Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1169 - 1169: The Unspoken Truths (Eliza POV)

The people moving on the screen suddenly went silent, and I turned my gaze to the remote on the couch, noticing the boy beside me had accidentally hit the mute button with his elbow as he dozed off.

Now, faced with sudden silence, thoughts and realisations I’d been trying to distract myself from using the sound came rushing back.

Naturally, they were about the boy…no, the young man quietly sleeping on my shoulder.

I carefully reached out with my other hand and guided his head down onto my lap, and he seemed to smile slightly before his expression slowly settled back to neutral.

‘He’s really asleep now…’

Before, he’d only been lightly dozing, but now he’d completely let go and allowed sleep to take over.

A sigh escaped my lips, and I reached out, brushing my fingers through the faint white strands mixed in with his black hair.

“…who are you really…?”

I couldn’t believe I was asking this about someone I’d already agreed to marry, but given the circumstances, I had no choice.

When had I first noticed that something was ‘off’ with Evan?

‘It was years ago…when Kuro first hinted at it, back when we’d just started dating.’

I remembered the cat spirit’s question, though I didn’t really get what he’d meant at the time.

[In the event that you end up discovering that Evan isn’t really who you think he is, would you still want to be with him?]

‘Who I think he is, huh?’

Thinking about it now, it meant Kuro had known all along, and likely Kayla too, given their…strange relationship.

I thought I understood that Evan wasn’t ‘normal’, but it seems I really understood nothing.

Evan’s strange connection with Artemisia, the casual way he referred to the goddess even before being sent back in time, the way he repeatedly mentioned being ‘chosen’ as a Hero, his odd choice of words when speaking about Aidos and its inhabitants, always saying ‘This World’, or ‘You People of Aidos’…’ as if Aidos wasn’t his ‘world’, his estranged relationship with his paren—no, the Duke and Duchess Eris, and the day he openly told me about something called the ‘Reincarnated Hero System’.

The thought of the Duke and Duchess, the parents of ‘Evan Eris’, brought my mind back to that woman we’d seen earlier today.

Glancing down at Evan, I couldn’t help but sigh again.

‘If I say the highlights in his hair match hers… I’m overthinking it, aren’t I?’

Sure, that may be true, but I’m damn sure I’m not overthinking it when I think that woman… is his real mother.

Not Evan Eris’ mother, but the other ‘Evan’ who’s in Evan Eris’s body.

‘Face it, Elizabella… the soul in your fiancé’s body isn’t the real owner of that body…’

I’d be deceiving myself if I didn’t acknowledge that much now.

Evan isn’t even trying to hide it anymore.

That ex-girlfriend of his from this world, the fact that he said the last time he’d spoken to her was years ago, him openly telling me he used to live in this city, the way he moved through the streets with familiarity, that phone the goddess gave him that has money from this world—

At that point, I stopped my thoughts, my eyes going to the phone in question lying on the table right in front of the couch Evan and I were on.

It had a password, but I knew it. Evan hadn’t bothered hiding it from me when he typed it in.

The password was also something I couldn’t possibly be unaware of… after all, it was my own name.

‘Should I…?’

I was tempted.

“…”

‘No, let’s no—!’

I didn’t notice when, but by the time I caught myself, I’d already reached out and grabbed the phone.

Evan stirred in his sleep at my movements, but as I slowly leaned back, he shifted slightly and his breathing evened out once more.

That was fine, but what was I supposed to do with this phone in my hands…?

“…damn it…”

I cursed silently as I swiped up the screen, typed in my name to unlock it, and pressed the first button on the bottom left, changing the display to one showing all the… what did he call it again? Apps? All the active apps.

I slid to the right, and soon, I found the one he’d opened numerous times today, the ‘Bank App’ he’d used to pay for everything.

Taking a deep breath, I clicked on it, and after a short loading screen, the landing page appeared.

“…damn it…”

I cursed again, realising the answer had been right in front of us the whole damn time.

Staring back at me on the screen, just below the bank app logo and above the line asking for a password, was a single welcome note.

[Welcome Back, Mr Evan Von Bourne.]

I stared at the last three words in silence, not knowing what to even think at this point.

“Evan Bourne…the ‘Count Bourne’… the answer’s been in our faces the whole time…”

I whispered the words as I tapped the button at the bottom of the screen to close the app, but repeated accidental taps seemed to trigger something else, opening an app with an icon that looked just like the phone.

