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chapter 02
“You can find the records over here. Sir Gray… good luck!”
Leaving the librarian’s quiet encouragement behind, Adele threw herself into the mountain of documents.
She searched with frantic determination.
Hours slipped into night. The lamps throughout the library were lit one by one. She kept reading until dawn returned and the lamps were extinguished again.
Yet after all that, she found almost nothing.
The king had wanted every trace of that man erased.
From the surviving records, Vincent appeared to have lived an ordinary noble’s life. He had entered the Academy through the proper aristocratic path, possessed an unpleasant personality, and—though he never graduated—there was nothing particularly remarkable about him.
For the past of a future villain, it was surprisingly ordinary.
Only his childhood stood out.
“He was abused…”
Society accepted a certain amount of discipline when it came to raising children.
But the House of Rogato had gone far beyond that.
He hadn’t been a prisoner of war.
How could parents do something so monstrous to their own son?
The records were so horrifying that merely reading them made her stomach churn.
As Adele turned the pages, her expression darkened.
She had believed that after surviving war, she had become numb to violence.
Yet the brutal abuse inflicted upon a helpless child made her feel physically sick.
The wounds she had glimpsed beneath Vincent’s torn clothes…
They hadn’t come from the battlefield after all.
“Was that when he met the future queen… while he was enduring those days?”
Only then did Adele feel as though she could understand, if only a little, how Vincent’s heart had become so twisted.
He had fallen in love with a kind-hearted count’s daughter.
But she had already been the crown prince’s fiancée.
Vincent lost control.
He assaulted the prince, was suspended from the Academy, fled to the enemy nation…
…and later invaded the kingdom itself.
Everything after that was familiar to Adele.
War.
And then another war.
“So, in the end… love was the cause of a war that lasted for years. It sounds like the plot of some cheap romance novel.”
Thinking that life was absurdly frivolous at times, Adele quietly left the library.
The long war of conquest was finally nearing its end.
Now Adele understood why, four years ago, the king and queen had refused to let her retire.
Without her…
There were countless battles they never could have won.
“…Ha…”
This would be the last one.
The war was won.
Whether she lived or died, that victory could no longer be overturned.
Soon, the kingdom would undoubtedly rename itself an empire.
None of that mattered anymore.
Adele could no longer feel her body.
“This time… I really might die.”
As her vision slowly blurred, only one person remained in her thoughts.
Vincent Rogato.
His swollen, tear-stained eyes, red from crying.
His pale skin that had remained beautiful despite everything.
His ash-gray hair.
And the expression on his face…
The one he had worn as he looked past Adele’s shoulder and saw Queen Lila.
Holding the memory of that beautiful man close to her heart…
Adele quietly breathed her last.
At that very moment—
Letters slowly began to appear across the body of the fallen knight.
Thus, Sir Adele Gray fell in battle during the War of Conquest fought for King Lohaide and Queen Lila.
Written in calm, emotionless script, the sentence glowed brilliantly.
Its light lingered for a long, long time before finally fading.
“…Damn it. So I was just a supporting character.”
No one could hear her voice anymore.
She was already dead.
Still, Adele cursed under her breath.
The sentence written after her death hadn’t been the end.
After mentioning her passing, it continued with page after page of King Lohaide and Queen Lila’s tear-filled romance.
As she read it, realization slowly dawned upon her.
She…
had been nothing more than a supporting character inside a novel.
No wonder her memories of the distant past had always been strangely hazy.
Even when the queen insisted they were dear friends.
To those two, Adele had merely been someone who happened to pass through their lives.
Naturally, the story had revolved around its true protagonists instead.
Learning that she had been nothing more than a chess piece meant to support their romance angered even someone as stoic as Adele.
She didn’t even bother thinking about the earlier chapters.
If all her accomplishments had been reduced to a few lines, then her role before that was probably no more than a handful of pages.
“Do they know how hard I worked?!”
But no matter how much she trembled with frustration…
Nothing would change.
“…Sigh. Is this really the end? Am I just supposed to wait here until their story finishes?”
If her guess was right, there wasn’t much left.
Vincent—the villain—was dead.
The war of conquest had ended in victory.
All that remained was for the two protagonists to enjoy their happily ever after.
