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Chapter 07
Leonhardt’s hand, which had been restlessly stroking her face, suddenly froze.
As he looked down at Lilietta’s sharply tense expression, he realized that her body was trembling faintly.
Lilietta was afraid of him.
At the same time, her entire body was tensed, ready to attack him at any moment.
Just what kind of life had this child lived?
Leonhardt withdrew his hand and stepped back slightly. Only then did the rigid tension in her shoulders finally ease.
Even if I told her we’re family and that she can relax… it probably wouldn’t mean anything right now.
After carefully considering his words, he spoke cautiously.
“Rita, for now… let’s go back to your room. Can you stand? Should I help you?”
“I can stand on my own.”
Rita answered stubbornly despite her pale, bloodless face, bracing herself against the wall as she pushed herself up.
Her slender arms trembled violently. Leonhardt suppressed the urge to pick up his staggering younger sister and simply walked ahead in silence—deliberately slowly.
Once back in the guest room, Rita sat down on the sofa. Leonhardt told her to wait, stepped out, and returned with a tea set.
He poured two cups of warm tea from the teapot, let Rita choose one, and then deliberately drank from the remaining cup first.
Realizing why he had given her the tea this way, Rita let out a faint sigh and said,
“You don’t have to be this considerate. I know you wouldn’t… poison this body—Lilietta’s body.”
“Knowing something with your head and accepting it with your body are different,” Leonhardt replied calmly after taking a sip of tea.
“Right now, everything feels unfamiliar to you, and you’re on edge.”
He added quietly,
“So I thought this might help you relax, at least a little.”
“……”
Rita was flustered by his unexpected response. She had just mistaken an ordinary person for a monster and attacked them—being locked up somewhere wouldn’t have been strange at all.
She stared blankly at her teacup, then slowly drank it. As the warm, bitter liquid slid down her throat, the tight knot of tension in her body noticeably loosened.
Leonhardt didn’t press her. He stayed silent and waited.
After finishing her tea, Rita brushed back her bangs, damp with cold sweat, and spoke first.
“Um… what about that maid—Hannah? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She was startled, but she wasn’t hurt. I sent her to the physician, so don’t worry.”
“…You’re not interrogating her? I just did something like that.”
“There was a reason, wasn’t there?”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Well… that’s true.”
“Then that’s enough.”
He checked his wristwatch and set his empty cup down.
“Rita, I still have some unfinished business, so I should get going. I’ll come back in the evening—rest for now. If you need anything, pull that cord over there.”
Seeing him about to stand up and leave, she asked in panic,
“You’re really not going to ask? Why I did that?”
“If I ask, can you answer?”
“…It’s not a simple story.”
“That’s fine. Long is okay. Actually, the more detailed, the better.”
“Didn’t you say you were busy?”
“My work isn’t more important than you.”
He sat back down instead of standing. Rita stared at him in disbelief, her mouth opening and closing, before she finally managed to speak.
“Hey, Leonhardt… you do know that I’m not your real younger sister, right?”
Leonhardt hesitated for a moment.
He had intended to pretend not to notice until she realized it herself—but what had just happened made him feel something anew.
Lilietta had grown up in an extremely abnormal environment.
I suspected as much from the first time I saw her… but it seems it was even worse than I thought.
She must have lived in a place where doubting everything and reacting aggressively to even the slightest threat was the only way to survive.
In that case… rather than pretending not to notice in this situation—
He wanted to reassure her, somehow.
After rubbing his mouth thoughtfully for a while, he spoke slowly.
“Rita, to be honest.”
“……”
“I think you really are Lilietta.”
“I told you I’m not.”
“Yes. You said you’re not, so I decided I should believe you.”
Leonhardt gave a bitter smile.
“But no matter how I look at you, all I see is Lilietta who lost her memories.”
“That’s just because of this body. Don’t get it wrong.”
“Rita.”
Eyes so similar to her own gazed at her steadily.
“What’s your earliest memory?”
“I told you—I was wandering around as an orphan.”
“How old were you? What kind of memory is it?”
