I, Mille-Feuille, was once a lowly viscountess. But on my sixteenth birthday, my life was turned upside down.
A year ago, Vacherin—the Dragon Duke of the Dragon Duchy of Éclair—made his first public appearance in a century, and I had been dragged along to witness the event. Upon seeing the face of His Highness, I was overcome by intense dizziness and collapsed on the spot.
At that moment, I remembered everything from my previous life. A hundred years ago, I had been Princess Charlotte of the now-defunct Kingdom of Sacristain. And Charlotte had been engaged to Vacherin, a member of the long-lived dragonkin race. At the peak of their happy relationship, she had been assassinated, and their marriage was never to be.
Charlotte’s soul had ascended to heaven, and she had been reborn as Mille-Feuille Forêt Noire—me.
I was dumbfounded by the sudden return of my past life’s memories. However, Charlotte and I were completely different people. Even though I had her memories, Charlotte’s personality and feelings didn’t overwrite my own. I did not feel anything for Vacherin, the man my past self had loved so dearly.
Still, I had been murdered in my past life, and I was unable to remember who killed me. The only thing I remembered was Vacherin’s wail of lamentation.
“No matter where you’re reborn, I promise that I’ll find you!”
To me, it sounded like he was cursing someone. It was an accusation and a condemnation. What had happened between the two of them? My past life’s memories were incomplete, so many things remained a mystery. A lover’s quarrel that had led to murder was certainly a possibility, and the thought of it made me shiver. The only thing I could do was to avoid Vacherin as much as possible.
Charlotte had been a blue-eyed, blonde-haired beauty. I, on the other hand, was a run-of-the-mill Plain Jane with green eyes, hair the color of milk tea, and a dour expression on my face. I was confident that I wouldn’t be discovered based on appearances. As long as I completely severed my ties with my past self, I could live a completely normal life.
At least that was what I had thought until I met a young student from the boys’ magic academy who called himself “Van.” He hid his face with a hood and acted haughtily toward me. He was always surrounded by a large group of escorts, so I surmised that he was the scion of an influential noble family.
In a twist of fate, my encounters with Van became more frequent. By sheer coincidence, I ran into an ill Van in the city one day. I could immediately tell that he was suffering from mana depletion, so I gave him some caramel candy that helped recover his mana.
Dragonkin women would use up a large amount of mana to suppress men who had gone berserk during their draconic transformations. As a result, the women would fall ill. I had been researching a way to help women recover their mana after suppressing transformations. Until then, nobody knew how to do this, but I discovered a way to enchant caramel candies with the mana from moonlight. I ended up catching Van’s interest when I gave him one of those enchanted sweets.
I had no desire to keep associating with the scion of an influential noble, but I became attracted to his sincere and honest demeanor.
For a long time, I found Van to be a complete mystery. But one day, he revealed his identity to me—he was the Dragon Duke Vacherin. He had lost his memories and was enrolled at the boys’ magic academy to relearn the fundamentals of magic. I had been interacting with him all that time without knowing this fact.
As for why he had lost his memories, it was the work of one of his escorts—a man named Duchesse. Van had been enraged at the death of Charlotte, and even after bringing the Kingdom of Sacristain to the brink of utter destruction, his rampage hadn’t stopped. At that point, Duchesse had sealed him away using an ancient stone scroll and forced him to sleep for a hundred years.
Duchesse had thought that the Dragon Duke’s wrath and grief would have faded away after such a long time, but it was not to be. Vacherin hadn’t forgotten his love for Charlotte or his vengeful wrath. Duchesse had thought that Vacherin would not be able to perform his duties if he remained that way, so he’d sealed away almost all of Vacherin’s memories. All that remained in Vacherin’s mind were things that happened until his adolescence. He had even forgotten how to use magic, so he’d had to enroll at the academy to relearn it.
I had fallen in love with the Van who had forgotten his dark and troubled past. I was relieved that I hadn’t simply become enamored of him because of my past life.
But it was too early for relief. I began to notice Duchesse’s unusual actions. He had been falsifying the results of the research Van had commissioned him to do—research on the redistribution of mana between dragonkin couples. And not only that—he had made attempts on my life.
I confronted him, and Duchesse revealed his terrible ambitions. He was plotting to consume all dragonkin women and obtain eternal life. He thought that we dragonkin women were a corrupting influence on men—including Van. That was why he had murdered Charlotte in the past and had attempted to assassinate me as well.
Though Duchesse had been the mastermind behind all these schemes, he hadn’t planned to take over the Dragon Duchy of Éclair. He only wished that Van would become a fitting ruler for the duchy, and he saw me and Charlotte as obstructions to that end.
His plans were revealed to Van, and the royal guard annihilated him. It wasn’t quite the happy ending we wanted.
Peace finally came to my life, and Van proposed to me. While I was overjoyed, there was one thing that still bothered me: Van had figured out that I was the reincarnation of Charlotte, but I was not the same person that I had been in my previous life. Even so, I was anxious to know whether he would still love me as I was now—as Mille-Feuille. Van’s answer was that my past life didn’t matter to him. He said that the sensation of his memories returning to him was similar to what I had experienced in recalling Charlotte’s. He declared that he was no longer the same person as the Vacherin in his memories.
Van and I had met each other with clean slates and still became attracted to one another. We had fallen in love in spite of our previous lives. We held each other, knowing we’d experienced a miraculous encounter.