It Wasn't a Coincidence

Chapter 135

My vision swam.

A covert family that handled the Imperial Family's military logistics.

And the insane terrorist organization I'd only read about in passing in the original novel, the 'Red Moon Liberation Front.'

As these two keywords became linked in my mind, I lost all desire to keep up the act of being a proper young man.

'Fuck it. I don't know.'

Last time, I had pretended to be sane and proper to escape this old man trying to forcibly reprogram me with military nonsense, afraid he'd mistake me for an airheaded noble brat and ship me off to the northern front.

But even pretending to be sane only got me relentlessly badgered and forcibly fed classified information like this.

If I put on any more airs of propriety here, all I'd get in return would be some crazy old geezer's insane quest to force me into the military, saying, 'I knew it—you were born to be a soldier!'

I sank deep into the sofa and crossed my legs.

"Professor."

"Why is that?"

"It's nothing in particular. But, Professor Wilhelm, let's make one thing clear."

Professor Wilhelm's thick eyebrows twitched faintly as he watched my attitude suddenly change.

"I don't know about meeting once more, since I've already promised that much to that bastard Lucius, but if you expect or ask anything more of me, it will be extremely difficult for me."

"Hmm."

At the boundary I drew, the old man stroked his beard and let out a groan.

What the hell do you mean, 'Hmm'?

"With all due respect, after hearing the background of House Rohanna from you just now, I feel even more uncomfortable getting involved in this matter."

"Uncomfortable? Is that truly how you feel?"

"Yes. When I came up to the capital, I resolved to live as quietly as a mouse. Even knowing this situation is obviously dangerous, I'm absolutely not the sort of passionate noble who'd devote himself to the Empire like my father or older brother."

However it may sound, this was the truth.

I'm neither a hero nor a patriot.

Professor Wilhelm wore a somewhat troubled expression.

Of course he did.

The image this old man had imposed on me all this time—the exemplary young patriot wearing the mask of a barbarian—had just been smashed to pieces by my own words.

'What isn't, isn't.'

If I cleared my throat here and answered, 'Ahem, I will devote myself to looking after Rohanna,' I might get grabbed by the collar and forced into the military tomorrow.

'Am I crazy?'

But then.

Entirely unexpected words suddenly sprang from Professor Wilhelm's mouth.

"Good."

"……Yes? What do you mean, good?"

"Then how about this?"

"……?"

Professor Wilhelm set down his teacup and stared at me impassively.

"Then let's make it a deal."

"……Pardon?"

All of a sudden?

What kind of back-alley haggling was coming from the mouth of a true soldier who had been talking about patriotism a moment ago?

"……What kind of deal are you talking about?"

I asked again, furrowing my brow deeply.

'What can this man possibly offer me that he's talking about a deal?'

Is he offering to exempt me from military service? Or an A+ in Introduction to Tactical Theory?

'Introduction to Tactical Theory is already an A+.'

Even if it were military exemption, I could just stubbornly refuse to go, couldn't I?

Unlike before, I'd firmly established myself in the School of Magic.

That was precisely when I finished preparing to argue against it in my head.

Professor Wilhelm calmly spoke several conditions aloud.

"……"

And the moment he finished speaking.

A heavy silence filled the laboratory.

I stared blankly at the old man's lips, my mouth hanging half open.

My brain stopped.

The resistance and instinct to flee that had been whirling fiercely in my mind were smashed to pieces by a giant hammer in the face of those conditions.

A little later.

A humiliating answer that betrayed my reason and convictions completely was forced from my lips.

"……Understood."

Clatter.

With trembling hands, I lifted my teacup.

I drained the remaining coffee in one gulp and shuddered at my paltry, vulgar self-interest.

"Heh heh. You're a man who knows how to talk, after all."

Professor Wilhelm regained his benevolent expression and smiled in satisfaction.

It was the leisurely air of someone who had established a thorough give-and-take, entirely different from when he'd been going on about patriotism a moment ago.

"Then I shall look forward to it. Don't take it too much to heart."

Does that make any sense?

Saying you look forward to it while telling me not to feel burdened?

Who knows why everyone above company commander rank is like this.

"……Yes. I'll make sure to treat her properly and courteously, without disappointing your expectations."

"Good. You may go."

* * *

My gait down the corridor was no different from that of a drunk staggering out of a drinking party in a traditional market.

"Haa, fuck, seriously."

I thought I'd been reincarnated into a romance-fantasy novel, so why had the genre suddenly picked up political-thriller, spy, and terrorist-story seasoning?

My head throbbed.

The after-date with Sophia scheduled for this weekend.

The one where I'd forgotten that Lucius said he'd arrange the place and time, and had even gotten my elder brother to recommend Argen Botanical Garden.

'Is it really okay for me to go through with this?'

I want to run away.

I want to go home.

Not my house in the capital, but the one in my hometown.

Creeeak.

"Ah, Sir Cassian!"

When I opened the door to my private laboratory, Lily, who had been sitting by the window reading a book, spotted me and rose, her face lighting up.

At her feet, the trio of small animals were rolling around and playing with walnut shells they'd apparently scavenged from somewhere earlier.

"……I'm back."

As I tossed off my outer coat in a lifeless voice and slumped down onto the sofa.

Patter-patter.

Lily immediately came over to my side and knelt beside me.

