[Episode 2] - The Mad Queen Who Talks to a Mirror (1)
“...We shall sound the funeral bell and conduct the funeral service for Her Majesty Vivian Liliensol, the Second Queen.”
Dong— dong—
A solemn peal of bells rang out, piercing my ears. I was asleep, and at the sudden sound of bells, I frowned without realizing it. What lunatic was ringing a bell outside someone’s house?
“...Please come forward one at a time and bid Her Majesty the Queen your final farewell—”
Amid the loud voice that seemed to reverberate through a vast hollow, I could hear small murmurs as well. Like grumbling whispers, numerous voices tickled at my ears.
“In the end, His Majesty did not attend Her Majesty the Queen’s funeral. Even now, His Majesty still—”
“I’ve never seen such a shabby royal funeral. Who would look at this and think it was Her Majesty the Queen’s funeral? If someone who knew nothing saw it, they’d think some provincial noble had died.”
“Because of the rumors that Her Majesty the Queen was a witch—”
Whisper, whisper.
As my consciousness, sunken deep in sleep, slowly returned because of the bells and voices, I suddenly felt my throat choke up. It was as if my nose and throat were submerged in water; I couldn’t breathe properly.
Gurgle, gurgle. When I sucked in as much air as I could, the sound of water filling my lungs burst from my mouth. And once my consciousness had fully returned, the first thing I felt was maddening pain.
“Ghh—! Cough—!”
The water that had entered through my mouth and nose was agony.
The pain of suffocation.
The pain of water entering my lungs.
The water that had slipped past my airway and filled my lungs was excruciating. I had only woken up from sleep, yet the sudden pain made me think that if I didn’t get up right this instant, I might drown, so I sprang upright.
“Uwegh, uweeegh! Cough! Cough!”
As I retched as if vomiting up every fluid in my body, water carrying a fishy stench came gushing out of my mouth. Had someone dumped water on me while I was sleeping? Or had I been water tortured?
After I vomited up all the water and the pain eased a little, I seemed to understand what the smell in my mouth was. For some reason, I could taste the fishy smell of lake water and the odor of rotting earth in my mouth.
“Hah, hngh...!”
Why on earth? That question did not last long. The moment I tried to think about what had happened to me, I heard murmuring all around me.
When I lifted my head to check the source of the murmurs, through my vision blurred by tears, I saw the face of a little girl. A child who looked about five to seven years old.
The girl, with black hair and red eyes, was trembling as she stared at me. She was wearing an entirely black dress, and in one hand, she was clutching a single lily flower tightly.
“Uh..?”
Yes, just like a child who had come to a funeral.
“U-uaaagh!!”
“Kyaaaak!!”
“Wh-what is it..? What’s going on..?!”
The moment I let out that stupid sound, screams erupted around me. Looking elsewhere past the girl, I saw people dressed in black mourning clothes fleeing left and right without exception.
People had crowded at the large doors, shoving one another and fighting in a frenzy to get out first. I swallowed down the pain that felt as if it were tearing my insides apart and looked around.
A church?
A cathedral?
The interior of the building, which had the feel of a religious structure, was decorated with black cloth and white lilies, giving off the unmistakable air of a funeral.
Especially the place where I had been lying.
A long, hexagonal wooden box shaped like a coffin. Inside this wooden box were white lilies and all sorts of things that seemed to have been objects the deceased used in life.
‘...No, it really isn’t a bed. It’s a coffin, isn’t it..?’
......No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t understand any of this.
What was this fishy taste of water in my mouth? What were the clothes of the people screaming as they ran out? The clothes of the child trembling as she stared at me, the appearance of the building—none of it made any sense.
“What the hell... is going on..?!”
*
At first, I simply thought it was a dream.
I had heard that there were dreams where you could sometimes feel pain, so I was sure this whole situation was a dream, and the pain I felt was because I had become too immersed in it.
But as time passed, I did not wake up from the dream. Rather, the more the pain subsided, the clearer my various senses became. I could taste food, and I could even smell people’s perfume.
“It appears to be short-term memory loss due to trauma. Perhaps, as you recover, your memories will gradually—”
Sitting on the bed, I listened blankly to the middle-aged man in a white coat as I looked around the room. When I glanced to the side, I noticed a large full-length mirror hanging on the wall.
Reflected in the large full-length mirror was a vaguely familiar face. I slowly blinked, then waved my hand as a greeting to the person reflected in the mirror.
But when I waved, the woman reflected in the mirror naturally greeted me back as well, and when I blinked, the woman reflected in the mirror blinked in the same way and looked at me.
She looked slightly haggard, but even that haggardness seemed beautiful, which made me think she must be an incredible beauty. Golden hair that seemed to have been woven from strands of gold, and green eyes that seemed to contain verdure itself.
...As expected, no matter how I looked at it, it was a familiar face.
“Ahem!”
As I stared blankly at the mirror, the middle-aged man who had been diligently explaining memory loss cleared his throat loudly as if telling me to focus, then opened his mouth.
“Then I shall take my leave now. If you remember anything at all, no matter how trivial, please call for me at any time.”
“...All right.”
With those words, the middle-aged man in the white coat bowed his head and slipped out of the room. He made no effort to hide how bothersome he found this, merely rambling about memory loss and then ending it there.
“It’s not as if I have memory loss, though.”
I could clearly remember even what I ate for lunch yesterday. I rose from the enormous bed, large enough for five adult men to lie on comfortably, then turned my head and looked around the room.
The room was so luxurious that calling it extravagant was not enough. Well, considering where I was right now, this level of splendor was only natural.
From the arms of the sofa to the frames of the paintings, there was not a single minor detail that was not gilded. Even the candlestick by the bed gleamed gold, as if it too had been made of gold.
