Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy
Iris
Please, return my… return my XXXX to me!
In a room filled with numerous devices of some sort, a woman with hair color similar to mine was desperately trying to reach out and grab something while being restrained by a device that might or might not be magical.
Every time she struggled to escape, her otherwise beautiful white skin was cruelly reddened and bruised, but she continued as if it was nothing, just to reach for the…
How dare you… HOW DARE YOU?! Curse you all… CURSE YOU ALL TO HELL!
Another scene played.
I saw a somewhat futuristic passageway covered with metal and what seems to be a piece of machinery.
A man covered in scars, spewing out expletives, was surrounded by a large number of who appeared to be soldiers, yet still struggling to break through the enclosure, desperately defending a white book that looked like I had seen it somewhere.
Did I… know the two of them?
I remembered. Even though both of them looked older… I had seen them in a dream before…
Why do you two keep appearing in my dream?
Why does my chest hurt so much whenever I see you?
Why… Why… Why…
Flowing down through time, my incoherent thoughts roll round and round…
Then I woke up.
“…Why?”
Tears were streaming down my face. As had often been the case for the past few days, I couldn’t stop wiping and wiping. For some reason, I was inexplicably sad. But today was a little different from usual…
“(sniffs)… Ahh… Ahhhhh!”
I don’t understand it. The dream had dissipated quickly, but I couldn’t stop sobbing.
It was completely different from the feeling of desolation from before.
The sorrow gripped my heart and squeezed it violently.
For just how long had I woken up crying without knowing why?
Finally calming down a bit, I wiped my tears and looked around.
“…Where am I?”
It didn’t seem to be Aini-san’s clinic. If anything, the room was like a guest room in some rich person’s house.
My memory was fuzzy, but the last thing I remembered was being in Reiji-san’s arm… I should be fine now, but my anxiety was still swelling at the thought of being in a strange room.
I touched my neck. As my hand felt soft upon touching my own throat instead of hard, cold metal, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Suddenly, I found what looks like a doorbell by my bedside and gave it a try. A clear sound chirped out… and almost without a pause, the door opened quietly.
“Please excuse me… Good, you’re awake at last.”
“Lenny-san… (coughs)”
Entered a woman in a maid’s dress, Lenny-san. A weight was removed off my chest when I saw someone I know.
My voice that called out to her was terribly gravelly. My throat felt completely dry, and I coughed involuntarily.
Seeing this, she offered me a small jug of water, from which I sipped to quench my thrist.
“Here’s the liquid medicine that Aini-sama prepared for you. Please drink it slowly.”
When I put my mouth to the spoonful of liquid offered to me, I found a sweet syrup with an indescribable taste of sour and bitter, perhaps medicinal herbs.
It’s like a much weirder version of the syrup medicine used for kids in my old world… If it tasted this weird even after being mixed with syrup, I shuddered at how dreadful it would be to consume this medicine by itself.
“Please don’t cry, you’ll have to take your medicine either way. They said good medicine tastes bitter after all. One more sip, please.”
“I’m not crying because of the medicine though…”
Steeling myself, I downed the entire thing in one gulp, then immediately neutralized my mouth with the offered water and took a breath.
…My mouth still tasted funny.
Let me be clear, my past self had no problem with bitter medicine at all. It’s just that this body’s got such a sensitive tongue.
I kept my perfectly legit excuse to myself.
“Um… where are we exactly?”
“This is the residence we seized from the town’s former mayor and turned it into a makeshift home base. You’re currently in the guest room at the innermost part of the mansion… We have moved you here from the clinic for safety concerns… well, certain people who care about you keep pestering us to do that, actually.”
I agree with them, though, Lenny-san blurted out those words before concluding.
Who are those “certain people”?
That raised a question, but more importantly…
“So that mayor has been arrested, right?”
“Yes. He has already been transferred to the royal capital, where he will stand trial.”
According to Lenny-san, at best, he would never see the light of day again.
From trading contraband goods and even slaves, to setting fire and release monsters upon the town he was supposed to govern… even I couldn’t find anything good to say about him.
“I-Is anyone injured after the attack? I think I can help…”
“You can’t.”
Still smiling, she rejected my offer giving me a chance to say anything.
I felt utterly helpless.
“I promise I won’t push myself too hard…”
“Iris-sama? We all know that’s not going to happen, so your brother has already given me permission to use force if you insist on overexerting yourself.”
“…I surrender, please forgive me.”
I’m sure it wasn’t my imagination that I saw a rope in her hand.
Reluctantly, I had to back down.
“Please rest assured, thanks to everyone’s hard work, no one was injured enough to require your attention. If anyone does, we’ll make sure you’re properly informed about the situation.”
“That’s a relief… By the way, where’re Nii-sama and Reiji-san?”
“They’re resting in the room next door. I’ll call them over right away… but first…”
With a light thud, she wrapped a cardigan over my shoulders.
“I know you were sick for days, but a lady such as yourself should always be presentable, so at least…”
Lenny-san came up to me with a hairbrush in her hand.
For some reason, my vision distorted when she reached out her hand to me.
“Allow me to fix your hair.”
“NO?!”
My body went stiff and jumped up.
My mind was going haywire. My heart was pounding like an alarm bell.
“Ah…”
I didn’t mean to react this way.
I lowered my arm and looked at Lenny-san… her eyes were full of pity as if looking at something painful.
From the way she looked at me, she seemed to be sincerely concerned about me.
That was rude of me, wasn’t it?
“…I’m sorry, please go ahead.”
