A Personal Story

Now then, Emi.

First, let me introduce myself properly once more.

My name is Nare.

Nare Luclees.

Head of the Luclees family.

A girl, 16 years old.

......Physically, at least.

When you say the Luclees family, that means a powerful family that has owned and run the Makarinkis ore mines for generations, here in the Saryunas Kingdom.

As the only daughter of such a family, I was, in other words, an elite whose future was promised from birth.

Naturally, I was disciplined most strictly by my mother, the previous head.

My mother...... Torre Luclees, was a capable woman, but she was short on warmth and blind to the subtleties of the human heart.

Apparently, she was quite harsh to her subordinates, including Doj, and the same went for that man, my father, Sarelka.

My father especially, you see, was no good at his work.

That man was the fourth son of a wealthy merchant here in this country, too, and he should have had a decent education, though.

The fact that his timid personality and my mother's arrogant and cold personality were a fatally bad match, leaving him in an environment where he couldn't excel...... that might be true, but still.

Every time my mother saw Sarelka's face, she berated and abused him, and that man would shrink into himself, unable to argue back.

To me, that was what a married couple was.

In other words, I grew up in a rather warped home to begin with.

Eventually, that man all but lived at the house of his mistress, Fateu, and stopped coming home to this mansion.

My mother left a man like that to his own devices the whole time.

In my mother's mind, that man's role had probably already ended the moment I was born.

She didn't care in the slightest that a half-sister by another mother, almost my own age, had been born.

Now then, such was my mother.

When her end came, it was ever so abrupt.

One time, a cave-in occurred in the mines.

My mother, who had gone on an inspection, was caught in it and never came back alive.

I was surprised, and I was sad.

No matter how harsh a person she had been, to me, Torre Luclees was still my mother, after all.

My only family, too.

My father?

There's no way I'd recognize someone who doesn't come home as family, is there?

Well, anyway, back then I was hopelessly, just a little girl.

A perfectly ordinary little girl, mourning and grieving the death of her mother.

That's why I was shocked to the core, and indignant too.

When that man, Sarelka, who hadn't helped with the funeral or shown his face at the service at all, suddenly came to me demanding something like ‘Hand the family headship over to me, your father’, that time, I mean.

In this country, the family headship is inherited by the rightful heir.

For my father, a man who married into the family, to inherit this house requires the consent of me, the rightful heir.

Of course, that sort of thing, it isn't unheard of.

After all, I, though my mother had raised me strictly, was a 16-year-old little girl.

My father would act in my place until I gained experience and grew up.

Normally, that would make perfect sense.

But, you see, the man in question was a no-good man who couldn't do his job and didn't even come home.

Naturally, a demand like that, there was no way I could swallow.

‘Screw that,’ I said, cursing him out pretty foully.

Then, what do you think that man did?

He pulled a knife from inside his coat, you see, and said this.

‘If you don't want to die, do as I say!’

Hahaha, thinking back on it now, it's impressive that such a cowardly man could actually do that.

Apparently, he was being egged on by Fateu, but anyway, it was behavior completely unlike that man.

A cowardly father musters every ounce of courage to point a blade, and the one he points it at is his own daughter: a really unfunny joke, isn't it?

Hm?

What is it, Emi, has your father pointed a blade at you too?

Hahaha, oh dear! My condolences!

I feel a sort of kinship.

Now, as for me.

The daughter with a knife pointed at her, Nare Luclees, was, at the time, helplessly just a little girl.

The sudden transformation of a man who was usually so jittery had me completely terrified, you see.

I ran.

To the head's study room.

And there, I locked the door and barricaded myself in.

Fortunately, the mansion's keys were kept in the head's study room, so with this, that man could no longer lay a finger on me.

Inside that room, I did nothing but tremble in fear.

Thanks to my mother's harsh personality, even I, her daughter, had been hated within the mansion all along.

I didn't have a single ally. I couldn't trust anyone.

I was so confused I couldn't think of anything, and I just trembled, shaking and shivering.

This state continued for about a week.

Food?

There were some baked sweets in the study room's cupboard, so I survived by eating those.

As for water, I managed by eating the snow piled on the window ledge.

Now, during that week, Sarelka did pretty much whatever he liked.

First, he announced to those around him that I had ‘followed her mother in death’.

