Lycoris Radiata spends much of her childhood wondering why certain things feel familiar when they shouldn’t.
A phrase overheard during a conversation, the title of a book she has never read before, even the faces of people she is meeting for the first time occasionally leave her with a strange sense of recognition. The feeling never lasts long enough to make sense of it, but it happens often enough that she stops dismissing it as coincidence.
Growing up as the daughter of a duke leaves her with little time to dwell on such things anyway.
Lessons, etiquette, social obligations, and endless expectations occupy most of her days. To those around her, Lycoris appears unusually mature for her age, the sort of child who rarely causes trouble and always seems to be thinking about something. Even her family occasionally finds her difficult to understand.
The answers arrive years later, and they are not particularly comforting.
A discussion about her future fiancé triggers memories she did not know she possessed. Names, events, and faces begin falling into place one after another until Lycoris is forced to confront an absurd possibility: she has seen this world before.
Not in this life.
In another one.
What unsettles her most is not the existence of those memories, but what they reveal. The people around her are connected to a story she vaguely remembers, one she never expected to become part of herself. Unfortunately, her role in that story is far from ideal.
The problem, however, is that real life refuses to behave like a game.
People say things they never said before. Relationships develop in unexpected directions. Even individuals she thought she understood prove capable of surprising her.
For Lycoris, that uncertainty is both reassuring and worrying.
If the future is not fixed, then perhaps she can avoid the mistakes she remembers.
On the other hand, it also means she has no idea what is actually going to happen next.
And that may be the most troublesome part of all.
