~Chapter 15~
To my tearful question, Marquis Valandier gave no answer.
Yes, he must have believed it… that’s why he hasn’t appeared in public even once since that day.
“Why… why would she say such things… how could she…”
“No one would ever imagine that another soul had entered Livia Arfin’s body. In the end, he would have had no choice but to believe it.”
That’s true. It was… only natural.
Even when I became Livia Arfin, people saw my different speech and actions, but no one suspected the truth.
People losing their memories and changing entirely was rare, but not impossible.
Besides, I had tried hard to make them believe I was truly Livia Arfin, despite my different tastes, speech, and food preferences. I knew some of her memories, after all.
As time passed slowly, they grew used to the possessed Livia Arfin.
So now, with her sudden change again, they probably thought her personality had just shifted back.
…I was the one who made it that way.
“Ugh… huu….”
I felt the hands covering my face grow damp.
I wanted to run to Khalid immediately.
To tell him it wasn’t me. That the one who loved him was me, and the one who hurt him wasn’t me.
I wanted to say he didn’t have to be hurt.
But the realization that I couldn’t… brought an even deeper despair.
Too much time had already passed for me to rush to him now, shouting it was all a misunderstanding.
My body crumbled to the floor. It felt like someone was squeezing and twisting my heart.
How hard I had worked for that happiness… how desperately I had searched for that love.
Yet I could protect neither him nor that love.
I gasped for breath, unable to breathe properly, and Marquis Valandier rushed to my side in alarm.
“Ugh… ugh… ah…”
My chest hurt so badly I curled up in pain.
He gently rubbed my back.
“I did tell him… that the current Livia is not the one we knew.”
I snapped my head up at his words, looking at him with desperate eyes.
Hoping — praying — that Khalid had believed him, even for a moment.
“You know His Highness isn’t someone who believes such things easily. Besides… there were other things that made it impossible for him to believe.”
His words crushed my hope.
I didn’t know if he was being considerate to me, or pitying Khalid… but the Marquis didn’t describe the pain Khalid must have gone through in detail.
“Since then, ‘Livia Arfin’ has become a forbidden name before His Highness. He tried not to show it… but it took him a long time to get there.”
He helped me sit back on the sofa, handing me a glass of water to calm me.
After a long while, I was finally able to breathe again, and my blurred vision slowly cleared.
With trembling hands clenched into fists, I forced myself to stay composed.
“I… I had a feeling.”
My voice cracked miserably as it spilled from my mouth.
I silently accepted the glass of water and drank to soothe my parched throat.
With a sigh, I carefully played with the glass in my shaking hands.
“After I crossed dimensions, when I realized five years had passed here… and there was no news of Livia Arfin’s death.”
Or perhaps… I had sensed it the moment I woke up in my original body.
That just as I had returned to my own body, Livia Arfin’s body might have returned to its rightful owner.
Especially at that time, it had felt like some immense force had forcibly pushed me out.
The sensation was indescribably strange and ominous.
“Livia… she was someone capable of doing something like that.”
Even so, I tried to ignore it.
Because the grief and despair of not being able to see him again were too great, finding a way to return had become my only priority.
“…I knew it.”
Still, I had wondered.
If the original Livia had returned after I disappeared… what happened to the people I loved?
But just imagining them living well without me had been unbearable, so I buried myself in the goal of returning here.
I regretted it.
I had wanted so badly to come back here, but never thought specifically about what would happen after I returned.
If Livia had hurt the people I cherished… why hadn’t I prepared for that?
‘…I can’t break down here.’
With what resolve had I come back to this place?
All I wished for was to see the face of the one I loved just once more.
To hope that he was doing well. That even without me, he was living happily.
If that radiant smile still remained on his face… then I had promised myself I would want nothing more.
Of course, I had considered that things might not turn out that way.
But that thought only tormented me. There was nothing I could do from outside this world.
But… now it’s different.
If I achieved one thing, it was time to think about what came next.
“……Ha.”
I took a deep breath in, then slowly exhaled.
Gathering my patience, I clasped my hands together and forced myself to stay calm.
“I want to hear more. Not just about Khalid… tell me what else Livia Arfin did… to my people.”
Marquis Valandier nodded as if he had expected this, and quietly began his long story.
His tale, which began in the early morning, didn’t end until it was almost lunchtime.
I tried to remain calm, but by the end, all that was left in my heart was despair beyond mere devastation.
“I don’t know what to say. Everything you had worked so hard to fix… has returned to how it was before. No… perhaps it’s even worse now.”
My parents couldn’t ignore their daughter, who had returned to her old self.
The trust I had built painstakingly didn’t crumble easily — and that became a sharp blade stabbing into their hearts.
Livia Arfin was someone who knew exactly what words to use to inflict the deepest wounds.
My parents, my younger brother Schurel, and all the precious connections I had made…
She severed them all the moment she woke up.
She could have cut them off. The original Livia probably never wanted those relationships anyway.
But did she have to be so cruel?
She hadn’t just cut them clean like scissors.
She sawed away at them repeatedly with a dull blade, as if to prolong the pain, to show someone how thoroughly she could destroy them.
“You once told me your memories sometimes returned. That’s why you could handle divine power.”
“…No. I never said it then, but I had almost all of Livia’s memories. Except for her very early childhood… I remembered everything.”
“I see. I suspected as much. Otherwise, some things couldn’t have been explained. Then… do you think the current Livia Arfin remembers your time here?”
My brows furrowed at his question.
The thought of my entire life being monitored left me feeling disgusted.
Just imagining that someone knew every corner of my life made my skin crawl.
I thought bitterly that Livia Arfin, having regained her body, must have felt this feeling even more acutely.
“I… don’t know. Maybe she remembers… maybe she doesn’t.”
I only remembered half of her life.
And even that, as time passed, was growing hazy.
As if… simply holding someone else’s memories was itself a forbidden act.
