So…… that’s why I came back in his place.
But I couldn’t know how far that being referred to as “God” had foreseen, how much He had arranged before choosing me.
I truly have nothing. There’s nothing I can do.
I don’t really understand why it had to be ‘me.’
“In the end, it turned out to be an extremely right choice.”
Benedict smiled calmly, saying anyway.
“It’s sad that I’ve confessed again to being a man without ability.”
He joked about himself having lost his magic power. My heart grew slightly heavy again.
“At first, you must have been flustered since you had no memories.”
He nodded.
“From the perspective of my 21-year-old self, my magic power had suddenly disappeared.”
He explained that the magic power that had been as full as breathing had disappeared in an instant without even the feeling of it draining away, as if he had never had it from the beginning.
“I couldn’t even use aura at first.”
Benedict lightly raised his hand.
A blue light wrapped around his right hand and then cleanly seeped in.
“But rest assured that my sword has become sharper. My current swordsmanship is the swordsmanship from five years later.”
I recalled his combat that I had witnessed at the great mansion.
No wonder he was excessively strong. Of course, reaching that level at twenty-six was also absurd.
Meanwhile, he must have had to hide the situation from the Regent. Although it seems his tail was caught later, I can’t imagine what kind of hardships he went through.
“Was pretending to have Ruthsoseng syndrome a strategy to make Duke Yorick let his guard down?”
“I wanted to be seen as sick prey by him, and he kept demanding strange things from me.”
Duke Yorick’s bizarre wall came to mind. I didn’t want to make Benedict recall unpleasant memories, so I changed the subject.
“Then you can’t use magic anymore?”
“It’s just not like before.”
He said it would get better.
“Like being able to use aura, it’s slowly gathering again, though slowly. Especially after the great mansion incident, the speed has gotten faster.”
“I’m really glad. Oh, how did you do the magic demonstrations?”
It was a strategy Benedict had chosen to hide the loss of his magic power.
At the hunting festival too, he had displayed enormous flame magic.
The Regent, who had already become dead, pointed to Miss Sana saying she had played a trick, but if she were capable of that level, Miss Sana would already be revered as the greatest flame mage. She’s even an illusionist.
But immediately, the pieces fit together naturally like a knot untying itself.
“With Miss Sana and—”
Benedict filled in the rest.
“My teacher. It’s a collaboration with Marchioness Anis.”
Whenever Benedict performed magic demonstrations, those two women were always there.
Miss Sana, the illusionist, creates the form of enormous magic, and the Marchioness, a flame mage, overlays the heat. Benedict nodded, saying the guess was correct.
We sorted through what had happened, confusing but step by step. It seemed there was nothing more I was curious about.
No, there was still one question remaining.
Why the person who came back to the past instead of Benedict had to be ‘me.’
But that was something I needed to ask that unrealistically wondrous being, not Benedict.
“Joachim.”
As I was lost in thought, Benedict called me again.
It was a cautious tone unlike him.
After calling me, Benedict couldn’t continue his words for a while.
As if he had been curious for a long time,
After a much longer hesitation than when I confessed to him that I had turned back time, he asked.
“…Really, even five years later…… were you alive?”
I met an indecipherable gaze.
“……Yes.”
“How was it?”
“As I mentioned earlier… the Empire five years later was a good place to live.”
“Not that. I’m curious about how you lived… whether you lived well.”
“……”
If that’s what he means.
“……It was good. I really lived well.”
So much so that when I first came back to the past, I resented it for a moment.
Those days were modest but happy and peaceful.
But now, the present after returning to the past was better, so I left those words out.
Even now, I was truly happy. To the point where I wondered if it was okay.
I looked back at Benedict with a smile, and he carefully opened his mouth again.
“I…… in the past. You, at Baron Moss’s estate.”
His voice grew small.
“…Ah.”
I briefly opened my mouth, then closed it.
He thought I had died at Baron Moss’s estate.
That’s what he seemed to be saying.
“……”
Naturally, everyone must have thought so.
Benedict too.
Mikhail, Jake, Sir Lifros too.
Everyone who knew twenty-year-old Joachim.
“……”
Benedict wasn’t looking at me.
I looked at his profile, then lowered my gaze to my feet again.
“So when I came back to the past and met you again for the first time, even though I had lost my memories. I had a strange feeling……”
His low voice continued.
“…I knew at first sight that we would be bickering with each other every day.”
He made a joke.
Looking down at the tips of my shoes, I also answered like a joke.
“Me too.”
Benedict’s voice had been heavy from earlier.
My voice answering wasn’t light either.
I raised my gaze that had been looking at my feet. Sunken eyes were looking at me.
“……”
I put a little strength into our clasped hands.