“Well… I don’t know exactly how old I was. I just remember thinking I’d starve to death like this… then I met someone. He asked me if I wanted to become his child, and I accepted because I was hungry. That’s my oldest memory.”
That person was the great mage Pascal.
Rita became Pascal’s child and underwent harsh training alongside other children.
Her memories from before that meeting were vague.
Whenever she tried to recall them, all that surfaced were gnawing hunger that clawed at her stomach, suffocating stench, chilling terror, and searing pain—so she didn’t dig any deeper.
Compared to my time as an orphan, even that horrific training felt bearable. At least I didn’t starve after becoming Pascal’s child.
She wished he would stop asking. She didn’t want to remember her childhood anymore.
“Got it? I was just a common orphan. There isn’t a single good memory from that time, so don’t ask me anymore.”
Despite her obvious reluctance, Leonhardt didn’t back down.
“What about before that?”
“What?”
“Before you became an orphan. A newborn couldn’t have survived alone. Don’t you have any memories of the family who raised you? Or the place where you grew up? Is it really nothing but wandering?”
“What are you trying to get at, Leonhardt? I’m really not Lilietta. I don’t remember living in some fancy castle like this, and I don’t recognize you at all. But I clearly remember starving and digging through piles of trash.”
Suddenly, memories surfaced of watching other children protected by their families and feeling envy.
The stench clinging to her body, monster entrails stuck to her skin. Blood-slick, scarred hands. A heavy gun she struggled to hold with her small hands.
The moment she saw a clean, well-dressed child her age whining to their mother about how dirty and scary she was.
The moment that “mother” wrapped her arms around the child, shielding them from her and the gun she held.
An ancient memory—of standing there blankly, watching, overwhelmed by envy.
Overcome with emotion, Rita raised her voice.
“Family? I don’t know! Screw that! Why would I remember people who abandoned me?!”
For a fleeting moment, Leonhardt’s face looked sad. Then he quickly composed himself and replied calmly.
“I understand not wanting to recall painful times. But if you truly don’t remember any family at all… if you were an orphan from the very beginning—then I want you to consider the possibility that you lost your memories.”
“What?”
“If it wasn’t a coincidence that you returned to this world in Lilietta’s body? What if the family you forgot is us? You might have regained your original body when you returned home.”
As he spoke, he took something out of his pocket and placed it on the table.
“Rita, I don’t know what it was like where you were, but in this world, a soul possessing another person’s body isn’t something that happens easily. There are rumors of black magic like that… but if that were the case, you’d feel some kind of dissonance.”
What Leonhardt placed on the table was a palm-sized matchbox. A flat brown box with gold trim around the edges, worn and weathered as if it had endured many years.
“A different person inside? Rita, I don’t believe I wouldn’t recognize my one and only younger sister. If her essence had changed, I would have noticed.”
He gently slid the matchbox toward Lilietta and stood up.
“Just think about it once. The possibility that you’re the real one.”
“…!”
Rita remained frozen until Leonhardt completely left the room.
The possibility that she was real.
She had never once considered it. After all, this was a completely different body.
Just what about me is he even looking at…
After hesitating, she carefully picked up the old matchbox and opened it. Inside was a small card with a dried four-leaf clover pressed onto it.
I found it!
Big brother Leon, pass your exam for sure!
The faded, cracked four-leaf clover was surrounded by round, childish handwriting, pressed carefully into the paper. It carried the scent of time and memories.
Was this a gift Lilietta had given Leonhardt? Had he kept it all this time? For more than ten years?
“……”
Rita stared at it blankly for a long while.
For some reason, she felt an intense sense of longing. A tender, warm, familiar feeling—like opening an old letter.
Something deep inside her stirred.
Yet no concrete memories surfaced. It felt strangely suffocating, as though shrouded in fog.
“You are ‘Rita.’ The orphan I took in. You have no parents or family.”
Instead, the memory that suddenly came to her was of the great mage Pascal, hood pulled low, placing a hand on her head as he spoke.
“Now, you’ll vividly remember just how hungry and miserable you were all this time. Be grateful to me, the one who took you in.”
