“Yeah. I love you, Amelia, so I want to talk to you for days and touch you. That’s why you don’t have to be worried about anything, and you don’t have to hold back.”
Amelia noticed he was specifically referring to her, and she became curious. “Then what about you, Luke?” she asked casually.
His eyes drooped slightly, as if he was at a slight loss. “I need to hold myself back a little more… I don’t want to scare you.”
Amelia tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
She doubted that Luke would do anything dreadful that would give her a scare, and she couldn’t make any sense of his words.
Giving her a wide smile, Luke released her from his hold. “The most straightforward solution is to yield my status as the Klein heir to someone else, but I don’t have any brothers. Choosing one of my more indirect relatives would be stirring a hornet’s nest, and above all, there’s one big issue with this method.”
“What is it?”
“My betrothal with you, Fourth Princess Amelia Glaisharle, was partly only possible because I’m the successor of House Klein. If I became a mere nobleman who wouldn’t inherit a peerage, our betrothal might be called off because I’d no longer be of a status worthy of you.”
“Surely that can’t be…” That can’t happen, right? was her first instinctive thought, but after some contemplation, she realized he had a point. That was a more than plausible scenario.
Being the heir of House Klein meant that Luke would be forced into an engagement with Prisca due to her Saint status, but if he lost that title, his betrothal to Amelia would be dissolved. It was as if they were cornered with no way out.
Amelia muttered, “Since it’s come to this… I can become a strawberry vendor and provide for you, and—”
“Hold on, not so fast,” Luke interrupted her. “Why do you keep going back to the idea of selling strawberries whenever something comes up?”
Clenching her hands into fists, Amelia began her passionate rant about the beautiful fruit. “Because strawberries are special. You can do anything as long as you have strawberries, so they should help us carve out a path to a bright future.”
Luke tilted his head. “Why do you have such unshakable faith in strawberries, by the way?”
Now that someone actually asked her this question, she started wondering. Why indeed? “Let’s see… The only thing I have and can summon is strawberries. But then, someone praised me, saying that as long as someone has my strawberries, they can do anything, and I was overjoyed. Wait…”
She’d heard those words when she was twelve. Which meant…
“You believe in them so much because of my praise back then?”
Amelia hesitated. “It…seems like it, yeah.”
She’d never actively thought of it that way, but now that he pointed it out, it was true that her love for strawberries had begun from Luke’s praise. It was a somewhat embarrassing realization, but above that, it made a lot of sense. That was when Amelia noticed something—if it wasn’t a trick of the light, Luke’s eyes were growing misty.
Startled, she looked at him with concern and offered her handkerchief. “Why’re you crying?”
“I’m not.” Accepting the handkerchief, Luke wiped his tears, grasped her fingertips, and planted a kiss on the back of her hand. “I won’t let you go, no matter what happens, Amelia. So have faith in me.”
Under his earnest gaze, Amelia nodded. Even if Luke’s route in the game was what defined this world—even if tradition demanded that he marry the Saint—the future wasn’t yet set in stone. She was going to place her trust in her strawberries and Luke. Instead of backing down, she would make a stand by his side.
A thought occurred to her. “Right, Luke. Remember how we were talking about the power source behind Prisca’s time loops? I think it might be the necklace that’s my mother’s memento.”
She proceeded to give him a rundown of how she’d arrived at that theory, as well as the orison stone’s color change.
When she was done, Luke nodded solemnly. “I see. That’s definitely possible. The fact that the time loops start from the point she snatches away your necklace would also fall in line with that theory.”
Amelia furrowed her brows. “But why are the timeline resets happening in that case?”
The orison stone might be infused with mana, yes, but she couldn’t grasp why that mana was starting these time loops. Was the explanation as simple as Prisca making use of the mana to achieve this phenomenon? That said, according to Helt, it was an artifact that the fifth consort had left behind to help Amelia. It was somewhat of a stretch that it would repeat time while disregarding Amelia’s wishes.
As she mulled over the matter, she suddenly remembered something. “Could it be…because I cried after my mother passed away and said that I want to return to the past?”
“I think that’s quite likely. That mana was manifested out of a Saint’s concern for her daughter. I wouldn’t be surprised if your wishes influence how it behaves.”
The pieces of the puzzle gradually clicked into place. “Until now, I just assumed that I was being dragged into Prisca’s time loops, but would that mean…she’s the one being dragged into my time loops?” Amelia blinked in a stupor at that shocking conclusion.
Luke gently clasped her hands. “You might not actually plan on turning back time, but somewhere in your heart, you do want to return to the past. Incidentally, the fifth princess also wishes to start over again. The orison stone likely reacted to both. Assuming that’s the case, it’s exceedingly unlikely that she could reset the timeline as she pleases without having you nearby. That’s a great discovery.”
He’s right. Amelia nodded. She and Luke could come up with the most ingenious plan in the world, but it would all return to square one if Prisca reset the timeline. Just knowing they should watch out for the orison stone and Prisca made it a lot easier to come up with countermeasures.