only a few minor injuries and nothing more. Thanks to that, we were able to end things peacefully and on common ground.
With that, I finished up the formalities. Then I joined King Glenreed, where the two of us stood face-to-face with Emperor Ishnad. Once we’d ordered everyone else to leave, the inside of that tent was dominated by total silence.
What came next was not a discussion between two countries or two rulers.
It was something I, and most likely, Emperor Ishnad, wanted to discuss.
“…We know that someone within the Ringrard Empire is able to cast curses.” I took a deep breath before getting to the heart of the matter. “That person is you, Emperor Ishnad. …Am I mistaken?”
I looked up at the handsome emperor across from me. He had fiery hair and a light in his eyes—so piercing, it was like a knife. Despite the intensity he gave off, something about him seemed mysterious and mature all at once.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“…Because you’ve shown an attachment to me,” I said.
It wasn’t vanity. Emperor Ishnad should never have come all this way just for me. I thought he was using me as an excuse to declare war on Wolfvarte at first, but after seeing him give in so readily, it suddenly seemed unlikely.
“Emperor Ishnad, you are the leader of an empire strong enough to make the ground quake. With any number of duties or requests you could attend to, you chose to come all this way…” I gulped.
Curses were a system of magic that affected the soul. If Emperor Ishnad was actually able to cast curses…
“Your past life wasn’t one of this world, was it?” I asked. “You came from another world, where somehow, you crossed over and found life in this one just like I did.”
I felt a faint sense of anticipation and nostalgia. That familiar blue planet was in my head as I questioned Emperor Ishnad.
“That’s why you came to feel an attachment to me, who had past life memories from the same world as you. Am I mistaken?”
If my theory was true…
It explained how Emperor Ishnad was able to invent and mass produce functional firearms. He possessed advanced knowledge that had yet to develop in this world.
“Attachment, you say…?” Emperor Ishnad murmured quietly. “You’re half right. I feel an attachment to you, and I remember the circumstances of my past life, but have no memories of living in another world. In the beginning, I was just like any other human born here.”
“Just like any other…?”
Becoming an emperor in one lifetime, defeating great nations, and leading his country until it was the strongest land on the entire continent. This was an impossible feat for an average person, no matter how many past life memories they held. I certainly couldn’t accomplish it—of this much I was absolutely certain.
“It’s the truth. I was exactly like everyone else, just a young man with a bit of a specialty in curses. That was who I started out as.”
“…Does that mean you lived before the Great Darkness?” I asked.
I remembered Silverio’s words. Curses had been a normal part of this world at least six hundred years ago, in the age before the Great Darkness.
“That’s right. It was about six hundred and fifty years ago that I studied the art of curses and fell in love with a woman.” Emperor Ishnad’s eyes squinted, like they were trying to chase after a distant, fading light. “When I was young, I swore to protect her even if it meant losing my life. Silly, isn’t it? It wasn’t as if I had any way of helping her once she fell ill.”
He pressed his lips together.
“All I could do was muster up my pitiful knowledge of curses and reach out to her soul. I wanted to make her remember me even once she was reborn. I thought I’d succeeded in cursing her to preserve her memories in the next life without destroying her ego…”
“You thought…?”
Something deep in my chest stirred. I wanted to hear what happened next, but couldn’t bear to know.
“I cursed my own soul too, reincarnating time after time with my memories intact as I waited for her. But with each life, I began to realize my mistake, as we were never reunited. It was a side effect of my curse. Her soul was cast out of this world and swept away to another.”
The soul that was swept away to a different world. It could only mean…
That soul was…
“It’s you. That was your past life, Laetitia.”
“My past life…”
Overcome, I repeated those words.
…But it was no use, of course. I couldn’t remember any tiny piece of it.
I was still me all the way through.
My only memories were of this life, where I was the daughter of a duke, and the life I lived in Japan. I tried and tried, but couldn’t recall anything earlier than that.
Half doubtful, half convinced, I listened to the rest of Emperor Ishnad’s story.
“My curse was incomplete. As soon as your soul departed this world, the curse probably malfunctioned. After my curse informed me you’d died in your past life, I managed to intervene and draw your soul back to this world, cursing it to be reborn from some mother’s womb. But it seems the original memories of hers were missing.”
He smiled—one full of an exhaustion that didn’t match his youthful appearance.
“I expected that, but never gave up hope. I decided to take the throne and expand my country so that it would be easier to find her. I used the blacksmithing knowledge I gained two lives ago, developed the firebolt cannon, and increased the territory of my empire. Finally, I found you at last, and that was when I felt a new hope.”
“A new hope?”
“Yes. I was willing to give up on your old memories, but hoped that we could start over and build new ones together.”
“…And that’s why you did all this?”
He framed me for Princess Ileze’s poisoning and tried to take me back to his homeland as a prisoner. It was such a cruel plan to ever be born from “hope.”
I glared at him with resentment. But Emperor Ishnad didn’t seem to waver.
“I did. She was a strong woman, but she was also weak. I thought that if I put her under such stress, she would break and come back to me in the end…but it seems you’re not like that, are you?”
“…I don’t think so.”
I was an audacious person who never knew when to quit—things I had full awareness of. I didn’t know what kind of woman I was in the past life he spoke of, but I felt absolutely certain that she wasn’t me. Maybe sharing a soul was the only thing we had in common.
“I thought, even without your memories and with a different appearance, I could still think of you as her if you’d just come and be with me. …But it’s not true. I think she’s gone from this world for good.” He breathed that final sentence like a quiet sigh full of resignation and despair.
While I felt pity for the emperor, I came up empty-handed when I searched my heart for any love or desire for him. He still made me nervous after he tried to frame me for a crime.
“My plan was to make her reincarnate with her memories and personality intact… It must have failed because the curse was incomplete. It seems you managed to live this life with memories of the one before it, instead of the memories you carried when you were the woman I loved.”
“I see… I was told that humans normally experience a destruction of the ego when they regain memories of their past life. Since that hasn’t happened to either of us, should we assume we’ll remain unaffected from here out as well?”
I felt bad for Emperor Ishnad, but I had my own life to live now. I couldn’t let this important issue weigh on my mind any longer.
“…Most likely, but it’s best to avoid strong shocks or emotions that could affect the soul. I can’t speak definitively about what might lead to trouble.”
“Strong shocks…”
I didn’t have to think about it for more than a second. Prince Fritz ending our engagement and pushing me into a fountain was what restored most of my past life memories in the first place.
Emperor Ishnad was right—intense shocks to the body or mind were definitely related to past life memories.
What if I receive another strong shock like that someday? I fell silent as my mind raced. That was when I heard the emperor mutter something.
“…You know, when you become uneasy like that, you do remind me a little of—”
“Don’t touch her.”
“Ah!”
My body was pulled backwards. That was when I realized King Glenreed had his arm around my shoulders.