“Where am I?”

“Are you conscious, Your Highness?”

“Ah.”

Everything was pitch black. Only a lamp hanging high above swayed precariously. One, two. Matching her breathing to the rhythm of the swaying lamp out of habit, Aira quickly regained her senses.

“What time is it now?”

The man who appeared to be a medical officer pulled out a pocket watch.

“It’s 8 PM, Your Highness.”

“What?”

Aira bolted upright in surprise. She had met Jens at 9 PM. Had she been unconscious for nearly a full day? The medical officer approached and made her restless form lie back down.

“Your condition is still not good. Please remain calm.”

When Aira moved, there was a rustling sound of a military uniform. As her initially narrow field of vision widened upon waking, she also saw a female officer watching her with intense suspicion.

“Lieutenant Schaefer. This person is still a patient.”

“Princess. Don’t move.”

“Huh.”

Aira couldn’t help but give a hollow laugh at another familiar face. Schaefer’s expression was cold, just as Aira remembered her.

“Still on the Nautile?”

Schaefer nodded.

“That’s right. Your status has not yet been determined.”

“Where is Lieutenant Will?”

Still with an unreadable, cold face, Schaefer answered.

“The first armistice negotiations are underway. The Lieutenant is a busy man.”

“…Already.”

She needed to convince him according to her plan before the armistice negotiations, but this stupid illness had held her back. She would need to meet him again before irreversible decisions were made.

Sighing, Aira let her body go limp. Seeing that she had calmed down, the medical officer quickly offered water and medicine.

“We forced medication after you lost consciousness. It’s time for your next dose, please take it.”

Aira looked at the handful of pills with a weary expression. These were the pills that had constrained her entire life. She took the medicine from the medical officer’s hand and swallowed it with water.

After checking Aira’s temperature and pulse again, the medical officer, apparently finding no particular problems, said he would send food and left. Only Aira and Schaefer remained in the small cabin. Schaefer still stood watching her vigilantly, not lowering her guard.

“Sit down.”

“Don’t think about doing anything foolish and stay lying down.”

Looking at the wary Schaefer, Aira slightly raised the corner of her mouth.

With her blue-black hair cut short, Schaefer had still been one of Jens’s closest aides about six years after this point in time, before Aira returned to the past. She had been assigned to constantly monitor Aira after she defected from the Archipelago to the Republic.

“I’ve brought food…”

With a knock, Yuvil opened the door and entered. He was carrying a tray in each hand, apparently having brought Schaefer’s meal as well.

He placed one tray on the table and another on the lap of Aira, who had awkwardly raised herself up. Scratching the back of his head, Yuvil said to Schaefer:

“Eat. I’ll keep watch. Or you can go to the mess hall if you prefer.”

“It’s fine. You must have your own duties. Go.”

“You should at least eat comfortably. Sit down to eat.”

Yuvil pushed Schaefer, who was still standing and not taking her eyes off Aira, toward the table.

Realizing that quickly eating and finishing would make them less uncomfortable, Aira promptly turned her attention to the tray on her lap.

The tray contained a simple meal of corn soup and bread. Aira picked up the spoon with a reluctant expression.

She wasn’t hungry at all, but she didn’t want to bother arguing with them about not eating.

“…?”

Aira took a spoonful of soup and struggled to maintain her composure. Something was… strange.

“…”

Even when she carefully picked out pieces of corn with the tip of her spoon to taste with the tip of her tongue, or when she tore off a small piece of bread and put it in her mouth, it was the same.

“Look, even if it’s not to your taste, just eat it anyway. Sorry, but we don’t have caviar here.”

Perhaps because she had expressed her desire for asylum, Yuvil spoke to Aira in an ambiguous tone. Aira shook her head in confusion.

“No, that’s not it.”

Aira picked up the spoon again and stirred it around. She knew in some corner of her mind that this violated not only Imperial court etiquette but also common dining manners, but she couldn’t muster the courage to eat any more.

Schaefer, who had been roughly dipping bread in soup and shoving it into her mouth, finally seemed to notice Aira’s strange behavior and frowned sharply as she spoke to Yuvil.

