The Empty Vase
"Prince Atar offered me an insult, so I left my seat. On the way back to the banquet hall I was told he was dead. I was so shocked that I went to see for myself, and after that... it was exactly as Your Grace already knows."
"I see."
"Yes. ...Yes?"
"That will be all."
What?
He had come all this way claiming he meant to investigate, and this was the end of it? Presepe's eyes went round.
Whether or not he noticed her bewilderment, Fenrik closed his mouth. Then, very slowly, he let those crimson eyes travel over the cramped tower.
A strange shame prickled through her.
"Does Your Highness dislike flowers?"
And what was that supposed to mean?
Belatedly, Presepe followed his gaze—and understood. From the very start, he had been staring at the empty vase set upon the table.
"I am not asking for the sake of the investigation, so you may answer freely."
"Flowers...?"
Out of nowhere?
"I—I don't dislike them. If anything, I like them."
"Because the vase is empty."
"It seems your maid is not doing her work properly. Leaving a vase to sit idle for no reason."
At Fenrik's words, Presepe tilted her head a little.
Come to think of it, Ella was not the sort of maid who looked after every small thing. And it was not only Ella. Every maid was the same. To them, Presepe was not someone worth tending down to something as trifling as flowers.
...But why was there a vase here at all, out of nowhere?
All at once she remembered the day she had first come to the tower—the very day Dietrich had dragged her here.
Back then the tower had been, quite literally, bare. Even the few things in it now had all been brought in after Presepe arrived.
...How long had that vase been sitting there? Who had left it?
"If you put flowers in it, it might feel a little less bleak."
"Don't you think?"
To Presepe, sunk in her own thoughts, Fenrik gave a brief smile, and went on.
"Shut away in here all alone, you must be very lonely."
"Ah... yes."
"Aside from flowers, what else does Lady Presepe like?"
At the question, a helpless little laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Nothing she might answer with came readily to mind.
In a way, it was only natural. From the moment she had been trapped inside the game, all she had thought about was how to capture the male characters if she meant to survive. That, or she had trembled in terror, reliving the moments she had died so wretchedly.
"You may not be aware, but a festival will be held in a few days."
"A festival?"
"It is not hosted by the Imperial Palace, so it will not be terribly grand, but a festival is a festival—quite the lively affair. For the merchants in the market district, it is their busiest season."
So there was something like that.
She had always been locked away. There was no way for her to know whether festivals came and went, and such things had nothing whatsoever to do with advancing the game, which only made it truer.
"The cold is easing and spring is on its way, so the flowers will soon be in full bloom. A perfectly suitable excuse to call it a festival. You will be able to see all the flowers you love, as well."
"But I... I can't go to a place like that."
The words slipped out before she knew it, her dry lips barely moving.
"I have to stay here. Always."
"Your Grace knows that perfectly well, doesn't he?"
Of all people—Dietrich's closest confidant. There was no way he would not know. A self-mocking look crossed her face.
"Who can say."
The answer that came back was a little unexpected.
"That remains to be seen. Does a person's life really run exactly as it has been laid out, every single time?"
"...What?"
"If that were all life amounted to, wouldn't it be terribly dull?"
Fenrik twisted the corner of his mouth into a smile. Presepe could not do the same. His words kept seeming to strike bone, and that unsettled her.
"In any case, thank you for making time for me today. I have asked everything I came to ask, so I should be going."
Fenrik, who had gone on at length about a festival no one had asked him about, rose without a trace of lingering. Then he offered Presepe a formal bow.
At once he started toward the door in long strides, and Presepe, still seated, could only stare blankly at his back. He turned to her again only just before his hand closed on the handle.
"I hope we might speak at greater length next time. That is only my own thought, but I suspect it would do you good as well."
"...Me?"
"You don't have anyone you can speak with at ease, do you?"
Presepe faltered.
Ordinarily, someone you could speak with at ease meant exactly that—someone you could face without guarding your heart.
But... had he truly meant it that way? Or had he not been speaking in the plain sense at all?
"Then I will see you again."
With that low, settling voice, the door opened and shut.
Left alone once more, Presepe stared at the closed door for a long while, her face stiff, and then let out a sigh.
"What on earth is going on..."
There was nothing she could make sense of. The bugs were throwing their usual fit, Atar had died out of nowhere, and now an NPC whose information would not even load was coming and going.
"Honestly."
Pressing hard at her temples against the throbbing ache, Presepe paused. What had caught her eye was the empty vase. The very vase Fenrik had spoken of.
She reached out and studied it in silence. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was only an ordinary vase. If anything nagged at her, it was only this.
"...Isn't it a bit plain, for something used in the Imperial Palace?"
Ateloia was the strongest empire in this world, and a great power was also a nation that possessed a great deal. The Imperial Palace was always full of lavish, extravagant things. The objects Presepe used, locked away in the tower, were proof enough: furniture thickly set with jewels and carved in exquisite detail. Even a single cup was an exercise in luxury. That was the Imperial Palace.
But the vase before her did not match that image at all. It had a certain delicate charm, of course...
In the next instant, the eyes of Presepe—who had been tilting her head at the vase—shook wide.
"...Flowers."
She had died and come back hundreds of times; she could not say with any precision which reset it had been. Probably around the time she had been trying to capture Dietrich. After she had returned from the humiliation of the event still to come—being thrown into the Ice Prison. A certain day when the vase on the table had been full of flowers.
"Right... back then... not long after I possessed this body..."
In the early days of the possession, Presepe had gone after Dietrich first. And she had died, without end. Even now, after enduring those horrors countless times, a shudder still ran through her; in the beginning, it had been beyond words.
Her mind in ruins, she had cut her life short. On the day of Dietrich's celebration banquet—the game's first event—before the male characters intervened and the main plot advanced, she slipped out of the hall and threw herself into the lake. Not that throwing her life away like that had done any good. In any case, the game had reset once more.
When had it been, after that? The cycle after next? Or later still? One night she had dragged herself back to the tower, worn down by the Ice Prison event that followed the banquet, and found the vase on the table filled with flowers in full bloom.
To Presepe, locked in the tower ever since she had entered the game, those flowers had been a great comfort.
Fenrik had been right. She had cried so much, alone, gazing at flowers that held a vitality as if they belonged to the real world. Of course, she had forgotten them soon enough, busy surviving everything else.
It could not have been the maids. If they had done it, they would have kept filling the vase afterward.
"...Who on earth?"
Presepe murmured, her face blank. But no one came to mind.
It was very late at night.
As always, Noah, resting in a room crowded with taxidermy, had drifted into a light doze. The sleep did not last. A knock came all at once from the direction of the mansion's front door.
"At this hour, what manner of ill-mannered bastard..."
In his dressing gown, Noah muttered to himself and stepped out into the corridor. Surely it was not some strange visitor. For no good reason, Fenrik's words from not long ago came back to him—that with so many rare things gathered here, an intruder might well appear. He even took up a decorative sword that suited him not at all, and opened the front door.
There was no one there to greet him. Only something enormous, wrapped in black cloth. As if out of consideration, so that it might be moved with ease, the thing had even been loaded onto a handcart.
Noah hesitated a moment, then lifted the cloth just a little.
"This is..."
His face went utterly startled.
"A taxidermied monster?"
Just as with ordinary animal specimens, a monster's taxidermy grew more valuable the more ferocious and unusual the creature. And since he had collected every sort of specimen since childhood, Noah had no interest in anything merely passable, monster or not.