I was an obedient niece. Janice was an obedient maid.
The clamorous alley fell quiet in an instant. My heart, which had been pounding fearfully, found its proper beat again.
I had been startled too, when the metal touched my throat.
Ever since I regressed, while searching for Cho’s whereabouts, I had considered that she might not recognize me, but I never imagined she would put a blade to me.
Because before she died, Cho had cherished me, her niece, so dearly.
In my past life, I had known I had an aunt but had no idea where she lived or what she did. It was only after I turned twenty that I found Cho.
After that we met from time to time. Every time we met, Cho worried about me and told me to say so whenever I needed help.
So I had assumed that once I revealed I was her niece, she would listen to me right away.
So that settles it. I’m the only one who regressed.
A few days after the regression, it had suddenly crossed my mind: Am I the only one who regressed?
Because my regression had been special.
It was thanks to three people, Janice, Cho and Cassion, that I had been able to regress. So perhaps they had regressed too. At the very least, wouldn’t they recognize me?
But Janice knew nothing at all, and neither did Cassion. And neither did Cho.
I was the only person who had regressed, and none of them had any idea how my past had unfolded.
“Did Sana send you?”
When I stayed quiet for a moment, thinking, Cho asked. I had expected her to get angry and tell me to stop posing as her niece, but since she brought up my mother’s name, I must really look like my mother.
Enough that it’s hard to doubt.
“No, Mother is… gone.”
“What? Sana, dead? Don’t lie to me!”
Cho jumped, and the blade pricked my neck. Sting. Along with the pain, blood ran down my throat.
“Stop it, s-stop it, I said!”
Janice shouted. A rat darted at Cho’s leg.
“Eek, what is this!”
Cho swung her leg.
I opened my eyes wide, looking at the rat that had been flung off, and Janice in her agitation, and I recalled how she would often say, I heard it from the rats.
Don’t tell me Janice controls rats?
“My lady, even if I die, I’ll save you!”
Was meeting my aunt really grave enough to talk about dying?
All sorts of stray thoughts came to mind, but calming Janice came first.
“Janice, I’m fine. So calm down. Please.”
Janice bit her lip hard, then let out a long breath. The alley was once again wrapped in stillness.
“Sana’s really dead?”
Cho stared at the side of my face. I nodded.
My mother’s death was something that had happened quite a while ago for me, having returned through regression, yet every time I spoke of it aloud, my chest still ached.
Mother had been the kindest, most wonderful person. Someone I could never imitate.
“Sana is… dead.”
Cho’s blade dropped. She staggered away from me.
It was strange that she, who chased after information, hadn’t known the situation of House Irenber.
“I deliberately stopped paying attention to that side, and so I couldn’t even be at my sister’s deathbed. I meant to go back once I’d made something of myself…”
Cho’s words settled my curiosity.
A woman who had run away because she did not fit noble life had wanted to return having succeeded, to show them all.
She had deliberately kept away from news of her family, afraid she would soften if she began to miss them. And while she kept her ears shut, someone precious had died.
Sorrow passed across Cho’s face.
I was wondering whether I should say something comforting when Janice seized my wrist and pulled me back in a hurry.
Janice hid me behind her and raised a plank like a shield to block the way ahead.
“Do you know who this is? Th-this person is…”
“Diana Viola Irenber, you said? My niece.”
Cho finished the introduction Janice had begun. While Janice mumbled, asking whether she had known all along, I pushed her aside and stepped forward.
“It’s dangerous, my lady.”
Janice whined from behind. But she no longer stopped me.
“That’s right. I am your niece.”
“You look a lot like Sana. Your face, I mean. So why did you come looking for me? Did Sana tell you to?”
“Mother missed you very much while she lived, Aunt. She even searched for you for a long time.”
I mixed lies and truth together.
If I could find Cho by making up my mind to, why hadn’t Mother been able to?
It was only after meeting the young Cho that I understood.
Cho smelled of the wind. She was not a person to be tied down anywhere.
So Mother had found her, and yet not contacted her, and left her be.
She missed and longed for her only sister, but she had not tied Cho’s feet. That was just like Mother.
I’m sorry, Mother.
But I am different. I wanted Cho to stay by my side.
Not necessarily her body, but her heart, at least.
Leave your body to the wind, and entrust your heart to me.
“Mother told me to go to you, Aunt Cho, if I ever ran into trouble.”
I’m sorry for lying again and again, Mother.
I looked up at the sky for a moment and apologized silently.
“How long has she been dead?”
I had expected Cho to see through my lie and dig into it, but the news of my mother’s death must have been quite a shock, for she only wore a troubled face.
“One year.”
Cho’s eyes wavered.
“Was Sana at peace when she went?”
“Mother was… relatively.”
I hope she was at peace.
In truth, my parents’ deaths were full of questions.
That day, they had been going to visit Mother’s hometown. But the rain had poured down heavily. A schedule they would normally have postponed, the two of them pushed through by force.
