“Were you asking that because you feared I would trouble you again?”
Martin smiled shyly. The Second Prince, whom everyone ignored, was easy enough for the young page to deal with. So he did not deny it and spoke freely.
“You can be like that sometimes, Your Highness. You need a lot of care, you know. Although it hasn’t happened much lately, you often fell ill and wanted many things, and wherever you went, you caused utter havoc….”
“So, Martin, you must be having an easier time these days.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m just sitting here like this.”
“Oh no, Your Highness isn’t the type to cause trouble because you’re active. Even if you sit still and then walk somewhere, you end up ripping something, losing something, or forgetting something and making it difficult for me. Actually, I’m most scared when you’re just sitting there, poring over a magic book or lost in deep thought.”
“What’s so scary about that?”
“I’m worried that you’ll suddenly come over, grab me, and ramble on about things I can’t even understand.”
Martin then rambled on and on, complaining about how Reiner talked too long. At the end of his chatter, he confessed his honest feelings.
“To be honest, when Your Highness talks for too long, I sometimes only nod while thinking about other things.”
“Is that something you should be telling me?”
“Pardon?”
“I won’t speak at length anymore.”
“Oh, but you will anyway.”
“Then I’ll forget we had this conversation, so keep doing what you do quietly.”
“Yes? Oh… yes.”
The young page grew uneasy at Reiner’s calm response. He had prepared answers in case Reiner whined, asking how he could say such things. He had planned to chatter away in mock teasing and brighten the atmosphere of the prince’s palace.
But the prince, who was the same age, had grown awfully mature lately. Somehow, he looked lonely. Martin hesitated before asking again,
“So, what have you been thinking about these days?”
“You say it’s bothersome, yet you ask.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. Hurry and tell me. Are you thinking about that magic you mentioned last time—escaping from the audience hall to here? Or the one about growing a tree quickly? You do know one tree withered to death, right? Her Majesty the Empress cherished that tree….”
“Didn’t we agree not to talk about that?”
“Then shall I bring up the story of the cat that ran away after peeing on your head while you were trying to develop magic to pet cats better, Your Highness?”
“Didn’t we promise to keep that a secret, too?”
Reiner wrinkled his nose, making the same expression he usually did. Martin finally felt at ease and laughed.
“Now you look more like yourself, Your Highness. All right. I’ll keep it all a secret, so tell me about that thing you’ve been working on lately—moving fast here and there, traveling back in time to the past.”
Martin was talking about the teleportation magic that had recently occupied Reiner’s mind. Reiner learned about that teleportation magic from a suspicious ancient spellbook tucked among several books gifted by his mother on his thirteenth birthday.
Reiner’s birth mother, the Empress, had not selected the tomes with her young son’s interests in mind. That book was old, dirty, and paper-thin, slipped by chance between other heavy volumes. It was filled with difficult incantations, as though to make up for its small size with its lofty content.
On the opening page of that book, in the manner of a warning, there was a meaningful sentence:
Do not open this book carelessly. Famous archmages of the Magic Tower devoted their lives to it, yet none among them achieved perfect understanding. Time passed while they did so, and they all reached their deaths. Is there anything more futile than obsessing over a way to reverse time?
Reiner ignored every sentence in the book, including the long, formal introduction. He found it strange that letters connected one by one to form words, and then those words formed speech.
When he barely managed to read them, another obstacle always awaited him. Between reading one letter and the next, stray thoughts intruded. To Reiner, even finishing a short sentence felt daunting.
So he merely looked at the pictures and symbols, counted up the calculations, and gradually uncovered the secrets of the formulas that way. At first, he learned how to move at very high speed, then how to move heavy objects without touching them or use teleportation to reach distant places.
And in the end, he discovered that, by pushing that teleportation magic to its maximum speed—moving faster than time flowed—there was indeed a way to turn time back.
Since he understood it, he could have tried it. But of what use was that? Reiner did not know. Even if he did rewind time, what could he change in the life he returned to?
He thought this, yet that was the only thing that stirred his interest, so whenever he felt depressed, he kept thinking about it. He must have thought about it so often that the words slipped out of his mouth before he knew it. With no one else to talk to, he had evidently pestered Martin with the same story for years.
Reiner smiled sadly.
“Yes, I must have been pretty bad about that. I’ll stop now.”