This one, you see, was an awfully thoughtless move.

If I ever stepped outside, this lie would be exposed immediately.

But Sarelka had been egged on by Fateu, who told him, ‘If you can't take the headship, kill her’.

Apparently, he couldn't tell his mistress, ‘She got away and barricaded herself in’, so he told a lie.

This haphazard behavior is truly characteristic of that man.

And then Sarelka brings his mistress's family to this mansion and starts living here.

There were no servants who opposed this.

The senior staff who had served the Luclees family for many years had already been dismissed by Sarelka.

The servants, for their part, couldn't keep up with my mother's harsh ways, and apparently their loyalty to the house had vanished completely too.

This whole staff purge apparently went surprisingly smoothly.

Now, on the flip side, there's me.

After a whole week shut up in a room, your head does cool down a bit, and the stock of baked sweets in the cupboard runs out.

At long last, I had no choice, but to leave the room.

I was surprised, you know?

When I peeked at the state of the mansion, Fateu and Keranko were acting like they owned the place, and most of the servants I knew were gone.

That this was bad, even a mere little girl could tell.

But while I was panicking, I noticed that one single servant who had served the mansion since my mother's day was still working.

So, I secretly went to that man to seek help.

That was Doj.

Seeing me, Doj was surprised.

A person he had been told was dead had secretly visited his room in the middle of the night, so of course he was surprised.

And what did Doj do?

Surprised as he was, he invited me into his room.

Then, he offered me a chair, telling me to calm down for the time being.

The dim-witted girl lets her guard down completely and sits in the chair just as she's told.

And waiting for the moment I let my guard down, Doj killed me.

Yes, the first one to kill me was Doj.

Using an ornament in the room, he struck me with one blow to the back of my head.

That hurt.

In the first place, no matter how much my mother was hated, don't you think the staff purge in the mansion went a bit too smoothly?

Sarelka is truly no good at that sort of work, you see.

That man could never manage something like that on his own.

There was someone helping him, and that was Doj.

And that's not all.

Doj, who was in turn the lover of Sarelka's mistress, Fateu, had drilled this into Fateu's head.

‘As long as Nare is gone, Sarelka becomes head of the Luclees family. Then the money and power of this family will be Fateu's to do with as she pleases.’

That is why Fateu had been egging Sarelka on to seize the headship from me.

In other words, the mastermind was Doj.

Trusting such a man and leaving myself wide open, what a hopelessly stupid little girl I was, really.

And so.

Normally, such a foolish little girl would be killed, and the Luclees family...... would be preyed upon by fools and perish.

That was how it should have been.

But, a miracle happened here.

......Time, rewinding.

Surprised doesn't begin to cover it.

I was stunned.

I had, most certainly, been killed by Doj.

The pain of it, too, I remember.

And yet, I, before I knew it, was trembling in the head's study room, barricaded in.

Once I grasped the situation, naturally, I was overjoyed.

And I thanked the gods.

Thank you so very much.

With this, I can start my life over.

I can take back what was stolen from me, or so I thought.

I was in seventh heaven.

......When in reality, I'd been thrown down into hell.

I immediately began to take action.

First of all, I visited Sarelka.

This isn't right.

Stop this crooked takeover of the family, I pleaded with him.

Looking back on it now, I can only shake my head at how utterly foolish that was.

A claim like that, Sarelka was never going to accept, was he?

If he accepted it, all that awaited that man afterward was ruin, after all.

Naturally, with Sarelka, it didn't even get as far as a discussion.

The moment he saw my face, that man readied ‘Agzeliary’ and slashed at me.

And so I got cut down, and that was my second death.

Measured by how long I lasted from the time rewinding to my death, this is probably my shortest record.

Now for the next.

The servant who seemed dependable kills me.

My undependable father kills me too.

In the mansion, there's no one on my side.

Then, what should I do?

With time rewound again and another chance to start over, I thought about it.

And I decided to borrow outside help.

I secretly slipped out of the mansion and reported the current state of the Luclees family to the authorities.

Hm?

You say I shouldn't be able to go outside the mansion?

Wrapped in mist, I couldn't go anywhere?

Hahaha, certainly, that's how it is now.

But it wasn't always like that.

