Only then did Alice realize that back in Tingen City, she truly had died once.
A person died three times in their life.
The first was Biological Death. It happened when the heart and breathing stopped, when the body's functions ceased.
The second was Social Death. This was not the embarrassing "social death" people joked about, but the moment after the funeral when a person's place in society came to an end.
The third was Memory Death, and it was the most profound. When the last person who remembered someone forgot them or vanished from the world, every trace that person had left behind disappeared.
On the surface, Alice had experienced the first kind of death. In truth, she had experienced the second—the little girl from Tingen City had died completely, long ago.
Now she was Miss Fortune. She was an angel, one of the Evernight Goddess's Blessed. The one thing she was not was the Alice Kingsley she had once been.
She was a god, while Alice Kingsley had been an ordinary little girl, a mortal like the people before her.
Tears poured down her face, yet Alice gradually grew calm. The grief she had carried for so long finally found release, and that fragile feeling flowed out with her tears—until a voice sounded.
"Alice, you..."
Dunn spoke her name in a voice and tone she still knew so well. It was little more than a sigh, but Alice heard him. She hurriedly raised her head, though tears blurred her vision.
Alice wiped her eyes. A faint trace of worry and concern lay in Dunn's gaze, but it vanished the instant she saw it. He lowered his head and asked again:
"Your Excellency?"
Alice suddenly wanted to cry again.
This was different from before. Then, she had simply been