No, no.

Actually.

The first magic to come into Alisa’s life wasn’t the prince who fell into the attic……

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Alisa opened her eyes.

A familiar ceiling looked down at her. Faded wallpaper and smooth, worn wooden beams, a small window letting in slanted light, and a little table beneath it.

The attic.

The very attic where she and Eden had first met.

Alisa pushed herself up from the wet floor and looked around. Roxia was shivering and coughing, and Eden lay face-down on the floor, breathing in ragged gasps. Both of them were bringing up water, but neither seemed seriously hurt.

Alisa drew in a deep breath as a wave of relief washed over her.

They had done it.

Against everything, they had all crossed through time and come back together.

And that meant she had lost something forever.

Alisa got to her feet. Her limbs shook from the release of tension that had held her rigid, but the urge to move right now was far stronger.

“I, just a moment…… I’ll be right back.”

“Alisa?”

Roxia called after her in surprise, but Alisa only shouted that she would be back soon and climbed down the attic ladder.

She slid down the stairs and threw open the front door, and Eden came running after her.

“Alisa!”

“I’ll be back, I’ll be right back. I just have to go right now……”

She gasped out the words, and Eden took her hand without a word.

“I’m coming with you.”

Alisa nodded.

The two of them turned and ran down the hill together. They passed through the town center where the streets leveled out, crossed the footbridge over the Montrau River, and flew past familiar signs.

Madame Marigold’s dress shop.

The narrow staircase beside the shop she had come and gone from so many times it had become a second home — she took the steps two at a time.

Her heart was pounding fit to burst. She swallowed, and the dried salt in her mouth turned bitter on her tongue.

She rang the bell five or six times in a row, then grabbed the door handle and turned it without waiting. The door, which should have been locked, swung open without any resistance.

“…… Roben!”

Alisa stepped inside.

The house was quiet. She had made enough noise to wake someone from a deep sleep, and yet there was no sound at all.

She went down the corridor to the dining hall. The fireplace she had seen on her first visit was still giving off warm heat. The neatly stacked logs inside seemed to say that someone had been here until just moments ago.

“Roben……?”

Sunlight poured into the empty room. Dust drifted slowly through the air, glinting in the light.

Alisa stood still and breathed in quietly.

The only sound was her own breathing.

She stood staring at the silent house with her lips pressed together, then dragged her sleeve across both eyes.

The moment they had parted in such a rush at the entrance. That really was the last time she would see him. She hadn’t even said a proper goodbye, only made promises she couldn’t keep……

“…… What a fool. I should have just said it outright.”

That this was the end, so please say goodbye properly. She could have clung to him shamelessly.

Then at least she would have been prepared.

At least she could have held him once.

“…… Alisa, don’t cry.”

Eden’s hand came to rest on her trembling shoulders. She turned to look, and he was smiling, faintly.

The image of Eden being dragged toward the gallows came to her. How calm he had been, even with death right in front of him.

Alisa couldn’t hold back the surge of frustration.

“You’re the same! How can a person draw lines like that so easily?”

“Did it look that way?”

“Yes!”

“Then I did very well indeed. From the day I left you behind, there wasn’t a single day I stopped caring. I even had the Montrau house sealed for a while — you didn’t know that, did you?”

“…… Of course not. You never told me.”

Eden stepped closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Without her noticing, he had grown as tall as the Roben she remembered, and now he held her steady from behind.

“Alisa, if that person really is just me, having lived a little longer, like you said.”

“…… Yes.”

“Then one thing is certain. Right now, he is happier than he has ever been.”

Alisa looked up.

Through her tear-blurred vision, she could see the grown Eden smiling quietly.

And she was certain. Beneath the shadow of time she had never been able to look into, he had been smiling just like that too.

“Come here, Alisa.”

“……”

“Let’s dry off before we go. It seems the fire in the hearth was lit for you.”

Alisa sat side by side with Eden on the sofa and waited for all the firewood to burn down. Until the last warmth was gone, and the final ember in the blackened logs went dark.

Once the warmth from the fireplace faded, the house turned cool quickly. Eden draped the blanket from the sofa over her shoulders.

“Let’s go now, Eden. Mum will be waiting.”

Alisa was the first to rise from the sofa, keeping her face steady. If Roben had been here, he would have wanted more than anyone for her not to stay lost in grief for long.

