My head was a total mess.

  After all, the memories of Naoyuki Haneda and the girl named Caius Elias Anastasia were completely jumbled together.

  After the wrecked funeral, my mother had taken me back to my room.

  Now that I was finally alone, I was calmly piecing together my current situation.

  As I traced my memories, it became clear that I had, in fact, been a princess all along.

  Right now, I was in Elias County, in the northeastern part of the Aristera Kingdom.

  My mother, Ariette, had married the current king—back when he was still crown prince, Caius Inquisitus Miredias III—at the age of sixteen, and I was born two years later.

  The king had a queen and three concubines.

  I almost cheered at the thought that this world practiced polygamy, but then I remembered I could never become a husband and cursed that flat-banged goddess again.

  Mother had been the third concubine.

  I—no, I—had been second in line to the throne.

  That was why I’d been attacked and killed.

  I didn’t want to accept it, but I could roughly understand the motive.

  It felt like my starting line had been shoved way back.

  The whole mess had begun in the autumn of kingdom year 246, during the war with the neighboring country, when the king died.

  He was forty-one years old.

  Since it happened in the middle of battle, his death was kept secret.

  The first prince, Caius Devon Heracleios, was only sixteen but had distinguished himself on the campaign. Leading a detached unit, he shattered the enemy’s right wing, allowing the Aristera army to push the front line forward and force a ceasefire.

  Yet even after the new year, the throne remained empty.

  The previous king had passed away without naming a crown prince.

  As a result, the capital had begun to look like a battlefield over the succession.

  Prince Heracleios, with his military talent and cheerful personality, was first in line and widely expected to become the next king.

  That prince was the first to be killed.

  Poisoned.

  Suspicion fell on the supporters of Queen Clarissa’s son, the fourth prince Caius Valerius Miredias IV.

  It had long been whispered that the previous king had postponed naming an heir because he wanted to pass the throne to Miredias IV.

  After Prince Heracleios’s assassination, while trying to leave the capital, even the first princess—me, Caius Elias Anastasia—had been attacked.

  The princess’s funeral had supposedly been held quietly in Elias County, surrounded by family.

  In reality, it had been absolute chaos, with the priest nearly going mad, screaming that an evil spirit had possessed the body.

  To the world, I was dead. My position as second in line and as princess had vanished into thin air.

  Naturally, my status as the count’s daughter had disappeared as well.

  This is nothing like what I signed up for, I thought.

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  Still, it seemed I had received quite rigorous training from a young age.

  My aunt Lunaflair had taught me magic, and my uncle Aculeos—a thousand-man commander—had taught me the sword.

  This aunt was something else.

  She had a toned physique you’d never expect from a mage, and she apparently had an exhibitionist streak—she loved showing skin and wore revealing clothes year-round.

  Not only that, she was the greatest mage in the kingdom and had become dean of the Magic Academy at nineteen.

  Rumor had it that while technically affiliated with the military, she kept refusing to deploy. Fearing she might flee to another country if dismissed, they’d made her dean instead.

  Aunt’s training had been brutal. It took me four whole years before I could use magic.

  Magic seemed to activate simply by willing it.

  Of course, only if you had the aptitude.

  But if it went against the laws of nature, it wouldn’t manifest as magic. And if the mental image wasn’t clear and vivid enough, it wouldn’t work properly.

  To sharpen that image, ordinary mages used “incantations” to verbalize it or “magic circles” to encode it.

  However, my aunt had strictly forbidden relying on those.

  The reason was that depending on incantations or magic circles let you use systematized magic, but it made advanced applications harder and crushed the user’s potential for growth.

  Since I’d endured such harsh training, I figured I could use it.

  I couldn’t.

  I traced my memories and tried to recall the exact moment it had activated.

  Nothing.

  Two of my three wishes—sword, magic, and royalty—had been crushed.

  The sword would probably be fine.

