Embarrassing was embarrassing.
I couldn’t stop asking questions about this place, where I knew nothing. Fortunately, it seemed none of the questions I asked put Hwaya in a difficult position.
“Miss Hwaya, you’re a fox… right? The physician was different.”
“Yes. That’s right, my lady. The physician came on a house call from another mountain.”
“Then is it different for each mountain? What should I call people like that?”
“There isn’t any particular name that refers to us. We’re simply known as mysterious beings. We only distinguish our affiliations by the names of the mountains in the regions where we dwell.”
She answered everything I asked as sincerely as she could. Of course, it might simply have been that I hadn’t asked anything difficult for her to answer.
Still, I could feel that she genuinely wanted to resolve my questions as much as possible.
And so, lying there, my question time with Hwaya continued. The moment I asked, “Why are there beings settled on every mountain?”
—Grrrrumble.
“Oh my.”
A sound loud enough for someone else to hear flowed out from my stomach.
According to what she’d told me, I had been asleep for a month and hadn’t eaten anything, and just now I’d even done something reckless with this weakened body. There was no way I wouldn’t be hungry.
“My lady. Shall I go to the kitchen and bring back something light for you to eat?”
On top of that, Hwaya seemed happy that I was feeling hunger. She looked more delighted than I had ever seen her so far.
Even if I refused and said I was fine, she would surely come up with all sorts of reasons and go to the kitchen anyway. It was also true that I was hungry, so there was no reason to refuse.
“Would you?”
“I’ll be right back, my lady.”
After bowing to me, Hwaya rose from her seat and was about to leave, but then she paused. She picked up a small rectangular object from the table and held it out to me. Without thinking, I extended both hands and received it.
A woman I had never seen before was reflected in the object she handed me.
Her skin was so white it looked bloodless and pale, and with the dark shadows beneath her eyes, she looked so sickly it was pitiful. Strands of unkempt black hair clung here and there to that skin.
Even so, her large eyes, which made it clear she was beautiful, and the delicate features gathered neatly together were all captured in the small mirror.
“Please look in the mirror while I’m gone. You might remember something.”
“I-I will.”
“The physician will remain posted in front of the door and keep checking on you even while I’m away, so don’t worry, my lady.”
“All right.”
Though she was only going to the kitchen, Hwaya seemed so worried that she couldn’t leave the room. Only after I gently raised my hand to her did she disappear.
At last, I could be alone. The rat beastman physician was still waiting in front of the door, but inside the room, I had been left by myself.
“So this is me…”
Wow. I just said something incredibly transmigrator-like. I had thought it was such a cliché line, but now that it had become my own situation, I realized it was only natural for such words to come out.
Because this appearance was completely different from my original one. Whatever emotion this sight stirred in me, a line like that was bound to slip out.
At least the color of the eyes seemed similar to my original appearance. But dark brown eyes were basically the default for Asians. So maybe that was meaningless.
“Hello.”
I lowered my voice as much as I could so the physician outside the room wouldn’t hear, and greeted the mirror.
Not myself reflected in the mirror, but Ryu Sua.
“And I’m sorry.”
I’ve completely ruined your image right from the start.
No matter if you two were promised to be married, a woman who was so terrified of him that she fainted must have been rather off-putting. I apologize.
But I’m probably going to have a great many more things to apologize for from now on.
Far from throwing me something like a status window and calling it a transmigrator’s privilege, I can’t even recall Ryu Sua’s original memories. For a pitiful person like me, the goodwill that comes from her existing relationships is a lifeline I absolutely have to protect.
I had only ever lived surrendering myself to the comforts of the modern world. If I’m thrown defenseless into a world whose name I don’t even know, will I be able to safely hold out until I find a way back to my original world or settle down in this one?
At this rate, in less than a week, there won’t be a body left for you to return to. Or maybe you’ll end up not wanting to come back at all.
So I’m going to stay here.
I won’t blindly deny and push away your original relationships, or run away in the middle of the night. I won’t throw a fastball at the male lead by saying, “I’m not Ryu Sua!” I’m different from those other transmigration protagonists.
I’ll remain here as Ryu Sua, who has lost her memories. I’ll pretend to be you and deceive everyone.
