Chapter 4

Entering a monastery.

The very day I decided on that, I was about to climb into a carriage.

Since I had made up my mind, sooner was better.

“There’s no need to be so hasty…!”

Father stepped out in front of the entrance with a bewildered expression.

It was appreciated that he came to see me off. Since entering the monastery right away would likely mean parting for this lifetime, it seemed he wanted to cherish our farewell.

Mother had also come out to the front porch.

She hadn’t visited my room earlier, but since it was breakfast time, perhaps she had been waiting in the dining hall?

“Even if you are entering a monastery, couldn’t you take more time to prepare? You are just a child, so you wouldn’t know, but there are ranks even among monasteries that accept noble daughters.”

I knew that.

Though I looked like a child now, I had already experienced various things.

Monasteries whose primary purpose was to accept noble daughters were different from ordinary ones; they possessed luxurious structures. They were built so that the noble daughters who entered them could spend their days free of any inconvenience.

Maintaining such facilities required enormous donations, and naturally, those funds were paid by the parents of the noble daughters who entered the monastery.

He must have been thinking that an ignorant daughter like me wouldn’t understand such things…

“I understand. Entering a monastery for nobles requires the appropriate advance arrangements and funds, doesn’t it?”

“Knowing that…!”

“However, I have already caused Father and Mother a great deal of trouble. I cannot impose wasteful expenses any further and continue piling up burdens upon you.”

“What are you saying?! Then what do you intend to do?!”

With Mother maintaining her silence in the background, my final conversation ended up being exchanged solely with Father.

“I plan to enter an ordinary monastery, not one for nobles. It doesn’t require donations. As long as I have a pious heart to serve God, they will welcome me.”

“That’s absurd!”

Father exclaimed as if crying out in distress.

“Elt… who on earth put these ideas into your head? It is true that monasteries for nobles are just names in name only. They are a kind of isolation facility used to corral spoiled, self-indulgent noble daughters in luxury. Real monasteries meant for offering devotion to God are entirely different.”

“That’s right. Bound by strict rules, I will have to perform all labor necessary for survival by myself. Luxury is considered a vice, and I will have to live a poor life, making it a harsh environment for someone pampered as a duke’s daughter.”

“Are you saying you are aware of all that?”

Exactly.

Even so, no matter how harsh and impoverished a life awaited me, I felt it wouldn’t make much difference compared to staying here.

Remaining a noble daughter who couldn’t use magic, scorned and looked down upon by everyone, and living on while enduring that humiliation.

And I already knew that at the end of desperately enduring all of that, there was nothing waiting for me.

Rather than repeating unrewarded endurance once more, living a life that sought solace in faith, harsh and impoverished though it might be, still allowed me to hold onto some hope.

This second life, for which I still couldn’t explain the reason.

If it was something given to me by God, I felt it would be fitting to live on with gratitude for it.

“That is why I am going unto God. Father, Mother, thank you for keeping a failure like me in this house until now.”

“Such a way of speaking…!”

“Because it is the truth.”

If I were my past self, I never would have spoken such words aloud.

I knew it as a fact, but I stubbornly refused to admit it. Admitting it would mean denying my very self.

Was it because I had died once that I could accept it so smoothly now?

Or perhaps I simply wanted to make amends.

In my previous life, I had hurt many people in order to become Crown Princess. A monastery might be the ideal place to repent for those sins.

“As my final piece of selfishness, I will borrow the carriage for the journey to the monastery. Please live your lives in peace from now on.”

I turned on my heel and placed my foot on the carriage step.

At that very instant, I was yanked back from behind.

“You cannot!”

“Mother?”

Mother pulled me tightly into her arms.

Because of this, I couldn’t move and was unable to board the carriage.

She had remained silent the entire time, so why suddenly?

“Elt is my daughter! No matter what anyone says, you are my child! I will never let you go!!”

She wept like a child, hugging me as if refusing to hand me over to anyone.

I was utterly bewildered, having never once seen Mother show such intense emotion.

…Could it be that on the eve of my execution in my past life, the reason only Father came to visit while Mother was nowhere to be seen was because…

Because she had wept as violently as she was doing now, and nothing could be done?

“Even when we learned you had no magic, she wept just like that. Saying, ‘She is my daughter’ and ‘I won’t let her go anywhere.’”

