Dusk settled in.
By the time the setting sun had cast its glow, dyeing the clubroom gold,
"I’ll be going, then."
Starting with Angelica, they left the clubroom one by one.
"Aren’t you leaving, Ian?"
"Ah, I have something to do, so I’ll stay a little longer."
I did not leave.
I wanted to check out the club customization feature that had just been unlocked.
If furniture suddenly popped into existence, it would be awkward trying to explain it to these people, who knew nothing about the system.
Scrrrape.
I was about to open my status window once Isabella, the last one remaining, had left.
"Ian."
Isabella merely slid the door open and stood silently on the threshold, looking at me.
Did she have something to say?
"Ian, by any chance..."
Holding my gaze with her eerily bewitching red eyes, she slowly parted her lips.
"Have you been cursed?"
"Pardon?"
I could not help making a dumbfounded face at that bizarre question, delivered with such a stiffly serious expression.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Hmm... But still."
Isabella narrowed her eyes at me, propping her chin on her left hand.
"Time turned back, did it not? From the point of your death onward."
That was true.
But what did that have to do with a curse?
"Isn’t it possible that I turned back time myself?"
"Surely not..."
She shook her head as though that were impossible.
"You are not even a mage. And if you possessed the power to turn back time... you would not have needed to fight a Sword Master twenty-nine times."
She then raised two fingers.
"There are two possibilities here."
She continued, folding them down one by one.
"The first is that, as you said, you turned back time yourself."
"But you just said that was impossible."
"Which naturally leaves only one possibility."
Then she folded down her remaining index finger.
"Time was turned back by an outside force. A curse, for example."
Well, she was half right.
It had not been a curse, but I had gone back using a Dream Ticket.
"So which of the two is correct?"
"Do I have to tell you that?"
Some of what she said was true, but that did not mean I needed to tell her everything plainly.
Shadows fell over Isabella’s face at my reply.
As if she were deliberating over something, she fell silent for a moment before opening her lips.
"Why?"
"If you wish to know something from me, shouldn’t you offer something of informational value in return? That would make the exchange fair, wouldn’t it?"
At my answer, Isabella curled her lips into a chilly smile.
"Oh? So when you said you would help me join the club, that was a lie?"
"That is one thing, and this is another. This is a trade secret."
"You were only able to defeat that masked man because I helped you."
"I landed the finishing blow."
"Honestly, how petty."
As I watched Isabella grumble, I gave the matter some thought.
Could her persistent interest in time being turned back mean that she suspected I was a regressor, or someone connected to one?
Hmm. Why?
In the game, she had not been the sort to go around searching for regressors.
Nor had she questioned regression itself.
Her attitude had been that a second chance had arrived, so she might as well use it to her advantage.
Which made this reaction of hers both novel and strange.
I had thought she would either accept it with an "I see," or rack her brains over how to exploit it.
Sigh.
Then she suddenly let out a breath.
"I am a regressor."
With her arms folded, she tossed those words out as she looked at me.
Casually, in the sort of tone one might use in an ordinary conversation.
"Is that so?"
Her tone had been so natural that I wondered if I had misheard for a moment and unconsciously rubbed at my ear.
"It may sound like I am insane, but you heard correctly just now."
As if driving in the final nail, she made it unmistakably clear.
"I am a regressor. And the Second Prince, Kyle, is one as well."
I knew.
Of course I knew.
She had been with the Second Prince at the time, and he had shown no reaction whatsoever when time turned back.
So I had assumed Isabella already knew that Second Prince Kyle was a regressor.
But.
I had not expected her to say it so openly.
In the original story, she had never revealed first that she was a regressor.
Even when Kyle, a fellow regressor, revealed that he had regressed, she had not told him.
She had only barely confessed it after a considerable amount of time had passed and their affection had grown.
"So then."
What on earth...
"Is that sufficient payment for the information?"
What was she thinking?
#
Once I realized that Kyle was a regressor, I thought there was no need to hide that I was one as well.
There were two people in this world who had returned from the future.
Then there was no guarantee there were not three.
Especially if, though I did not want to think about it, that woman was a regressor too...
No, that could not be.
If she had been a regressor, she would not be following the exact same path as before.
That woman was empty-headed, but she was the ultimate master of self-preservation.
Considering I had openly behaved differently from before the regression and she showed no reaction whatsoever,
she was not a regressor.
But there was no guarantee that she alone was not one, or that those I would face as enemies in the future had not regressed.
That was why I thought it would be best to keep it hidden.
However.
There was a man who kept catching my attention.
Ian de Logres.
Thinking back on it now,
him blocking the Second Prince’s slap for me could be explained by the fact that I had not slapped that man across the face before my regression, meaning it was something that would never have happened.
But more fundamentally, that man had never come to the academy before my regression.
At the very least, there was no way I could have failed to notice someone with that enormous build and intimidating face.
I had evacuated to the dormitory before my regression, so I did not know what happened afterward, but it had been Professor Luke and Iris who defeated the masked man.
The Ancient Documents Club had also been disbanded, yet it had managed to remain in existence because of him.
It was strange.
