Chapter 3
“Vivian, are you alright? I overheard the maid telling Father that you hurt your head badly, and I got worried.”
It was my fourth older sister, Reina. Apart from her pale green eyes, she looked nothing like me.
Her glossy, dark brown hair swayed as she walked.
Stunned into silence, I finally managed to speak. All thoughts of whether I had traveled back to the past just moments ago had vanished.
“Did you come to hell too, sister? What… what happened after I died?”
“……Vivian, you had a terrible nightmare, you poor thing.”
She hugged me tightly, as if with pity.
As if to let me feel all the love she had for me, just like on a certain day ten years ago.
A faint scent of the peach perfume Reina used to wear before her marriage wafted from her.
“……It’s been a while. This scent.”
“Hmm? I’ve never changed my perfume.”
But she had changed it years ago to the lily-of-the-valley perfume her husband had given her…
As I tilted my head, Reina looked at me with a puzzled expression. With her flushed cheeks like a child and her small stature, she clearly looked to be in her early twenties.
With a mix of doubt and belief, I spoke to her as I would have done ten years ago.
“Sister… my coming-of-age ceremony is soon. Do you remember?”
“Of course! I already bought those white shoes you said you wanted!”
At Reina’s unchanged response, a heavy bell seemed to ring ‘ding’ in my head.
“The white shoes with the butterfly brooch decoration?”
“Yes, you said you absolutely wanted to wear those shoes for your coming-of-age ceremony.”
The white shoes Reina gave me were my favorite part of my coming-of-age ceremony, which had ended more modestly than others’ birthday parties.
“Do I really look nineteen to you?”
“……No, Vivian.”
She hardened her expression and answered firmly. For a moment, following Reina’s expression, the air in the room seemed to freeze.
“You’re the mature, pretty type. You look about twenty-one, like me.”
In front of Reina, who smiled, breaking the air that had felt suspended, I shook my head vigorously.
‘That’s impossible.’
The maid without a single gray hair said this was the reign of the Crown Prince of Venice and that Lucas had never married. Reina, looking like an innocent young lady, said she was preparing for my upcoming coming-of-age ceremony.
Could it really be… truly, that I hadn’t come to hell or heaven as twenty-nine-year-old Vivian Frederick, but had woken up again as nineteen-year-old Vivien Dartion, given the chance to live a second life?
Reina, who had been quietly stroking my dry, ashen hair, spoke up.
“Vivien. I heard somewhere that the Grand Duke of the Carlisle Duchy is looking for a bride. How about applying there?”
She said the same thing as she had on a day ten years ago, before Lucas proposed to me.
Sister knew better than anyone that the only way for me to escape that dreadful basement room was through marriage.
If I had truly returned to that time, by now, my first through third older sisters had already left to find marriage prospects—whether doctors, merchants, or artists—leaving no stone unturned.
Only me, low priority in the marriage market, and the fourth sister, Reina, who kept making excuses about not wanting to marry yet, remained in this mansion.
“No, I’ll politely decline.”
That position naturally belongs to you, sister Reina, so the answer came out reflexively.
“But if the rumored Viscount Boundary sends you a proposal, Father will accept it right away.”
Who would believe that I would soon leave this basement room and live in the royal palace?
“Why don’t you apply instead of me, sister?”
“Huh?”
“To become the Grand Duchess of Carlisle.”
Soon after, worn down by my urging, Reina would submit an application. The Grand Duke would be captivated by her, and they would marry. Reina would later say it was the best decision of her life.
The events of ten years ago were unfolding before my eyes again.
“I really think I’ve returned… to ten years ago.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying, Vivien.”
Reina, looking bewildered, held my hand as if worried. Like Reina’s sunny disposition, her hands were warm, and that warmth seemed to reach deep inside me, but soon a chill ran down my spine.
Because one fact flashed through my mind like lightning.
Theodore, who killed me while trying to kill Lucas. That mad dog of a man was living right above me.
Right here, in the servants’ quarters of the Dartion mansion.
“You’ve been saying such strange things today. Oh my, your lip is bleeding!”
Only then did I realize I had been biting my lip without even knowing it was bleeding.
“Is Theodore still working in our mansion?”
“That man who was Father’s servant? He left here ages ago, Vivien.”