It displayed what appeared to be a ‘Call Log’, with many names listed, all showing dates from several years ago.

‘AD 3100 by this world’s calendar…’

I glanced up at the date and time at the top right that showed AD 3105, meaning the last call on this phone had been five years ago.

Looking back down, I saw it was the 8th month, August.

“I’m the same Evan you’ve always known. Whatever change you might be thinking of… happened before you met me.”

That line echoed in my mind as I stared at the dates, my brain automatically matching this world’s AD 3100 with Aidos’ Year 1050.

‘August…that was when Laurene said she found out Evan was a Hero, wasn’t it?’

I moved my gaze down, scanning the call log without scrolling, and the further down I went, the older the calls became.

The names were mostly unfamiliar, but one stood out, written in red, starkly contrasting with the other blue and black entries.

[Mum].

A small photo icon sat beside it, and even without clicking, I knew.

‘It’s her…’

The woman we saw at the estate earlier today. It was her.

‘I was right.’

That woman was his mother.

Taking a deep breath, I silently turned off the phone screen by pressing the side button, then set it back on the table without a word and glanced down at Evan, sleeping peacefully on my lap.

‘Reincarnated Hero System.’

I remembered the day he’d told me about it, adding weight to the suspicions I already had.

Uncle George once mentioned that Evan’s body and soul seemed oddly ‘Out of Sync’, and Evan’s words earlier today confirmed Uncle George’s observation.

“It’s just… after many years, I finally realise why it was so easy for me to control and adapt to Evan’s body and only took a little over a year for the body-soul synchronisation to complete…”

He was talking about how easy it was for him—’Evan Bourne’—to control and adapt to the body of ‘Evan Eris’.

With all this, the conclusion was obvious.

‘Evan Bourne is someone from this world…Earth V, and he was reincarnated in Aidos in the body of Evan Eris…’

I paused, thinking of the boy we’d seen earlier today, and found myself shaking my head.

‘No…were they switched…?’

It seemed likely that Evan Bourne had taken Evan Eris’ place in Aidos, and Evan Eris had taken Evan Bourne’s place on Earth V.

The one responsible for the switch was also obvious.

‘The goddess Artemisia…’

She brought Evan Bourne to Aidos to make him a Hero…why? Was it because of something that happened when he went back in time?

Then there was that ‘Prisma’ talk.

The Fallen Celestial Deities we fought last year called him ‘Prisma’, mentioning the exact same names Evan had told us about from his time in the past.

He also said ‘Prisma says hi’ to the goddess Aphine earlier, and her reaction about him ‘remembering’…

Does he not have all his memories from his time in this world…or perhaps…from a different world entirely?

‘I’m lacking too much information.’

I couldn’t draw a full conclusion beyond the fact that the ‘Evan’ in Evan Eris’ body is NOT Evan Eris.

‘Does Laurene know?… Her eyes are special and can see through things, but…’

After a moment, I shook my head silently.

‘I don’t think she does…’

Sighing, I placed a hand on my chest, feeling my heart beat at its usual pace.

‘I’m not as shaken as I thought I would be. Is it because I was already suspicious long before?’

Whatever the reason, I was taking this a lot calmer than I expected. Or maybe my shock was just delayed.

I glanced down at the young man sleeping defencelessly on my lap, my hands trailing from his hair to his shoulders.

‘I want to wake him up now and demand answers.’

That thought nearly made me move, but I stopped myself at the last second.

‘No…not when I haven’t even told him everything.’

It wasn’t nearly as big as his, but I did have open secrets of my own.

Things I’d been hiding because I’d technically run away from home, but never found the chance to just tell him outright, like the fact that I was from the Laneford Family and the daughter of a Councilman of Vathax, even though he’d already pieced it together himself.

Not that I’d really been hiding it in the first place…just like he hadn’t bothered hiding anything from me.

‘He knows, doesn’t he? Why else would he be so blatant if he didn’t know I was likely going to question him or go through his phone or something…’

Sighing, I leaned back on the couch and ran a hand through my hair, the TV light reflecting off the golden blonde strands I inherited from my father.

‘Fine…after we finish with this mess in Tarse, I’ll tell him everything…and ask him to tell me everything about himself too…’

It’s high time we stopped this silly game of ‘Open Secrets’.