From now on, I’ll detestably raise the corners of my mouth and trample into the precious relationships you built, enjoying them as I please. I’ll drink in the goodwill of this maid named Hwaya, who is worried about me and explaining this and that to me, the sympathy called the love of a monster fox.
Even though, because the person inside is a man. Because I am not Ryu Sua. I won’t be able to give them a single thing they truly want.
I’ll remain here in a cowardly, filthy way.
Because I don’t know what state you’re in right now.
You may already be dead, or perhaps because of me, you simply can’t wake up. Maybe I just can’t feel you, and you’re watching me even now.
Even so, I don’t have the余裕 to be considerate of you. Don’t forgive me.
I’ll simply hope that I safely return to my original world, that this body safely returns to you, and that you can continue your love.
Unlike other transmigration protagonists, there’s no way I, a man, will truly fall in love.
So don’t worry too much.
***
Hwaya, who had left the room saying she would go to the kitchen, passed the physician and turned the corner at the end of the corridor, where she found a snow-white man sitting on the floor.
Her master. Sohwi, the ruler of Horyeongsan, where all foxes gathered.
The one who had no equal in the vicinity of Horyeongsan was now sitting on the floor in a truly pathetic manner, jiggling his leg.
“Instead of sitting here like this, why don’t you go inside the room?”
“She mustn’t harm her health because of me. For today, this is enough.”
Hwaya thought it was truly absurd that he was pretending to be considerate when, in truth, he simply couldn’t bring himself to enter because it pained him to see the woman he loved look at him with fear.
Of course, when that woman had looked at Hwaya as if she were someone she had never seen before, let alone remembered her name, Hwaya herself had nearly collapsed on the spot, so she could understand him to some degree.
Still, she had faced her directly and even exchanged words with her.
The disloyal worry of whether it was truly all right to marry off the child she had carried on her back and raised as a nursemaid to a master showing such a pitiful sight rose in her again.
Even so, she had to send her off. Was he not the man loved by her mistress… and by the pretty daughter who had called her Mother? Even conceding a hundred times, the bride was too good for him.
Recalling for the first time in a long while the worry she had entertained every day until Sua was injured, Hwaya only then truly felt that her lady had regained consciousness.
And also, painfully, that her lady had lost all her memories of this place.
“How was Sua’s condition?”
“I cannot be certain, but…”
That fact sank in bone-deep.
“At the very least, she cannot remember anything from this place.”
“I thought as much. Sua was a child who yelled at me even at our first meeting. And?”
Sohwi, too, had naturally learned that much while observing the situation from outside the room until she woke again.
To begin with, even the physician who had exchanged only a few words with her could know that much.
But the two people who had watched her longer than anyone else knew best that such a simple fact could not be all there was.
“And so, though it was insolent of me… I dared to test my lady.”
“I understand.”
Naturally, the rest followed.
“Even though she has no memories, she has no trouble conversing, and she seemed to understand the word ‘check.’”
A secret about Ryu Sua that, in this mansion, only the two of them had heard directly from her before she lost her memories.
“It seems that only the memories of her previous life remain.”
“As expected? Haa… She did seem that way.”
The two of them, who knew that she had begun a new life while retaining the memories of her previous life, naturally realized that the only thing left to her now was those memories.
“Should we consider it fortunate that she hasn’t forgotten everything? Or…”
And that fact could not help but strike the two of them all the more heavily. After all.
“Am I supposed to court Sua while she has the awareness that she is a man?”
“You have already done it once, so what is the problem?”
“Back then, at least she had the awareness of being a daughter engraved into her by her deceased parents. Now she does not.”
They also knew everything about the fact that, in her previous life, she had been a man.
“Wait… Then does that mean I must start again from the days when the young lady was shy around strangers?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
And they knew everything about what eccentric acts she had carried out up until now.
“Then she won’t run away from home again, will she?”
“Absolutely not. Absolutely. Do you know how much trouble we went through when she ran away last time? This body cannot leave the vicinity of Horyeongsan, so I cannot even go look for her myself!”
“If that happens, I will go search with the grand madam again, so you may be anxious all by yourself.”
“Hwaya. Have you not been disloyal to me lately?”
“I may be your servant, Master, but I am also my lady’s new mother, am I not?”
Now that she had forgotten all the eccentric acts she had committed and the dark history that followed, the future that might unfold once again was truly worrisome—yet it also carried the scent of memories that brought a smile to their faces.