“I’m Alice Lovell, captain of the Astraea Familia.”
The red-haired girl rested one hand against her hip and grinned.
“And you, brave young master?”
“Lelouch.”
Alice waited.
Several seconds passed.
“…That’s it?”
“It’s the only name I remember.”
Lelouch gave her the shortest possible explanation.
He had awakened alone in the forest.
No belongings.
No memories.
No idea how he had arrived there.
He deliberately omitted the blade piercing his chest.
His death.
And the voice that had pronounced judgment upon him.
He could not determine whether those things had actually happened or whether they were fragments of some unusually vivid nightmare.
There was no reason to reveal uncertain information to someone he had met less than ten minutes ago.
Alice listened without interrupting.
Unlike nearly everyone else he had spoken to since waking, her green eyes did not immediately fill with suspicion.
Instead, she studied him as though weighing something beneath the literal meaning of his words.
“No home.
No money.
No memories.”
Alice counted them on her fingers.
“And you’re looking for a Familia.”
Lelouch’s eyes narrowed.
“How did you know I was looking for one?”
He distinctly remembered not mentioning that part.
Martha, who was still standing nearby, immediately raised her hand.
“I told her!”
Lelouch turned.
“This young man has already been rejected by three different Familias,” Martha continued cheerfully, “and he’s still stubbornly determined to become an adventurer.”
“Martha…”
His voice dropped.
“What?
Everything I said is true.”
Alice openly examined Lelouch’s arms and legs with about as much restraint as the recruiters who had rejected him earlier.
Lelouch mentally prepared himself for another predictable verdict.
Instead, Alice nodded to herself.
“Weak body.”
Lelouch’s eyebrow twitched.
“No combat experience.”
A second twitch.
“Memory loss on top of that.”
“If you’re going to reject me, you could make the process considerably more concise.”
“Who said I’m rejecting you?”
Lelouch stopped.
Alice lightly touched one finger to his chest.
“Falna can strengthen your body.”
She raised a second finger.
“Experience can be learned.”
A third.
“And memories can be searched for later.”
Then her expression softened.
“But someone willing to stand in front of a blade for complete strangers when there’s absolutely nothing in it for him?”
Alice tapped his chest once more.
“A heart like that isn’t something you find every day.”
“Courage without strength may simply be stupidity in a more flattering disguise.”
“Exactly!”
Alice nodded so enthusiastically that Lelouch actually paused.
“That’s why you need strong companions!”
Her smile widened.
“People who won’t let that courage end with you getting yourself killed!”
Something deep inside Lelouch trembled.
Companions.
One ordinary word—
And suddenly countless blurred images moved behind the darkness covering his memories.
A black mask.
A hand placing a piece onto a board.
A green-haired woman smiling.
Someone standing with their back toward him beneath the sunlight.
Voices.
Arguments.
Laughter.
People beside him.
People behind him.
People he had—
Every image shattered.
Pain pulsed through his skull.
Lelouch suppressed it before his expression could change too obviously.
Then he looked at the girl standing before him.
Alice extended her hand.
A hand that had just defeated three adventurers with almost insulting ease.
Now it simply waited in front of him.
Open.
Gentle.
Offering rather than demanding.
“Lelouch.”
Alice smiled.
“Would you like to meet our goddess, Astraea?”
The warmth in that smile was almost absurdly bright against a city where fear seemed to hide behind every street corner.
“Come join the Astraea Familia!”
Amid countless strangers in a city he did not know—
It was the first hand extended toward him without asking where he had been born.
Without judging his weakness.
Without demanding anything in return.
Lelouch looked down at that hand for several long seconds.
He did not know who he had once been.
He did not know why he had been sent to this world.
He did not know what power slept behind his violet eye—
Or why the mere hint of it filled some forgotten corner of his heart with dread.
He knew nothing.
But perhaps—
Finding those answers required a place from which to begin.
And for now…
The first step might simply be accepting the hand of justice being offered to him.
….
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….
I also have many more novels in my collection that you might be interested in I upload ten novels a day, with 3 to 4 chapters per title depending on the length.
If you’re following a particular series, please wait your turn a little If there’s a particular novel you’re enjoying on Patron, please give it a ‘like’ so I know to focus on it