[Translator – Vine]
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[Proofreader – Sato]
Chapter 3. Venting (2)
Alright, let’s sort out the situation.
I definitely stood on the Empire’s final battlefield, and there I died, caught up in the prince’s battle.
When I opened my eyes again, it was in a dream at the point before entering prison.
As the prince happened to be right in front of me, I cursed excitedly, trying to vent everything that had built up.
Afterwards, for some reason, I got drunk on the excitement and fell asleep on the street after drinking.
And now, it’s the next day.
The morning sunlight is warm and the ground is cool.
When I make eye contact with passersby on the street, their gazes sting as they look at me like a drunkard.
‘Oh.’
…By this point, shouldn’t I know?
‘This isn’t a dream?’
In other words, this is reality.
I haven’t returned to a dream after death, but to some point in the past.
As I realized this, a phrase suddenly came to mind.
– I ask you.
The words that man said before dying are suspicious.
His eyes, shining unusually golden, turn suspicion into certainty.
‘Really? Did you really send me back?’
Apart from the feeling of emptiness, acceptance became easier.
You’d think a mere prince wouldn’t have the power to reverse time, but thinking about it again, that man seems capable of doing just that.
Setting aside all the minor details, just one thing was enough.
The first Grand Master to appear in a thousand years since the founding emperor.
The prince was a man who surpassed a realm that was nothing short of legendary, as if it were nothing.
Really, as naturally as breathing.
– Hmm, I’ll break through soon.
– Pardon?
– It’s easier than I thought. The legend.
– What nonsense are you spouting again? Just lie down and sleep. Stop muttering to yourself at dawn like a senile old man.
– Don’t be surprised tomorrow.
Don’t be surprised, my ass.
I was jaw-droppingly surprised in that battle.
Golden sword auras raining down from the sky on the battlefield, and the man who achieved this laughing heartily in vagrant-like attire – how could one not be surprised?
Thanks to that, I couldn’t see the prince as human for a while, and it was only after he shouted loud enough to shake the barracks, claiming he ran out of toilet paper while taking a dump, that I could treat him like before.
Anyway, that’s the kind of man he is.
If he can easily break through the legendary walls, couldn’t he send a person beyond space and time?
“Huh, huh huh…”
At the end of a hollow laugh, such a mutter escaped.
“…This crazy bastard?”
I wasn’t curious about the intention.
The person who caused this had already told me.
– You go to the past and beat me up. I mean, please knock some sense into me.
He’s being ridiculous.
Sent to the past? Okay, whether it’s true or not, he’s the kind of man who could do it.
I should be grateful that I didn’t die and survived.
But you know what?
Looking at reality, that man’s request was truly an absurd one.
According to the solemn imperial law, even just hitting a royal is punishable by death.
And that man is the crown prince, isn’t he?
Defying the crown prince?
Beating the crown prince with fists until he’s half-crippled?
That’s immediate execution.
It means my head will make a sorrowful farewell to my body, dangling from the gallows.
Just as I was chuckling at that thought, it hit me.
‘In my right mind, I can’t defy…’
Halt-
‘…him?’
My body froze.
It was because I suddenly remembered something.
‘Come to think of it, this isn’t a dream.’
Then…
‘…Yesterday’s events?’
The words I had said came back to me one by one.
– Your Highness, please come to your senses. I’m begging you to separate your lower body from your thought process. Or should I do it for you?
First, sexual harassment.
– This is exactly what you do. You don’t attend banquets, you neglect your studies, you have no intention of training, all you do is sneak around. You’re the very image of a wise ruler deeply concerned with the lives of his people.
Next, sarcasm.
– The farts won’t stop. Please bear with me. Or what, does it hit too close to home? Well, if it doesn’t bother you at all, that would mean you have no conscience.
Contempt.
And finally.
– Release this. If you do, I’ll erase today’s events from my memory.
…Ordering a royal.
It was right after I realized.
Shiver-
Goosebumps rose all over my body.
A trembling started from my fingertips and spread throughout my body.
A shock like my soul leaving my body erupted with a ‘kwang’ in my head.
My mouth fell open blankly.
“Uh…”
…I’m fucked.
* * *
Regarding the matter of facing execution immediately after returning to the past.
