Chapter : A Dream of the Past (1)

After being replenished with fresh moisture and bathed in the spring sunlight, the flowers bloomed with an even stronger brilliance, more beautiful than those she usually saw.

Faustina stood in a certain room within the royal castle, looking down outside through the window.
In the direction of her absent-minded gaze, the fiancé she had first met at the age of seven was smiling at her younger sister with an expression he would never direct toward Faustina.

—For some reason, the one viewing this past memory from a third-person perspective was seven-year-old Faustina, who possessed memories of her previous life.
She had dreamed of past memories several times before, but this was the first time she had seen them with such clear awareness.

‘Maybe this is a good dream, letting me observe my former self objectively.’

She chose to stay positive.
For the sake of the future, she needed to watch carefully.
But what would happen next?
There were countless similar situations, so even Faustina herself could not tell which moment this was.

“If only I had had the same hair and eyes as Mother…
Would Bernhard-sama have looked at me then?”

‘No, I don’t think so.’

It was not her appearance, but what was inside that had made him dislike her.
On top of the arrogance peculiar to nobility, she could not tolerate Bernhard’s affection being directed toward Elvira, and she tormented her blood-related younger sister—sometimes violently, sometimes insidiously.

Analyzing her past self calmly, Faustina reached the conclusion that she had simply wanted someone to turn around and look at her.

At whom?

‘At Bernhard-sama, and at Mother as well.
My narrow-minded former self should have realized it much earlier.
There were so many people who looked at me.
Father, Brother, Linsy, Her Majesty the Queen, and Prince Neige too.
…No, that’s not quite right.’

It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed.

‘I did notice, deep down.
But even if I wanted to stop, I could no longer stop.’

And so, until the very end—

‘Ah…’

Faustina, who had been looking out the window, lifted her face.
Her vague expression shifted, regaining a faint spark of life.
She turned her face, wondering who had arrived—

‘Huh!?’

She couldn’t move.
Her face was pinned down by something unseen from above, making it impossible to turn.
Why!?
As she panicked, the scenery gradually began to fade.

“…………you……
You are very…….”

Only the figure of the person speaking to Faustina was blank, making it impossible to tell who they were.
The voice sounded familiar and yet unfamiliar, indistinct.
If she could tell who it was, she would remember what happened next, but just then, a distant voice crying out, “Please wake up!” reached her, and the scenery dissolved into mist.