Interlude: Rachel SilverPlace and Jeanne D'Arc

I was in the midst of blazing fire.

Its red tongues licked the sky and began to burn the white cloth wrapping my body. Heat besieged my body. Smoke flew about, the smell of burning wood wafted, choking anyone who breathed it.

"I'm not Jeanne! Please, I'm not Jeanne!"

I kept screaming until my voice went hoarse but not a single citizen present could hear me, as if from the start it had never reached their ears.

Struggling? Useless. The ropes on my body felt like they wound tighter every time I moved. The pain spread more when the heat of the fire began to burn my skin.

"Please, let me go! I'm not Jeanne!"

No matter how hard I screamed, no matter how loud I shrieked in pain. My voice had lost to the sobs and prayers of those mourning me.

I shrieked.

"I don't need your prayers! Save me! Please, let me go! I'm innocent! I'm not Jeanne!"

On the other side, disgusted looks were instead directed at me by a number of people. The extremists. People who considered me heretical for saying the truth.

I heard God's voice!

It wasn't a delusion! It wasn't a demon! But why did I end up like this? Treated unfairly like a witch in fairy tales?!

In the end, no matter how hard I screamed. Still no one heard me.

I knew this was a dream. A dream that always repeated. But the pain was real.

My eyes darkened. Reflecting a golden bias that increasingly burned my skin and flesh until only ashes remained. The smell of burnt flesh increasingly wafted, making everyone who smelled it disgusted.

As soon as I saw that expression, my eyes closed. Falling asleep in darkness and regret.

*****

"I'm not Jeanne!"

I jolted from my sleep.

Sweat flowed as if I were taking a shower. I hurriedly grabbed the glass of water on the table and drank it until empty.

Slowly I bent my knees, hugging them to my chest, curling up deep in the corner of the room. My lips were still trembling. My breath was still racing. My eyes were still red.

The memory of that nightmare still constantly haunted me. A nightmare I could never defeat. A nightmare that appeared every time I used Jeanne d'Arc's full power.

"I'm... not Jeanne..."

That was the word that always murmured from my mouth afterward.

I hated this. Hated it so much. I wanted to be useful, but every time I used my power, all that existed was regret toward myself. That's why I always pretended to come late, or avoided using my full power as much as possible.

But I held it in. Pretending not to know, pretending nothing happened. I didn't want my friends to feel awkward and leave me alone. I didn't want to become useless.

No matter what, I was a hero from the past incarnated into the present. No matter what, Jeanne was a part of me that I had forgotten. Jeanne was me, and I was Jeanne.

But still... this was painful.

The sensation of heat, the terrible memory of being burned, the pain and feeling of humiliation from being looked at with disgust by the very people I had saved with my own hands. All of it mixed into one. A dark feeling that was hard to explain.

Was this... what Jeanne actually felt?

That was what I always asked. But that answer never came. Jeanne and I never spoke, and would never speak. Because we weren't different entities, we were still the same entity. We weren't another personality. We were just like... an amnesiac raised with different memories and lives.

As the clock hands kept ticking. Second by second.

I glanced at the door. Not opened. No maids or buttlers came.

It seemed everyone was asleep. Leaving me alone struggling against the trauma of my own past.

My father, my mother, and all my servants in this mansion knew about the organization. Though not incarnates like me, our family was the one funding the Fearborn hunter organization in the Belgian, Japan and England regions. Each country had a similar organization. While donors came from businessmen and a small number of nobles in each generation.

When I accidentally awakened my hero's essence. At first everyone was proud. So was I. But slowly, they began to worry because of the recurring nightmares that came almost every day.

Sometimes, curiosity came to me.

Why was I, a pure English person without mixture, in my past life a French person who drove out my own country? Why wasn't I just born French too? Why did I have to be a noble? Why not a commoner or an orphanage child like in my past life?

Where was I actually? Was I English, or French?

Why was I instead born on the opposite side of my past life? Even until now, England and France had always been two countries that held a kind of dislike for each other due to disputes hundreds of years ago.

Thinking about it made me curl up deeper.

The cold air was blown by the night wind, passing through the gaps of the wide-open window. But I had no intention of pulling my blanket. Instead, I hoped this cold air would help me stay awake until morning so I wouldn't have to fall asleep and dream those things again.