This proposition required deep contemplation, but first, I felt newly resentful that even living life again, that damn criminal label couldn’t be erased.
‘What did I do so wrong?’
Even if I asked the heavens, there would be no answer.
If there had been a heaven to give answers in the first place, it wouldn’t have let the empire fall like that.
Or did it let it fall because there were no answers?
Anyway,
Gurgle-
My stomach hurt.
I wanted to cure my hangover.
However, when I tried to eat at a restaurant, I realized that all the various ornaments I had been wearing were gone, showing how drunk I must have been last night.
Begging somewhere is out of the question given my position.
Yuren of the great Paros family.
Even though I lived as a thug, searching through all my memories, there was never a time when thug Yuren went around begging, so it didn’t seem right to start begging now.
It was while such thoughts were floating around.
‘…Oh.’
That thought suddenly occurred to me.
‘Can’t I just go home?’
At this point 20 years ago.
Now, when Paros is still thriving.
Surprisingly, I, Yuren Paros, was a young lord.
No, I was the owner of a mansion…!
‘That’s right. I had a house. Why didn’t I think of this?’
…Why? Well, after becoming an adult, I only stayed behind prison bars, and after leaving prison, I only stayed in barracks.
20 years was enough time to erase the concept of ‘home’ from my mind.
Anyway, the nostalgia ends there.
I jumped up from my seat.
‘The direction of home is…’
I turned my head this way and that.
If you go to the center of the main street, there’s the imperial palace.
If you go right, there are nobles’ boutiques, if you go left, there are nobles’ mansions, and if you go down, there’s the land of the imperial citizens.
After recalling all that, I finally remembered the location of my house.
‘Ah.’
The Paros mansion isn’t nearby.
I set my gaze far.
The mansion is at the outermost edge of the capital.
It was on a hill where you could watch over the imperial palace.
* * *
As I walked, memories kept coming back to me.
‘I used to walk these streets a lot at dawn.’
On nights when I drank all night, I would pass through the imperial citizens’ territory and head home looking at the eastern wall.
Because if I did, I could see the sun rising beyond that wall.
Don’t people become sentimental when they see the majesty of nature?
I was no exception, so at those times, I would buy cheap rum from a nearby tavern and drink as I walked.
This was that alley, and moving further, I could see a flower garden.
‘This was the family’s land from here.’
Despite being noble land, there was no fence here.
What was it again, because of the ancestors’ teaching that we shouldn’t build walls between us and the people?
It’s a bit funny though, since they still carefully fenced off the area around the mansion itself.
Anyway, as it was a garden where outsiders could freely enter rather than a managed one, flowers were blooming here and there as they pleased.
It’s not the season yet, but soon, young couples and children from the capital would often visit this area to see the fully bloomed flowers.
I recalled such things one by one.
And at the end of it, I could see it.
‘…It’s home.’
It’s been almost 20 years.
When I visited after getting out of prison, it had burned down without leaving even ashes.
The house that was so devastated you could barely tell something had been there.
As I looked at it, a new feeling welled up.
‘Was it this small?’
The mansion in my memory was a bit bigger.
A bit more suffocating, a bit more stifling.
But look.
On the hill, there was just a modest three-story stone mansion, with no other buildings around.
The fence looked low enough to easily climb over, and the moderately decorated garden exuded a quaint atmosphere.
Suddenly, I questioned myself.
‘What was so stifling about this place?’
What on earth was my past self doing?
How twisted was I to find even this stifling and run away from home every time?
Thinking about it made me laugh hollowly.
As I took another step, a familiar face greeted me.
“Y-Young Master…!”
[PR-N: I will refer to him from now on as ‘Young Master’ instead of ‘Young Lord’.]
“…Venter.”
The family retainer, Baron Venter Elliot.
He had been pacing anxiously in the garden when he spotted me and his eyes widened.
His thick white hair and wrinkled face were a welcome sight.
His straight back and proper gait reminded me across time of just how strict a person he was.
Venter approached with quick steps.
I muttered.
“It’s been a while.”
Then Venter replied.
It was a very angry reply.
“Yes, yes! It’s been quite a while indeed! How could you stay out until morning again today!”
