Chapter 153: Sunset (36)

"It's all a dream, a dream you have before dying.

Ugh, it makes me dizzy.

Even if you brought in a seriously crazy person, they wouldn't be this messy and disoriented."

The girl from the next room said, wearing an awkward, feigned smile.

"......This is a dream?"

"Honestly, you don't want to believe it's reality either, right?"

"That's... true."

"Then believe it's a dream. Though it'd be a problem if you wrote off everything from your past deaths as dreams too."

When I hesitated to answer, she let out a sigh and slowly continued.

"So, you fell from a tall building, survived through sheer luck with just a slightly broken leg, and for some reason, the Saintess showed up within a day, said the exact same words she said when you first met, and treated you, and everything else sounds like nothing more than unimportant people muttering in the background. And you say this isn't a dream?"

"......."

Hearing it put that way, it really does seem like a dream.

"So, that means the one standing before me is Lavin Edelgard."

The girl from the next room, no.

Levina chuckled as she spoke, then stopped and let out a sigh.

"Yeah, how long are you going to keep thinking that way? Anyone can see you look exactly the same."

And then she walks around me.

Strangely, no matter where she walked, the same footsteps sounded.

As if someone were deliberately making sound effects with their mouth.

"From the moment we first met, even though I was your older sister, you seemed like someone several times my age.

We'd both learned from the same tutor, yet your speech was strangely like an old man's.

I just thought it was because we had different mothers."

Levina stopped walking and conjured a bench where she had been standing.

"When we were young, I pitied you in my own way.

Maybe because your mother was different, you got pushed around, and even the servants bullied you.

Whenever I tried to stop them, they said your mother had ordered it, so what could I say."

And she leaned back as if lying down.

"But then that little kid brought poison from who knows where and said to the servant tormenting you, 'I'll probably end up in the same position as you when I grow up anyway, so would it be alright if I tried it instead?'

The servant, of course, smiled a vile smile and handed it over to you."

Maybe I'm slowly losing my mind.

Perhaps, having lived too long, I've caught some special form of dementia that lingers even through regression.

Or maybe, from the start, I drank and smoked so much that I've developed early-onset dementia.

I rubbed my eyes at that thought, but the Levina before me didn't disappear.

"And then you casually dabbed poison onto mother's cup, and when you locked eyes with me, you went 'shh' and passed by. Later, you framed that servant as the culprit. Anyway, you were strange."

I can't tell if I'm hearing her thoughts, or if hallucinations and auditory delusions are overlapping.

At the very least, I'd never once experienced a hallucination where my surroundings went this dark and then showed me something.

"You even went to the Academy and lived practically praised by everyone around you, and when the demons invaded, you'd become a hero whose name everyone knew even in rural villages."

It does feel like that might have been the case.

About two weeks after my mother died, when I was locked in the closet for two days, I had a dream where my mother hugged me tightly and took me out of the mansion.

Though her neck was broken, just like the last time I saw her.

"It felt like the world revolved around our dear head of the household.

I guess it didn't for you. You don't remember, do you?"

"...Would I?"

Look at the state I'm in now.

"Lavin, do you love me now?"

"I don't know."

To be precise, I don't know if I love what's in front of me, or if I love Levina.

I don't even know for certain whether what I feel for Levina is love.

I know nothing, and I just seem to live drifting with the flow, which somehow made me dizzy.

"But you should love me. Thanks to me, you've died in front of me, died in front of your beloved fiancée, seduced the Saintess, and spent happy times with the girls you picked up from that heretic village."

"And in the end, even with me......"

"I don't want to hear it."

"Still, you looked happy, didn't you? Though the hair-pulling was a bit of a shock."

Instead of answering, I scratched my palm with my fingertips.

Levina looked at me silently, then tilted her head slightly.

Even in this place of nothing but darkness, the floor seemed solid, her snow-white hair flowed down and touched the ground.

I could hear her breathing, the sound of her hair lightly brushing the floor, but it felt like listening to sound effects artificially made by someone.

"By the way, did you really fight with Seraphina like that?

You act so gentle now, but back then, you must have behaved just like Seraphina."

"...I did behave the same."

"What trash. Heh heh."

I tried to think of something to refute with, but nothing came to mind, so I just kept my mouth shut.

"I'm sorry."

Hearing those words of apology, I somehow felt an awkwardness.

Because I couldn't tell at all what she was apologizing for.

"You living like this, it's all my fault."

"Hearing that doesn't really hit home."

