“……Father?”
I saw a man who looked to be in his late twenties, with brown hair, sitting there reading a book.
“……Fath—no……. Papa?”
Green eyes, so like my own, moved and looked at me.
“What is it, Tia?”
Goosebumps rose along my arms at the voice that was exactly as I remembered it.
What is this? Is this real?
To dismiss it as my life flashing before my eyes before death, the smell of books in the library and the texture of everything around me were far too vivid.
I blinked several times, trying to grasp the situation.
I had clearly been hit by a carriage, thrown into the air, waiting only for the moment my breath would stop—so why was I suddenly standing in the mansion library?
Why were the bookshelves so big, and why was the desk so high?
“Tia?”
When was the last time someone had called me so gently like that?
At the familiar green eyes looking at me with concern, I felt as if I might burst into tears.
Father was exactly as young as I remembered him.
“Tia, are you all right?”
I had no idea what was going on, but for now, I had to get away from here.
“I’ll just—um, may I go to my room for a moment?”
Father tilted his head once, then seemed reassured, his eyes curving kindly as he nodded.
“Of course. Shall I go with you?”
His large hand stroked my head as he asked.
“Ah, no! I can go by myself!”
“Haha. You’re even more spirited than usual today. Go carefully.”
“Yes. Um, I’ll be right back. Please stay here for just a little while!”
After shouting that, I began running without thinking.
As I ran, the library I looked around at retained its old appearance.
That is, the outdated appearance it had before I became the person in charge and changed it to be more efficient.
This is strange! This is really strange!
When I raced out of the library, a corridor that was both familiar and unfamiliar greeted me.
My room was too far away, so I opened the first door I saw and went inside.
The room, furnished with a bed and a few simple pieces of furniture, seemed to have no owner.
I wondered if it was a guest room, but that wasn’t important right now.
Lombardi was enormous, the mansion itself like a single village, and there were more empty rooms than one could count.
“A mirror! Yes, a mirror!”
Fortunately, I found a full-length mirror set in the corner of the room.
It didn’t seem all that far away. Strangely, though, I had to take several steps to reach it.
And the moment I stood before the mirror, I understood why.
“Why am I so small?!”
My body was absurdly tiny, not even filling a third of the full-length mirror made for an adult’s height.
When I looked down, I saw two hands like maple leaves, a round little baby belly, and two small feet.
“How old am I right now?”
There was no one I could ask. After thinking for a moment, I hurriedly lifted the hem of the skirt I was wearing.
“The time I fell and got badly hurt was on my eighth birthday!”
Once, while playing in the garden, I had scraped my knee badly on a rock, and the scar was large enough that it had still remained on my body when I was twenty-five.
“It’s gone. There’s no scar.”
My knee was pale and unblemished, without a single wound.
“That means I haven’t turned eight yet……”
I looked into the mirror once more, but the reflection was undoubtedly my childhood self.
If I had woken up after an accident and found not a single wound on my body, that alone would have been shocking enough. But to open my eyes and find that I had returned to the past?
Even for me, who had once died and been reincarnated, it was not easy to accept.
After all, regression was a first for me.
My legs trembled, so I sat down on the bed beside me.
But because I was so short, even that wasn’t easy.
Beyond the window I could barely see through thanks to my suddenly smaller height, the scenery of Lombardi came into view.
“I really came back to the past.”
I murmured as I looked at the large evergreen trees rising abruptly from deep within the garden.
They were trees that my eldest uncle, Vieze, had cut down after he became the head of the family.
He had claimed it was for landscaping, but it was obvious he had done it because he disliked the trees Grandfather had cherished.
Afterward, however, it was revealed that those trees had been bestowed by the first emperor in celebration of the completion of this mansion, and he had suffered greatly for it.
For someone who was the eldest son and, in name, the head of the family, not to know about trees with such meaning to the family.
“Idiot Vieze.”
I had no idea what Grandfather had been thinking, but Vieze was absolutely not fit to be the family head.
But if seen that way, my younger uncle Laurels was equally unqualified.
If Vieze was a petty man with a narrow, biased view of the world, then his younger brother Laurels was nothing more than a loyal hunting dog who moved exactly as his elder brother ordered.
The only one who had shown any promise was my father, Gallahan.
Though he overthought everything and had a weak constitution, he was so learned that even the Academy coveted him.
But because Father passed away early, Grandfather had no other choice……
Wait.
“I can…… save Father?”
Father died of illness not long before my eleventh birthday.
At the time, there had been no cure, so we had no choice but to let him go without being able to do anything. But I clearly remembered hearing, only a few years later, the news that a doctor had discovered a medicine.
“I can save Father!”
My whole body trembled with joy.
My eyes seemed to grow hot, and then a single tear fell.
I didn’t have to lose Father.
I could save him.
I didn’t have to watch Father, still far too young, painfully waste away as his life came to an end.
