***
Even after being imprisoned, Lianne couldn’t stop thinking about the emperor’s last words.
The empress’s seat is not vacant.
He didn’t say there was no need for a new empress, but that it had never been vacant from the beginning.
“It was probably just something he said to drive me crazy.”
Otherwise, it didn’t make any sense.
How could that be possible unless a dead person came back to life and appeared?!
***
“Huh? What? Who came back?”
I blinked and asked Delight again.
“Hmm, well… Haha. It’s hard to explain, really.”
Delight scratched his head awkwardly and smiled.
“Ollia, your mother, the empress, has returned.”
It would have been less shocking if lightning had struck out of nowhere.
How could the empress, whom we all thought was dead, suddenly appear overnight?
“…She was dead, though.”
How is she back?
“Dad thought so too. But it turns out she’s alive.”
“How?”
Did she fake her death and disappear?
How could that be possible? And how could that fact have been hidden all this time?
I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Well, I don’t know the details yet either…”
“So, what do you actually know, Dad?”
“Huh?”
I wanted to yell at Delight’s awkward face.
What do you even know?!
After the chaos at last night’s banquet had settled, I slept deeply.
Thanks to that, I woke up feeling refreshed this morning, only for Delight to visit me.
I thought we would have a pleasant conversation, catching up on how we’ve been and sharing stories.
But as soon as he saw me, he immediately said:
“Actually, I wanted to tell you something yesterday, but something unexpected happened, and I couldn’t.”
And then he said this.
If it were the old me, I would have clutched my neck and passed out hearing such a shocking statement!
“Ollia, there’s actually one more thing I need to tell you.”
“What else is there?”
Could anything be more shocking than this?
“The empress has no memory.”
“…What?”
“So she doesn’t know anything.”
“What do you mean, ‘she doesn’t know anything’?”
“I mean it literally. She has no memory of the past. She doesn’t remember her time at the palace, and she doesn’t remember you either. Everything she knows now is what I told her.”
Suddenly appearing out of nowhere and not even having memories—it was all too strange.
Could she be an imposter, pretending to be the empress with some other motive?
“Dad, are you sure that’s really my mother?”
I deliberately grabbed onto Delight’s collar, asking cautiously with a worried expression.
“It could be someone else lying, couldn’t it?”
As soon as I spoke, Delight’s smile disappeared.
“Ollia, the empress is definitely your mother. Don’t doubt that.”
Delight, with a serious face I had never seen him show me before, said firmly. He was the one proving that the empress was indeed my mother.
I wanted to ask more questions, but in any case, she was my real mother.
It felt strange to keep doubting the empress’s existence when Delight was so sure of it.
I decided to ask something else instead.
“How did you meet her? Is that why you were late?”
“Something else delayed me, but at the very end, I stopped by somewhere, and that’s when I got hurt.”
“What?!”
You got hurt again?
Are you really not as strong as you think?
“Haha, as expected, the only one who cares about me is you, Ollia.”
“Hey!”
It’s not concern—I’m mad! How many times have I told you not to get hurt!
“I wasn’t seriously injured. I just passed out for a moment due to the shock.”
Passing out alone seems like a serious enough injury, but he was pretending it wasn’t a big deal.
Perhaps sensing my gaze, Delight quickly moved on from talking about his injury.
“There was someone who helped me then. It turns out, that person was your mother.”
“What?”
This story was unfolding in the most unexpected way.
The words coming out of Delight’s mouth were going in a direction I could never have predicted.
***
When Delight barely escaped from the underground auction and crossed the border back home, their bodies were already at their limit.
From the injuries sustained fighting the wolf beastmen and the damage caused when the building collapsed on them, plus the exhaustion from overexerting themselves to cross the border, their condition had deteriorated rapidly.
In the end, before reaching the nearest castle, Zaire collapsed first, followed by Delight losing consciousness shortly after.
When the warm air and the smell of something delicious woke him, the scene that greeted his eyes resembled what one might see right after death.
“Am I really dead? I can’t die yet. Ollia is waiting for me.”
Even if I were dead, I must come back to life!
“Are you okay? What nonsense are you talking about?”
