Home/The Duke's Revolution Is My Responsibility/ch 1

Episode 1: A Second Chance

If only you could know which phase of life you were passing through—then living might actually be worth the trouble. Like, to put it in book terms: how many more pages until the next chapter begins, whether you've reached the halfway point, or if the end is still far off.

I opened my eyes and thought: This is absurd.

"Roana! Give me a hand! The burning smell won't go away!"

Karin shrieked like a screaming kettle. Hissing steam burst out, and sure enough, something was sizzling and burning—just as she'd said.

It was a morning scene I knew all too well.

I rose from the bed as if in a dream. The creaky old wooden floor. The icy cold floorboards that chilled my very heart. What always jolted me back to reality were these vivid sensations.

"Ugh, aaah! It's going to explode! Ex-explode!"

Stepping outside the room, I saw Karin raising a ruckus in the kitchen. Her dried rose-colored hair stuck out every which way like a bristly broom, and her impossibly long, slender limbs flailed between the sink and the stove. The tattoos running from the back of her neck down to her waist peeked out from beneath her disheveled clothes.

It was definitely the Karin I knew.

"This is the legacy I leave you."

"Don't live like a dog the way I did."

My mentor, Karin—who vanished like the wind after leaving me those words. Over five years had passed since she disappeared. The last time I saw her was more than five years ago.

I suppressed the surge of emotion rising in my throat and approached her from behind. Calmly, I began to clean up the mess—turning down the flame that had nearly devoured the pot, opening the small window to air out the burnt smell, and rescuing the kettle that had boiled dry. Naturally, it hadn't exploded.

"M-magic! It's magic!"

Was this really the same woman who once dominated the empire as a master magitechnician?

"Call it the handiwork of a skilled assistant. And step aside."

"No, I'm on kitchen duty today—"

"Just let me do it and get out of here. That's how you help without getting in the way."

I practically shoved Karin out of the kitchen by her back. Because I knew that in a moment, she'd pick up a knife to chop vegetables—and slice off her own finger along with them. Then she'd raise her bleeding hand and spout nonsense about it being a badge of honor.

I swiftly and cleanly prepared all the ingredients.

Karin was lounging in the living room armchair, flipping through account books like they were magazines. I glanced at her and then called out.

"Karin."

"Whoa."

"Karin."

"Whoa."

"Is this a dream?"

Karin, who hadn't looked up from the ledgers, set the stack of papers on her lap.

"How did you know?"

I was speechless. Her eyes felt metallic, inorganic.

She continued as usual.

"Life itself is nothing but an unending dream. No different from a life sentence."

Karin often said things along those lines—that life was a daydream—in all sorts of variations. She pointed a finger toward the bathroom.

"So go wash your face with cold water right now and come back to your senses. I'll set the table."

So was this a dream or reality? What was it, exactly?

---

I'm not the type to reread a book I've already finished. Especially if that book is meticulously miserable, boring, and ends in a disappointing mess. I would never open that book again.

Yes, that's a metaphor for my life.

"If you could go back in time, when would you choose?"

To that clichéd question, I always gave the same answer.

"There's no moment I'd want to return to."

Because my life was always a mess—tragedy struck like a flood before I could even prepare. Yet as time passed, fleeting moments came when I caught myself wondering: What if it had gone differently? What if I'd done this or that?

For example: when Viktor Hartland was sent to a remote sanatorium without a word at nineteen. When Karin vanished. What could I have done if I'd gone back to before those things happened? I couldn't know the outcome, but I didn't want to stand by and get my throat slit again. Had the goddess Freya answered that wish?

I stared blankly out the window. It was the dead of winter; occasional grains of snow fluttered down like millet. The branches were bare, and the frozen earth seemed devoid of any trace of life.

"What are you trying to do to me?" I slammed my fist against my thigh. "Who asked to come back? I can't go through the same pain again..."

I checked the mirror first. It was hard to tell—I'd always looked younger than my actual age anyway.

"If that's the case..."

I grabbed the desk and lifted one foot. On my right sole, near the heel—a small scar. "The scar... is gone!" Since I'd gotten that scar at twenty from stepping on glass, that meant I was younger than that now.

I checked the design blueprints plastered haphazardly all over the walls. If I'd gone so far as to pin up those blueprints, it meant I'd been racking my brains over them. It wasn't hard to recall which artifact had obsessed me during which period.

"If I work backwards... I'm about eighteen?"

Eighteen. I let out a hollow laugh. At the same time, fear surged in like a tidal wave. I was afraid of what lay ahead—of what I would do with these very hands. The imperial capital, Estro, reduced to an inferno. The people writhing in despair. The death that came at the very end...

I collapsed to the floor and pressed my forehead against the desk leg.

"If this is a dream..."

Thump.

"Just wake me up..."

Thump.

"And let me die again."

Thump.

"I want to die."

Thump.

"Die..."

I clutched the chair and sobbed. I remembered all too vividly the physical agony—the moment three cold, sharp swords pierced my abdomen, the blade that gleamed like moonlight as it sliced beneath my throat. I remembered my life flashing before my eyes, too.

At the time, I'd felt relieved. Finally freed from that wretched existence.

But was that truly how I felt?

