Chapter 71
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71.
A faint, peculiar scream echoed from somewhere distant, but Cassian Artez chose to hold his breath rather than rush toward it.
Instead of urging him to investigate or asking what had happened, I opted to remain still against him, trusting his instincts completely.
I knew all too well that in such strange circumstances, his sharp intuition was far more reliable than my clumsy guesses.
His arms tightened around me.
"Roselita, the wallpaper seems to have changed."
"...Yes, it has."
The Rest Chamber had supposedly been redecorated about thirty years ago.
Though the Imperial Palace maintained its spaces meticulously, even such care could not erase the natural fading or inevitable marks of time.
Yet what I saw now was distinctly different in color, and moreover—
"The warmth is gone."
As if the fireplace had never been lit because no Ball had been held.
"True, but...."
Cassian Artez, still puzzled, relaxed his grip around me slightly.
"It's not winter air."
I agreed with him. The absence of warmth was indeed present, but there was also a subtly unpleasant dampness—
Like the rainy season.
"The scream seems to have ended. The distorted air has stabilized too."
Even as he spoke, Cassian Artez kept his guard up, lowering his voice to a whisper.
"And no one is approaching nearby."
At his words—similar to how things were when no events were held—I nodded and summoned the magical scroll.
A reply notification had arrived around the time Cassian Artez mentioned the air distorting.
I hoped there might be something useful in it.
I could have simply left the Rest Chamber and checked outside, but the fact that Cassian Artez remained still and holding his breath meant that any hasty movement would be far more dangerous.
I skipped the unnecessary portions and checked the two attached documents first.
Soon we both fell silent, having read the contents of two prophecies that appeared in the form of different magical scrolls.
For different reasons.
The moment I opened the unpublished prophecy scroll, I realized these were materials never revealed to readers in the original work.
And I thought that if I had only seen this, my anxiety might have eased somewhat.
After all, this list was relatively sparse.
But the unconfirmed prophecy scroll was....
The file list was so extensive, and the contents so repetitive, that I could understand why they had declared it impossible to review.
Like documents that had been rejected multiple times, accumulated, and then saved again with only the endings slightly altered.
"...Do you understand what this means, Roselita? And what is Rozi?"
It's the pet name the original Cassian Artez used to call the original Roselita Salice.
I managed to answer only within my own mind.
'...How on earth am I supposed to explain this?'
Moreover, the entire document was hyperlinked, but only the file 'Rozi's Parents' Generation Gossip.txt' had a special effect indicating it was currently in progress.
The Rest Chamber suddenly felt unfamiliar, the humidity like summer rather than winter, and the atmosphere around me clearly devoid of any scheduled events.
And the phrase "worlds are merging" written in the reply scroll, along with the file list that they believed to be prophecies.
I could easily piece together the rough circumstances from all of this, but before that, there was one massive barrier I had to overcome.
To my superior, with whom I had been conversing normally just minutes ago,
'Actually, I'm from another world, and when I was born, I found myself possessing the protagonist. This world is actually a work of fiction.'
I would have to say....
I wished that all of this was merely a hallucination I was seeing incorrectly, or that my deductions were wildly off the mark.
Otherwise, it would be truly far too....
Far too....
I found myself unable to continue my thoughts and simply stared at Cassian Artez.
Because my heart ached.
Because it felt truly too cruel.
'Because I, having continually rejected the protagonist's role.'
Had this person, who had never properly received anything good, become entangled in this—
"Roselita."
As if cutting through thoughts that assailed me like a tempest, Cassian Artez cradled my face in his hands.
"It's alright. Whatever you say, I will believe it, listen to it, and endure it."
"...Your Majesty."
"So don't agonize alone. Just tell me."
He met my eyes with warmth.
A familiar, playful smile graced his features—one that seemed to say I need not harbor any anxiety.
"Let me bear Roselita's worries with you, yes?"
I am your superior, after all.
His voice was far more trustworthy than any fabricated words could ever be.
*
No matter what, I couldn't bring myself to mention possession or alternate worlds—it would make me sound utterly mad. I glossed over it as best I could.
The fact that I was creating secrets I never wanted to keep left me feeling somewhat frustrated, but Cassian simply smiled and took my hand.
"It's alright. That's the best you can tell me right now."
He could be insufferably teasing most of the time, yet in moments like these, his consideration only made me feel more apologetic. I wondered if he understood that.
Rather than pressing me on the part I'd awkwardly glossed over, he focused entirely on understanding the scroll's contents.
"So to summarize—there exists something like an absolute being who knows the flow of this world, and this is their record?"
"That's right."
"Unreleased means events that actually happened or will happen, and Undetermined means events that had potential but never came to pass?"
I nodded in confirmation, and Cassian read through the scroll once more, his expression growing troubled by the same detail that had bothered me.
"This 'mixing' is what concerns me most."
"Especially the Undetermined section. The fact that they marked it as 'non-reviewable' suggests it's dangerous."
Dumping this problem on me and expecting me to solve it felt irresponsibly reckless.
"But that's not all...."
Cassian gazed at me intently.
With so many tender spots already exposed, my heart stumbled at his look.
"It irritates me that there are already so many things taking an interest in you."
Cassian pulled the hand he was holding and drew me into his embrace.
"The thought that someone might cling to you as desperately as I do—I don't like that at all."
I fell silent for a moment.
I recalled the original story in my mind, then answered him in a serious voice.
"No matter how I think about it, I can't imagine anyone surpassing Your Majesty."
The original Cassian, overflowing with righteousness and obsessively concerned with public opinion, could never compete with my devilish boss who tempts me with a salary...
It was a perfectly rational conclusion, but Cassian seemed pleased by my reasoning in a different way. He pressed a kiss to my cheek and whispered.
"Then I can rest easy, knowing my lovely fiancée would never leave my side."
His voice carried that same mischievous tone as always.
*
Even when I mentioned that the Late Empress Maribel Liardan's involvement was quite likely, Cassian Artez held me with a surprisingly light-hearted attitude.
"Actually, this works out well. I was curious what had happened."
He opened the window of the Rest Chamber and crossed through the Imperial Palace, ghosting past the guards positioned with eerie precision.
"...Is the guards' security really that lax, Your Majesty, or are you simply that skilled?"
"Perhaps both?"
Thanks to his reckless traversal through the Palace, we realized we had stepped back into the past—at least twenty years or more.
The insignia on the guards' uniforms had been changed twenty years ago, different from the current design.
And the place where I traced the scream Cassian Artez had caught was somewhere I myself had never once laid eyes upon.
"...Peony Palace."
It was the residence of Cassian Artez's mother, the Late Empress Maribel Liardan, which the Emperor had personally sealed away.
The moment we arrived there, we found ourselves speechless for an entirely different reason.
"Really, are you teasing me like this? Do you know how startled I was?"
A lovely woman with lustrous golden hair stood cradling a temperamental cat, pouting at the man descending before her.
"If I'd known you'd scream like that, I wouldn't have done it, Belle."
The man, barely dodging the cat's claws as they raked through the air, wore an expression so full of concern he looked ready to kneel at any moment.
"It's my fault for worrying about you even though I know someone as strong as you would never stumble from a tree."
"I'm truly sorry. So please, don't tell me to eat alone tonight, all right?"
The conversation was far too tender and intimate for the gravity of the situation, leaving us breathless.
The man fidgeting before the beautiful Empress was none other than that viper of an Emperor himself.
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