Even when time repeated, I was able to go outside the mansion, and people outside the mansion continued their lives without change.

Anyway, I appealed to the authorities.

Well, it caused an uproar, let me tell you.

Attempted murder of a powerful family's daughter, and seizing the family.

What Sarelka had done was, quite simply, a grave crime.

That man was arrested on the spot.

And Fateu, who had egged that man on, and Doj, who had been pulling her strings from behind the scenes, were caught too.

The Luclees family came back to me, safe and sound.

Good, good!

......Really, it would have been great if everything had been settled with that.

But unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

There was a person who did not accept this result and harbored an intense grudge against me.

That was Karashia.

From her perspective, the seat of next head of a distinguished family, which should have fallen into her lap by chance, had been snatched away by me before she knew it.

Well, rather than snatched, it just went back to the way it was supposed to be.

Anyway, she harbored a grudge against me.

Oh, Karashia and Keranko had no involvement in Fateu and Doj's plan, so those sisters were just thrown out of the mansion and weren't arrested.

Seeking help from the authorities, when I go that route, you see, I end up at odds with Karashia without fail.

It goes well up to a point, so I tried this method several times, but once I do this, no matter how I struggle, I get killed by Karashia.

One time, I was cut down by ‘Agzeliary’, “her father's keepsake.”

One time, my food was poisoned.

One time, I was blown to bits by a suicide attack with a bomb.

Anyway, that woman comes to kill me with terrifying tenacity.

That girl is dangerous.

Super scary.

Since Karashia herself hasn't committed any crime until she kills me, I can't have her arrested beforehand, either.

Even if I hire guards to beef up my defenses, she slips through a gap and kills me.

Truly, she is a woman impossible to deal with.

With one thing and another, you see.

Being killed over and over and over and over, I came to the point where the family, honestly, didn't matter to me anymore.

Until then, I feel like I was thinking that I must inherit this Luclees family that has continued for generations and pass it on to the next generation......

Honestly?

More than the family, I want a peaceful, safe life of my own.

Normally, one would think so, right?

So what I did, was run.

I secretly slipped out of the mansion and tried to flee far away.

But this, too, didn't go well.

For starters, it's winter.

A harsh season for a little girl who knows nothing of travel to make a long journey.

On top of that, fearsome monsters live around here.

They're called Ranrananga White Lizards. Do you know them?

Lizards that act in groups and can move even in winter.

As “a symbol of hardy vitality that won't yield to ice and snow,” you see, they're the monsters whose shape is borne on the family heirloom ring passed down in my house for generations.

These things get in the way of my journey.

No matter if I change the time or change the path, whenever I try to leave this small country, these things always attack me.

Unfortunately, I have no training in fighting.

Every time I'm attacked, I'm easily killed.

Good grief, what a pain.

Being eaten alive, let me tell you, was a fairly rough experience.

Nothing I do works.

I can't even escape.

And yet, time repeats over and over.

Gradually, my heart was stained with despair.

Everything, it all stopped mattering to me.

Even when time rewound and I returned to the head's study room, I lost all motivation.

Then, what happens is that before I starve to death, Sarelka makes a duplicate key and comes inside.

Seeing me, having lost all will to live and showing no sign of resistance, that man decides I'm no danger and starts keeping me locked up in a room of the mansion.

It's a nuisance to keep me alive, but if possible, he doesn't want to get his own hands dirty.

A passive show of malice, truly characteristic of that cowardly man.

Ironically, a life of being locked up like this is actually the one where I live the longest.

But unfortunately, while I can live long, this is also the most painful life.

After all, I'm given only the absolute minimum amount of food to keep me from starving to death.

On top of that, after a while, my existence is discovered by Fateu and the others.

From then on, it's awful, you know?

Every single day, I'm tormented.

I'm subjected to terrible violence and then left alone.

Keranko, in particular, was awful.

Karashia is dangerous, but Keranko is dangerous too.

How can she, so easily, beat a person that worn down with a smile on her face, I wonder?

My life of confinement always ends with the curtain falling on Keranko's happy smile.

......Really, though.

I was exhausted.

By the hell, repeated over and over and over and over.

But, you know.

One time, I noticed something interesting.

I discovered a way to watch a show, a really, really delightful, refreshing and exhilarating one!

A hell born of the loop.