The journey, difficult from the start, grew worse when the road they always used flooded, and in the end, on the detour, they met with the accident.
The carriage, trying to avoid falling rocks, plunged off a cliff. It was an accident. But looking back, everything about it was suspicious.
At the time I was simply too sad and let it slip by.
“You say Sana told you to come to me?”
Cho’s question pulled me out of my thoughts. Cho let out a long, thin breath.
“Yes. She said you would help me. I’m still young, so I need you, Aunt.”
I drooped both eyebrows and clasped my hands together to look pitiful. It was a lie I could never have imagined telling before.
But now I knew that sometimes lies are necessary.
Because I was no longer a child.
“Diana, was it? Don’t tell me you need a guardian?”
Cho took my hand and stood me flat against her side, then stepped back. Leaning against the wall, Cho took out a cigarette and put it in her mouth.
White smoke spread wide through the back alley. As widely as the smoke spread, light slowly began to seep into the alley as well.
“I don’t need a guardian. I need other help.”
“You really are naive, aren’t you? You think family can do anything? No, no. If I help you, what will you give me?”
What will I give? I’m your niece! When you came to my execution ground, you hadn’t come wanting anything from me.
At Cho’s words, the innocent expression I had put on nearly collapsed in an instant.
Seeing the change in my face, the left corner of Cho’s mouth rose. She tapped my stunned, stiffened cheek with the hand holding the cigarette, then tossed the cigarette to the ground. It hissed as it landed in the dirty water.
I dropped my gaze. Watching Cho grind out the discarded cigarette, I bit down on the inside of my mouth.
I had thought I had cast off all that naive, innocent act, and yet I had nearly made a mistake again. Leaning on someone else’s goodwill and hoping for luck.
Even though I know Cho well.
Cho weighed gains and losses clearly, whoever the other party was. If she felt her own loss would be large, she turned down anyone.
I remembered the anecdote of how, when she later cooperated in building the royal intelligence organization, she took a treasure of the royal family in return.
Back then I didn’t even know she was my aunt, and I only thought she had incredible nerve. I thought His Majesty had taken a loss.
He hadn’t. The intelligence organization whose foundations Cho had laid played a rather excellent role, for one owned by the state.
Demanding a deal even in the face of blood was just like Cho. My disappointment turned into trust.
“That’s the first thing you need to learn. There’s no help without a price.”
I jabbed at the ground with the toe of my shoe. Each time I stamped, bits of filth spattered up and stuck to my dress.
Right, begging for help by leaning on emotion is what you do when you have nothing to give. And I have plenty.
“You need a price?”
I raised my head. I threw away the innocent expression.
“Naturally.”
Cho, who seemed to have taken an interest in my completely changed expression, straightened up. She took a step closer. I opened my eyes wide and looked up at her.
“I’ll give it to you.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“You need money. I know your guild members’ living expenses are overdue.”
Cho’s eyes narrowed. They were full of suspicion: how do you know that?
Cho’s Chorni would later build its wealth by buying and selling all the information of the continent, but in the early days it suffered from a shortage of funds.
Trust is the basis of buying and selling information. Naturally, very few people entrusted work to the guild Chorni, which had not yet found its footing.
People trusted Cho but did not trust Chorni.
So Chorni was at present closer to an errand guild than an information broker, and the commissions that came in were at the level of odd jobs.
But it was not a guild so easygoing that such intimate information would leak out from the inside.
Cho studied me with wary eyes.
“I take after you, Aunt, so I know a little about buying information myself. Deals between equals. Only now do I feel like making a deal. Shall we?”
To be exact, I hadn’t bought the information I had; I had lived it.
I had been able to learn Chorni’s present circumstances easily from the conversations I’d had with Cho in the past.
Because Cho would sometimes bring up her past hardships as fond memories.
Cho, who had been looking me over to judge whether I was lying, took a step back. She folded her arms across her chest and raised her chin.
“A deal, you say. Fine, let’s at least hear your terms.”
That was a pass, for now.
When she had pressed the blade to me, I had thought it would be hard to have a productive conversation with Cho today, so this was a relief.
“As you know, I’m the heir of House Irenber.”
“Correction. You’re the heir apparent, not yet the heir. You have no guardian. Are you planning to make me your guardian? Forget it. I can’t stand being tied down.”
“I know I can’t bind you, Aunt, a person like the wind, to my side.”
“Then by what means are you going to give me a lot of money?”
“Not yet, but I’m about to become the official Head of House.”
“Hahaha, so you’re not naive after all, you’re just a fool?”
Cho laughed loudly, as if she had expected as much, and shook her head.
Cho passed by my side without a trace of regret. She did not forget to pat my shoulder as she passed.
Behind Cho’s back, I spoke with feigned confidence.
“I’m going to marry His Highness Cassion, the Third Prince.”
