In a Female-Dominant World with a 5:1 Gender Ratio, I Saved a Girl as a Kid, and She Said She Wanted to Be My Bride—Who Would’ve Thought She Was a Princess… - 18

Chapter 18: The Silence of the Night, and the ‘Artificial Garden’ Whispered by a Past Life

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(Alto’s POV)

I returned to the old dormitory just barely before curfew, having finished the secret meeting in the underground archive.

“Then, see you tomorrow.”

With those words, Princess Lilianna returned to the detached palace using teleportation magic. Coming back, I was struck once again by the moldy smell of the room and the creaking bed. After everything that had happened today, my mind had been completely awakened, leaving me unable to sleep.

I rested my elbows on the window frame and looked up at the star-filled sky spreading out beyond the glass. It was a beautiful night sky. Stars scattered like gemstones. The moon gently illuminating the land below.

A fantastical scene that anyone in this world would praise in poetic terms. But to my eyes right now, they looked like something entirely different.

“…Artificial satellites, huh.”

Saying it out loud, the words sounded far too inorganic, completely out of place in this world of swords and magic. They were foreign objects. Yet once the sense of discomfort latched onto my mind, it spread like ink soaking into paper. The memories and knowledge etched into my soul from my previous life—as Kazuya Ichinose—were sounding an alarm.

My previous life had been nothing more than that of an ordinary college student. No. More accurately, I had been a “logical, science-obsessed otaku whom no one around really understood.” While my friends lost themselves in clubs and romance, I spent my days alone in the back of the library, devouring hard science fiction novels and specialized books on astrophysics.

Why had I chosen that kind of life? It had been to escape the collapse of my family environment or to be precise, the betrayal of my mother.

That had happened when I was in high school. One day, when I returned home from school, there were unfamiliar men’s leather shoes in the entryway. From the living room came a sickeningly sweet voice belonging to my mother’s, sounding in a way I had never heard before.

The man was one of my father’s younger subordinates. When my father came home from work and I told him what was going on, it turned into a living hell. As my father cried and screamed, my mother looked at him coldly and said this.

“I’m sorry. But before being a mother, I want to be a woman.”

“I’m tired of playing the role of a good wife.”

After packing her things, my mother didn’t even glance in my direction. The person who had been a “kind mother” to me transformed into nothing more than a “woman faithful to her own desires,” and she threw away the “family” of my father and me as if discarding worn-out furniture.

The father she left behind was broken, and the house fell into ruin. That was when I realized something. The human heart was uncertain, full of errors—like a bug-ridden program.

“Love” and “bonds” could collapse one day without any logical consistency. People got hurt precisely because they depended on such things. That was why I escaped into a world where there were “definite answers.”

Mathematics. Physics. Simulation. There was no betrayal there. The physical laws that shaped the world were universal. There was no room for emotion to interfere. My obsession with science and science fiction had not been driven by noble curiosity. It had simply been escapism.

And my end had come just as abruptly and anticlimactically.

One winter day. I had shut myself up in my apartment, obsessively verifying massive sets of equations related to the “simulation hypothesis” I found online. For a full week, I forgot to eat and sleep.

Then, suddenly feeling hunger and thirst beyond my limits, I staggered out of my room. I was just going to a convenience store late at night to buy food and water. My steps were unsteady. My vision blurred. My thoughts were still completely filled with strings of equations. Whether I failed to notice the red light, or whether my legs simply tangled beneath me…

There was a piercing screech of brakes, followed by a violent impact. My life ended when I was flung away by the bumper of a truck. As I was slammed against the asphalt and my consciousness faded, I remember thinking…

Even the pain felt like nothing more than a bug, an electrical signal misfiring in my brain.

“Ah, figures… In the end, the world really is nothing more than a programmed string of numbers.”

That sudden “death shutdown” cemented my nihilistic conviction. And it was precisely because I saw the world through such a warped filter that I had always felt an inescapable sense of unease about the very “nature” of this reincarnated world.

This world was a little too well made. For example, the climate. This country had beautiful four seasons, but they were far too stable. In the seventeen years since I had been born, there had been no massive typhoons, not a single instance of unpredictable abnormal weather.

Crops were bountiful every year, as if calculated in advance. It was as though we were inside a perfectly climate-controlled greenhouse terrarium, maintained by advanced air-conditioning systems.

And then there was magic power. This energy filling the atmosphere was far too conveniently designed for humans. Aside from me, this convenient energy was limited to women, but they could absorb magic power as easily as breathing and generate fire or water with a single act of will.

…Was this really a “natural phenomenon”? Wasn’t nature supposed to be far more violent, irrational, and chaotic? Whenever I used magic, I repeatedly felt the texture of an “artificial system” beneath it.

…And that star chart. The parchment I had seen in the underground archive resurfaced in my mind. Countless points of light moving with perfect regularity, threading their way between the twelve zodiac constellations. What if those weren’t merely observation devices, but “environmental control systems” meant to maintain and manage this world?

A chill ran down my spine. It was a familiar setup from typical science fiction novels. A planet-scale management system created by a long-lost super-ancient civilization to preserve its habitat. Or a massive experimental ground built by some unknown beings from a distant star.

“…If that’s the case, then what are we?”

I clenched my hands tightly. Abandoned by my mother in my previous life, and abandoned again by my mother in this one. If this world was a “managed miniature garden,” then were we who lived in it nothing more than “guinea pigs” being raised inside it?

From there, my thoughts inevitably collided with an even more terrifying question.

If the environment was being managed this perfectly… Then why was this “distortion” being left untouched? A male-to-female ratio of one to five. A world of extreme female supremacy and male inferiority. If the environment was stable, then why alone was “life” twisted into such an irrational, distorted form?

From a biological perspective, it was blatantly unnatural. From the standpoint of species preservation, it was an inefficient and fragile system.

…No. What if this wasn’t a “failed bug,” but a “design parameter” intentionally set by the administrator?

…No way.

I shook my head, desperately trying to drive away my otaku-fueled delusions. I was overthinking it. There was no evidence. I wanted to believe it was nothing more than a bad dream born from a man poisoned by memories and trauma from his previous life. But Lilianna’s figure at our parting refused to leave my mind.

“The principles governing our ‘lives’ here on the surface may also be harboring some great distortion.”

She had said that as she placed her slender white hand on that thick black leather ledger, the demographic records. The expression she wore at that moment… It wasn’t an intellectual awe toward the heavens, but something far more visceral, a face enduring real, blood-filled pain.

“…So tomorrow, I really have to face those numbers, huh.”

I closed the window and pulled the curtains tightly shut. Even after blocking out the starlight, the unease in my chest didn’t fade. A vague yet enormous anxiety swept through me.

More than the story of the “satellites” in the sky, the story of tomorrow’s “ledger” felt far crueler—like it would thrust upon us a truth far more inescapable. I lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket up over my head.

Tonight, I will rest.

At that time, I had no idea what the princess would speak of tomorrow.

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