It was unbelievable, but now that I had returned to the past, I could do it.
And soon after, another realization came to me.
“Then can’t I protect Lombardi too?”
I sprang up from my seat and walked to the window.
From there, the view of Lombardi’s massive four-story main building and the many buildings constructed around it as if embracing it could be seen at a glance.
I could also see the guests visiting the mansion, the servants, and the employees who worked for Lombardi.
All of this no longer existed.
The empty, dead mansion, the sight of imperial soldiers locking the gates, was vivid before my eyes.
“First, I have to stop Vieze from becoming the family head.”
At the time, supporting the First Prince had been the decision he made as the next family head.
Lavini Angenas, the mother of the First Prince and empress of the Lambrew Empire, was cousins with Seral, Vieze’s wife and my aunt.
With a relationship like that, it was only natural his heart would incline that way, but still, this concerned the position of the next crown prince.
The First Prince did not have the makings to bear that tremendous power and responsibility, and Emperor Yovanes was by no means a foolish monarch.
The one who failed to understand that and supported the First Prince was Vieze.
If only he had not publicly declared his support like that.
No, if only he had not tried to threaten and harm the Second Prince!
Lombardi would have been safe.
For a moment, I thought about trying to persuade Vieze, but I soon knew it would be useless.
If he had been the sort of man who changed his mind because someone persuaded him, that disaster would never have happened in the first place.
Then that meant someone else had to become the family head instead.
“I would have passed this family on to you…….”
I remembered the words Grandfather had often muttered with a sigh, as if out of habit.
“Should I…… try?”
A laugh slipped out of me, but it wasn’t an entirely unrealistic idea.
While I had helped Grandfather and effectively handled the family’s affairs, I had thought more than once that it would be better if I were the family head, thanks to Vieze constantly knocking down the towers I had painstakingly built.
In truth, whatever I did, I would likely be better than my eldest uncle.
“At the very least, I wouldn’t make such a mistake with the Second Prince. Then our family will be safe. Since I already know the Second Prince will become crown prince anyway……”
Then what if I got close to the Second Prince in advance?
If I became friendly with him, wouldn’t that benefit Lombardi?
And that wasn’t all. I had memories of at least the next twenty years of events.
If I made good use of the knowledge I possessed, I could make Lombardi even more powerful and prosperous.
I could protect my beloved Lombardi with my own hands.
Surely.
“Let’s try it.”
If left as it was, the family would go completely bankrupt.
For a house that had reigned for hundreds of years, it had been destroyed so emptily that it was almost laughable.
I couldn’t simply stand by and watch Lombardi end up like that.
“I’m going to become the family head.”
Or it would be fine if Father succeeded Grandfather.
As long as it wasn’t the eldest, Vieze, or the second, Laurels.
“Then first……”
I sat down on the bed again and organized my thoughts a little more.
* * *
“Lord Gallahan was summoned by the family head and has gone to the office, my lady.”
When I returned to the library, the seat Father had been sitting in had already been neatly cleared, and the librarian relayed the message to me.
The elderly librarian, already quite gray-haired, Broshul.
I began working in the library after this Broshul resigned due to illness.
He had originally been a famous professor at the Academy, but it was said that after leaving the lectern, he came to Lombardi.
“Grandpa Librarian.”
For someone my actual age, that would have been an extremely rude way to address Broshul, who had once been a professor, but so what?
Right now, I was a child.
“Please lend me one book.”
“What book do you wish for?”
When I gave the title of the book, Broshul was dumbfounded.
“Did Lord Gallahan perhaps ask you to get it?”
“No. I’m going to read it.”
I understood why Broshul was surprised.
But I did not avoid his staring eyes and waited confidently.
This book was the one I had wanted most to read before I was hit by the carriage.
But because it was so rare and expensive, I had never ended up reading it.
A short while later, I left the library with one rather heavy book tucked under my arm.
“I’ll go near the office and wait while reading.”
When I asked just now, I was told today was the third day of the week.
Gathering his three sons and one daughter on the third day for a brief meeting was Grandfather’s old habit.
But the time was different each week, so Father and his siblings had to remain within the mansion all day and wait for Grandfather’s summons.
Even so, not a single person was dissatisfied with that.
Because in this Lombardi, Grandfather’s authority was absolute.
As I walked along by myself, the main building appeared, and I was able to reach the corridor in front of the office.
It was a place I had frequented as if it were my own room when I helped Grandfather with his work.
Perhaps because I was seeing it from a child’s point of view, it looked somehow different.
I wanted to look around the interior of the main building a little more, but I had to lean against the window and rest.
The distance from the library to here was far too great for my current short legs.
Besides, perhaps because this was truly a child’s body, I could feel myself tiring quickly.
I was thinking that I might have to take a nap a little later when it happened.
“Hey, half-breed.”
I heard the voice of some arrogant little brat calling me.