C183
I couldn't believe the memories of Liena unfolding before my eyes.
If Leandro were to introduce Liena to the daughter of Count Wallace, wouldn't that be Ethel?
Indeed, in this life, which was Liena's second life, I met Liena with Leandro as the daughter of Count Wallace.
So, what the hell is this memory and that person?
"Well, by the way."
At that moment, Liena in her memory looked at the "daughter of Count Wallace" who was eating in front of her.
"I think Lady Wallace is a very free-spirited person. My brother is a somewhat strict person, so I worry she might feel frustrated."
Then, the freckled cheeks of the woman who was cutting meat with a knife turned as red as a blush.
Just now, Liena was simply pretending to disgrace her brother and pointed out the woman's immature manners at the table.
To be honest, even to me, she didn't seem accustomed to aristocratic etiquette at meals.
"I-I'm sorry. I'll study more."
Liena responded to the woman's apology as if she really didn't know what was going on.
"Oh? What? Why are you apologizing?"
"... I just feel lacking in everything."
"Lady Wallace seems like a very nice person. Uh, then, what did you say your name was?"
"My name is Agatha Wallace."
"Please take care of me in the future, Agatha. If you marry Leandro, you'll become my sister-in-law, but I just want to be friendly and call you Agatha, is that okay?"
The air around the table became heavy due to Liena's rudeness in addressing her by name without permission.
Afterward, Leandro tried to change the subject, but the atmosphere couldn't be resolved, and an uncomfortable time passed.
"There's no need to be so harsh."
After Agatha left, Liena didn't hide her straightforward expression even in front of Leandro who came to see her.
"I told you from the beginning. I don't like this."
"You were the one who said you wanted to own the abandoned mine property of the Wallace family."
"I asked you to buy me a mine. Not to promise marriage."
"And so? This is the best way to get the abandoned mine while avoiding suspicion."
"Was it purely for me? Don't lie. Don't I know you? It was clearly improper of you to even talk about marrying the woman you met that day. It was not prudent at all."
"......"
"Why aren't you honest? You fell for her at first sight and proposed to her."
"... Well, yes. I don't know if it was love at first sight, but anyway, I was attracted to her."
"It's interesting. What does that woman named Agatha have that you fell for her? She's not very pretty and seems shy."
"It wasn't Miss Agatha."
"What?"
"When I first went to Count Wallace's house, the woman I met wasn't Miss Agatha."
"Then why did Agatha come to the house today? What happened to that girl who attracted my brother?"
"They said she disappeared."
Leandro's expression darkened.
"They said she vanished without a trace just a few days after my visit."
"Why?"
"I don't know either. Not even her family knew the reason."
"So, Agatha is her younger sister?"
"To be exact, her cousin. She's the niece of Count Wallace. I heard he adopted her not long ago."
"So, she didn't want to sever ties with our family, so she adopted her niece shortly after his daughter disappeared? Seems like a great family."
"Don't be so sarcastic."
"Do you want to be associated with such a greedy family when you don't even have that woman?"
"I can't help it. It's a marriage between families. I can't give it up hastily. Plus, my original purpose was to give you the abandoned mine."
"... Well, fine. Do as you wish, brother."
"After meeting her several times, I found out that Mrs. Agatha is a good and deep person. I'm sure she'll be a good hostess for Cassius."
The conversation between the two people, which left me even more confused, ended like this.
"Did Ethel disappear?"
Why? Did she run away because she couldn't bear the mistreatment from the Wallace family?
That was the only reason that came to my mind immediately, but there was no way to confirm it at the moment.
Meanwhile, Liena's memories continued.
Leandro married Agatha and, like me, they descended together to Cassius territory.
And the next memory was after a long time had passed and the relationship between Agatha and Liena had grown closer.
Agatha was like me, even passing by Cassius' house once a month for family meetings, except she didn't feel as distant from Cassius.
The fact that Liena was the center of Cassius remained the same since my time, but the Cassius family maintained a fairly decent relationship with Agatha.
