#10. Adaptation (1)
Truthfully, Sasha had taken this marriage very lightly.
Olga had seen it as a flaw that the groom was gravely ill and unlikely to live long—but Sasha didn’t.
Having lived many different lives, Sasha was free from the narrow-minded thinking that was common in this era.
She didn’t believe that marriage defined a woman’s entire life. Nor did she think becoming a widow or getting divorced was a terrible thing.
In fact, she even found it a bit freeing. After all, once you were “formerly married,” society no longer pressured you to remarry, and you could enjoy a peaceful, independent life.
So while preparing for the wedding and even during the ceremony, Sasha didn’t care what kind of person her husband was.
It didn’t matter who he was.
To Sasha, her husband was merely someone passing through her life. His past and future didn’t concern her.
She hadn’t even thought much about him as a person.
Despite proudly declaring to Pavel—who lashed out at her—that they were “husband and wife, a family,”
Sasha hadn’t really treated him as one of the precious people she truly cared about.
So she hadn’t known.
Hadn’t realized just how much pain Pavel was in…
How much suffering he had endured…
How deeply he must have despaired, knowing he might die before reaching adulthood…
How terrible it must have been to suffer through pain, alone, late into the night…
“……”
Sasha reached out, fumbling softly.
Her hand wandered across the smooth blanket until it touched Pavel’s tiny hand.
She stared at the small palm that fit perfectly in hers—and finally realized:
Her husband was just a twelve-year-old boy.
Much too young and too frail to bear this kind of pain alone.
She gently gripped his hand more tightly.
And in that moment, Sasha understood—her marriage would be very different from what she had imagined.
At the very least, she would protect this small, young, and fragile husband of hers.
✦✦✦
The next day.
All the guests had returned home, and even Duke Dmitri Volkov, who had attended only briefly for the ceremony, had left for the frontier again.
Only Pavel, Sasha, and Count Tula—who managed the estate and castle in the Duke’s absence—remained at the castle.
Pavel didn’t open his eyes until the sun was high in the sky.
He had been sleeping to recover his exhausted body.
Sasha sat quietly at his side so as not to disturb him.
Just then, there was a knock, and a maid entered the room.
It wasn’t the same maid from last night—it was someone new.
The maid politely greeted her and opened her mouth to speak when—
“Shh.”
Sasha gestured to be quiet, then stepped outside with her to avoid waking Pavel.
“What is it?”
“Count Tula requests your presence.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
Now that the Duke had left, Count Tula was the only senior figure in the ducal household and someone Sasha would be living alongside going forward.
Sasha tried to guess why he had summoned her.
“Probably to give me a tour of the castle and discuss how I should adjust to life here.”
Normally, such tasks would fall to the Duchess—but that position was vacant.
So Count Tula must have taken on the role of guiding and teaching her.
Sasha asked,
“All right. Where should I go?”
She followed the maid to the count’s office.
“Ah, did you sleep well?”
Count Tula greeted her warmly and offered tea, asking casual questions—how she found Pavel, if she’d slept well—simple small talk to ease the tension.
After a while, he got to the point.
“There’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”
But what he said next was not what Sasha had expected.
“I want to know where you plan to stay from now on.”
Sasha couldn’t answer immediately.
“Where I plan to stay?”
She had assumed she would be living here at the castle.
“Why is he asking this? Do they plan to send me back to House Arban now that the ceremony’s over?”
Perplexed, Sasha blinked, unsure of his intent.
Seeing her confusion, Count Tula explained kindly.
“You may not know, but Pavel doesn’t live in the main castle. He resides in a separate annex.”
She didn’t know. This was news to her.
“Pavel lives in an annex?”
Pavel was the Duke’s only son and heir—so why wasn’t he in the main residence?
While Sasha frowned slightly at the strangeness of it, the count continued.
“Normally, a couple should live together, of course…”
He gave her a measuring look.
“But now that you’re part of House Volkov, you have the right to live in the main castle. The annex is cramped, and it’ll be uncomfortable to stay there with Pavel. Why not move into the castle instead?”
He spoke as if he were offering her a grand favor.
His casual, confident tone made it clear he didn’t expect her to refuse.
