Past (english version)

Chapter 2

I open my eyes and see a woman leaning over me. I leap to my feet, headbutting both of us. A great pain pierces my skull. The woman recovers quickly.

" Princess! You're awake!"

I look at the woman without understanding. Princess? Awake? What's she talking about?

" Excuse me, but who are you?"

"Good heavens! Don't play games with me, Princess. I was scared enough when Charles brought you here soaking wet from the rain."

Who, what, where? This woman is totally insane. And the way she talks, it's like we're in the 17th century. But it's not Mardi Gras.

" I don't know who you are, lady, but you're going to have to leave."

The woman looks at me in shock, as if I'd just told her something awful. She puts a hand over her mouth, runs to a large door and exits. I look around, the room is straight out of a history book. There were objects here that don't even exist anymore. I'm definitely not home. My heart starts beating faster and faster, where have I fallen?

The woman returns accompanied by three other people, dressed just as extravagantly as her. One of them is a man of about twenty-four who look familiar, and then I remembered.

"Louis XVI?" I'm astonished.

"Why do you call me that, Elisabeth? You always call me by my name."

Louis XVI, supposed to have been dead for centuries, stands before me with a face dead with worry. And what's more, he called me Elisabeth. Have I gone mad? Have I taken a blow to the head?

"Marie told us you'd lost your memory, is that true? Don't you remember your family?" Start mourning a woman I didn't know.

I'm embarrassed by the sadness of this woman, who must have been my mother, but I really don't understand the whole story. A man enters the room, wearing scrubs and looking like a doctor.

He approaches my bed and puts his hand above my head, and it starts to glow blue. What the hell was that?

The doctor shook his head in disbelief.

" It's as I feared, the princess has lost her memory." he announced gravely.

Louis XVI is supporting the woman who claims to be my mother, who is fainting. Another girl I hadn't noticed, but who was just as well dressed as my "mother", speaks up.

"So Elisabeth doesn't remember any of us, or what happened to her?" She asks worriedly.

The doctor turns to me, gives me a hard look and then turns back to the girl.

"Apparently not, but you can help her recover her memories by talking to her about certain things, you can already start talking to her about his accident."

He turns back to me.

" Princess, you were out boating two weeks ago and a storm came up, you passed out in the rain on the way home and Charles brought you back and you never woke up until now."

I beg your pardon? What the hell was he talking about? I was reading Past, the novel my best friend Wendy recently put on sale. It's about...

"Oh my goodness!" I suddenly understand.

"Yes, I know it's hard for you, Princess." Compatise the doctor

I'm in Wendy's novel! Normally that's impossible, but there are several clues to that effect.

I've been called Elisabeth for a while now, Louis XVI is standing in front of me and the doctor has worked his magic. All these things are in Past.

There's just one last thing I need to check, and it's only in the novel.

"What's the butler's name?" I ask.

"Ignace, why? Would you like me to send for him? " my "mother" asks me hastily, seeing me turn pale.

Ignace was the butler in Past and Wendy had chosen this name because it means "fire" in Latin. As she was a Fairy Tail fan, she'd wanted to put that reference there.

I run my hand through my hair. Damn! If I really was Elisabeth in Past, I had a lot to worry about. Élisabeth dies on the guillotine, because she supposedly tried to poison her brother at his own party, but it was a bitch who was jealous who did it. She was imprisoned and at her trial none of her family supported her except her brother, but he was too weak to move. She was guillotined the next day.

There's no way I'm going to end up like her. I'm going to try to stay as long as possible in this macho world! And I'm going to take the opportunity to introduce the feminist sooner than expected.