"I don't... want to die..."

Yes—if I'd truly wanted to die, I would have killed myself. I knew dozens of ways to die instantly, without feeling a thing. I was the empire's finest magitechnician, after all.

---

After crying for a long time, I sat at the desk and unfolded a piece of paper. I wrote down the first question that came to mind.

—What caused the regression?

I had an inkling.

I fiddled with the ring on my left index finger—a small ring set with a red gemstone. It was what Karin had left me as her "legacy." The "secret box" containing the ring was full of blueprints written in a script I couldn't decipher, along with a trove of artifacts that refused to function no matter what I tried. Among them, this ring was the only piece that could be called jewelry. In my previous life, I'd treated it like an extension of Karin herself and always kept it on me.

At first I wore it as a necklace; later, to ward off unwelcome advances from men, I claimed it was a gift from a lover and wore it on my finger.

The reason I suspected this ring was obvious.

"Even the scars on my body have vanished, and my body has grown younger—yet this ring alone remains unchanged."

Everything had reverted to years past, but this ring alone was preserved intact, without a single scratch.

"Could this ring have been an artifact all along?"

I needed to investigate. But if I kept wearing it, Karin—who hadn't yet left me her inheritance—might see it and faint from shock. Better to store it away.

I threaded the ring onto a chain that originally held another pendant and hid it beneath my clothes. As for how I'd regressed—I decided to look into that thoroughly later.

Now, what I needed to figure out was what to do.

I would live differently than before. I wouldn't lose Viktor or Karin. I wouldn't create weapons of mass destruction and fuel wars.

Let me recall the sequence of events. From here on, what will happen to me in order is...

First: Viktor will be sent to a sanatorium.

Viktor was the illegitimate son of the Hartland barony. Though brilliant, his frail health made him a target of constant bullying by his half-brother. Eventually, when he fell seriously ill, Baron Hartland confined him—like imprisonment—to a remote sanatorium.

Even there, we exchanged letters from time to time. But after I was conscripted for the war, I couldn't even do that. Arthur III intercepted every letter sent to me. I was completely cut off from the world.

Arthur III's cheap, cowardly threat—cooperate, or Viktor dies—worked all too well on me.

"Viktor..."

I closed my eyes and thought of Viktor Hartland.

"Hey—do you want to be friends?"

His soft, mumbling voice. The kindness with which he'd cover my lap with a small blanket, worried I might catch cold—me, who was several times healthier than him.

Viktor spent most of his time in a forest cottage far from the main manor. There was an artificial lake there, and except in the bitter cold of winter, I'd swim and play in it. Viktor, frail as he was, rarely went into the water—but he'd sit on a large towel under the big tree, reading difficult books. Even when I dripped water all over his towel, he never complained. He'd even beckon me to sit beside him and feed me rare fruits he'd brought from the main house.

Viktor—he was a friend of my soul. We shared every secret and held spiritually fulfilling conversations. Being together was joyful, and we always looked forward to the next week. In that period, my life was balanced—labor with Karin, and pleasure with Viktor. It was only the damned war that cut that stability short.

What could I do here?

First, it was crucial not to let Viktor be sent to a sanatorium. If it became inevitable, then I'd bribe the staff and have him moved discreetly. There would surely be a servant reporting on his condition—I'd slip that person money and transfer Viktor to a better facility in secret. For that, of course, I'd need funds.

Viktor's illness was severe and would require a fortune, but I didn't have much money right now. Karin had donated nearly all her assets to relief organizations across the empire when she'd shut down her workshop in the capital, so we'd started our small workshop in this region with almost nothing. Even so, our current workshop had gained word-of-mouth by taking custom artifact commissions—at almost no profit.

One thing was certain: I was broke.

I bit the end of my pen and thought. I need money.

Though my body had regressed, I hadn't lost my future knowledge. I—Roana Wedgewood—was still, at my core, the empire's greatest magitechnician. But unless I threw myself into gambling, it wouldn't be easy to amass a large sum overnight.

Still, I'll find a way to get the money.

Alright—I'll handle Viktor's problem like that.

The second thing I needed to do:

Stop Karin from disappearing!

To do that, I had to find out how and why she had vanished. Was it related to her legacy?

Karin and I had lived together for over a decade, but we'd never truly opened our hearts to each other. I knew she'd struggled with emptiness, loneliness, and weariness just before she disappeared. She drank more often, and there were days when she'd just stare blankly out the window without doing any work.

Karin was beside me—but she didn't feel like she was really there. What on earth had she been carrying in her heart all that time?

Suddenly, Karin felt terribly unfamiliar. The person I thought I knew best in the world, the one I believed I understood most deeply—now felt distant, like a complete stranger.

I need to talk to her.

I folded the paper, put it in the desk drawer, and locked it.

Once you've drawn your sword, you should swing it right away, shouldn't you?

Karin would be in her room—probably one of two states: already drunk, or about to be. I flung her door open without knocking.

"What—you scared me!"

Right on cue, Karin was licking her lips as she uncorked a bottle of rum. Good—about to get drunk.

"Let's have a talk, Master."

Thump. Karin clutched the bottle like a baby and said:

"Yes—a talk, you say...?"

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