Chapter 3 – Coming Back to Life Again

Before Irenia even opened her eyes, the first thing she felt was a sweet fragrance.

A dizzying sugary scent burrowed into her nose. Such a fragrant aroma. One she had certainly smelled before, sometime long ago, and yet one that had become unbearably distant.

A faint scrap of memory from her childhood, from days when every moment of life had been warm and beautiful, swept across her vision without her even opening her eyes.

“Miss Irenia. You lovely sleepyhead. You must wake up and eat some freshly baked brioche.”

Miss Irenia?

There had once been a time when she was called that.

So very long ago, until before she turned twenty, everyone had called her that so warmly, full of affection, throughout her younger days.

She had been protesting to the goddess in terrible remorse and disillusionment, in dreadful pain that seemed to tear her heart apart, and then at some point all consciousness had vanished.

And yet now, for such a sweet fragrance to stir her senses, and for such a soft and gentle voice to ring out. The one calling her with such fond, ticklish affection was surely Lariesa, the nursemaid of her childhood.

She could hardly believe it, and longed to open the two eyes that had been tightly shut for so long and confirm everything.

“Elonzo! How can you just jump right onto Miss’s bed again!”

Elonzo?

Elonzo, the shaggy light-brown Elonzo, her first little dog whom she had missed so dearly even in dreams, eagerly licked at her eyelids and cheeks.

This warm touch was unmistakably Elonzo. It was surely her fluffy Elonzo, whom her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, now grown quite large.

“Miss, you have taught Elonzo such bad habits. Oh dear, if Madam finds out again, I’ll be the one scolded. Elonzo, stop that, be good, Elonzo, come now!”

No matter how sternly Lariesa tried to look as she scolded Elonzo, neither Elonzo nor Lariesa was the least bit harsh, so this lovely being would lick her cheeks a while longer, and she, she……

Ah, in this coziness and warmth, it felt as though her whole body might melt away. She still could not open her eyes, and only tears spilled out instead.

“Oh, Miss. Why are you crying? Are you in pain somewhere?”

The feel of that palm quickly touching her forehead. The skin was somewhat roughened from hard work, thick and familiar, and at once she knew for certain it was Lariesa’s touch, and she felt relieved. Endless tears continued to fall.

And when she opened her eyes, there indeed were Lariesa’s kind dark-brown eyes, full of concern, fixed on her.

“Na, na…… nny……!”

She immediately threw her arms around Lariesa’s shoulders as though crushing them. A warm embrace. Perhaps even softer than her mother’s arms, the embrace of Nanny Lariesa, the most comforting place in the world, one she had always been able to run to and bury herself in at any time.

“Heu-heu-heuk. To see you again, Nanny…… I missed you so much…… kkeu-eu-euk……”

In her past life, her nurse Lariesa had died trying to save her. The mansion in flames. Elonzo running into it to fetch her doll, Delphinia. Then she herself running in after Elonzo. And the moment Lariesa saw that, she chased after her, barely managed to save her after she had collapsed from smoke, and died.

Ah, to meet Elonzo and Lariesa again. Then this place must truly be heaven. Tears streamed endlessly down her face. If this was heaven, then perhaps I could see Delphine and Delphinia, those children, again as well. Ah, then we would never again suffer from hunger and cold, and would never be parted forever.

“Nanny, I’m so sorry. Nanny, it was all because of me…… heu-heu-heuk…… if I hadn’t done that…… heu-heu-heuk……. But for more than thirty years, every single day, you were the one I missed most……”

Just calling that name and being held in those arms made it feel as though everything painful and sorrowful from her previous life was melting away.

“Wh-what? Thirty years, what in the world are you talking about? Oh, Miss. Did you have some kind of terrible dream? Oh, you poor thing. But you absolutely must not cry like this today of all days. Tears on such a wonderful day? If these pretty eyes swell up, it will be awful!”

As if swollen eyes were such a disaster, Lariesa carefully pried her away and held a linen towel embroidered with delphinium flowers to her eyes, meticulously wiping away her tears. Even that towel carried a faint floral scent.

As she gradually calmed down and looked around, the room that came into view was the great mansion of the del Tieri family, the house where she had been born and raised. It was exactly like her bedroom there, the most beautifully decorated room in the house.

“Your favorite brioche turned out especially delicious today. I brought plenty of raspberry jam and clotted cream too. Here now, open wide.”

After wiping away her tears, Lariesa showed her a dazzling silver tray, on which sat a plate painted in fine porcelain with her favorite delphinium flowers, piled high with brioche. There was plenty of jam and cream too. Just looking at them, tears swiftly welled up in her eyes again.

To keep her from doing nothing but crying, Lariesa quickly tore off a soft piece of brioche and popped it into her mouth, which had fallen open with a little “he-.”

The rich butter fragrance seeping deep into her nose, and the way this perfect pastry clung tenderly to her tongue, together with the sweet jam. For a moment, the taste of heaven filled her mouth, and her heart swelled all over……

Then she remembered the incident Delphine had told her about not long before she died, when she had managed with great difficulty to pick up a piece of bread lying in the street, and her throat tightened and her face froze in place.

The day a beggar boy, unable to endure the smell of bread coming from Le Boulanger, the bakery closest to Elmanyef Bridge, had stolen a loaf of freshly baked bread.

It was said that the broad-shouldered baker who had chased down and seized that skinny boy had mercilessly swung a rolling pin and crushed one of the child’s arm bones.

That slender body crumpling with a scream.

The bread fallen to the ground and stained with filth.

That smell that, in the end, had burrowed into Delphine’s lungs as she watched all of it trembling in immense fear.

They said that even after breaking the poor child’s arm, the owner still had not vented his rage, and so he dragged the beggar boy away and handed him over to the shopping district watch. Only then, gathering all her courage, Delphine had picked up the fallen bread and run without once looking back.

Every moment of how her heart had tightened while hearing that story was still vivid. Ah, Delphine. Where could Delphine be.

Right now, before her eyes, there was only Elonzo and Nanny Lariesa. Everything she felt in this place was simply too much like long ago, her home, her room, the meal prepared by her nursemaid, exactly as it had been then.

“Oh my, Miss Irenia. You mustn’t, I told you, you mustn’t cry! Are you still troubled by the memories of your dream? Even so, no. If you keep crying like this!”

With quick hands, Lariesa wiped away her tears one drop at a time.

“Now quickly finish eating. You must hurry and get ready to go to the Pietra Feast Day banquet!”

The Pietra Feast Day banquet?

Good heavens. Pietra Feast Day. Th…… then that meant the Pietra Feast Day that had long since been forbidden to be celebrated by order of His Majesty the Emperor. The last banquet held in its honor had been…… at the Imperial Palace…… ah, that day, I had fallen in love with him…… whom I had seen again for the first time in years. In the end, that night, she had shared love with him. Their love had begun that way, but in truth, it had been the beginning of the curse.

Why, of all things, did she have to come to heaven and repeat that very moment from that very day?

And yet, if this was heaven, no angels could be seen, and Lariesa’s movements were far too consistently brisk…… even the taste on her tongue, even the feel of Elonzo still lying across her lap without any intention of moving, was all as vivid as before.