From Martin’s point of view, that only made him more concerned, so he asked one more time, despite not caring about magic himself.
“No, I like hearing about it. Traveling back in time to the past… that sounds really cool.”
“Cool, is it?”
“Yes. Then you could eat breakfast again. Well, maybe you don’t care much about eating, Your Highness.”
“Right. Then if I went back to morning, I’d give you my share.”
At Reiner’s words, Martin blushed and grinned as if just imagining it made him happy.
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ll practice my time-rewinding magic just for you.”
“If you did that, it would be so great. If you went back not only to this morning but more often and further back, there’d be so much you could do.”
Martin’s eyes shone like he had too many things he wanted to do. Reiner tilted his head.
“You’re still only fifte—”
“Fifteen, the same as you, Your Highness.”
“Right, you’re only fifteen. What do you want to turn back so badly?”
“Well, there are lots of things I regret. Don’t you have any, Your Highness? If you rewind time, you could see people who died, fix your mistakes. You could avoid getting into trouble. Then maybe my situation would be better, too. Surely you have something like that, right? There’s no way you don’t.”
Reiner laughed as he watched Martin ramble. Then he slowly nodded.
“Yes, I’ll think about what I might want to change.”
“You must have plenty. You make a lot of mistakes, Your Highness. Think about it in your dreams tonight, and tell me tomorrow. For now, let’s get you to bed. I am your bedroom page, you know. When you see me, you should think about sleeping, not talk of magic.”
Martin chattered away while preparing the room for the night. Thus, in that somewhat calmer atmosphere, Reiner was lost in thought once again. If time could be turned back, maybe one could see someone who had died. Martin was right. Even so, did he have anyone he yearned for that much?
He might also fix his mistakes.
He might avoid trouble.
Would that improve his circumstances?
Those thoughts never really came to mind.
No matter how he looked at it, there was only one thing Reiner wanted to do by reversing time.
“I had to go back to before I was born.
I had to go back to when this body had not a single wound.
To the burn Niklas gave at seven, when he was scorched by fire.
To the scar that never vanished after Father tied me up for two days last year.
I had to go back to when there was nothing, back to Mother’s womb.
And then I must never be born again.
But there was no need to share such a resolution in front of innocent Martin. Reiner shook his head, driving out his futile longing so that only he would know it. After laying himself on the bed, he spoke in a rather bright voice to his same-aged page, Martin, who sat beside him as etiquette demanded.
“Martin, let’s stop talking about that boring magic. Tell me about your life before you came to the royal palace.”
“You mean the story I told you last time?“
“Yes, that story about going rabbit hunting with your eleven siblings. The one where you cried because you couldn’t kill the rabbit, and your mother hugged you.“
“You already know it all. Why do you want me to tell it again?“
“Just tell me.“
Even if it was an old story everyone knew, there was always delight in recalling one’s childhood memories. Martin talked for hours that day about his family.
Even after he left, sleep did not come easily. Left alone in the dark of night, Reiner used the darkness as an excuse to bring out the feelings he had just chased deep inside himself with a few nods, so he could ponder them again.
If I turned back time.
Then I could keep from being born as my father’s son.
If I did not get born again.
Then I wouldn’t have to live always recalling that if I cried because I couldn’t kill a rabbit, there would be no one to hug me.
He thought this and opened the ancient tome once more, the one he had never truly read. He counted the numbers in the spells, which were easier to see than letters. He stroked the mana that flowed effortlessly from his body, though it still had not fully recovered.
That was how it was.
That happened three months ago.
And yet, Reiner could not understand why he was here now.
If he could not return to his mother’s womb, he should at least have arrived at the time when he was a newborn wrapped in swaddling cloth, eyes not even open.
He had never made such a great miscalculation.
On the floor of the imperial palace, a blue flower was in bloom.
It was a hardy spring flower that blossomed as soon as the cold withdrew.
And a princess child with bright red hair, the perfect contrast to that flower, was entering the castle.
He could never forget that face. She had died in his arms.
Reiner blinked his big, blue eyes.
‘I must be mad.’
Even as he said that, he could not stop himself from heading toward the girl. Without even putting on his shoes, he ran straight to where she stood. He quickly grabbed that little hand that had once touched his wrist. And then he wanted to get closer still. He wanted to hold the living girl in his arms again.
Leave a Reply