And it wasn’t a bad offer.
Most people would prefer the spacious, elegant castle over the cramped, rustic annex.
There didn’t seem to be any advantage to staying there—besides Pavel, of course. And they had only met the day before.
There was no real reason for her to insist on staying with him.
Sasha could understand Count Tula’s confidence. If she’d heard this offer yesterday, she might have considered it too.
But—
“That’s quite all right.”
Sasha refused without hesitation.
Count Tula’s eyebrows twitched.
“You won’t regret that?”
“No. I see no reason to stay here while leaving my husband alone. Nor do I want to.”
“…Oh?”
Caught off guard, Count Tula fell silent.
A heavy silence stretched between them, but Sasha sat tall and said nothing more.
She wouldn’t take it back.
So the count asked one last time.
“I’ll give you one more chance to think carefully. Are you sure you’ll stay with Pavel? No regrets?”
He claimed to be giving her time to think—but Sasha didn’t need it.
After holding Pavel’s hand through the night, she had already made her decision.
To become a real family to him.
To stay by the side of that small, fragile boy and protect him.
So—
“I’ll be with Pavel. I won’t regret it.”
✦✦✦
It had already been a week since the wedding.
In that time, Sasha had quickly adjusted to her new environment.
At first, she had trouble sleeping in the unfamiliar bed, but now she felt just as comfortable as if she were in her own home.
Her smooth adjustment was largely thanks to the fact that she wasn’t living in the main castle.
Had she moved in there, it would’ve taken a week just to memorize the layout.
But where she was now—Pavel’s modest two-story annex—was simple.
Small enough that you could count every item, even down to the spoons in the kitchen, in a single day.
Sasha was extremely satisfied with her decision to move in with Pavel.
✦✦✦
The reason Pavel stayed in the annex was due to his health.
Just attending the wedding had left him bedridden with a high fever.
That’s how fragile he was.
Doctors had only been able to guess that he was suffering from some unknown illness—no one had been able to identify it precisely.
Without a diagnosis, there could be no cure.
And since they couldn’t treat the disease directly, all they could do was recommend rest and fresh air.
Unfortunately, the most famous convalescent retreats were far from the Volkov estate.
As the Duke’s only heir, Pavel couldn’t be sent far away.
Conveniently, a suitable location was found within the estate itself.
A two-story hunting lodge deep in the forest that surrounded the castle, secluded and long unused, once inhabited by a forest keeper.
Though the building had become old and shabby, its air was clean and the area deserted.
It was the perfect rest location, just as the doctors had advised.
Under Count Tula’s direction, it was restored to livable condition, and Pavel had been staying there ever since.
“The air really is wonderful.”
Sasha leaned her elbows on the window ledge and rested her chin in her hands, gazing out.
From her second-floor room, the view of the forest was clear and beautiful.
Like something out of a fairytale—tranquil and green.
When the sunlight hit the leaves just right, they sparkled, and the breeze carried the forest’s refreshing scent like waves.
Just watching it made her headaches ease, so whenever she didn’t feel well, Sasha liked to sit by the window and stare.
Today was no different.
But she couldn’t afford to stay idle forever.
“Time to get back to work.”
She straightened, deciding she had rested enough.
After choosing to protect Pavel, Sasha had begun delving deeper into her past-life memories.
Her current medical knowledge wasn’t enough to identify the root of his illness.
But if she could access the full scope of knowledge from her many lives, maybe she could find a clue.
The only problem was—
She didn’t retain perfect recall of all her past lives at all times.
The human brain had limits. If she tried to remember every detail of dozens of lives all at once, her mind would likely shatter.
As a child, she had devised a method to protect herself.
She couldn’t just forget everything. And she didn’t want to.
The memories and knowledge she had gained through those lives were invaluable.
So she needed a system to organize and store them—so she could retrieve what she needed when the time came.
Luckily, in one past life, she had studied advanced memory techniques.
The Mind Palace.
A method of building a mental space in her imagination to store visualized memories.
This way, she could live normally without the burden of constant recall—but dive into the palace at will and retrieve any memory she needed.
“Let’s do this again.”
Sasha closed her eyes—and stepped into her mind palace.