Keep the mourning short, and the memories long.

He himself had never managed that, always wearing that black suit and grieving for the Alisa he had lost……

She was pressing down the heaviness in her chest and about to turn away. Eden spoke up, his voice uncertain.

“Wait, Alisa……”

“Yes?”

“Didn’t all the firewood burn out?”

“Hm? Yes, it did. We checked together.”

Whoosh — Eden pulled her hand urgently.

“Come look at this.”

Not knowing what to expect, Alisa followed him back to the sofa and looked where Eden was pointing, into the fireplace.

And there, in the hearth that had burned down to nothing but ash, new firewood was burning. It wasn’t just a lingering ember. There was genuinely a fresh stack of wood, neatly arranged.

Alisa’s mouth fell slowly open.

“E, Eden. Right now, here…… new firewood…… appeared, didn’t it?”

“…… Yes.”

Looking back and forth between Eden, who nodded with complete seriousness, and the fireplace, Alisa spoke up in a rush.

“R, Roben! Are you here?”

“……”

“You’re here, aren’t you? You just can’t be seen anymore. That’s all it is, right? You haven’t disappeared, you’re still right here beside me……”

Clatter.

A fire poker flew out from the empty fireplace. Using the black ash as a pencil, letter by letter — crooked, uneven strokes began to form on the floor.

“What is it? W……”

She and Eden stared at the letters with wide eyes. One by one, slowly taking shape like drawings being sketched from gathered ash, they formed a single sentence.

[WELCOME HOME]

Alisa clapped her hands over her mouth. She had no idea what to say. The last thread of possibility she had been holding onto had become real, right before her eyes.

She couldn’t see him, couldn’t touch him.

But he was undeniably there.

Her very first magic.

Alisa whispered in a trembling voice.

“…… Roben.”

“……”

“I’m back. With Eden.”

“……”

“I said I’d introduce you…… but I suppose there was no need for that. Was there?”

“……”

The poker moved back and forth. Like it wanted to pass along some kind of answer.

After a brief flurry of movement, what the tip of the stick left behind was a small drawing of a house. As though to say, welcome home, truly. As though that alone was enough.

Alisa scrubbed at her eyes and ran to the fireplace. She gathered the ash on the floor with her fingertips and began to add to the drawing.

A slanted roof. A space so small that even two adults would be a tight fit, let alone a child — the attic where everything had begun. In that little magical space, she drew Mum and Roben and herself, all holding hands and smiling.

“Roben, can you see this?”

Alisa pointed to the tall stick figure drawn inside the house.

“You have to be here too, otherwise it’s not our home. So, so……”

“……”

“You can’t go anywhere now.”

“……”

“Honestly, there’s nowhere left to go, is there? You can’t exactly buy a new house in your condition.”

The poker twitching on the floor flew up into the air. Alisa quickly covered her forehead with both hands. But instead of tapping her forehead, Roben pressed down on her head and ruffled her hair.

As though to say, without any doubt, that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Only then did Alisa stop her clumsy attempts at threatening and let the corner of her mouth curl up.

Then Eden’s voice drifted in from behind her shoulder.

“…… Alisa, don’t you think you forgot something?”

“Oh.”

Alisa quickly drew in one more figure. Eden looked at the thin, squished little shape crammed in beside Alisa and gave a satisfied nod at last.

“Right, the younger me is still better after all……”

Eden winced and grabbed his head. When he lowered his hand a moment later, there was a red, swollen mark on his forehead.

“What just happened?”

Alisa looked back and forth between Eden’s disgruntled face and the floor, then whispered.

“Um…… Roben says to come back and argue after you’ve lived two hundred and fifty more years?”

“Ha, can you tell him not to pull rank with age?”

“Oh, um, I don’t need to pass that along since he can hear everything, so please stop dragging me into this……”

Eden pressed his lips shut with the look of someone with a great deal to say. Alisa burst out laughing between her two beloved Edens.

Just as it had always been, she might never be able to look at his face, not for a long time, perhaps not ever. She might find herself parting from her mother again without warning.

Even so, Alisa wasn’t worried.

Alisa Ludendorff was no longer a little girl!

〈There’s a Prince Living in Our Attic!〉 — END