A woman’s voice snapped Delight back to reality.
“How does this place look like hell to you? Have you ever seen such a warm and cozy hell?”
“…….”
“Sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t heaven either. So, get yourself together. You need to stay awake if you want to live.”
“…….”
“Your companion has already regained consciousness and is recovering.”
The woman kept talking to prevent Delight from falling back asleep.
“Are you the one who saved me?”
As Delight grasped the situation, he turned his head towards the voice.
“…Why are you here?!”
Delight was once again convinced that he had, in fact, died.
Because there’s no other way that face could exist in front of him.
“Ha… So I must really be dead.”
Delight’s eyes slowly closed again.
“Seriously, I told you, you’re not dead!”
A frustrated female voice rang out, followed by a wet towel being dropped heavily onto his face.
The woman who roughly threw the towel carefully wiped Delight’s face, trying to wake him up.
“You’re alive, so stop saying nonsense.”
She repeated several times that he wasn’t dead.
“But…”
Delight spoke with his eyes still closed.
“Then this doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“If I’m truly alive, then why am I seeing a dead person?”
“What?! Are you saying there’s a ghost here?! Can you see a ghost?”
“Well…”
“No, no! Even if you can, don’t say it! This is my home—how am I supposed to live here if I’m scared now?!”
The frightened woman began flailing her arms around without looking at his face, poking Delight in the eyes and nose in the process.
“Ouch. Stop it.”
“You stop first!”
The woman was waving the wet towel above Delight’s face as she shouted.
Suddenly, whack—Delight snatched the towel from her.
He sat up, now staring directly at her.
“Enough of the jokes.”
“…Huh? Oh, right. It was a joke, wasn’t it?”
She asked cautiously, seemingly nervous after seeing him suddenly stand up.
But the more cautious she was, the more stern Delight’s face became.
“Blueny, why are you here?”
“Huh? How do you know my name?”
His once-wife and empress opened her eyes wide in shock as she asked.
Before they knew it, the two were sitting across from each other with a table between them.
Delight stared at the person sitting opposite him with a complex expression.
“What’s going on?”
“Do you know me?”
Her innocent face reflected nothing but confusion as she asked him back.
Delight couldn’t help but be stunned by her naivety.
“Stop playing these silly tricks.”
He couldn’t hide his displeasure any longer. Delight was now on edge, as though he were ready to take immediate action.
“How are you, who is supposed to be dead, sitting here alive and well?”
“As you can see, I’m alive.”
She responded with a slight laugh, not seeming to understand what he was talking about.
It seemed like she was trying to lighten the mood with her joke, but Delight’s expression only grew colder.
He stared at Blueny, who sat before him.
“Are you pretending not to know me on purpose?”
Of course, she had faked her death, so she probably didn’t want to face him now.
Delight’s lips twisted into a bitter smile.
“Don’t think you can get away with pretending. You need to explain what’s really going on.”
“I’m sorry. Did I make a mistake? I was just trying to help someone I found unconscious.”
The woman didn’t hide her frustration, feeling wronged for being accused when all she did was help a stranger.
It didn’t seem like she was pretending—she truly appeared not to know anything.
Delight’s brow furrowed as he sensed that something was off.
“Could it be that you really doesn’t know?”
Just as he began to harbor doubts, the woman cautiously raised her head to gauge his reaction, as if something was clicking in her mind. She carefully began to speak.
“Could it be that you know me from the past? If that’s the case, please forgive me for not recognizing you.”
“Forgive you, huh.”
Is she trying to brush everything off with that one word?
Just as Delight’s patience was about to snap, she spoke again.
“I lost my memory.”
“…What?”
Delight’s face went blank in an instant. He blinked slowly as he stared at her.
“You see, I lost my memory in an accident a few years ago.”
She began to explain her situation, as if now understanding the truth.
“Thanks to my belongings, I only know my name. I have no memory of who I was or what kind of life I lived in the past.”
“…..…”
“The doctor who treated me said that my memory might come back with time, but even after more than four years, I haven’t remembered anything.”
Her gaze toward Delight was that of a stranger’s—someone who didn’t recognize him at all.
Delight finally had to admit that she truly had lost her memory.
