Aria of the Withered Branch
Chapter 1

Prologue

Life was no fun. I did wonder from time to time how I had reached this point, but if I was honest, I already knew why. Or rather, I knew how things had gotten this way.

Though it might sound hard to believe, I remembered the moment I was born into this world. Certainly, it was a very brief moment that I recalled, and my awareness of my surroundings was close to nil. But the moment remained engraved in my memory all the same, in surprising clarity.

Unable to see, all I had was my sense of touch and hearing. I was cradled in something cold and hard, and I could hear words being spoken, but couldn’t understand them. The noises coming from all around me buzzed in my ears, but there was a single utterance that I could make out very clearly. Only later did I learn what those words actually meant.

“No more girls. She’ll have to be a boy.”

The words had filled me with despair the moment I understood them—they had permanently defined my value in this household. I was the fifth wheel—and a completely unwanted one at that. I was a burden to keep, but also could not be easily thrown out.

My mother, who’d had a weak constitution, died after giving birth to me. The cold, hard hold I remembered was my mother’s final embrace, though her spirit had already taken leave of her body long ago, and not a bit of warmth remained.

The same day that my mother passed away, the count moved her replacement in. All the preparations had been made in advance, as though they’d just been waiting for her to die. Even more terrible still—his new wife was my mother’s half-sister. She was my aunt, but my father had cheated on my mother with her for a very long time, so now she was my stepmother. From the cheating came a half-sister, who was three years older than me, who also moved in. Thanks to my father’s utterly shameless paternal love, my older half-sister became the heir of the family.

Unlike my mother, whose parents were legitimately married, my stepmother was born from my grandfather’s lover. My stepmother’s mother, the lover, was unable to marry my grandfather, even after my maternal grandmother died, because of the strong opposition she faced from my grandfather and his family. Therefore, as a high-ranking noble family that held to the social hierarchy just the same as any other, I was the rightful heir—not my illegitimate half-sister. However, my father had eliminated this possibility from the start.

The moment I became a boy in the eyes of the world, I was stripped of my right to become his successor. The absurd house I was born into had a rule—the heir of each generation had to be the opposite gender to the last. The 36th head of the family had to be a woman, with no exception. This was reason enough for them—they had decided I could never live my life as a girl.

Revealing the truth might have won me the support of the elders in our family, at least, but it was also clear that I would have quietly disposed of if I’d dared. At some point, I came to realize this and promptly lost interest in the position. I was raised as a boy, and as someone entirely unnecessary within their home. All those who were aware of my real gender simply thought of me as a cause for anxiety and an obstacle. Nobody was on my side, and strangers were generally kinder to me than my own family.

Because my father was a high-ranking noble, those around us were of similar rank, and they all despised me. I had nothing to offer them nor any talent of note, so they didn’t have even the slightest modicum of interest in me. There were others who came to me with a faint sense of empathy, but they inevitably turned away after they became charmed by my greedy sister. I was treated like a maid and forced to sit in at meetings I could not be excused from—a doll and an accessory kept only because of their noble pride.

This wasn’t to say that I didn’t have any acquaintances at all. I was pretty for a boy, and quite popular among my female acquaintances. My gender identity was hazy, but I knew that it was in my best interests to hide my real gender, for staying out of trouble equaled survival. This was the only way I was going to survive.

When I was younger, at least, I probably had a strong desire to live. I had goals, things that mattered to me, and was motivated by my pride to keep going. Though my stepmother did not torment me outright, she seemed to feel inferior to my mother, who was her half-sister. She sometimes got me in trouble and watched on with satisfaction as I was punished.

As for my sister, she was never satisfied unless it was made clear that I was beneath her in all ways. I sometimes resented fate because I had inherited the same sibling relationship lived out by the previous generation of my family. I was naive and desperate for love when I was younger, unlike nowadays, and I’d begged for their attention to a miserable extent, sadly enough. I wanted to excel at everything I did so I could win their recognition, but that wish never materialized. Instead, I was left to despair every step of the way.

Perhaps it was a good thing that I was not named my father’s successor—outside of simple memorization and routine business work, I was below average in every regard. It took me quite a while to come to terms with this truth, but doing so allowed me to give up entirely and toss away any lingering regret. Now, I was just a dull person drawing in lethargy.

Perhaps it would have been better if my personality had taken an abrupt turn for the worse, and I’d begun making loads of trouble wherever I went. I could have become the ladies’ man of the century with my looks, or perhaps a notorious con artist, winning recognition from similar crooks in the alleyways I frequented. But I was tired of it all now.

Tired, lonely, and listless. I… I just wanted to rest.

I’d recently been forced to sit the test required of young noblemen to earn their knighthood, so I would be of some use to the family, but I had failed spectacularly. My father had tossed a recommendation letter at me after that. The document had stated in bold letters that my future was in working overseas, which meant they were finally throwing me out. I’d known in some vague sense that such a time might one day arrive, and that I would probably feel hurt when it did. Lo and behold, I felt absolutely nothing at all. If anything, I was relieved. Then it suddenly hit me.