The nostalgic nagging made me realize something before anything else.
‘Ah, that’s right.’
To them, I’m just the delinquent young master who drank all night and crawled home in the morning.
I pondered for a moment.
Would they believe me if I said I had gone through all sorts of hardships, even became a Sword Master, died and returned?
‘…No way.’
I ended up shaking my head.
Saying such things would only make me look crazy.
The nostalgia was entirely my own.
‘Let’s see…’
What kind of person was my past self…
Right, it was roughly this kind of feeling.
“I felt like getting drunk.”
“Is there ever a time when you don’t feel like getting drunk?”
“……”
“Young Master, please…!”
Venter’s face contorted into a look of distress.
I felt oddly guilty.
As I averted my gaze, Venter heaved a deep sigh.
“Young Master.”
“Venter, I don’t feel well. I want to eat something and get some sleep.”
“You can’t, Young Master.”
“Should I collapse with my stomach turning inside out?”
“Even so, you can’t, Young Master!”
Venter raised his voice, which was rare.
This is strange.
In my memory, there weren’t many times when Venter was this adamant.
“What’s wrong?”
Have my memories been beautified by nostalgia?
Just as that thought occurred to me.
“The Mistress waited for you all night, Young Master. Without sleeping a wink!”
My thoughts stopped at those words.
* * *
I entered the mansion for the first time in 20 years.
But my heart was far from peaceful.
I couldn’t even recall memories of the mansion’s decorations, objects, or structure.
When I thought of the person who would be in the third-floor study right now, all such thoughts became blurry.
Meanwhile, Venter said things like this.
“The Mistress was really very worried.”
“…I’m sure she was.”
“Thinking you might have forgotten the time, she sat at the dining table for over an hour.”
“…I’m sure she did. That’s the kind of person she is.”
“In the end, she couldn’t even touch her utensils. The servants ate the cold food, and the Mistress couldn’t even enter her bedroom, thinking something might have happened to you. Even after hearing that you were enjoying yourself on the streets, it was the same. She looked so… so relieved yet so sad at the same time.”
It was truly behavior befitting my sister.
At that, I recalled something I had forgotten.
‘That’s right…’
The day I was imprisoned was, unusually, a day when I had accepted my sister’s dinner invitation.
I remember agreeing because I was sick of her persistent requests.
What happened after that…
‘I was wronged by His Highness.’
Right after that, I was immediately imprisoned.
My sister only found out about it two days later, and she came to see me right away and said this.
– Young Master, are you hurt anywhere?
With such a haggard appearance, smiling so foolishly.
My younger self didn’t understand such things.
It was much later that I realized my sin.
This was a memory that stabbed at my heart, and a sense of guilt that didn’t disappear no matter how many times I reflected on it.
Of course, it would have been fortunate if it had ended with just reminiscing about the past.
But today was not the past.
I saw a wooden door that smelled of old wood.
My sister is behind this.
Venter knocked on the door.
“The Young Master has arrived.”
Then a voice was heard from inside.
– Let him in.
My eyes trembled.
It was only now that I fully realized that I would hear that faint, almost vanishing tone in my ears again.
The door opened.
Now I could see with my eyes.
Long gray hair like mine cascaded down. Blue eyes like mine shone.
However, unlike me who was like an angry colt, my sister had an extremely delicate and pure impression.
That was the general evaluation, not just mine.
Next, my eyes caught sight of my sister’s arms, so thin they looked like they might break if you tapped them.
Also, her haggard complexion with deep shadows under her eyes came into view.
Cecilia Paros.
The woman who protected this family in place of me, the delinquent.
The woman who waited her whole life for her worthless brother to come out of prison, and in the end, perished along with the family.
I suppressed the rising emotions.
I tried to bow my head.
But before I could, I heard footsteps, and suddenly this person was right in front of me.
My sister placed her hand on my cheek.
Then she quietly moved her lips.
“Young Master.”
And so this person,
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
She smiled.
Foolishly and haggardly, but with relief.
Just like the day I was imprisoned.
My sister looked exactly the same as in my memory.
“I heard you slept on the street. Is your stomach alright?”
[Translator – Vine]
Pro Novels
[Proofreader – Sato]
