Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Starting at the Guillotine
The sky was soaked in the crimson light of the setting sun that glared angrily from the horizon onto the Grand Square of the Imperial City. At the center of this famed square loomed a guillotine, its crude and rusty blade dripping red.
The sole Princess of the Tearmoon Empire, Mia Luna Tearmoon, stood before the deadly instrument and gazed blankly at her surroundings. Voices assaulted her ears, sharp and relentless. They were full of fury and malice, attacking and condemning her with words that cut deep into her heart.
"...How? How did it come to this?"
Why, she wondered, did she — Princess of the proud Tearmoon Empire — have to suffer such a terrible fate? Was it because when she was told there was no bread, she laughed and said to let them eat meat? Was it because when her advances had been rebuffed, she'd vented her frustration by slapping her rival, the daughter of a poor noble? Was it because when she was brought a dish that contained ambermoon tomatoes, which are disgusting, she'd fired the cook on the spot?
She continued to ponder the matter — ostensibly oblivious to the fact that she'd pretty much answered her own question — as she looked at the masses of people and the hatred that filled their expressions.
At the front of the crowd was a young man who, with his silver hair and refined air, cut a striking figure as he gave instructions to the surrounding soldiers. He was Sion Sol Sunkland, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Sunkland. To his side stood a young girl of equal presence. Known as the Saint of Tearmoon, she was the daughter of a poor noble who ruled a remote domain near the edge of the empire. With Sion's help, she had started a revolution to save the people from their suffering. She was Teona Rudolvon, whose own scorn had once ignited the flames of Mia's hatred... But now, those flames had sputtered and died, leaving nothing but ashes of emptiness and resignation.
"How... did it come to this..."
The same words trickled weakly from Mia's lips. Soon enough, a soldier walked up behind her and forced her to her knees. She looked up and saw her hands being forced against the semi-circles carved into a coarse plank of wood. Then the top half was slammed down to keep its condemned captive in place. The crude surface bit into her skin, leaving painful splinters.
"How... did it come to this..."
The third utterance of her question was met with a reply.
"It's for the sake of the empire. Now, be a good princess and die."
She looked up to find the soldier who'd brought her here looking down at her, his eyes cold and hostile. They were eyes that wished for her death. Something seized her from the inside. A chill of terror ran up her spine, but it failed to find her head. The heavy blade of iron had already fallen.
There was a dull thump, and the world began to spin...
A well-used diary, the only personal article she had been allowed, fell to the ground. Slowly, its tattered pages began to turn the color of the blood-red sky.
Thus did Mia Luna Tearmoon die.
That was how the dream went.
"Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Mia screamed. It was a scream that was a tad lacking in the refinement that would befit a princess of the empire.
"M-M-M-My head! My head my head my head my heaaaaaad!"
She frantically patted her own head, checking every angle and surface to make sure it was all there. And then she checked again. Just to be sure.
I-It's there! I'm fine. I'm all right.
Next, she nervously looked down at her body. The stiff, ragged cloth that had covered her was nowhere to be found, instead replaced by a lavish nightgown made of a fine material that was lovely to touch. It was soft, comfy, and almost excessively frilly. Her skin, once marred by scars big and small, was again smooth and unblemished. She held up her hands. They were smaller than they'd been in her... dream.
As though they belonged to a child...
Still feeling rather heavy in the head, she slowly got out of bed and walked in front of the full length mirror. When she peered into it, her blue eyes went wide with surprise. Her argent hair was neatly trimmed to shoulder length, and her cheeks glowed with the faint pink of health. The girl looking back at her was the spitting image of her when she was just eleven or twelve. Back then, the empire yet boasted an affluence and prosperity that was nearly unmatched in all the continent...
How terribly strange. I recall being twenty years old...
She frowned.
I was seventeen when they caught me trying to escape... and confined me to a dungeon for three years... and...
Memories of those torturous days resurfaced one after another. She remembered the anguish. The crying. She recalled the sensation of the dungeon's stiff stone floor and the cold dampness of her blanket. The sudden flashbacks were bewildering. She felt confused, but more than that, she felt deeply relieved.
"...O-Oh ho ho. H-How terribly obvious." She giggled loudly to herself, as if she was trying to laugh off the nightmare. "N-None of that ever happened. How could it? What a silly dream. Childish in every way. And how silly of me to have had it."
She kept laughing and laughing, so desperate to fill the room with something other than silence that she didn't realize one, very simple, fact: real children don't think of their nightmares as childish. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something near her pillow.
"...Oh?"
She frowned curiously at the odd object. Upon closer inspection, she found it to be an old diary. In fact, it was her diary. She recognized the cover. It was the one she'd been using since she was ten. For some reason though, it looked much older than that. Its pages were aged and ragged and... Why was it covered in dark stains?
