Whew.
Helena took a short, deep breath and knocked on the door.
Usually, a servant or butler would have come out to guide her from the entrance. But there was no one to welcome visitors.
‘……This is strange.’
Though not particularly grand, after she became the Grand Duchess, they had received quite a bit of attention.
She had built them a decent mansion instead of the crumbling old house, and hired staff to serve them. She sent several horses along with people to help run the estate.
Yet now, the mansion was strangely quiet. As if everyone who should be there had disappeared.
“Is anyone here? It’s Helena. Please open the door…….”
When there was no response from inside, she was about to knock again. Then-click– the doorknob turned.
“……Helena?”
The door opened just a nail’s width. A familiar voice flowed through the gap, and after a few seconds, a woman appeared.
It was Viscountess Owen, Matilda Owen.
“Have you been well, Mother.”
Matilda straightened her back after confirming the identity of the unwelcome visitor.
Without hiding her displeasure, she looked Helena up and down as if searching for flaws in merchandise.
“What brings you here without notice? And what’s with that appearance?”
Her voice was sharper than her raised eyebrows. It stabbed at Helena’s heart.
Matilda glared with wide eyes and quickly surveyed the surroundings, then roughly grabbed Helena and pulled her in.
“Come inside first.”
Helena followed her steps inside.
A strong smell of alcohol hit her nose after just a few steps. A familiar sense of discomfort crept up her ankles, but she continued walking.
The mansion’s condition at the end thoroughly betrayed her expectations.
Liquor bottles rolled on the table, and the servants she had provided were nowhere to be seen. Dust had accumulated in every corner of the house, and some furniture was even broken.
Despite it being bright daylight, the curtains covered all the windows, making the surroundings dim.
As she surveyed the interior, Matilda snapped at her.
“What kind of Grand Duchess dresses like that? Not even wearing a single proper piece of jewelry.”
“-Hiccup.”
Before Helena could open her lips to respond, an intermittent hiccup sound came from behind.
Reflexively turning around, she saw what she’d thought was a carelessly piled heap start to move.
Soon, a man with a bandage wrapped around his head raised himself sluggishly from among the array of liquor bottles.
“Ah, our lovely daughter has come.”
The smell of alcohol grew stronger. Her head started to ache.
They were clearly her family. The only people in this world who shared her blood. Yet why did the word “lovely” feel so empty, like a mere shell?
Helena spoke his existence aloud with as much difficulty as she felt hearing it.
“……Father.”
He also looked her up and down like Matilda had, and mumbled with slurred pronunciation.
“Do you… perhaps have some money? Or even some jewelry gifted by the Grand Duke would be fine, bring out something. It’s been years since you’ve seen your family; surely you didn’t come empty-handed.”
Hearing the voices from downstairs, her stepbrother Eric also came down the stairs. Resting his arm on the railing, he smirked.
“Long time no see, Helen.”
His eyes looked hollow above his unkempt beard. His pupils were hazily unfocused, and every time he opened his mouth, the smell of stale cigarettes wafted out.
His once somewhat decent face showed signs of having been in fights.
His eye sockets and the bridge of his nose were scattered with dark blue bruises. His arms and legs were wrapped in bandages, and his lips were swollen and red.
Despite all this, his rotten mindset remained the same.
“I was just about to talk to you, so this is perfect. The money you’re supposed to send next month, can you give it to me in advance? I’ve got some expenses.”
Helena swallowed inwardly. Though they were always the type to end sentences with requests for money, they had never been this bad.
At least out of thin self-respect, they hadn’t previously clung to her like desperate beggars.
Moreover, Viscountess Owen had acted at the door as if she were being pursued by someone.
Suddenly, the worst assumption crossed her mind.
‘Surely not…….’
Though they were despicable people, she had been sending living expenses faithfully every month. After all, they were still family, even if only in name.
Nevertheless, if they couldn’t even properly pay the servants’ wages and had to send them away, there was only one answer.
“You’ve been gambling again.”
Her head ached even more. It was throbbing, almost spinning.
“Even after killing my brother that way, you still continue?”
“How did he die because of us?!”
Matilda growled, screaming loudly. Helena couldn’t contain her rising anger and burst out.
“While you were flipping those paper cards and giggling, Basil died without even getting proper medicine!”
“He was always a sickly child, don’t be unreasonable! All the medicine in the world wouldn’t have helped! You can’t blame this on us!”
“You shouldn’t have hidden it in the first place. Basil…… Did Basil and I ever truly have a family?”
“We were being considerate, afraid you’d be shocked! Does pointlessly suspecting us bring the dead child back?”
