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Chapter 2
Prim opened her eyes wide as she felt the cold marble floor against her back and the back of her head.
“…Hmph!”
The breath she had stopped breathing suddenly returned all at once, and every sensation around her became painfully sharp.
She could smell the musty air of the old, worn-out temple, the faint warmth of the early-summer sunlight, and the fresh green scent of young leaves beginning to sprout in the distant forest.
All of those scents rushed over her at once.
But there was one scent she could not detect anywhere.
Her final fragrance.
She could clearly remember every individual ingredient she had carefully chosen, as well as the lingering scent created when they blended together.
Yet at this moment, she could not smell any of it.
The Inquisitors who had come to arrest her were gone as well.
Only the dry coldness of the old marble against her back, without a trace of blood or even a drop of perfume, brought her back to reality.
Varin had shown her two paths.
She had made her choice.
And she had gotten what she wanted.
She did not need to look into a mirror to know.
She had returned to the time when she was only about ten years old.
“Ah.”
Her own childish voice sounded strangely unfamiliar.
Ever since she had taken the curse meant for Rozien, Prim had never run again.
But she imagined that this must be how someone would feel after running for a very long time and finally coming to a stop.
When she looked down at her younger body, her heart suddenly began beating rapidly and violently.
An emotion she had never asked for swept over her.
It was as though she had truly become a child again.
She felt inexplicably miserable, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
Every bit of strength seemed to have drained from her body.
She felt as though she could not move even a finger.
Prim eventually collapsed back onto the floor.
“I’ll rest for just a little while…”
She had spent her previous life desperately chasing wealth and luxury to escape poverty and deprivation.
She had endlessly created and sold fragrances, using her friend’s guilt to exploit him for years.
Only after losing him had she realized how much she regretted it.
Now that she had finally returned to the past, she did not want to live that way anymore.
She would help Rozien obtain the wealth and glory that should have been his.
But that was all.
Perhaps she could live a little more leisurely this time…
“Huh? No, no, no! Wake up! We still have thirty million Petals to go! There’s no time to rest!”
Prim stopped thinking for a moment.
Was that an auditory hallucination?
“Oh, how heartless! Have you already forgotten my voice? After I went so far as to turn back time for you!”
Prim slowly sat up again.
Because her body had become about ten years old, the low altar was now exactly at her eye level.
A dried bouquet of flowers was trembling on top of the altar.
The priestess Marceria, who maintained this temple, had placed it there as an offering to the god.
At first, the flowers had probably only been slightly wilted.
But with Marceria being too busy taking care of the children, the bouquet had completely dried out.
Now the extremely dry flowers were trembling and giving off a faint light.
The already discolored leaves crumbled into powder.
Prim remembered the voice.
It was difficult to forget the voice of someone she had spoken with until the moment of her death.
However, back then, the voice had sounded like dozens of bells ringing at once, or like someone sweeping their fingers across an instrument with a hundred strings.
But now…
“…Varin?”
“Yes, it’s me! Me, Varin!”
The moment Prim recognized him, an intense reaction burst out.
Half of the bouquet crumbled away.
Varin’s voice now sounded like an impatient sparrow chirping loudly.
Prim blinked.
The bouquet trembled again.
“Haha! You must have been surprised! Anyway, you don’t have time to rest here!”
Gods’ words were called divine revelations.
Just before her death, Prim had believed that what she experienced had been a divine revelation.
A revelation filled with radiant scenery, heavenly sounds, and miracles.
But now, there was nothing except one trembling, worn-out bouquet.
A dried bouquet shaking on the crumbling altar of a darkened temple.
Varin noticed the look in Prim’s eyes as she compared the two situations and immediately shrieked.
“The power I gained from the fragrance you gave me existed in the future that no longer exists! You returned to the past just as you chose, so the power you gained in that future disappeared too!”
“Oh. So that’s what happened.”
Varin shouted even more loudly at Prim, who remained eerily calm despite having just traveled back through time.
“Listen carefully! I’m using the little bit of power I had left after sending you back, along with the scent of this bouquet, to communicate with you. You must become a Perfuma Etheria again.”
Prim calmly replied to the word again.
“Varin, I wasn’t a Perfuma Etheria before either.”
Only the greatest perfumer on the continent could be called a Perfuma Etheria.