  After all, in my previous life I’d thrown myself into classical swordsmanship.

  I’d practiced everything from basic stances to iaido draws.

  I searched through the training content.

  The swords they used were almost identical to Roman-era weapons from my old world; there were no katana.

  The only thing I’d gained was this face—far beyond ordinary.

  It was so perfectly beautiful I couldn’t believe it was mine.

  Good looks are a virtue.

  But only until twenty.

  Once you enter society, they start to fade, and without substance behind them, they only decline.

  That was my honest impression after watching countless women at work.

  I had to polish something else.

  With that thought, I slipped into bed. The lamp on the wall flickered, stirring the air in the room, and a particularly large four-legged shadow appeared on the wall.

  Startled, I sat up—only to realize the shadow belonged to a tiny cat.

  A white cat with gray patches.

  It looked just like the bakeneko from before, but much smaller.

  The cat hopped lightly onto the bed and sat in front of me.

  “Were you calling that bakeneko me?”

  “Peeking into people’s hearts is pretty rude, you know.”

  “Can’t be helped. I am a god, after all.”

  “If you’re a god, can’t you do something about this?”

  “What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I’ve got the sword-and-magic royal package, but everything got crushed the moment I arrived.”

  “What a shame. Life is like that. Even I, the cat goddess, got run over by a car and died.”

  “When you put it that way… it’s kind of sad.”

  “Mmm. …Actually, I came to apologize. It’s because I asked you for help that things turned out this way. I forgot to erase the memories that should have been wiped, shoved a soul into a corpse, and now you’re stuck living this bizarre life. I’m truly sorry. But since you’ve been given life, you should live it to the fullest. I’ll watch over you, so do your best.”

  “That’s exactly what I was planning to do before sleeping.”

  “I see. Sorry for disturbing you. I just came to tell you that I’m watching over you.”

  “Watching over me? You mean surveilling me, right? So I don’t do anything crazy with my previous-life knowledge since you forgot to erase the memories.”

  “Quite the sharp eye. Well, that’s part of it. But it’s also because I wish for your happiness. After all, you’re the man who listened to my wish.”

  “Then at least make it so I can use one spell.”

  “You’ll have to manage on your own. But I’ll give you one piece of advice: magic is the power to overwrite reality with imagination. It is somewhat bound by the physical laws of this world, but conversely, it can manifest within the scope of those laws. Just be sure never to use E=mc2.”

  “I see. Interesting. So if I incorporate physical laws into magic circles and combine them, I could even make a railgun?”

  “Well, something like that—but no nuclear stuff. There was once something whose very existence was erased from meaning.”

  “Hmm, I don’t really understand what that means, but if there’s no meaning in its existence, then being erased doesn’t matter, right?”

  “That’s true enough. It’s the way of living in void, never to be born again. Since you know reincarnation is real and are thinking about the next life, I’ll tell you this.”

  Bastet paused for a breath and began to speak.

  “The universe is like bubbles floating on water. Countless ones are born and pop. Within them exist lives like yours. You lives are born again and again—from microorganisms to mammals to humans like you. Life circulates. Be grateful that you were born human and reincarnated as human. Have you ever seriously considered the life of an ant mindlessly crushed under a person’s foot? Have you ever thought about the life of livestock raised only to be eaten? Those are lives too. Therefore, you must not live in vain.”

  “Heavy words. I’ll remember them.”

  “Good, good. I’ve talked too much. As you said, I’m your overseer. I’ll never leave your side, so prepare yourself.”

  “Understood. Then I’ll call you Basti—is that okay?”

  “Fine by me. Now, I’m going to sleep.”

  With that, the cat curled up on my lap and fell asleep.

  She’d said everything she wanted and promptly dozed off.

  Having an overseer who can see straight into my heart is pretty dangerous.

  Anyway, it was an interesting talk.

  I’ll try it out tomorrow.

  With that, I closed my eyes.

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