“Did you do something to her food?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t mess with food. Besides, why would I risk getting destroyed by the Lieutenant for doing something unnecessary?”

Hearing Yuvil’s answer, Schaefer stood up with a scraping sound. After confirming that her tray and Aira’s contained the same items, Schaefer took away Aira’s tray while Aira didn’t know how to react.

“Excuse me. I’ll bring you fresh food.”

“No, it’s fine…”

Ignoring Aira’s protests and waving hands, Schaefer carefully tasted the soup with her finger.

“…?”

Tilting her head in confusion, Schaefer checked the bread and even the utensils Aira had already used, but finding nothing unusual, her frown deepened.

“Try this.”

Schaefer pushed the tray toward the bewildered Yuvil and asked the confused-looking Aira:

“What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. There’s no problem at all.”

“With acting skills like that, we wouldn’t even need the Lieutenant for interrogation—that idiot Yuvil would be enough. Tell me. I don’t intend to treat you well, but I don’t plan to neglect you either.”

“Really, there’s nothing wrong. I just got up and my stomach doesn’t feel good. Sorry, but could you open the window for a moment? You can put handcuffs on me if you’re worried.”

“…”

Schaefer opened the round window with a still suspicious expression.

Aira declined Yuvil’s offer to bring something new with a shake of her head and leaned back on the bed.

After Yuvil left, Aira stared blankly as the breeze flew in through the window Schaefer had opened.

‘What on earth is happening?’

There was nothing wrong with her food.

What was strange was her. She couldn’t taste or smell anything from the food she put in her mouth. She could barely feel the tactile sensation of it going down her throat, but couldn’t tell whether she was drinking water or soup. The bread too—she couldn’t distinguish whether she was chewing on bread or a sponge.

Flap.

A strong sea breeze came through the narrow window. Aira, who had been doubting her sense of taste and smell, was surprised by the scent of the sea breeze. She could clearly smell the saltiness.

But this time, there was no tactile sensation. Only when she noticed her hair obscuring her vision did she realize that the wind was blowing wildly into the room, making her hair and blanket flutter and drying her eyes.

‘I must have finally gone mad. Just as he always wanted.’

Since such symptoms weren’t among the aftereffects of the Emperor’s disease, it couldn’t be related to her illness. It was simply that she had become strange.

Well, losing a few senses after traveling back in time with unchanging magical power wasn’t such a big deal. Anyway, this strange situation would end once she fulfilled his wish and ended her life.

Things like eating or feeling the sea breeze—their presence or absence meant nothing.

Before returning, in her past life, although she had been thrust onto the battlefield, until then she had been raised as a noble princess in the Empire, and even after going to the Archipelago, she had received precious treatment.

Had she, who had eaten only the finest things, enjoyed delicious food? She wasn’t sure anymore. In the last year before her death, in the Republic, she had mostly just shoved military rations into her mouth, just enough to stay alive.

She had enjoyed feeling the sea breeze. It was the first freedom she felt after escaping the stifling Imperial palace. But what meaning did taste or wind have in the face of the death she needed to reclaim?

She was merely a corpse that had returned for a reason.

Aira glanced at Schaefer. Schaefer was still watching her with an unflinchingly cold but dutiful attitude.

Looking at her, a memory suddenly surfaced. Like Yuvil, Jens had been preparing something big with his trusted inner circle in the past. Accepting her and conquering the Archipelago must have been part of that plan.

Was continental unification his wish, then? But Jens wasn’t that ambitious a person. Rather, he was the type to reluctantly follow the Republic government’s orders. Despite that, he had overflowing ability and had swiftly subdued the Archipelago.

‘In any case, I can end my life if I fulfill Jens’s wish.’

She looked at the medicine bottle neatly placed on the side table. As the ship continued to rock, the various-sized pills in the bottle fit together without gaps. They no longer rattled.

‘To discover his wish and fulfill it, I need to stay by his side. For that…’

Thoughts that had been fragmented by her sudden regression now fit together neatly like the pills.