Chapter~03
The situation before my eyes felt so much like a dream that I remained dazed and sluggish for quite some time, only realizing that this was reality when I heard the director’s angry shouting.
Yet the slippery warmth of the blood that had flowed between my fingers still felt incredibly vivid.
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand why the life I assumed had ended in death at the Elrad Ducal Family had somehow continued like this.
Perhaps God had pitied me, who had never been loved by anyone until the very end, and given me another chance.
‘Even though I’ve returned to when I was only eight and powerless…….’
I had been lost in thought for so long that I hadn’t even eaten my bread, so Emily, who was sitting beside me, called out to me.
Her voice contained a strange mixture of impatience and anticipation.
Seeing Emily unable to take her eyes off the bread in my hand, I couldn’t help but smile bitterly.
Emily’s reaction was so delighted that she didn’t know what to do with herself, and my mood began to lighten a little.
At the ridiculous voice, I turned my head and saw Thomas standing there arrogantly.
He was the biggest and oldest child in the orphanage.
Thomas clearly hadn’t imagined that I, who was normally timid and quiet, would answer back like this.
He gaped at me, then his face turned bright red under the gazes of the children watching him.
He threateningly moved one arm as he approached me.
He looked like he was about to hit me at any moment, but instead, I raised my chin.
No matter how big he was, he was still only one of the children who had grown up without enough food.
A ten-year-old brat like him, who wasn’t even an adult man, wasn’t frightening at all.
At that moment, a boy with dark gray hair sitting in one corner spoke.
His name was Jack, and he was the same age as Thomas.
Thomas, who had always been extremely jealous of the handsome Jack, immediately glared at him.
‘Even so, he can’t beat Jack.’
I was shaking my head, thinking that fighting wasn’t all about size, when—
Thomas had already approached me, stuck out his tongue, snatched my bread, and quickly ran away.
I shouted and tried to chase after him, but Emily hurriedly grabbed me.
Looking around, I saw all the children staring at me as though I were strange for standing up to Thomas.
Even Jack was looking at me.
Feeling terribly embarrassed by all the sudden attention, I cleared my throat and sat back down.
At the time, I had no idea that I would regret not chasing Thomas for the entire day.
—
Growl, growl, grrrrrrr.
Crouching down and cleaning the floor with my freezing hands, I clutched my stomach.
I was so hungry.
At that moment, I heard someone click their tongue.
It was Jack, who was sitting on the windowsill and cleaning the window.
I was already hungry, and now he was picking a fight with me?
I threw down the rag I was holding and stood up, glaring at him.
Jack flinched, then continued speaking.
Strictly speaking, there was nothing wrong with what Jack had said, which only made me angrier.
It should have been embarrassing to get angry at a child, but perhaps because my body had become younger, my mind had become younger as well, because I couldn’t suppress my anger.
Besides, I knew exactly what kind of adult Jack would become, so I thought this might be my only chance to properly confront him and win.
‘Should I just charge at him?’
It was just as I was seriously considering it.
I looked down at my hand in surprise.
The hand that had been holding the rag only moments ago was now holding half a piece of the black bread we had been given that morning.
Why would I throw away food?
No matter how hard the black bread was, once it entered my stomach, it was all the same.
‘Jack, you’re actually…… a good kid, aren’t you?’
I looked at Jack while inwardly proclaiming the eternal truth: ‘Anyone who gives you food is a good person!’
Jack narrowed his eyes as he said that.
I was startled by his words.
Jack and I were from the same orphanage, but we had barely spoken to each other more than a few times.
So how had he noticed that I had changed?
Feeling strangely guilty, I hurriedly changed the subject.
We only had one meal a day, so he had clearly been saving it to eat later.
I couldn’t understand why he had given the bread to me.
I glared at Jack, intending to give him a proper piece of my mind this time, but I froze.
Through the window, a burly man and a little girl were entering the orphanage’s snow-covered front yard.
—
And so, back to the present.
After hearing the director’s introduction and Diana’s greeting, I stood completely frozen.
‘……Of all days, today?’
The day I returned from the death I had faced at the Elrad Ducal Family was the very day Diana, the youngest daughter of the Elrad Ducal Family, entered Tesar Orphanage.
‘Can this really be dismissed as a coincidence?’