“Really... how lavish.”
Even the pajamas I had been changed into were so soft that I could barely feel I was wearing them. Judging by this state of mine, it seemed I held quite a high position in this place.
“...I suppose I have to admit it now.”
I did not want to accept such an unrealistic and illogical situation, but now a hypothesis I could no longer deny began to crawl up from one corner of my mind.
A story that would only appear in web novels or webtoons.
“To think I possessed someone...”
I grabbed my cheeks with both hands and stretched them out. When I pulled hard enough that it felt as if the flesh of my cheeks might tear off, tears pricked at my eyes. As expected, it wasn’t a dream.
The moment I accepted that this situation was reality, a sense of injustice surged up all at once. I slowly walked toward the large full-length mirror I had been looking at earlier.
When I stood in front of the mirror, a woman with venomous eyes glared at me. She wasn’t trying to glare; this woman’s default expression was simply that spiteful.
Eyes as venomous as a snake filled with poison, a sharply raised nose, and a pointed jawline. Her impression was already sharp, but her pale skin seemed to make that sharpness even harsher.
No wonder her face had felt familiar. Looking at her closely, I was certain.
Why on earth?
Of all people to possess, why did it have to be this woman’s body?
I raised my eyes and looked at the woman reflected in the mirror. Her expression was so fierce that, for a moment, I was frightened by the face in the mirror and swallowed dryly without realizing it.
“Wow, I’m losing my mind.”
The kingdom’s hopeless scoundrel, abandoned even by the king.
A mad narcissist who loved herself obsessively.
One of the only thirteen “witches” said to exist in this world.
“Why her?”
And...
The villain of “Snow White,” whose “death” was certain at the ending of the game or fairy tale.
“Why did it have to be this woman!! Usually, in a ‘child-rearing simulation game’ like this, you’d put me in the player character, the king!!”
Overwhelmed by despair, I threw myself onto the bed and rolled around. I kicked the bed with my feet, pulled the blanket over my head, and screamed at the top of my lungs.
Even screaming until my throat felt like it would burst did not make the despair disappear. Rather, the stinging pain that came to my throat each time I screamed seemed to be telling me, ‘This is reality, so give up.’
As I huffed and fumed in anger, my body must have grown exhausted, because my eyes slowly began to close. Yes, please, when I wake up after sleeping, let all of this have been a dream.
And so, inwardly, I even cried out the names of gods I had never believed in and prayed. Please, when I opened my eyes and woke up, let me return to my original male body.
*
Whether the gods did not exist.
Or whether the gods ignored my prayer.
When I opened my eyes to the chirping of birds, I was still the kingdom’s scoundrel, “Vivian Liliensol.”
Perhaps because I had slept, my cooled head began to accept reality. In order to live as “Vivian Liliensol” from now on, I absolutely needed someone’s help.
In web novels or webtoons, the person who possesses a body usually retains that body’s memories, but for some reason, I could not read “Vivian’s” memories.
So I desperately needed someone to help me.
“Phew...”
If this world truly was the world of the child-rearing simulation game “Snow White” that I knew, there was exactly one person who helped Vivian.
Could I call it a person?
You know.
The witch’s helper that exists even in the fairy tale.
I sprang up from the bed and walked back to the mirror I had kept looking at yesterday. The mirror still reflected Vivian Liliensol, who looked as if the word “spiteful” had turned into a person.
“Ahem!”
After clearing my throat, I looked at the mirror and whispered the “line” everyone knew. Because there was only one line the witch from “Snow White” said while looking at the mirror.
“Mi-mirror, mirror~ Who is the fairest person in this world..?”
......
But the mirror gave no reaction.
I felt so embarrassed that my entire body seemed to curl in on itself, but as far as I knew, this had to be “the mirror.” The huge full-length mirror in Vivian’s room was the only mirror like this.
I cleared my throat again and called out to the mirror in a lilting voice.
“Mirror, mirror~ Who is the fairest person in this world~?”
At that moment, the surface of the mirror began to ripple.
As if a drop of water had fallen into still water and created waves. When the rippling surface of the mirror began to calm, the mirror changed.
It was only natural for a mirror to reflect objects and mimic their appearance, but Vivian’s “mirror” was different. Once the ripples faded, the “Vivian Liliensol” reflected in the mirror began to move on her own.
The Vivian inside the mirror slowly opened her eyes, met my gaze, and opened her mouth.
—Blech.
“...Huh??”
The Vivian inside the mirror, who had opened her mouth, suddenly pretended to gag. As if she had heard something unbearable, she even covered her ears and frowned, then instead snapped at me.
—What is this?! What the hell?! Is the new Vivian also a crazy woman afflicted with narcissism?! Are you planning to make me repeat the same answer all day long like the previous Vivian?! Are you another crazy woman who won’t be satisfied unless, whenever you ask, “Who is the fairest in the world~?” I have to tell you hundreds of times a day, “The fairest woman in this world is you”?
“.....? Um, mi-mirror?”
—I can’t! I won’t! I can’t live like this anymore! I thought Vivian was finally dead, but then some strange person takes over Vivian’s body and tries to do the exact same thing as that woman! If that’s what you’re going to do, just kill me!!
At the sight of the Vivian in the mirror sprawled on the floor and bawling as if she were suffering from PTSD, I broke out in a cold sweat without realizing it. Just what in the world had Vivian done to make the mirror act like this?
I plopped down on the bed and decided to wait until the mirror’s fit stopped. I considered simply covering the mirror with a blanket, but if that made the mirror hate me, that would be bad.
And the mirror had clearly said this while looking at me.
The new Vivian.
‘This mirror... knows I possessed her, doesn’t it?’