What an empty feeling.
She had survived two wars.
She had fought desperately, risking her life countless times.
She had trained until her bones and muscles screamed, becoming so strong that no one dared challenge her.
While the protagonists laughed, smiled, and fell in love…
She had struggled, bled, gritted her teeth, and pushed herself beyond every limit.
And in the end…
None of it had mattered.
Her fate had always been to die during the War of Conquest.
Even her denied retirement had simply been another stepping stone toward securing the protagonists’ victory.
“If I’d known this was how it would end… I would’ve ignored everything and spent my days relaxing until old age. I should’ve retired no matter what.”
Only after dying did Adele realize how meaningless it all had been.
She hadn’t left anything behind.
If that was always going to be the case, she should have ignored every order from her superiors and simply lived the rest of her life happily.
Instead, she had worked herself to the bone until her dying breath, never allowing herself even a single indulgence.
She wanted nothing more than to shout at her past self.
“Get a grip!”
Perhaps that listlessness had been the original story’s influence all along.
Maybe only after death had she finally been allowed to think clearly.
“So dying is what it took for me to start using my own head? Hah… how touching.”
But what was the point now?
She was already dead.
After calming herself, Adele sighed and looked around.
She had no idea where she was.
The entire place glowed with soft white light.
Large glass spheres were scattered everywhere, making it difficult to walk.
Some even appeared out of thin air.
“What are these?”
Murmuring to herself, Adele picked up one of the glass orbs.
The instant she touched it—
Someone else’s life poured directly into her mind.
It was Vincent Rogato’s childhood.
“What the hell is this?! Do you have a death wish?”
“I-I’m sorry, Young Master Vincent! I’ll clean it up immediately!”
An enraged voice echoed through her mind.
At the same time, vivid images unfolded before her eyes.
A crowd had gathered.
At its center stood Vincent, furious beyond reason.
A maid knelt before him, begging for forgiveness.
And she could even see what was about to happen next.
“Gh…!”
The real problem came afterward.
The enormous flood of memories crashing into her mind brought with it a splitting headache.
Clutching her head, Adele dropped the glass sphere.
Tung—! Ting! Tang!
Crash!
The fallen orb rolled across the floor of its own accord, smashing into more than twenty other spheres in rapid succession.
It all happened in the blink of an eye.
“W-What… was that?”
Ironically…
The sphere containing Vincent’s childhood remained perfectly intact.
The shattered or cracked spheres dissolved into gray ash before vanishing into thin air.
Only the hateful orb that had gifted her such an agonizing headache remained, almost proudly untouched.
“What in the world is happening…?”
Adele glared at it.
Though it was merely a glass sphere…
Somehow it reminded her of Vincent himself.
“Come to think of it…”
Even while she had been alive, despite remembering almost nothing unusual, every memory connected to Vincent had remained crystal clear.
Hadn’t he been the very last person she thought of before dying?
The realization left her feeling strangely unsettled.
Why…
Why was Vincent Rogato tied to her life both before and after death?
At that moment—
RUMBLE!!
An earth-shaking roar exploded through the space.
Adele instinctively covered her ears.
Perhaps because so many spheres had shattered, the brilliant world around her suddenly began collapsing.
The dazzling light dimmed.
The ground beneath her feet started crumbling away.
“Wah!”
She tried to escape.
It was useless.
Still reeling from the unbearable headache, Adele stumbled before she could reach solid ground.
Losing her balance, she desperately reached for anything she could grab.
The only thing within reach…
…was the very sphere that had caused her suffering.
“How is this thing supposed to help?! Am I really going through this much trouble even after dying?!”
As Vincent’s childhood flashed before her eyes once again through the glass…
Darkness swallowed her consciousness.
She fell.
When Adele opened her eyes again, she found herself standing near Vincent.
He was shouting at the top of his lungs, threatening someone.
Hidden among the gathered spectators, Adele quietly looked around in confusion.
“What… is this?”
The scene before her was exactly the one she had witnessed inside the glass sphere.
Vincent raged over a stain so faint it was barely visible.
A maid knelt on the ground, sobbing and begging for forgiveness.
No one stepped forward to help.
“…So this is a predetermined event.”
“I’m just another passerby watching it unfold.”