The time has come. It was time to end it all. And doing so was within my power. The relief I felt did not last long, however.

“What a nasty-looking little thing.”

I’d never seen my mother with my own eyes, but I owned something of hers that I saw in her portrait—my one and only keepsake. I usually kept the precious heirloom hidden under my clothing, but I’d accidentally left it uncovered, and my stepmother didn’t miss her chance. She snatched the necklace the moment she laid eyes on it.

It was a silver necklace with a blue gem mounted in the center of a round pendant. It burned to nothing in the drawing room fireplace that day, and my own heart seemed to shrivel up and die along with it. I tried not to care as I left the room, but the incident caused me to come to a decision. As I packed my things and left the mansion, I took with me something that my stepmother treasured deeply—a ring that housed a gem said to be indestructible.

It wasn’t that I wanted money—even if I was just a useless addition to the family, the status afforded the count’s house meant that I had more than enough when it came to basic necessities. I was grateful for that, at least.

That was why I’d only stolen the ring. Doing so was a final timid attempt at revenge, carried out by a lonely girl. Unaware of what consequences this seemingly trivial act would bring down on my head, I left home. My destination was an inn, having confirmed its location in advance.

As I’d expected, it was not only secluded, but there seemed to be almost no one around. I paid the lodging fees for two months upfront and demanded that nobody enter my room for the duration of my stay. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I threw the ring to the floor and stomped on it as hard as I could.

As I did so I thought of my dead mother, the way I was starved for love as a child, and my stepmother destroying my mother’s necklace. I’d mindlessly immersed myself in stomping on the object until I snapped out of it. When I came to, my forehead was sweaty, and the red gem that was supposedly stronger than steel lay in powdered fragments on the floor. Tales of its indestructible nature had been lies in the end.

I felt good, and now able to die without any regrets. It was almost like I could hear angels blowing trumpets in the distance. I was finally ready as I put the charred necklace over my head, leaving it to lay on my chest. After tidying my clothes, I lay down in bed, waiting for my life to come to an end.

I Thought It Was a Dream

I was dreaming. A vast screen, like one that might appear in a theater, floated before my eyes. In my dream, I watched a total of five short films. The title of the first one quickly flashed across the screen.

[1. Hellicharde]

The protagonist of this film seemed to be around six years old. She was an incredibly cute little girl with a full head of beautiful pink hair. Her chubby cheeks and huge, sparkling green eyes were incredibly lovely.

The girl yawned and waved her hand through the air, causing something incredible to happen. Books slid from the bookcase and began to dance. It was like magic—in fact, it was literally magic. The girl began to say something, and the children around her wrote it down.

Is she a student? Based on her surroundings, I guessed it might be a magic tower, or perhaps a lab at a university. But this was odd. I’d lain down, intending for my world to come to an end. Why am I having this dream?

These thoughts did nothing to stop what was happening to me, however. As I stared blankly at the screen, the child suddenly spun around to face me. I felt like she’d seen me, and just as I was pondering the possibility, her eyes widened.

The pink-haired girl, who’d been blinking as she stood rooted to the spot, shuddered. She stared at the ceiling with a look of elation on her face, raised a fist into the air, and shouted something bizarre.

“So you didn’t want to lose me, either?”

The child came toward me, and I flinched.

Isn’t this supposed to be just a film? Can she actually see me?

She stared up at my confused expression, then grinned and dashed to the door. The other children hurried after her, confused.

“Where are you going, Hellicharde?”

They were calling her name. The screen faded to black, only to be replaced by a new motion picture.

[2. Phasion]

The protagonist of the second film was a beautiful man with bright blond hair and very pretty lips. He seemed to be from my home country, Chaive, since he wore the white ceremonial uniform of the imperial guard. I thought of the knight exam that I’d failed recently, feeling gloomy for a moment. I soon shook my sadness off, however.

The insignia on his chest suggested he was a commander. He was with Duke Alfine, a relative of the imperial family and a highly-ranked noble. The cast of this second film was impressive. It was odd to think that a famously cold-blooded great noble was making an appearance in a motion picture in my dreams.

The knight commander was polite and gentle for the duration of his conversation with the duke. The restraint in his movements was unique to the knights and felt very graceful, for some reason. It was especially impressive that he was managing to talk circles around the old duke despite being considerably younger, and so soft-spoken.

I marveled at the scene absentmindedly, but I snapped back to my senses. I don’t want to be here right now. When will this film end?

I’d learned one thing, at least—this motion picture followed a similar pattern to the previous one. The man stopped talking with the duke and spun around to glare at me, just as the previous protagonist had done. I laughed. If the same pattern was repeating itself, then this second film was very likely about to end, too.