Final Chapter: In the Snow (part 4)

If, at the very beginning, rather than prime minister, he had just made the young

man king to begin with...

If he had, surely he would have reigned over this country far better than the king

himself could.

If that had happened... then his daughter...

The king sunk into despair.

Having lost hope in that king, the queen said: "You have failed. Our fate is already

sealed. However, if we use my ability, we can tell our past selves about this failure."

The queen had a mysterious ability. It allowed her to transfer a person's

experiences to their past self.

The past self who received them would experience them as if for themselves, and

it would feel as if time had been wound back for them. It was using this power that

the queen had survived the bloody war of succession. (Or to be more precise, she

had repeatedly sent back her memories moments before her death, then avoided the

danger.)

After explaining this, the queen had apologized to the king. It turned out that she

had used this power to choose her husband, too.

It seemed no matter how fierce of a warrior she had taken as her husband, no

matter how wise a sage, the kingdom was destined to be destroyed. Invasions by

foreign enemies, attacks by monsters, plots by the nobility, uprisings by the

people— while the reasons differed, the result was always that the royal capital was

engulfed in flames.

This king who people thought was mediocre had been the only one who, while he

hadn't uplifted the country, had managed to extend its life. It seems this king was the

only one whose child the queen had given birth to.

"Even if I use this power, we cannot change our present," Elisha had explained to

him. "However, we can lead our past selves to a future different from this one. Dear...

if our lives are to end here anyway, would you like to try creating a future like that?"

When the queen told him this, the king came to a resolution. That he would send

word of this failure into the past. Then he would have his past self leave the throne

to the young man.

It may only have been to satisfy himself. But it felt like it might offer him some

atonement for the things that had been lost due to his failure, so the king entrusted

everything to his past self.

The king and queen transferred their memories to their past selves.

Those memories had come back to him as he'd listened to the young man speak

about enriching the country and strengthening the army.

◇ ◇ ◇

"To put it simply, I am the king who inherited those memories," Albert finished.

While I listened to Sir Albert's story, I was in a state of confusion. Was this a time

slip...? No, a time leap?

He'd said it was dark-type magic, but it could even do stuff like that? Oh, but all

that was inherited were the memories, so it wasn't as if the person's consciousness

returned to the past.

If those memories were truly being transferred into the past, that should have

created a time paradox. Because the Sir Albert sending the memories had no

memory of having them sent to him.

In that case, could it be that Elisha's power was one that let her intervene in an

alternate dimension that was highly similar to her own? Less like the "Life Do-Over

Machine" and more like the "What-If Phone Box," huh? To put it simply, that would

mean this world wasn't the past of the sending world, it was an alternate dimension.

Though, even if I brought this up, I doubted the two of them would understand.

They probably didn't have a concept of other dimensions to begin with, and I

couldn't exactly say I understood it that well myself.

Aw, geez, this place wasn't just a simple world of swords and sorcery? I thought.

While I was busy being confused, Sir Albert took a sip of his tea and sighed.

"Honestly... it must have been hard on the one who sent me the memories, but it's

not easy being the one to receive them. From my perspective, I feel like I've lived a

life in which I made you my prime minister, acted like a fool, and then turned back

time. If I hadn't heard Elisha's explanation on the other side, I would have thought

time had just turned back. I, myself, haven't done anything, but the guilt I feel toward

you won't go away. I apologize on behalf of the former me. I'm terribly sorry." Sir

Albert bowed his head deeply.

"No, apologizing to me doesn't help... I mean, I have no recollection of any of it..."

"I know that... This is only for my own self-satisfaction. I want to apologize.

Please, let me apologize."

"...Well, if that's how it is..."

If he said he wanted to apologize, the best thing to do was probably to let him.

The situation was well beyond my understanding, so I couldn't put myself in his

shoes.

Sir Albert looked me straight in the eyes and said, "And so, to keep things from

turning out the way they did in my memories, I ceded the throne to you. I believe

this should answer your first and third questions."

"...I'd have to agree with you," I said.

The answer to my first question, "Why did you give your throne to some kid you

just met?" was that, actually (though, this wasn't correct, strictly speaking), it wasn't

the first time we had met.

The answer to the third, "Why did it take so long for you to meet with me?" was

likely that he hadn't been sure whether or not to reveal the existence of this ability.

It might have been because he'd wanted to see for certain that we had reached a

different future from the prior world first.

That left my second question. The issue of Georg's loyalty...

"Don't tell me you told Georg about all this?!" I cried.

"...I am weak," said the former king. "I wasn't strong enough to carry this burden

alone."

Sir Albert looked out the window. It had started to cloud over a bit. It might start

snowing.

"I couldn't believe that, with my power alone, I would be able to call forth a

different future. I told everything to the one man in this country I could trust, Georg

Carmine, and asked for his help. That was why he came up with a plot to

exterminate the corrupt nobles who had become your enemies in that time. It was

our fault that Castor grew suspicious of you. However, because the plan was already

in motion, we couldn't reveal it, and I apologize for the undue suffering that put you

through."

That had been... Georg's reason for the staged treason, then. To have all of my

potential opponents taken down in one fell swoop, and for him to fall alongside

them. That plan had coincided with the one Hakuya and I had been working on to

keep Amidonia under control, which had turned it into a grand stage none of us had

expected. It looked like Roroa had been planning her own script of events, too, so it

had become a grand stage with many playwrights.

Those who'd thought they would be making others dance had been forced to

dance themselves, and though we'd felt like we were cutting our own paths, we had

actually just been walking atop the rails someone else had laid for us.

"I dunno what to say... It makes me lose confidence in myself," I admitted.

"There's no need for that," Albert said. "The fact of the matter is, you managed to

reach a different future, no? You annexed Amidonia, and you rebuilt this kingdom

which was nearing its end into the Kingdom of Friedonia. I can say with confidence

that I was not wrong to give the throne to you."

"I'm glad to hear you say that and all, but... in the end, where do you think the

future changed?" I asked.

"The very beginning, no doubt. Because, this time, from the very start, you had

Liscia by your side."

"Liscia?" I asked.

It was true, Liscia had been supporting me from the very beginning, but why was

her name coming up now?

Here, Sir Albert put on a slightly sad expression. "Liscia was at your side in the

future where I made you my prime minister, too. She was serving as Georg's

secretary, so the two of you met through him. In that world, just in this one, Liscia

recognized your true talent and fell in love with you. Even when I dismissed you

from your post, she came to appeal directly to me to reinstate you. However... that

time, I didn't heed Liscia's advice. Disappointed, Liscia returned to Randel where

you were. To Castle Randel, which the nobles burned to ash. I'm sure she spent her

last moments... together with you..."

Liscia... had died at my side, huh. Now that he mentioned it, he did say that the

king of that world had "lost everything." That had included his own daughter, then.

"What about the other comrades that I've recruited?" I asked.

"They were never there to begin with. In that world, you never used the Jewel

Voice Broadcast. I listened to the voices of those who valued tradition, and I never

allowed you to use it. That was why you never gathered personnel, or did the sort of

productions that you do now."

Working without the Jewel Voice Broadcast, huh... That would have been hard.

Now that I thought back, most of the current members of my staff had been gathered

through the the Jewel Voice Broadcast. Without the Jewel Voice Broadcast, I

wouldn't have met Aisha, Hakuya, Tomoe, or Poncho. Also, if I had just been the

prime minister, I doubted Excel would have dispatched Juna, and I wouldn't have

met Ludwin, Halbert, or Kaede through the military, either.

That being the case, the Jewel Voice Broadcast was starting to feel like the

turning point.