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Side chapter 3.5: Memories from dreams within dreams, Part two
I fell down into the muddy world of sleep. In the darkness, beautiful yet lurid colors were overlapping. If this is a visualization of my own spirit, even I feel that it’s quite bleak. I’m not quite able to describe it accurately with words, but it was a twisted sight, that seemed terribly hollow to me.
Even though I was so immersed in my dream world, strangely my mind still retained quite a sharp sense for emotion. It feels like while I’m asleep, my heart is shriveling.
Memory bubbles appeared again out of somewhere, they were wriggling. What will I see this time, I wonder. At any rate, I had no way of resisting, so I’ll just quietly watch them obediently.
They were some pretty old memories. It happened when I had been just a little older than I am now.
In front of the young girl that used to be me, was her younger sister that was scratching in pain at herself due to the effect of some plant. The girl was watching the sight in horror.
The girl’s younger sister had been playing at a shallow river. Her whole family was out that day on a picnic. Her parents noticed that her younger sister was violently thrashing about in the river, and came running over. My father forced my younger sister to throw up by sticking a finger down her mouth, while my mother called an ambulance.
Her younger sister had accidentally swallowed some leaves of the hemlock growing by the water’s edge. It seems that some of the leaves had fallen into the water, so she swallowed them along with the river water.
It’s an extremely clear memory. Even though my memories had begun fading after I reincarnated, this is one of the clearest memories that I can recall. I had used this memory to kill my entire family.
Even just a few tiny leaves had almost killed my younger sister. When I had shredded maybe hundreds of the leaves into the soup, it was a memory that remained carved into my mind even up to now.
Without paying attention to my feelings, the memories kept changing on me to new scenes.
“Oh? ……So there was this type of game as well.”
The girl was holding a video game controller pointed at a TV screen. The 3D CG character looked pretty good on the screen, and places that seemed like western palaces were beautifully displayed on the screen as well. In front of all this scenery, was the girl that was the heroine of this game.
“- If you take this path and turn right, the crown prince should be there.”
Next to the girl, her younger sister was giving her information on the game’s capture targets. Even though the girl really didn’t care for spoilers about characters and story that she hadn’t seen yet, her younger sister kept blabbing on.
Maybe it was that she sensed that her older sister was approaching death, and that she wanted to have more conversation time together.
“If you listen to the crown prince, you’ll also learn about the military commander-in-chief’s grandson. But, you won’t be able to go down the crown prince path then.”
On the screen was a young boy with blonde hair. It seems that he’s the crown prince.
The screen darkened as some conversation choices popped up, while an image of the crown prince remained on the left side. It seems that there’s different screens for when the characters are conversing with each other.
“Hey, Emilia Rindarl. What’s up?”
Although the lines had voice acting, the voice actor acting the part sounded a bit unnatural. The girl furrowed her eyebrows as she went to the options menu, and turned the voice acting to the OFF option.
“Ah, wait.”
The girl ignored her younger sister’s objection. The tone of the male voice had sounded a bit too flirtatious, and the girl felt uncomfortable at that.
This is quite a long memory. Even though I didn’t want to see it, the memory continued on. Still, I couldn’t avert my gaze. Even if I tried to pay no attention to it, I wouldn’t be able to pretend to forget about it immediately. My heart was pounding.
Even though I didn’t want to see it and tried to resist, I couldn’t move even a finger. Even though I’m feeling distressed, this time I wasn’t able to escape.
The game’s BGM suddenly changed, to a much more aggressive soundtrack. A girl in a gaudy dress with black hair and sharp eyes appeared. She had a much different type of design from any character that had appeared so far.
“Ah, it’s Elisa.”
The girl’s younger sister suddenly muttered that, and the girl learned that Elisa was the heroine’s rival and enemy.
There was a noise ringing in my head. The fog was already fading from my head, and I just kept staring at the remnants of this piece of memory in my mind.
I can’t say that the person on the screen merely looked like me. After all, the person on the screen really had been “me.”
The moment she appeared, it was made clear that she was the heroine Emilia’s enemy. She’s always dressed in vulgar and gaudy clothing, and has a twisted, evil personality. She would feign politeness while getting in the way of the relationship between the crown prince and the daughter of the archduke from the neighboring country.
That was the type of character that Elisa Kardia was.
“daughter of the archduke from the neighboring country”
This makes me think that in the otome game somehow what happened instead was:
-Elisa’s father, still alive, either opposed or was neutral to accepting the refugee, leading to the decision that the country would reject them.
-The Densel dukedom would eradicate the shiru tribe and would stay on peaceful terms with the Arxia kingdom as a result.
-Since they are in peaceful terms it would not lead to conflict with the Rindarl union as a whole.
-Emilia Rindarl being the daughter of the archduke was most likely sent there for diplomatic reasons, showing a wish for peace in sending the archduke’s daughter studying there.