"Ah, right."
Soon, I realized why.
The fundamental reason the Cassius family kept away from me was because of Liena, who was anxious to lose her family's love for me.
But Agatha wasn't me, so Liena didn't particularly distrust Agatha.
As her brother's wife, I would say he treats her with moderate kindness, but she doesn't seem very interested in her.
"It's somehow similar to the novel."
This was exactly the scene of the Cassius family that I imagined while reading <Return and Walk on a Path of Flowers>.
It was strange. Unlike the novel, Agatha, not Ethel, took her place, but the overall picture resembles the novel more...
At that moment, I realized like a lightning bolt.
The name Ethel is never explicitly mentioned in the novel.
Appearing as a supporting character, she was always known as the daughter of Count Wallace, Leandro's wife, or Liena's sister-in-law.
Even the usual description of her appearance was nonexistent.
"I simply thought it was Ethel."
The body she transmigrated into was the daughter of Count Wallace, and Leandro appeared and proposed to her, so she couldn't help but think that Ethel was Liena's sister-in-law in the novel.
A shiver ran down my spine as I felt that something I had firmly believed in for so long was being denied from its foundations.
If this assumption is correct, the character I thought was Ethel was Agatha from the beginning.
It wasn't Ethel's fate to become Leandro's wife.
I felt dizzy. If this weren't Liena's memory, I would have collapsed long ago.
"So, is this the content of the novel?"
If I hadn't transmigrated, would Liena's second life have unfolded according to the novel?
It was the most plausible inference that had occurred to me so far, but it still felt uncomfortable.
Why does the second life, which never happened, remain in Liena's soul in the form of memories?
Judging by what I had seen of her so far, Liena clearly didn't remember this life correctly.
And there was one more question.
What happened to the real Ethel?
I had to continue enjoying Liena's memories, which continued intermittently, holding an unsolved mystery.
As if to prove my assumption that this memory was Liena's second encounter in the novel, the whole situation unfolded according to the novel's content.
Without my intervention, Liena smoothly progressed down the path of success.
One by one, she knocked down Cassius' political enemies who stood in her way and turned the Iver group into the empire's top traders.
However, shortly after Liena defeated the false saint Arsia, she was hit by a desperate crisis.
Terence not only started a civil war in pursuit of power but also a monstrous wave erupted.
Even in a situation that could only be described as chaos, Liena never gave up.
With the help of many people, she finally led the civil war to Mikhail's victory and managed to defeat the evil apostle, the culprit behind the wave of monsters.
My impressions of witnessing that majestic and wonderful heroic story from the protagonist's point of view...
"It's a bit bland as expected."
This is what I felt when I read it in the book, but Liena overcame all these difficulties more easily than expected.
The rebels were reduced to a motley crew when their leader, Terence, lost his ability to lead due to increasingly severe headaches, and the apostle of the evil god also strangely fell below expectations.
The battle with Shadow was the most tense, but the evil apostle controlling Shadow came out in vain.
"The Liena I faced some time ago is much more persistent and terrifying."
While thinking that, I looked at the evil apostle of the evil god from the novel who fell after being stabbed by Liena's dagger.
It is said that, like Cassius, he was a human with demon blood and became an apostle after being noticed by the evil god.
In the reality I found myself in, Liena was chosen instead of this man.
He looked at Liena with mysterious eyes.
"Do you think this is the end?"
"It's over, so?"
"It's not over. Be afraid of the shadow of misfortune that will befall you until the end of your life..."
"Haha. I'm not afraid at all? Tell them to show up anytime. I'll crush them again!"
The death of the apostle. This was just as I saw it in the novel.
"That's true, but there's something..."
When I found the scene through memory, I saw things that weren't visible when I read it in writing.
A representative example was the apostle's attitude in warning Liena about the future.
In the novel, it was described as the final struggle of a loser, and Liena seemed to accept it as such, but for some reason, it seemed unsettling to me.
Rather than just cursing Liena, he seemed sure of her misfortune.
"As someone who knows something."
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