Chapter 15: The Dream Story — Part One

That night’s dream showed me a scene of Merry talking with someone.
Merry was handing my brooch to a man.

It was the emerald brooch I had worn with a cream-colored dress just the other day.

Last time, I had brought many accessories with me, but this time I hadn’t packed much.
There was no point in wearing such things if no one would look at them, so it only felt troublesome.
Because of that, I had left most of them at home.

The two of them said something while turning the brooch over and holding it up to the light.
They seemed to be checking something.

The man tilted his head.
Apparently, he couldn’t make a judgment.
He wrapped my brooch in cloth and slipped it into his breast pocket.
Then he handed a small vial to Merry.

Merry lifted the vial slightly and frowned.
Inside was something white.
It might have been sugar.
Could that have been the sugar mixed with poison that I was made to consume?

Merry looked displeased as she saw the man off.

Now that I thought about it, Merry often asked me about my accessories.
Not the new ones, but always those passed down from my grandmother.
When I asked why, she said they looked old and romantic, as if they had a history.

Biting her thumbnail, Merry suddenly turned toward me.
She looked somehow frustrated.

That was when I woke up.

This made it the third time I had seen such a strange dream.
This time, I myself never appeared in it at all, which finally made me realize how odd it was.
So I tried to recall what had happened before.

In my previous life, I had left the management of my accessories to Merry.
She polished them often and held them up to the light, but I thought that was just normal care and never questioned it.
But perhaps it had meant something.

I felt like several items had gone missing without me noticing.
But I gradually lost both the will and the reason to wear them, and stopped caring altogether.
So I had no idea which accessories had disappeared.

Then something else came back to me.
I needed to have the luggage I had sent to the marquis’s house returned.
In all the chaos, I had completely forgotten.

My hairbrush, my hand mirror, my nightcap.
Yes, especially the nightcap.
The one that fit perfectly and was so easy to use.

When I told Bell about it, she exclaimed, “Oh, that’s right,” as if she had just remembered too.

“I completely forgot.
We really should speak up about it.
I want to say they should send it back without being told, but they must be in even more of a panic than we are right now.
It can’t be helped.”

Bell said this with a snort.

“It would be better to handle this through the steward.
I’ll pass the message along.”

With that, she left the room.

I took out the brooch from my dream and gazed at it slowly.
Just like in the dream, I held it up to the light and looked through the emerald, but nothing unusual appeared.

‘What was that dream?
Who was Merry meeting?’

Curious, I pulled out the accessories my grandmother had given me and lined them up on the table.
There were quite a lot of them.
My grandmother had left most of her accessories to me.
Noel had complained they were old-fashioned and only took a single gold bracelet.

“If you think the designs are outdated, have them remade.
Older gemstones are often larger and better than the ones used today.”

That was what my grandmother had said.
The jewels passed down through the earl’s family had gone to Mother.
Once Eric married, those would be handed to his spouse.
That was how they were preserved as family heirlooms.

So what I had received were accessories, not particularly high-end pieces.
Of course, each one was worth a fair amount, but they were, in a sense, modest items.

Come to think of it, I had never once worn the jewelry inherited by the marquis’s family.
There was a set with a large ruby necklace and matching earrings.
It was astonishingly lavish and valuable.
But unfortunately, it didn’t suit me at all.

What had Merry been doing?
Had she been selling my accessories to that man?
But she hadn’t received any money.
If it were just about selling them, she would have brought more pieces.

In the end, no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t make sense of it.

After that, Lloyd came by to confirm arrangements regarding the luggage.
He said an inventory list was being prepared and would be sent to the other party first, and that someone would be sent to retrieve the items tomorrow.

“If we leave it to the Deal Marquis House, there’s no telling what might happen.
I’ll send two reliable men.
It barely fills one carriage, does it?
Surprisingly little…”

After saying that, Lloyd fell silent.

“What is it?”

“The quantity and contents of the luggage were clearly strange.
So was your condition at the time.
And yet, I failed to notice.
After living this long, what was I even looking at?”

Lloyd hung his head.

I had felt no hope or joy toward the marriage, so I had only intended to bring the bare minimum.
I had refused everything else, saying it could be sent later.
For the eldest daughter of an earl marrying, the luggage must have looked absurdly sparse.

Seeing his expression, I forced myself to speak brightly.

“It’s all over now.
From here on, only good things will happen.
I’m sure of it.”

“Yes, indeed.
By the way, Brian-sama has made an inquiry about visiting the earl.”

Lloyd said this with a smile that looked close to tears.

“How nice.
It feels like it’s been ages since we last met, even though it’s only been two days.
…How strange.”

Lloyd’s expression softened into a genuine smile.
He seemed to have recovered himself, and that made me happy too.

“When will he come?”

“I’ll ask the earl.
Before that, let’s take care of the luggage first.”

After Lloyd left, the room grew quiet, and I must have dozed off.
In that short time, I saw another fragment of a dream.

I was lying in bed.
It seemed my health had already deteriorated, as I was thin and pale.

I had started drinking tea with sugar, said to be nourishing when one caught a mild cold, but apparently medicine had been mixed into it.
Little by little, my condition worsened, my appetite vanished, and my spirits sank.
Even so, I drank that tea every day.
Believing that if I kept drinking it, my health would eventually return.

Merry shook me awake and asked me something.
She seemed to be showing me several accessories.

I think this happened many times.
Merry had been strangely fixated on my grandmother’s accessories.
I remembered that clearly now.

When I pointed at one, she clutched it in her hand, put the others back into the accessory box, and left the room.
I must have fallen asleep just like that.

My body was buried beneath the blankets.
That lifeless, thin body looked almost as if it were already dead.

I jolted awake, straightening up in my chair and looking around.
This was my room, and it was still bright outside.
And my health felt perfectly fine.

Only then did I finally realize that these were not ordinary dreams.
They were probably fragments of what had happened in my previous life.

If that was the case, would I eventually see my own death?
And what came after that?
Was there even an after?

As I thought that far, my heart thudded heavily in my chest.

What if this world I was seeing now was the dream instead?