Her pastel light-green eyes anxiously examined my complexion.

"You look terrible. Are you feeling sick?"

"No. I'm not sick."

I rested my head against the back of the sofa and closed my eyes.

"It's just that my head hurts a little. I have so many things to worry about that my brain cells seem to have declared a strike."

"Your head?"

Swoosh.

Suddenly, I felt a warm, soft touch on my forehead.

When I opened my eyes slightly, Lily was checking my forehead with her small hands.

"You don't have a fever……"

After murmuring with an extremely serious expression, she asked me,

"Did Professor Wilhelm scold you badly? Or was training with Professor Iris too grueling?"

"It's not that. The world is just bullying me too much."

At my frivolous complaint, Lily let out a pretty little giggle.

"The world is bullying Sir Cassian? Someone as amazing as you, who uses such incredible magic?"

"Amazing, my ass. I'm just everyone's punching bag."

"Hehe!"

Well, would you look at that.

She giggled, perhaps because she found the phrasing funny.

"Then, Sir Cassian."

"Yes."

"Shall I brew you some warm black tea? Or would you like to sleep a little? I'll quietly keep watch over you."

I gently removed the hand she'd been resting on my forehead and smiled faintly.

"Please make me a cup of tea. Something sweet."

"Yes! I'll bring it right away!"

Watching Lily's retreating back as she hurried toward the kitchenette, I drew a deep breath.

I'll think about the complicated stuff later.

Whether it was the terrorist organization or House Rohanna.

For now, I just wanted to savor this cozy rest a little longer.

Clatter, clatter.

From the kitchenette came the peaceful sounds of Lily washing a teacup and measuring out tea leaves.

I rested my neck against the sofa and quietly closed my eyes, peering into my complicated thoughts.

'Think. Let's think this through.'

I slowly began going over the conversation we'd had in Professor Wilhelm's laboratory.

A covert family of the state. A massive axis moving the Imperial Family's logistics and military funds.

And.

'The Red Moon Liberation Front.'

One of the main episodes from the original novel that had suddenly lodged itself in my mind.

The fact that House Rohanna had been entangled with the insane terrorist organization that drenched the entire Empire in blood.

I pressed hard between my brows.

I completely understood why Lucius had so desperately pushed Sophia at me, and the vicious survival instinct underlying that heartrending sibling affection.

But.

'Something feels a little off……'

As I fit the fragments of my memories together one by one with my eyes closed, I was suddenly seized by a strange sense of incongruity.

The source of that unease lay not outside me, but in my own mind—in my memories themselves.

'Wait a second.'

A little earlier, when Professor Wilhelm had mentioned Rohanna.

And when I'd heard that their role was that of a covert organization handling military logistics throughout the forward regions.

The plot from the latter half of the original novel had played through my mind like a film, scene by scene.

That chilling line Crown Prince Louis had uttered as he executed the Rohanna family, the perpetrators behind the terrorist attacks.

-"The weight of the crimes of insulting the Imperial Family and treason is not something we can overlook, even for a meritorious family. I will tear Rohanna out by the roots from the Empire."

A sentence that matched perfectly, without even a single word out of place.

The line breaks and even the font weight of the text I'd read on a smartphone screen in my previous life were vividly clear enough to raise goosebumps.

"……"

I abruptly opened my closed eyes.

A cold chill slowly crept up along my spine.

"……This wasn't something I just happened to remember, was it?"

I swallowed hard.

Could the human brain, no matter how brilliant, really recall a passage from a web novel I'd casually read as killing time in my previous life twenty-odd years ago, perfectly, without getting a single word wrong?

And at precisely the moment that crucial information capable of determining whether I lived or died surfaced?

'This isn't something to handwave as plot convenience.'

I know myself.

My neurons and synapses hadn't admirably gone all out and dredged up the memory from my unconscious in a crisis.

It was as if someone had

'artificially implanted only that section into my memory and brought it back?'

A chill ran through me when I realized it.

I scratched the back of my head, horrified at myself for having casually brushed aside every memory related to the original novel with a mere, 'Oh, right, that's how it was.'

Why hadn't I thought this was strange until now?

Since the absurdly overpowered cheat ability called the Fixer existed, had I simply taken vivid memories from my previous life for granted as an ordinary transmigration perk?

"Ha."

I let out a hollow laugh.

'Fuck. Come to think of it, even when I first remembered my previous life at the capital banquet, it happened all of a sudden.'

The terrace of the capital banquet hall.

The place where Elysia had been crying after Crown Prince Louis coldly abandoned her.

The moment when the woman I'd comforted there appeared with Louis and was revealed to be Elysia von Rosenberg.

Even then, it had been as if a bomb had exploded in my mind, lightning had struck, and all the memories of my previous life and the original novel's settings had poured in at once.

I had been living a perfectly ordinary life in House Farne's territory until I was twenty, happily digging potatoes.

Why had I only become aware of my transmigration at that precise moment when I'd come up to the capital and become entangled with the main characters?

'It wasn't a coincidence.'

A trigger.

A specific person, a specific keyword, a specific event.

Only when I encountered those things was the sealed data in my mind forcibly unlocked and injected into me.

So all these circumstances I was experiencing weren't the drifting journey of an unfortunate extra who had fallen into an ordinary novel.

'Someone is drip-feeding me only the information I need, forcing me to move across this fucked-up mess.'