It looked exactly like the diary she saw in her dream right before waking up. She reached out a trembling hand and touched the discolored book.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she flipped open the cover to reveal a page soaked through in something dark and red. It was filled from top to bottom with bitter scribblings that matched her dream word for word. They described her long and harrowing experience in vivid detail, from her agony in the dungeon to her terror of the guillotine.
"Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Mia screamed again. Then, her eyes rolling back, she fainted on the bed right then and there.
Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Things Mia Hates and Voicesfrom the Past
Even after regaining consciousness, Mia continued to lie in bed, her limbs splayed sloppily across its surface.
"I feel... terribly ill."
She had no appetite, and her lunch remained untouched. Her mind was occupied by the nightmare. She wanted to believe it was a nightmare. However, the vivid intensity of the memories and the existence of the bloody diary suggested otherwise.
"Ugh..."
She groaned and rolled from one side of the bed to the other. Then, she groaned again and rolled back. All the while, she kept thinking and thinking. She thought long and hard.
For a whole thirty minutes.
"I feel... terribly hungry."
Her stomach growled. Barely an hour had passed since she'd turned down lunch.
"Ah-hah," she said with a dainty clap. "I remember hearing that sweets are good for thinking about things."
Having had what was undoubtedly an excellent idea, her face lit up as she quickly hopped off the bed and scampered out the door.
The emperor's family, Mia included, lived in a castle known as the Whitemoon Palace. Its halls were adorned with green, gold, and white moonstone, while lavish ornaments lined the walls. She walked through it, taking in the sights. It was an empire at the peak of its opulence, but, she knew, on the brink of decline.
Eventually, she came to one of the castle's four dining rooms, the White Night Dining Hall. In the large room was a man; he gave her a puzzled look.
"Why, if it isn't Princess Mia. What might I do for you, Your Highness?"
He was a bear of a man with a thick, fluffy beard. Mia's eyes widened a little in surprise as she recognized him immediately.
I do recall... that this man is the head chef whom I fired.
On the day of her fourteenth birthday, she'd fired the head chef who kept bringing her vegetables that she hated.
"That would be two years from now..."
"Um, pardon me?"
"Oh, it's nothing much. I feel hungry, so I would like to have some snacks prepared. Some moonberry pie would be marvelous."
The head cook frowned and shook his head.
"I beg your pardon, but I cannot bring Your Highness snacks so close to lunch."
There was a nostalgic ring to his words that made Mia smile in spite of herself. It occurred to her that he was the only one who ever refused her wishes like this. The chef who replaced him simply cooked whatever Mia ordered. And in the end, that got boring. Getting her way each and every time was, after a while, tedious.
"Ah, well, if so, the leftovers from lunch will be fine. Would you be so kind as to bring those please?"
"Huh?"
For some reason, the head chef stared at her in shock.
"Yes?"
"Uh, nothing. Pardon me. I shall bring them right away."
Before long, an assortment of food was brought before her. There was some bread that gave off a sweet, subtle aroma; a stew made with a generous amount of seasonal vegetables; a long piece of marinated rouge salmon; and a fruit bowl.
"Ah, how wonderfully nostalgic," she said as she gazed down the table of food.
In particular, the vegetable stew caught her eye. She felt a wry smile creep across her lips as she dug her spoon in. There they were, mixed in with all the other ingredients. The ambermoon tomatoes that she hated.
I could never stand their sourness.
She held up her spoon and regarded the chunk of ambermoon tomato on it.
I must say though, this does look somewhat appetizing.
Just then, a memory flashed, bringing back to her the food she'd been forced to eat in the dungeon. She remembered the bread; stale, moldy, and so hard that it hurt her teeth. It had tasted like sand in her mouth. Time and again, her throat would close up, refusing to swallow another bite. At times, they would bring her stew. It was always murky and gray, but the reason why remained a mystery to her. The only things that passed for vegetables in it were grassy weeds, which were deeply unpalatable. She didn't mind the taste though, she really didn't, she just wished it didn't make her stomach hurt for days on end. While she'd heard about the ongoing famine and how it left people with nothing to eat, she'd come to believe that her treatment was the result of spite rather than necessity. She even had proof; after hearing that she hated ambermoon tomatoes, there were days when they had fed her nothing but.
How terribly unpleasant that was...
She could still recall how raw it smelled when they'd held it up to her nose. And when they forced her mouth open and pushed it down her throat, she'd retched from its sour bitterness. She shivered. The memory gave her goosebumps.
Pulling herself out those thoughts, she returned her gaze to the ambermoon tomato on her spoon.
Compared to the ones back then, this seems to almost glow...
She'd intended to leave it uneaten, but curiosity got the better of her and she put the piece in her mouth. Immediately, her eyes snapped open.
"Chef! Someone summon the chef! Now!"
The maid she'd shouted at jumped and asked in a trembling voice, "Y-Your Highness? Is something the matter?"
"Just bring the head chef here!"
The head chef, having heard the sudden commotion, quickly appeared.
"Was something... not to Your Highness's liking?" he said with a nervous smile. His cheek twitched a little.