"I thought I alone would be enough, but everyone around me ended up caught up in it too."

Levina's toe scraped the floor.

The sound of her lightly scraped foot settling back down passed through my ears.

At the same time, she smiled, gazing at the empty air that showed nothing.

As if recalling something.

It seemed her eyes could see something.

Gazing at something no one else could see, she spoke as if delighted, sometimes as if in pain.

"Not to mention you and me, even the Saintess, who must have grown up loved in a wealthy family since childhood, turned into someone odd, and honestly, Seraphina doesn't seem quite right either, probably because of you.

The girl I remember was saner than that."

Levina said nothing for a long while.

Her still shoulders began to tremble little by little.

"It's just that everyone had an empty place form in their hearts, I never thought it would turn out like this.

I thought that was a light price to pay."

Neither her inhales nor her exhales were steady.

Sometimes her lips moved faintly, but not a single word came out.

A sound like her breath catching could be heard.

She quietly tapped the side of the bench with her fingertip.

The ends of her breath trembled minutely.

Tap, tap, a regular sound rang out.

"Because of the wish I made, everything fell apart.

Seeing the person you love fall apart because of you, it turns out that's far more painful than I thought."

Levina spoke in a voice that sounded wet, letting out a trembling breath.

"Right now, if there were anywhere to hang myself, I feel like I'd do it."

"Didn't it hurt when you hanged yourself?"

Maybe because I was told this is a dream.

I felt a little more at ease.

"It hurt terribly."

"What hurt the most?"

"Burning to death."

"Right, even I felt sad watching it."

As my expression darkened slightly, Levina spoke, deliberately making her voice sound bright.

Even so, the wet feeling to it remained.

"Thanks to dying like that... it's so hard to say thanks.

But at least I could give it back to you."

It was the first time I'd seen Levina seem so full of emotion.

To the point she didn't feel like Levina.

The sister I knew wasn't someone who could make a face like that.

"By the way, aren't you going to ask what I wished for? You must have seen me burst, too."

"I don't particularly want to know. I don't want to hear that my life ended up in this state because someone was pulling my strings."

At my words, Levina's expression began to harden.

"I want to believe that living like a wreck, acting like a fool, and hurting people were all things I did myself.

Not blaming someone I'd only meet in a dream."

"Why on earth?"

"Because I don't want to feel relieved. If I blamed you, my mind would be at ease, but then I wouldn't be able to do anything.

Because I'm lazy. If it's not my fault, I can't do anything."

"Just hate me, and think it happened because of me."

"There's no way I could hate you. Still, you're Levina. You're my sister."

"I wished for you to live and love me.

I just said it vaguely, like that, and that's why you're going through this now.

And you still say you don't hate me?"

"Even hearing that, you're too different from my sister."

"Of course we're different. Because of me, you both became no better than lunatics."

I approached Levina, who was speaking while averting her gaze.

Her hair somehow seemed even whiter, and perhaps because she hadn't grown up miserably from a young age, her skin seemed far more delicate too.

I gently stroked the cheek of the Levina who would have been my sister, and ran my fingers through her hair.

I can feel her body heat. Her face flushed slightly.

"Every day was horrible, my head was filled with thoughts of wanting to die, and then I barely got better.

Once everything disappeared, I even thought this must be the life I was meant to live."

But hearing that it wasn't, that actually comforts me.

At least for me, hating someone was also harder than I thought.

"You truly loved me, and you wanted to save me, right?

And you believed that I, that I could accomplish anything, right?"

At that, Levina's face trembled faintly, and then she nodded.

"Then how could you possibly hate yourself.

I hate myself too, so who could I hate."

As if unaccustomed to being touched, Levina was stiff, wearing an awkward expression and posture.

When I pinched her cheek and pulled, it stretched far more than I expected.

"So you're saying that Levina, if she'd grown up sane, would have turned out like this?

If I'd lived with a sound mind from childhood, if I'd only gotten rid of the Duchess, you would have grown into such an ordinary person, Levina?

I think I'd rather not believe it."

"......."

"Stop whining, just... I see.

Just say you wished for me to be happy.

If my sister loves me, then I'm happy too."

At that, Levina grabbed my wrist and pushed me away.

"Are you happy?"

"Not particularly yet."

Looking at her face, tears had welled up in her eyes.

But her expression wasn't the awkward, feigned one from before.

A strange expression, neither laughing nor crying, had settled upon her face.

"Then go back, Lavin. And don't come back. There won't be a next time."