Episode-965
Chapter : 1929
Lloyd nodded. He looked away, staring at the rows of books as if he hated them. "There was an accident during a training exercise back home. A transport failure. I came back, and you were gone. I was left alone with Yohan."
The name of their son hung in the air between them.
"I lived a long time after that," Lloyd said quietly. "Eighty years. I raised our son. I grew old. I became a general. I invented things." He paused, his voice thick with a complicated grief. "I eventually found peace again. I married a brilliant woman named Eun Ha, and we built a good life together. I wasn't alone. But you... you were my first war. My first loss. And a part of me always wondered what our life would have been if that transport hadn't crashed."
He turned back to her. "When I woke up in this world, in this body... I thought I had left that entire life behind. I never imagined..." He looked at her face, tracing the freckles with his eyes. "I never imagined the first chapter of my life would be here too."
Airin sat in silence, processing the impossible. She looked at Lloyd—this young, powerful nobleman—and saw the old soul inside him. She saw the husband who had mourned her for half a century.
"That's why you cried," she realized. "At the market. The first time you saw me. You knew."
"I knew," Lloyd admitted. "But I couldn't be sure. Not until now. Not until you said his name."
He reached out and took her hand. His grip was tight, desperate. "You are Airin," he said firmly. "You have your own life here. You have your own dreams. But the soul inside you... the spark that makes you you... that is Anastasia. It's the same soul I loved in another world."
Airin looked down at their joined hands. The warmth was the same as in the dream. It was the only anchor she had in a world that suddenly felt too big and too strange.
"What do we do?" she asked. Her voice was small. "I... I have memories of loving you. But I am also a student. And you are... you are married. You have a life."
Lloyd pulled his hand back gently. The mask of the Professor slid back into place, but it was thinner now.
"We do nothing," he said. "Not yet."
He stood up and walked a few paces away, putting some distance between them. He needed to think. He needed to be the strategist.
"This is a lot to handle," he said. "The memories... they can be overwhelming. They can confuse you. They can make you feel like you're losing your mind."
He turned to face her. "I don't want you to force it. I don't want you to try to be Anastasia for me. You are Airin. You need to figure out what that means."
He was protecting her. Even now, with his heart clearly breaking, he was acting like the soldier protecting his family. He was giving her a way out.
"Take some time," Lloyd said. "Take the day. Take the week. Don't come to class. Just... sit with it. Process it."
"And then?" Airin asked.
Lloyd looked at her with a mixture of sadness and fierce determination.
"And then," he said, "we will figure it out. I promised I would always find you. I have. I'm not going anywhere."
He gathered his scattered papers from the table. He stacked them neatly, his hands steady now.
"Go back to your dorm, Airin," he said gently. "Rest. Let the fog clear."
Airin stood up. She felt heavy, burdened by the weight of two lifetimes, but also strangely light. She wasn't crazy. She wasn't alone.
She walked to the end of the aisle. Before she turned the corner, she looked back.
Lloyd was standing there, watching her. He didn't wave. He didn't smile. He just stood guard, a silent sentinel watching over the ghost who had come back to life.
"Goodbye, Evan," she whispered to herself.
"Goodbye, Professor," she said aloud.
She walked out of the library and into the bright afternoon sun. The world looked different now. The sky was the same blue, the grass the same green. But everything felt sharper. Deeper.
She walked back to her room, the name "Yohan" echoing in her heart with every step. She had a lot to think about. But for the first time in a week, the crushing confusion was gone. She knew who she was.
Chapter : 1930
She was Airin. And she was Anastasia. And the man in the olive uniform was just down the hall.
The storm of memories had passed, but the reality of it was just settling in. And Airin knew, with a certainty that spanned worlds, that nothing would ever be simple again.
________________________________________
The week after the conversation in the library felt longer than a year for Airin. The air inside the Royal Academy, usually buzzing with the sound of students practicing spells or debating history, felt heavy and thick whenever she was near Professor Ferrum.
They didn’t speak much. They couldn’t. What do you say to a man who claims he was your husband in another life? What do you say to a man who looks at you not as a student, but as the only person in the world who truly knows him?
It was a strange, tense dance. Airin would walk down the long stone corridors, clutching her books to her chest, and she would see him. Lloyd would be standing by a window or talking to another teacher. As soon as she appeared, his head would snap up. For a split second, his face would be open and vulnerable, filled with a desperate kind of hope. Then, the mask would slam back down. He would nod politely, say, "Scholar Airin," and keep walking.
But Airin noticed the details. She noticed how his hands clenched into fists at his sides when she walked past, as if he was fighting the urge to reach out and stop her. She noticed that he always positioned himself between her and any potential danger—a rowdy group of students, a loose cart, even a drafty window. He was guarding her, silently and constantly.
It was exhausting. Her head was full of two sets of memories. In one moment, she was Airin, worrying about her grades and her scholarship. In the next, the smell of chalk dust would vanish, replaced by the smell of rain and gun oil. She would remember stripping down a service rifle while a man named Evan reviewed deployment orders. She would remember the feeling of a simple, polished silver band on her finger.
She needed to breathe. She needed to be somewhere where the past couldn't find her.
So, on a Tuesday afternoon when the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, Airin skipped her study hall. She didn't go to the library; that place felt too charged now. Instead, she headed for the Crystal Greenhouse.
The Greenhouse was the jewel of the Academy. It was a massive structure made of curved glass and white steel, sitting on the edge of the campus grounds. It was home to rare plants from all over the continent—flowers that sang when you touched them, vines that glowed in the dark, and trees that smelled like cinnamon and sugar.
Airin pushed open the heavy glass door and stepped inside. The air was warm and humid, smelling of damp earth and blooming petals. It was quiet here. The thick glass walls blocked out the noise of the city and the school.
She walked down the central path, letting her fingers brush against the large, waxy leaves of a tropical fern. The sunlight poured in from above, filtering through the glass and the leaves, creating a shifting pattern of green and gold on the floor. It was peaceful. It was simple.
She found a small stone bench near the back, hidden behind a wall of purple hydrangeas. She sat down and closed her eyes, tilting her head back to feel the warmth of the sun on her face. For a moment, the headaches stopped. The dual memories settled down. She was just a girl sitting in a garden.
But the peace didn't last.
A sudden chill ran down her spine. It wasn't a cold breeze; the greenhouse was sealed tight. It was a feeling inside her bones, an instinct she didn't know she had. It was the feeling of being watched by a predator.
The birds inside the greenhouse, usually singing and chirping, went silent. The magical flowers that hummed soft tunes stopped their music. The silence that fell over the glass building wasn't peaceful anymore. It was heavy. It was dangerous.
Airin opened her eyes.
Standing at the entrance of the greenhouse, blocking the only exit, was a man.