"Excellent marksmanship."
"You don't think I missed on purpose!"
Her voice, still excited, snapped back. Cider calmly asked in return:
"Do you have the skill to miss on purpose?"
"Of course not."
Esperanza, who had thrown her gun into thin air, turned off the automatons and strode over. Her hair tied in a single bundle swayed at her waist. Seeing the sweat flowing down her forehead and nape, Cider reflexively pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket.
'I had this habit.'
Esperanza accepted the handkerchief as if familiar with it, then hesitated.
"Just use it."
"You're not the type to show such kindness, are you?"
"You look quite used to it for sothing like that."
"Giving
a handkerchief isn't kindness. Kindness is sothing you show to other people. That was until yesterday—no, the day before yesterday."
Even as she said this, Esperanza appropriately wiped her forehead and nape with Cider's handkerchief. anwhile, Cider went inside to examine the automatons. Even without mory, he could easily tell that he had personally manufactured all these automatons.
"This one's broken."
While examining them one by one, he found an automaton that wasn't moving.
"I noticed this morning. It's not a frequent occurrence though."
"It shouldn't be. Considering who made it."
"Even though you have no mory."
"Even without mory, I can recognize what I made."
She couldn't recognize Esperanza, but she recognized automatons? Her insides twisted.
"Shall I fix it?"
At his question asked without even looking this way, Esperanza sharply retorted:
"There's no need. ...When my husband cos, I can ask him to fix it."
Cider slowly straightened up.
"Do you think I beca a different person because I lost my mory?"
"To , yes. Without those mories."
Those were mories the two of them had built together. Cider was the only person who knew who Esperanza was in this world, and Esperanza was the only person who called Cider's na. That could never change.
Losing mory didn't make affection disappear without a trace, but what she had shared with the Cider who had those mories couldn't be shared now.
"So, do you hate
now?"
"I don't hate you... but you are annoying. You showed your face at so pseudo-academic conference, got hit by sothing, and forgot only my mories completely—how could you not look annoying?"
"A pseudo-academic conference? I went to such a place?"
"Ah, is that what's important right now?"
"It's important. It's the cause of my mory loss."
According to Millen's explanation, he had attended an obviously suspicious conference just because there was a research presentation related to spaceti machines, got into an argunt with one of the presenters, and was attacked. They attacked him with so strange machine that was presented that day, and they let their guard down because there were no visible injuries.
As soon as Esperanza heard this story, she contacted the conference demanding they hand over at least the machine blueprints, but it remained to be seen how effective threats by letter would be. Even if the threats worked, it would take ti for Cider to analyze the machine and produce results.
It was difficult to explain this situation in detail, and it was also hard to discuss the spaceti machine research in detail. Esperanza decided to gloss over it roughly.
"That's what they say. I only heard about it too."
"You're hiding sothing unfavorable to , aren't you? You said it shows on your face."
"Why do you only rember things that are favorable to you?"
Cider shrugged. He was really annoying. Esperanza looked down at her clenched fist. Just one hit... couldn't she hit him just once? If she hit him well, his mory might return.
"I have no mory, but just looking at your face, I can guess what you're thinking—it seems I really did spend three years with you."
Cider, covering Esperanza's fist with the back of his hand to hide it from view, smiled broadly.
"Anyway, I lost the mories of the past three years after being attacked at so pseudo-academic conference I don't know about... And you think I'm worthless without those mories."
"I didn't say that."
"Isn't it similar?"
"I said it's not."
"Then. Will you allow
to fix that automaton?"
The person who had pointed a gun at her neck last night was now being friendly as easily as flipping his palm. Honestly, it was bewildering, but at the sa ti, she felt a clear sense of déjà vu.
'He was like this from the beginning...'
There was no need to try hard to understand. Instead, Esperanza asked about a different aspect.
"Without even rembering making it, can you fix sothing your three-years-later self made?"
Cider's face, which had been relaxed until then, changed strangely.
"That's quite insulting."
"It's probably less insulting than coming ho from an outing to find your husband has completely forgotten only you."
"...Oh my, that's regrettable."
Instead of pursuing the unfavorable topic, Cider changed the subject.
"Anyway, to fix that, I'll need to check the blueprints as you said."
She never said she'd let him fix it.
However, Cider opened the door and went out as if to lead the way. Esperanza, who had turned on a cleaning automaton, followed behind him. This ti there was no comnt like 'You're not thinking of following, are you?'
Upon arriving at the study, Cider imdiately rummaged through research materials.
"I thought it would be around here."
Having sohow found what he wanted among the irregularly organized materials, he sat on the sofa. Esperanza sat on her dedicated sofa opposite him and watched him intently, then took off her indoor shoes and lay diagonally on the sofa.
"...What are you doing?"
Cider, who had been turning pages, stopped and asked.
"What do you an?"
"You're barefoot right now. And you have your feet up on the sofa."
"So I have to change my posture just because you lost your mory?"
"You normally sit on the sofa in that posture?"
"It's been three years like this. You had the sa reaction at first, but you got used to it quickly."
"Well, that's comforting."
Cider clicked his tongue and lowered his gaze back to the records. Esperanza opened a letter from a new friend she had made a few months ago and began reading.
Howard, who knocked on the study door and entered, hesitated. Two people sitting on facing sofas. Each was absorbed in their own work. It was the sa as usual, as if yesterday's incident had never happened. Except for the absence of tis when they would occasionally look up from what they were reading to gaze at each other.
"Count, is it correct that your mory still hasn't returned?"
"Not yet."
"Then... Countess, what about the demonstration?"
The letter fluttered and fell from Esperanza's hand.
"Right. There was a demonstration...?"
This was a really big problem.
"I need an explanation."
"So, the day after tomorrow you're doing a technology demonstration with so professor in front of the Queen and Galliston."
"Is there a reason I agreed to do such a pointless thing?"
"Since you've been refusing military work for three years, you could say it's a show of loyalty, if you must put it that way."
Neither the Queen nor Galliston would think he had loyalty anyway, but sotis such shows were necessary.
"Of course it's not just the two of them coming—there are the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, Pri Minister Tempton, various high-ranking people. Well, anyway. It's not a small scale."
"So, what is this technology?"
This is where the problem arose.
"I don't know either."
Cider hadn't told Esperanza the identity of that technology either. For unknown reasons, he had maintained secrecy to the end, so she hadn't tried to find out, but if she had known this would happen, she would have at least secretly looked into it!
"Not at all? You don't just not understand it, but you don't even know what it is?"
"Yes, not at all. I don't even know what professor you're doing the demonstration with."
"Don't you have any guesses?"
"I originally don't know anything about that field at all. There are research records that you've been working on recently over there, but you said that research was already finished."
"It would have to be if you're doing a demonstration."
"Then the research materials were probably already organized and filed away."
Things couldn't get more tangled than this. This was all the fault of Cider Claiborne for going in and out of that pseudo-academic conference alone three days before the demonstration.
"Then there's no choice but to recover my mory?"
And to recover mory, there was currently only one thod.
"We could analyze the machine that attacked you and find a solution in reverse, but even if the blueprints arrive tomorrow..."
"Even working through the night, it would be difficult to analyze soone else's machine in two days and figure out what that machine did to ."
It was questionable whether that machine really did anything. It seed more likely that Cider Claiborne had just forgotten his mory on his own after getting hit on the back of the head.
"So in the end, it seems like there's no choice but to drink the potion."
Unlike yesterday when he had retorted with things like 'Why should I trust you?', Cider readily nodded.
"That might be necessary. But about that—I read the records yesterday and it said that consumption involves considerable pain. Is it really proper dicine?"
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