But when I thought about it carefully, I realized that my first turning point in life could perhaps be considered my meeting with Diana.
If Diana hadn’t appeared here in the past, the Duke of Elrad wouldn’t have torn the orphanage apart, and I wouldn’t have become a street beggar overnight and suffered all those hardships.
So perhaps my return to this exact moment meant that I was being given the chance to start a new life from my first turning point.
Lost in thought as I looked into the blue eyes of the child clutching my sleeve, I examined her with a fresh perspective.
‘Now that I look at her, she really does give off the air of a noble young lady.’
I hadn’t realized it when she was younger, but now I could sense that there was something different about her.
Her beautiful appearance clearly radiated nobility, but even setting that aside, Diana’s clothes, though dirty, were made of materials and had a design that could never be seen on the orphanage children, who wore hand-me-down clothes donated by villagers.
Diana held up three chubby fingers before hurriedly changing them to four.
It seemed she wasn’t accustomed to her new age yet because her birthday had been only recently.
It also matched my memories.
It was winter now, and Diana’s birthday was in autumn.
‘I really did return ten years into the past.’
It felt like a dream that only a few months ago, I had attended Diana’s fourteenth birthday party.
At that moment, perhaps unable to endure the uncomfortable gazes around her any longer, Diana pouted her lips and whimpered.
“Hic.”
A memory from the past suddenly came to mind.
In my previous life, I had been careful not to approach Diana like the other children.
Diana was spoiled and cried at the slightest thing, so I was afraid that if I stayed around her, I would get scolded by the director along with her.
‘In truth, it was only natural for a four-year-old child to be spoiled and cry.’
Especially for a child who had been separated from her beloved family overnight.
Anyway, strangely enough, despite seeming uninterested in the other children, Diana would stare intently at me, our eyes meeting several times whenever I turned my head, or she would linger around me.
Back then, I found it terribly burdensome and avoided Diana by running away from her.
At that moment, Diana sadly released my hand and lowered her head.
It seemed that because I hadn’t said anything, she thought I was rejecting her.
The tears welling up in her large eyes looked ready to fall at any moment, and my heart sank instead.
I had already ignored this little girl once in my previous life.
No matter how frightening the director was, I shouldn’t have done that.
I quickly took Diana’s hand.
Diana blinked rapidly in surprise.
‘Gosh. She’s so cute!’
This time, my heart skipped a beat for an entirely different reason.
I soothed my startled heart and gave her a gentle smile so she wouldn’t be frightened.
Unlike Diana, I wasn’t particularly pretty, so I doubted my appearance would help her lower her guard.
When I spoke to her gently, Diana blinked several more times before answering.
All the way to the communal bathroom, the gazes pouring from around us were intense, from the children looking at me with displeasure to Jack, who looked puzzled.
But my steps didn’t waver.
This was a miracle-like opportunity to change the difficult future that awaited the children of the orphanage and me.
—
When I hurriedly turned off the faucet, Diana tilted her head in confusion.
Tesar Orphanage was connected to the water supply, but because it was located near the mountains, the water supply wasn’t very reliable.
I skillfully scooped up a ladleful of water from the large basin placed in one corner of the communal bathroom, soaked a piece of cloth made from old clothes, and wrung it out.
The moment my hands touched the ice-cold water, I came fully to my senses.
The miserable reality suddenly felt painfully real, leaving me feeling dejected, but I quickly shook my head.
‘I just have to endure for a few days.’
In my previous life, about a week after Diana came to the orphanage, the Duke of Elrad and his knights had stormed in.
If I took good care of Diana in the meantime, found evidence of the director’s corruption, and exposed it, the future would undoubtedly change.
I first tried to remove her dirty clothes and wash her, and Diana obediently raised both arms high.
I patted Diana’s head, who was about a handspan shorter than me, and began wiping her face and hands with the damp cloth.
It seemed she had really been rolling around somewhere, because the water ran out before I could even finish wiping her.
After fetching more water and wiping her hair with the wet cloth, I suddenly stopped.
As I wiped away the dust and dirt that had made her hair look like an ordinary gray color, dazzlingly translucent silver hair was revealed.
When I stopped moving, Diana blinked her blue eyes.
Silver hair and blue eyes.
They were the defining characteristics of the Elrad family.
I muttered with pursed lips, then suddenly flinched and froze.