Now it was my turn to speak.
“Back then.”
Five years ago, when I was a mess and couldn’t even speak.
It was a feeling I should have conveyed back then.
“…Thank you for being by my side. Thank you. I… really, if it hadn’t been for you,”
My time would have stopped just like that.
He alone came to the room no one visited.
I still don’t know why Benedict came.
We were nothing to each other, and yet his small kindness was so enormous to me.
I became able to look at something.
He watched over me from the side until my shattered heart could mend again.
If there hadn’t been someone watching over me from the side, I wouldn’t have been able to get up. Because even before that, I had been broken and weak.
“I don’t know if you know.”
Benedict said.
“But that was a really precious time for me too.”
I looked back at Benedict with surprised eyes.
Calmly meeting my eyes, he confessed repeatedly that that time was precious and special.
That time that was clearly so valuable to me—I couldn’t understand why it was precious to him as well.
“At first it was guilt and impulse.”
Unvarnished words reached me.
“You were the last scene of my happy childhood,”
He mentioned when we first met.
Just as I saw young Benedict standing in the garden,
Young Benedict also saw me under the sunlight.
‘Call me by my name.’
I recalled him being kind even when young.
Forgotten memories. Our childhood moments playfully surfaced and disappeared like pranks.
“You saved me.”
Benedict confessed that he knew I had pulled him out of the river in the past too.
“Originally, Rilke Meyer had been proposing deals in secret. I thought letting it be known that he saved me was a way not to cause you trouble.”
He explained that he thought the kindness of saving him shouldn’t make the Regent Duke take interest in me.
“The thought of fixing things later was nothing but arrogance. Anyway, at first I came to you with those kinds of feelings.”
Watching from your side, he couldn’t bear the pity, Benedict expressed it that way.
“When I thought about you continuing to lie alone in that dark room, I really couldn’t bear it.”
He explained one by one what he saw and felt while dealing with the broken me.
Being shocked that I was too gaunt.
Feeling like he was talking to a doll.
Me screaming, having fits, self-harming.
Getting so tired from pushing him away, but already being tired himself, so he just came to see me anyway.
And from some point on, me starting to become lovely ‘like a person.’
Faint vitality settling in my cheeks.
When the door opened, me looking at him.
Even while struggling, becoming still when held in his embrace.
About that warm body temperature that relaxed and went limp as if reassured, and his heart that swelled up without reason.
“Later, when you got better and became healthier, I wanted to show you only good things.”
His eyes grew heavy.
“I wanted you to experience only joyful and happy things. When you started moving again, not knowing pain, seeing only good things. Experiencing only happy things.”
I couldn’t bear it either and opened my mouth.
“I was really happy.”
I was truly happy.
“So Your Highness… you don’t need to do that.”
I never dreamed that me at that most shabby and terrible moment of my life,
Would have such meaning to Benedict.
I just thought I should live remembering and cherishing his kindness of unknown reason.
That such a me was toyed with by Baron Moss… and that he thought I was murdered, my heart felt so wretched I didn’t know what to do.
“Thanks to you, I lived happily. Even now I’m so happy.”
I can’t look at him. I urgently only looked up at the sky.
There are no clouds.
The clear winter sky was so full of sunlight it was dazzling.
“I’m glad.”
A whisper was heard.
He said he was glad I was happy.
“Yes, I’m really glad.”
I also answered in a choked voice that I thought so too.
“I’m really glad.”
That even now I could tell him that I was happy because of that, I was truly glad to the point my heart sank.
Benedict also looked at the sky.
We sat together like that for a while, looking up at the cloudless winter sky together.
Along with the sound of fireworks going off again, soft commotion could be heard from the banquet hall.
After listening to others’ conversations from far away for a while, we stood up together.
Walking through the winter garden, we started our conversation again.
November’s wind was cold, but when he embraced me, it was warm. It was so warm that I hugged back, then feeling somehow cautious and let go, he pulled me into an embrace that was breathtaking. That was good too.
If it didn’t hurt, he asked me to tell him more stories about the past. I made the same request.
I wanted to keep hearing his stories of the past.
Are you okay? I’m okay. You?
We asked each other the same.
Sometimes words got choked up. It wasn’t hidden.
Just expressions and gazes were enough. Just as we looked at the sky together, even through silence we could reveal everything and feel everything.
So we shared somewhat heavy stories only as much as they didn’t hurt, and became that much lighter. Someday, later, enough to share the heaviest stories.
At the end, even all of those things became light. Sometimes they soaked up moisture and sank heavily, but at those times we were already by each other’s side, so it was okay.
We held hands together and moved forward together.
<A Cage Full of Greenery (Complete)>