"What... is this?"
Mia held her spoon up to the head chef's nose. On it was a piece of ambermoon tomato.
"Well, this is... a stew... made with seasonal vegetables..."
The way his eyes wandered suggested he was feigning ignorance. Mia, however, was having none of it.
"Allow me to rephrase. What," she said, pushing the spoon even closer toward the chef's face, "is this vegetable?"
The chef was a good deal taller than Mia, so she had to stand on her tiptoes and stretch her arm upward to properly brandish the item in question. At first, he simply stared at the spoon. Eventually, the realization that Mia was not backing off deflated him. He hung his head and said in a defeated tone, "I believe... it is an ambermoon tomato, Your Highness."
The maids around him cast worried glances his way.
"Never! This... This is an ambermoon tomato?"
She stared in disbelief at the object on her spoon. Her hand shook a little as she slowly brought it to her mouth. There was a mild sweetness hidden within its tangy but refreshing taste. Stewed to just the right softness, it melted on her tongue and left behind only its exquisite flavor, which lingered in her mouth.
Something stirred in her.
She brought another spoonful of stew to her mouth, and then another, her motions slow and trance-like. Memories came flooding back. She remembered the acerbity, the raw bitterness. But none of it was there. Each gulp was a piquant juxtaposition of past and present — of recollection and reality. She reached for the bread and took a small bite. A soft aroma, sweet and fresh, filled her nose. For a moment, the whole world seemed to come to a stop with a transfixing silence. Then, a trembling sigh escaped her lips, and the spell was broken.
"Was bread... always this soft?"
Something hit the table with a gentle spatter. She blinked and looked down. A spot was wet. Only then did she notice the tears running down her cheeks.
"Y-Your Highness! What seems to be the matter? Is there a problem with my cooking?" asked the head chef, panic evident in his voice.
Mia turned to him to respond, but with her cheeks full of food, she produced little more than a series of indecipherable noises. Furthermore, she choked on a piece in the process and went red in the face as she wildly flailed her limbs about. Only after exhibiting copious amounts of unprincess-like behavior, along with one of her equally panicked maids bringing her water, did the commotion finally cease.
"That was most satisfying, chef. Your skills are commendable."
She smiled at the head chef, who was fidgeting nervously.
"I am greatly honored, Your Highness. However, as the stew today was cooked with the intention of bringing out the natural flavor of its ingredients, I cannot in good faith take credit for its palatability."
"Oh? Is that so? But, hm... Take for example, then, the ambermoon tomato. Did it not have a more pungent flavor? I do remember it being rather disagreeable," she said, recalling the ones she was forced to eat in the dungeon. Those were hard, bitter, and sometimes literally rotten. They were absolutely terrible.
"Ah, well..." The head chef smiled as he rubbed his chin. "Cooked improperly, ambermoon tomatoes can indeed end up tasting as Your Highness describes. However, these have been stewed for three days straight. So long as the right amount of heat is used, they can be prepared by just about anyone."
"My, how curious. If they are such trouble to prepare though, can we not simply avoid eating them altogether...?"
"Absolutely not. That would put the health of Your Highness at risk. For us servants, ensuring the nutrition of the royal family is as important a duty as any."
The head chef pressed his hand to his chest and gave a deep bow. Mia had always taken such shows of deference for granted, assuming it was the natural way of things. It wasn't though. Not at all. After the revolution brought about the empire's downfall and her own personal ruin, almost no one showed her even a morsel of concern, much less deference. She knew this now and allowed her lips to curl up into a tender smile.
"How terribly considerate of you. Know that I am most grateful for your efforts."
"...Huh?"
Hearing honest gratitude from Mia left the head chef in a state of absolute shock. With his mouth agape, he took a few unsteady steps backward, reeling from the impact of what he'd just heard. Never did he imagine he'd receive such kind words from the willful princess.
...At this point, it shouldn't be very hard to infer the way Mia usually behaved.
The chef stared at Mia with the kind of wide-eyed bewilderment usually reserved for feats of apparent magic where, for example, a person somehow flew thirty feet into the air. After multiple blinks of disbelief, he finally managed a reply.
"I-I'm... I'm honored, Your Highness."
It wasn't much, but it was something. He scratched his chin as if the praise left him abashed, and added, "O-Of course, it might simply be an issue of cost... These foods prepared today were of the finest quality and would cost about a month's pay for common folk."
"My, is that so?"
Talks of cost and price never made much sense to Mia. Having been utterly spoiled in her upbringing, she'd lived a life of luxury wherein a simple glance from her was enough to have her every wish fulfilled. She neither knew nor cared about how much her meals and lifestyle cost, or how much money a commoner made in a month. As a result, it would be natural for her to ignore the head chef's comment.
But she didn't.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to feed you royals?
An accusatory voice echoed in her mind. She jumped a little and looked around.
Wh-What in the moons?! Who was...
The voice, however, sounded familiar. It was someone from her memory...
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