To earn that title, a perfumer had to pass three trials and receive the blessings of all twelve gods, as well as recognition from the Emperor and the High Seat.
Only twelve people in the entire empire were permitted to bear that title.
The trials were held once every ten years.
When Prim was fifteen, circumstances had made it difficult for her to participate.
She had been unable to participate in the next trial at twenty-five either.
She had died before she could even take the examination and had returned to the past.
“No! You were already practically a Perfuma Etheria! You created a fragrance powerful enough to make me use the Forbidden Art of Reversing Heaven and Earth! If you’re not the greatest perfumer on the continent, then who is? No one else has ever accomplished what you did!”
Prim listened silently.
It was not because she agreed.
She simply had no desire to argue.
She no longer wanted money or glory.
In her previous life, her fragrances had nourished the gods and drawn their blessings.
Those miracles and blessings had sharpened the swords of the knights fighting against magical beasts.
They had also made Prim as wealthy and powerful as a star in the heavens.
For years, she had never even needed to put her feet directly on the ground.
She had worn nothing but soft, beautiful clothes as delicate as an angel’s feather.
Now, she had unexpectedly been given another life.
She intended to help Rozien enjoy the wealth and glory that should have been his.
But that was all.
As Varin had said, she had created a fragrance powerful enough to make a god use the Forbidden Art of Reversing Heaven and Earth.
So she no longer cared what other people thought of her.
Whether they acknowledged her or not made no difference.
As though he had read her thoughts, the bouquet trembled violently.
The few dried petals that remained crumbled into dust.
“Oh, my little Lily of the Valley! That’s an absurd way of thinking. I’m telling you, you have to create a fragrance like the one you offered me before!”
“I remember the perfume formula. I can simply recreate it…”
“That fragrance won’t work anymore! It has to be a completely new fragrance.”
“A fragrance that has never existed before. A fragrance that even the gods themselves have never smelled.”
“If you don’t create such a fragrance and offer it to me before the day you died arrives again…”
“…?”
“…”
“Varin?”
At that moment, every remaining petal trembled and turned into dust.
Varin’s voice abruptly disappeared.
Prim blinked and stared at the bouquet, which now consisted of nothing but stiff, bare stems.
She called the god’s name again.
“Varin…?”
The remaining stems rattled.
Then even the linen string holding the bouquet together had rotted away and fallen apart.
The stems scattered across the altar.
A cloud of pale dust rose into the air.
Prim stared in confusion.
The god had disappeared in the middle of speaking.
It even seemed as though he had been about to give her some important warning or information.
But the completely crumbled bouquet remained silent.
For one last moment, the dried stems trembled desperately.
Then they became still.
What happens if I don’t offer him the fragrance before the deadline?
If she wanted to continue the conversation and hear the divine revelation again, what would she have to do?
“I’m using the little bit of power I had left after sending you back, along with the scent of this bouquet, to communicate with you.”
That was what Varin had said.
If she prepared a bouquet with fragrances that were properly balanced and harmonized, would Varin be able to speak with her for longer?
Prim turned her head and looked outside the old temple.
Early-summer sunlight poured through the half-open door.
Prim looked down at her legs.
More precisely, she looked at her feet.
Then she raised her head again and stared outside.
The warm early-summer air was waiting for her.
Prim suddenly muttered,
“It’s still going to be a thorny road.”
Her life had become a “thorny road” much earlier than this.
Prim and Rozien were two orphans completely cut off from the rest of the world.
They had met on the streets.
Rozien had looked like a stray dog, hiding his blood-red hair, which resembled the fur of magical beasts, beneath a ragged and worn-out piece of cloth.
Prim herself had probably looked like a miserable, sickly animal just like him.
Neither of them had enough strength left even to be wary of one another.
They leaned against each other, using one another in place of a warm coat.
Their parents had abandoned them.
Whatever scraps of food they barely managed to find disappeared the moment they put them into their mouths.
Even the money they stole through pickpocketing was taken from them by someone else.
But they never lost each other.
No one could take the other away.
So, if it meant protecting each other…
If it meant protecting the only family they had ever had, a family they had never believed they would possess…
They were willing to do anything.
Even something like pushing Rozien away when they were caught up in a back-alley dispute and were about to be struck by an unknown curse while trying to escape.
