The Nebulis palace.
As the sunlight filtered through the Queen’s Space, the area was serene, holy, and calm.
Everything was different from back then.
Thirty years ago…
Princess Mirabella, who had cried and shouted then, now stood as Queen Mirabella in the same spot.
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“I believe that is enough.”
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The queen spoke in a somewhat mechanical tone.
“Sisbell, you may disengage your Illumination astral power.”
“Y-yes, Mother.”
The images from thirty years in the past had already disappeared before her mother had asked Sisbell to release her powers.
That was because Sisbell had reached the limit of how long she could re-create the past.
But this was enough.
As a pure spectator of the events, Sisbell understood what had haunted her mother these thirty years and why she feared the truth.
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The infamous Salinger had saved her mother while sullying his own name.
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He had done it in the past, and if she thought about it carefully, he was still doing the same now.
“Um, Mother…”
“Thank you, Sisbell.”
In contrast to Sisbell’s timid voice, her mother’s tone was composed. Sisbell was surprised by how placid her mother was.
“You have just only come back from the Empire to the Sovereignty, and yet I asked the world of you. You may rest in your room.”
“Y-yes, Mother! Then if you’ll excuse me!”
She quickly bowed, then scurried to the door.
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She quickly left the Queen’s Space.
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She was a clever girl. She knew her mother must have felt something disconcerting after watching the past through Illumination.
The queen watched her leave.
“Ahh!”
Mirabella Lou Nebulis IIX fell to her knees.
The floor was cold.
By coincidence, she fell right beside the spot where Nebulis VII had been.
“What have I done…?!”
She let out something between a sigh and a sob.
Though she covered her mouth, she couldn’t hold back her wail.
“‘Why would you defile that’? How could I have said that…? I couldn’t trust him. I’m the one who defiled our relationship!”
Did she regret it?
No. This was not remorse.
She couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive herself.
……Even if I can apologize to him, even if I can repent…
……Even if I dedicate the rest of my life to that, I will never be able to forgive myself.
She almost wished she had not learned this.
But she’d had a foreboding feeling all this time. A feeling that they had slipped by each other in a dreadful way.
“…………”
Her eyes grew misty, and she began to gasp for breath.
If she simply fainted here, things could be so much easier.
“But…”
She gritted her teeth.
Her parched lips twisted, and Queen Mirabella dedicated all the strength she could to her legs.
“If I fall now…then my becoming queen would be pointless. So I can’t allow myself to stumble!”
She staggered as she rose to her feet.
“……Salinger.”
She received no reply.
She was the only one in the Queen’s Space. The star who had saved her thirty years ago was nowhere to be found.
……It’s not that he’s gone.
……I drove him away.
But now she understood.
The words he had left her prickled her keenly as they sank in.
“You’re right—I’m not fit to be queen. I couldn’t stop Elletear, or save Alice, or even keep Sisbell from seeing such an atrocious scene… But…!”
She had one last duty as the queen.
“I will nip the evil at its root. I will get rid of this planet’s greatest calamity.”
The masterminds behind the events of three decades ago had been the Hydra. She had learned they had simply been captivated by the Planetary Calamity.
……If we follow the source of the evil…
……Salinger, and me, and everyone else can be said to be its victims.
That was why she couldn’t allow herself to fall.
She pulled out her comm.
As her fingertips quivered, she fumbled with the device as she manipulated the LCD screen.
“Alice, it’s me.”
“Mother?!”
The person on the other end was far away in the distant Empire—her daughter.
“Please wait, Mother! I-I’ll go somewhere I can be alone—”
“That’s all right.”
The Imperial soldiers and Saint Disciples were likely by her side. But that was fine.
“Alice, please tell them exactly what I say.”
“Huh?”
“I, Nebulis IIX, wish to speak to Lord Yunmelngen directly. Will you allow me to?”
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……She would rise.
……Ascend to the stage and the fight that she had stepped down from that day as Princess Mira.
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She was far past her prime.
She was no longer the current heroine. And yet she would be one of the people who would see the final curtain draw to a close.
Yes, her story was not yet over.
It was too early for the curtain call.