Ian stood at the center of every change.
But something did not add up.
He had not attended the academy before the regression, so he should not have been able to know such details.
Yet he changed things so naturally.
At first, I thought he might be a regressor, but soon decided he probably was not.
I had not discarded my suspicion that he was a regressor, but I thought perhaps he was something twisted and different.
However.
What gave me certainty was this:
He died, and my regression began from that point.
And he was aware that he had gone back in time.
So I thought that he was either a regressor or something connected to my regression.
Of course, I was not interested in where this regression had originated.
Nor was it something I wanted to know badly enough to reveal that I was a regressor.
Even so, the reason I revealed this to you was...
How should I put it?
"Because I do not think you are an enemy, at least."
"What did you say?"
"It was nothing."
That was such a simple reason.
Twenty-six times.
That was how many times I watched you die.
I went back twice more before meeting you, so you probably died twenty-eight times.
I saw your heart pierced, your throat cut.
I saw your limbs severed and your face impaled.
It must have hurt.
I died from poison, and it hurt for me too.
But you did not give up.
You threw your entire body in front of that demonic spear charging at Lady Haede.
Because of that, you were the only one hurt.
Though I had to deduct points for the fact that you tried to kill yourself at the end.
But how should I put it?
I envied them.
Lady Haede, and Lady Iris.
I did everything to make Kyle look at me.
Yet I foolishly died after taking poison.
I looked only at that man and ran only toward him.
I threw everything away and poured all the things I believed to be my love onto him.
Hoping that perhaps he might look at me, even just a little.
Consumed by such foolish lingering attachment, I died from poison.
But you were not like that.
Because I heard it.
What you said as though scolding Lady Haede.
"I have seen you crying as you pour holy power into that hole, knowing it will not close, eleven times."
I saw it too.
Her desperate sobbing.
Though she knew he was dead, she tried to revive his corpse.
The scream of that girl, who had always gone around smiling, as she poured everything out of herself and wailed.
You...
did not fight for Lady Haede’s favor.
Nor did you fight for Iris’s love.
You simply hated seeing anyone die.
You hated seeing someone cry because of it.
That was the only reason you fought.
Dying twenty-eight times for that was not an easy thing to do.
So.
I envied those two, somehow.
The truth is, wanting to know why you could regress, or whether you were a regressor, was just an excuse.
I simply wanted to tell you that I was a regressor.
Then.
Like those two.
I thought that if I died, you might cry beside me too.
Honestly...
Another chance has come to me, and yet... I suppose I still have not kicked this habit of doing foolish things.
"So, has that been sufficient payment for the information, Ian?"
"Um. You are not seriously telling me to believe that, are you?"
"You went back twenty-eight times yourself. Then naturally, there can be regressors too."
So.
Are you a regressor or not?
"I went back through a ticket. Every time I died, the ticket tore apart, and then I returned to before the fight."
A ticket?
At those two abrupt words, my thoughts stopped for a moment.
"By ticket, do you mean the kind of ticket I am thinking of?"
"I do not know what you are thinking of, but if you mean a ticket as in an admission pass, then yes. I would like to show you, but it crumbled away once the battle ended, so I cannot."
..........
"Are you telling me to believe that?"
"Well, with a regressor standing before me, surely there can also be a ticket that turns back time twenty-eight times?"
"That is awfully flimsy... Compared to the information I gave you, is that not a little cheap?"
"But what can I do if it is the truth?"
At his absurd answer, I held my throbbing forehead for a moment.
Well.
It was not as though I cared much about such things in the first place.
"So."
"Yes?"
"I would like to hear your impression of meeting a regressor."
I swept my hair back and thrust out my chest.
It was a silly thing to say.
Something exceedingly silly and meaningless.
I did not particularly like conversations like this, but...
"Then tell me where I ought to invest."
"How about investing in the Second Prince?"
"Isn’t that man already a delisted stock?"
"That is true."
How should I put it?
Since he answered my nonsense with nonsense of his own,
I felt that perhaps talking like this was not so bad after all.
#
Scrrrape, click.
I watched the sliding door Isabella had gone through for a moment.
I had no idea what she was trying to say.
From suddenly revealing that she was a regressor,
to everything else, she did not feel like the Isabella from the game.
Well, whatever.
It just meant she trusted me that much, did it not?
Now then.
‘Status window.’
【Ian de Logres】
◈ Level: 47
◈ Titles: [Rival of the Sword Demon], [One Who Surpassed the Impossible]
◈ Traits: [Dragon Strength], [Insight Eye], [Oath of Chivalry], [Flower of Chivalry], [Knight Slayer], [Time Sense]
◈ Stats
Physical: 306 | Mana: 125
Luck: 10 | Mental Strength: 30
Aura: 120 | Spirit Power: 0
(SP Held: 0)
▶ [Skills]
▶ [Pets]
▶ [Club]
I brought my finger to the word [Club] at the very bottom.
Then a familiar UI began to unfold before my eyes.
Cute little pieces of furniture, and chibi dolls sitting in chairs.
The very UI I had seen on the monitor filled my vision.
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