Father said, his voice strained with pain.

“You were still too young to understand, so you probably don’t remember. Being born a noble without any magical power is unprecedented. Whether to secretly send you away as an adopted child, or to put you to death—if one puts the family above all else, anyone would think of that as the safest and most sensible course.”

Indeed.

Mother had immediately arrived at that very thought, which was why she had resisted.

I, too, had harbored a lingering doubt for a long time.

Why on earth had they kept someone like me—“one with no magic”, something that should have been impossible for a noble family in this country—housed under their roof without disowning me?

“…Perhaps I raised you wrong.”

Father said.

Those were the exact same words I had heard from him last in my previous life.

“Elt’s efforts were far too agonizing to behold, and it made me hesitant to offer clumsy words. You are truly a hardworking daughter. You constantly sought out what you needed to do, and once you found it, you hesitated not at all in heading toward it. You would always dash forward with such breathless earnestness.”

“That’s not…”

I started to say “not true,” but trailed off and clamped my mouth shut.

I had become obsessed with the idea that becoming Crown Princess was the only path to prove my nobility, and in my reckless frenzy, I had hurt countless people, ultimately destroying even myself.

If someone called that running wild beyond all reason, I wouldn’t be able to argue against it.

“We should have talked with you much more. Even now, you’ve jumped to your own conclusions and are trying to slip away from us. You should consult your parents more often. After all, you are still a child.”

“Yes.”

“When you said you were going to stop studying magic, there was more I wanted to say. Let me finish that now.”

Saying this, Father bent his knees and lowered his gaze until it met mine.

“Won’t you come home to our territory?”

“To the territory?”

“Yes, our own domain granted to the Eldenvalk family by the royal family, far away from this royal capital. Many nobles live in the capital. Because of that, someone like you who cannot use magic stands out and becomes a target for heartless rumors. But the moment you step even a step outside the capital, the people there are mostly commoners. Only nobles can use magic. Seen through the eyes of commoners who have little to do with magic, you are not all that unusual.”

Where we currently lived was the royal capital.

In my previous life, I had spent almost my entire life without taking a single step outside the capital.

I had assumed it was only natural for nobles to live in the capital, which was precisely why I believed that if a magicless person like me even stopped living in the capital, I would cease to be a noble entirely.

“In truth, I probably should have retreated to our domain much earlier. Yet, drawn in by the lingering hope that you might somehow acquire magic later in life, I dragged my feet and stayed behind. Before we knew it, you had grown old enough to understand things, and you yourself became desperate to gain magic.”

And so my parents hadn’t been able to say anything to stop me.

Because they were trying to honor my feelings.

Now that I thought about it, the vast majority of the citizenry were commoners, which meant the vast majority of the population couldn’t use magic.

Yet, due to the very nature of a capital city, the royal capital where we lived gathered a multitude of nobles and hosted intensely active social circles.

That was precisely why an anomalous existence like me became an object of morbid curiosity.

“Of course, I won’t banish Elt to the territory alone. Mother and I are coming too. Family belongs together. That is why I would never send you away to a monastery.”

“But if you do that… what about Father’s work in the royal capital…?”

“Managing our territory is also a splendid duty for a noble. No one has any right to complain if I focus my efforts there. Especially since, right now, I don’t hold any particular official post at the castle anyway.”

Could it be that Father…

Had remained without a post precisely so that he could take me and return to the territory at any moment?

Even though some nobles would offer their own daughters up in political marriages just to secure high government offices.

“Whatever the reason might be… what parent would ever abandon their child?”

How foolish I was…

In my previous life, I hadn’t realized any of that, simply rushing forward all by myself.

I hadn’t realized that I was loved.

I should have listened to what others had to say much more.

If my past self had done that, I wouldn’t have had to go through such a foolish rampage.

No, time had been rewound.

The many people who had been hurt by me in my past life—that very fact itself would be erased, and they ought to be starting over with new lives.

Wasn’t the true meaning of this rewound time to pray that those people could safely live happy lives?

That was the utmost a foolish daughter, striving to aim for the Crown Princess position despite lacking magic, could possibly do.

“I understand, Father, Mother. I will go to the territory.”

Thus, the shape of my life began to change dramatically from what it had been the first time around.