Sometimes I thought, what if I had failed to become a hero back then. Would England have won and this awkwardness between countries be destroyed? Or... the opposite?

But somehow... I felt without my past self, England and France would become one strong kingdom that could conquer everything. There would be no more wars because everything was under one banner.

The world's people wouldn't go to war because they were afraid of England's power. There would be no more suffering from war. There would be no more oppression.

So... was my presence really necessary?

"People of England, no. The whole world... please forgive me. If Jeanne had never existed everything would definitely..."

"England would definitely rule the world under the banner of three lions. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

I jolted. Immediately woke up and turned to the side.

Tirta was already there. Sitting on the edge of the window while letting his hair flutter in the night wind.

"Tirta? What are you doing?"

"I heard you used your full power again. So I came just to make sure. Well, while taking a night stroll too. Coincidentally there was also a clue about the murder case around your mansion, so I stopped by."

"Such a liar." I smiled wryly. But it soon faded and was replaced by a relieved smile when I stole a glance at him. "You came here to check on me?"

"I told you it was for investigation," he said, full of obvious lies.

I pursed my lips. "If that's the case, let me call the police and tell them there's a pervert who sneaked into a fifteen-year-old girl's room."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, how funny. You want me imprisoned? Sorry, I'm not a lolicon."

"I have CCTV."

"Oh, okay. Now I'm starting to sweat."

I just chuckled for no reason. What was strange was, that laughter also spread to Tirta. His voice was slow and warm, tickling my ears. Bringing an indescribable comfort amid the restlessness that kept besieging me.

Slowly, that laughter faded. Replaced by an intimate exchange of gazes between us.

"You know, Rachel," Tirta called, with his distinctive low voice. "If England won because of Jeanne's absence, they might conquer the world. Your assumption might say it's a good thing because England would bring peace. Well, you're English, it's natural to be proud of your nation. But... maybe your assumption would be the opposite of the reality on the ground."

I blinked a few times. Before tilting my head.

Tirta responded with a gentle, calming smile.

"You know, when resources start being totally monopolized by a certain race, company, entity, family, group, or whatever it is, plus they are the policy holders, what happens is a despotic tyranny."

“We've seen examples throughout history unfolding. Leopold who tried to monopolize rubber and ivory from Congo and killed millions of people because of his NPD. The Soviet Union, with strict policies on its colonies other than Russia, which made millions die in the Gulag until the Soviet Union itself split due to the failure of its own political monopoly and communist system. Then various mad emperors in ancient China. Also Middle Eastern kings. And many others."

"Not just countries or politics. A more visible example is in economics and business. Like the case of Standard Oil America in the twenties. They monopolized oil, raised prices, extracted maximum profit, paid minimum obligation burden. In essence, they made anyone dependent on oil their slave. There's also the case like VOC in my country in 1602-1799. Initially they were just an ordinary trading company, before finally starting to act more by monopolizing the agricultural and land sectors. Extracting maximum profit and oppressing local farmers in the past."

"Those reasons formed anti-trust policies focused on eradicating monopolies that harm many parties. In essence, monopoly is only the beginning to plunge someone into oppression and ego."

"Well, your country was never colonized. So you don't know how it feels. Different from my country which was colonized for hundreds of years, at least that's what's written in history books though the roots of the colonization itself are somewhat doubtful in its time."

He paused for a moment, then slowly approached me. Flicking my forehead gently. Like he always did.

"Ouch."

I rubbed my reddened forehead.

"Don't think like that anymore. Don't doubt yourself. Don't worry about what happened in the past. Live your present life with a full smile. Be Rachel SilverPalace, not Jeanne d'Arc. You live in the present, not the past."

I bowed my head deeply. A thin smile spread on my lips.

"Thank you, Tirta."

That's what I said. But as soon as I looked up again, he had already disappeared. What remained was only the pain in my forehead, also the curtain still fluttering in the wind.

Though left without goodbye, my smile instead widened.

"Such... a skilled charmer."

I lay back down on the bed, pulling my bright red velvet blanket, covering the lower part of my body. Then stared blankly at my bed's ceiling full of soft and beautiful silk curtains. My mind wandered wildly. Then without realizing it, I fell asleep on my own.