“Well then, once again, allow me to do your hair…”
Somewhat reservedly, I felt a touch on my hair. It’s fine, she’s a good person.
Still, every time her fingers touched my neck, the feeling of the cold metal collar passed through my mind, and my body shivered.
I’m so sorry, Lenny-san. You’ve been so good to me, and I didn’t mean to scare you just now.
My hair was combed and loosely braided so that it wouldn’t get in the way.
Lenny-san then moved to leave the room.
“I’m going to get Saul-sama and Reiji-sama now. They said they have something important to tell you.”
“Please do.”
After she left the room, the door was closed.
For the moment, the room was filled with complete silence.
“(pants heavily)…”
Feeling bad for Lenny-san, I released the fear I had been enduring with all my might until now.
I almost forgot about it for a while, but I’m scared of other people. Again.
“I thought I’d gotten better…”
I could do nothing but sigh at my deep-seated trauma.
“If only I was stronger…”
Why did only Nii-sama and Reiji-san get such strong and powerful bodies, I’m so jealous.
I recalled how big and warm Reiji-san’s back was when he carried me on his back…
My body and mind petrified instantly.
Being alone had the side effects of bringing back memories of what happened when I was delirious with fever.
I was seen nude directly from the front.
I felt so safe and secure when I snuggled up to him in my piggyback ride.
I asked him to spoil me by holding my hand before I fell asleep.
…OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE?!
I was feeling sick and feeble back there, but still…!
If only it had been my carelessness alone, if that’s all there is to it, it’s still perfectly fine for me…!
The problem… the problem is…! In my foggy consciousness, which I wasn’t even sure if it’s dream or reality, I heard those words reach my ears…
“SHE’S… MINE!”
“SO KEEP YOUR DIRTY HAND OUT OF MY WOMAN YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
WAAAAAAAAAAAH?!
I felt like my face was on fire.
Any fear I’d felt was all blown away.
Reiji-san… just why?! Why did you have to say that?!
If that was a dream, then please let me wake up from it!
But, what if it was real? How… just how am I supposed to react if it was real?!
Even worse was that… I don’t really hate it. Far from it, in fact, I was really hap- NOOOOOOO!!
“WAAAAAAAAAAH?!”
I buried my face in the futon, desperately trying to quell the thoughts that seemed to spiral out of control, all alone in my carousel of agony…
“You alright in there? I’m coming in.”
“Yesh! Come inh!”
I stuttered?!
I hurriedly combed my hair that had become shaggy again, and was barely able to put the cardigan over my nightgown when the door clicked open.
“Sorry for intruding on your rest… Why do you look so out of breath?”
“It’s… nothing… Please don’t… worry about it…”
While I was gasping for breath, Nii-sama just shrugged his shoulders and watched… I threw my pillow at him.
Inside the room, it’s just me, Reiji-san and Nii-sama… well, Ayame, there’s no need for her to act when no one else is around.
The two of them shared everything they knew about the “White Book”, and I told them as much as I knew about the day of my reincarnation in return.
Suddenly, a geometric pattern of crimson spawned from the book and ran in all directions to the white world where the reincarnation took place.
Shadows extended from the book and restrained my body, penetrating it and rewriting my entire existence.
I’d tried to forget about it out of terror, but that was clearly an anomaly.
“So that’s what happened…”
“It’s completely different from ours… I’m sorry, we should have asked about that earlier.”
“That wasn’t your fault… I, too, had forgotten about it until just now.”
But if that book really was the cause… the only person who could do such a thing was the one who single-handedly wrote the entire source code for that game.
“When you said he was likely to be the former king Aureolus in this world, I was inclined to agree, but…”
There’s a serious problem with that train of thoughts, namely…
“The former king was a Highborn, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“He was. I just don’t understand how…”
The royal family of the Magical Kingdom of Nordglacier consisted of mostly Highborn, who excelled in magic. That included its previous king, Aureolus, as well.
However, Aureo-san in my old world had no such wings, and if he had, it would definitely be a big deal over there.
“What if that Aureo guy somehow converted himself into a Lightwing like Iris?”
“There’s no way that could have happened.”
Ayame immediately rejected Reiji-san’s theory. I’m with her on this one.
If he really could turn himself or anyone else into a Lightwing, would he have bothered to go through all this hurdle to send a bunch of people from our world into his?
“So we still have to travel to the royal capital to find that Higami dude after all?”
“Yes. We aren’t getting anywhere close to the answer no matter how hard we think at the moment.”
“I know right…”
And that concluded our discussion on the White Book topic.
However, there’s something else I was more concerned about, something that the two of them forgot because they were too focused on “the magic book that recreates the Lightwing race”.
“…By the way, aren’t you two forgetting something important?”
“Hmm?”
“If Aureo-san is really that Aureolus person, then how did he come to our world in the first place?”
“…Ah.”
“Damn, my mind was going in the opposite direction, so I completely missed it… What a shame…”
“You’re right, Iris, how did we miss something that important?”
Or perhaps it is something we ourselves had given up on somewhere along the way and tried not to think about.
If our speculation about Aureo-san was correct, it was a gospel that could not have been better for us.
It still remained a possibility.
How it will be done is yet to be imagined.
The question of what would happen to our current bodies also exists.
But… the possibility was no longer zero. It’s infinitely far from zero.
Someone from this world had indeed travelled to ours… that means!
“”“We can finally go home!”””
The three of us stood face to face, our faces beaming with joy, our voice overlapped with each other.
Amidst my life in another world with no foreseeable future, a ray of hope as small as a spider’s thread had sprouted.
APM - Translation 