“Left? He’s already gone?”
He left the Dartion mansion. Had he already become a member of the imperial knights? I remember him staying at the mansion until I went to the palace. Was I wrong?
“Do you know how long ago that madman left?”
Reina, startled, scolded me.
“Vivien, watch your tongue! No matter that he was Father’s servant, we don’t have the right to treat him carelessly. Besides, he’s been gone for quite a while…”
No right to treat him carelessly? Theodore tried to kill Lucas, who had trusted and supported him for so long.
The term ‘madman’ was far from sufficient to describe that beastly traitor.
“But why are you looking for him?”
I swallowed what I wanted to say and hugged the twenty-one-year-old Reina I had met again.
“It’s nothing, Reina. I’m just so glad to see you again. Truly.”
I decided to forget about Theodore for now. Or at least, put it aside until I had to face him. Because something was more important.
Being able to see Reina again meant I would soon see Lucas again too.
My heart began to beat so fast it felt like it would burst.
“The day I woke up was January 3rd, Imperial Year 181.”
I counted the days. I wondered if I would wake up and be back in reality, but nothing changed after a night had passed.
I moved in front of the wall calendar and thought deeply.
‘Knights join at the beginning of the year, so he’d be at the palace around now.’
For days, only one thought had filled my mind.
‘…Let’s go check myself. See if he really is in the knights.’
I felt that only by seeing with my own eyes that Theodore was in the knights could I accept this unbelievable return as reality.
After refusing the maid’s offer to bring me food twice, quite some time passed. I quietly pressed my ear against the door.
Hearing no signs of anyone, only the sound of insects, it must have been deep in the night.
I opened the closet, put on the thickest coat I owned, and carefully opened the door.
I ran frantically up the steep stairs leading to the ground floor, and my paper-thin body felt as heavy as wet cotton.
“I really had no strength. The old me.”
Fortunately, it was the dead of night, and all the lights in the servants’ quarters were off.
Then I saw a small orange lantern used for security in the distance.
I quickly flattened myself behind a pile of vines in the garden. Mud got all over my clothes, but I didn’t care.
After confirming the small orange light had completely disappeared into the building, I took off my shoes, held them in my hand, and crept along the shortcut from the garden to the stable.
I quickly saddled the most agile horse, the one with the sleekest, shiniest mane.
Fortunately, horseback riding was the only activity among the social sports encouraged by the Oranum Imperial Family that I was confident in.
Slipping out through the back gate of the mansion connected to the stables without running into anyone, my body, tense with nervousness, seemed to relax a little.
As the night grew deeper, icy wind seeped into every bone and joint.
My nineteen-year-old body, which had done nothing but take medicine and sleep in that basement room, wobbled on the horse.
Memories of that first year in the palace, of that particularly cold winter, seemed to pierce through me as well.
During work hours, the time I spent with Lucas melted away like sugar cubes touching my tongue, and I was endlessly lonely until he returned.
When Lucas officially introduced Theodore, who had become a knight, I was overjoyed.
‘You two already know each other, right? I heard Theodore worked at the Dartion mansion.’
Like my mother, who existed only in a portrait, I was quite tall, but he was a full head and shoulders taller than me.
When he looked down at me, that tree-like man, it seemed a cool shadow was cast beneath his broad shoulders.
‘Hello? Looks like our connection runs pretty deep.’
‘……’
‘Hmm? Theodore, are you listening to me?’
‘……Yes.’
A man who was expressionless, even though he wasn’t cursed like me. Just knowing that such a person existed was a comfort to me.
But to think that under his reliable protection, Lucas and I would be happy forever was a great arrogance.
My churning heart burned with a searing ache.
This was how I, who couldn’t cry, recognized my deep sorrow.
I hated being sad more than insomnia or a cold. That tingling sensation in my heart was a type of pain I could never get used to, no matter how many times I experienced it.
“Ugh!”
Moreover, in this life, the heartache seemed even deeper.
A terrible pain spread as if my heart had been pierced by Theodore’s longsword, and I couldn’t breathe.
Startled by the incredibly vivid sensation, I frantically felt around my left chest where he had stabbed me.
In doing so, I lost my balance for a moment and fell from the horse.