In her first life, Helena had realized too late that Basil was dying.
Since they had a physician, she believed their promise to care for him wholeheartedly if she just faithfully sent money. She trusted their greed before money. She suppressed her desire to see him.
Having been practically sold into marriage, she felt too sorry to show Basil that she was living well, eating well, better than him.
She was also afraid that if she fell out of Eugene’s favor, she wouldn’t even be able to send money for medicine. He wanted her to abandon old habits that didn’t befit a Grand Duchess.
[Evergale is now your responsibility too. Please act according to your position, Helena.]
In the end, she had to swallow the words that Basil was a person, not a habit. Gradually, she stopped visiting.
And during a winter when snow came unusually early.
‘You were already gone.’
Helena held Basil’s funeral on her birthday.
She begged and begged every regression, but there was no change.
Even bringing him to Evergale to live together, or sending him to a ward where specialized treatment was always possible.
[I’m sorry, sis.]
As if it had to be that day, as if cursed to be only that day. Basil invariably departed on her birthday.
So she practiced letting go of greed out of habit. Even in moments when she tried to force herself to accept this as her fate, it was enough to be able to stay by Basil’s side a little longer, as much as the time that had regressed.
It was the only thing Helena was grateful for in this cursed regression.
But even this meager gratitude was truly difficult. In this life, she had awakened after Basil’s departure. Basil would have been neglected just like in her first life.
Yet, a life that had never been easy seemed determined to remain that way until the end.
Helena rushed to Basil’s room, following an ominous sensation. The cold air that hit her as soon as she flung open the door was chilling.
“Huh.”
The room was empty. It was clean, as if it had been empty from the beginning.
The navy blue suit she had first tailored for his 16th birthday, the canvas and painting supplies she had prepared so he wouldn’t be lonely, the pretty wave-patterned bedding that still held Basil’s scent. None of it was there.
Helena collapsed as if facing ruins. Matilda’s shadow approached from behind.
“Don’t take it too hard. Keeping a dead child’s things only makes the house gloomy. At least we got some money for them.”
Money, money again. Bile rose from within. Helena stood up on trembling legs, steadying herself against the doorpost.
“Are you……Are you even human?”
“What?”
“Even beasts cherish and raise their young. Even thorny plants embrace their offspring.”
“This girl has gone completely mad, living with a bloated belly alone, now she can’t see anything clearly!”
Turning to face Matilda, the bitterness of the bile grew stronger. It was too bitter to swallow anymore.
So Helena spat it out like a last struggle.
“No matter how much you’ve given up on being human, you shouldn’t be worse than beasts! After living off that bastard your whole life, you certainly have a loud voice, but what will you do now? There won’t be anything to beg for anymore.”
“W-what?!”
“Instead of spending time shuffling cards, you should be looking for a gravesite where you won’t starve to death.”
Matilda hesitated for a moment. Her face turned red and blue as she froze. Viscount Owen and Eric, who had been observing the argument, suddenly stared at Helena. Their sunken eyes were burning red.
Even their piercing gazes were saturated with materialistic nature.
Helena let out a disbelieving sigh. And amidst all this, that’s what worried you?
“Where is the bottom for you people?”
“Y-you, say that again. What did you just say? Are you saying you won’t send money anymore? Who do you think got you into Evergale in the first place?!”
“Really, until the end…… If you had even a shred of conscience, you wouldn’t do this!”
“How dare you try to lecture your parents!”
Slap!
A sharp sound rang out. Her vision swung drastically. Her cheek burned.
Was that sound from my flesh? Her eyes grew hot.
“Parents. You call yourselves parents.”
Helena remained still, not even thinking to touch her swollen cheek. The inside of her mouth tasted like blood from a cut.
“You stole my food bowl to fill your own bellies first, taught me to read people’s intentions before letters, didn’t provide even a decent set of clothes but dressed me in sewer stench, and you call yourselves parents?”
She pressed down on her heated eyes. She would rather die than show a pathetic sight before these people.
She recited each word as if engraving a curse.
“If this is what parents are, it would have been better not to have had any from the beginning.”
“Still not coming to your senses…!”
This time, Viscount Owen raised his hand. Helena stood her ground, eyes wide open. If she blinked now, tears would fall.
Mom, Dad, Brother.
All of them were looking at her with distorted faces, as if she were an insect.
Acknowledging this, unbelievably, she felt like laughing. It leaked out like air from a deflated balloon.
“Since you’re the kind of people who would crawl out of graves for money, you spew such blades from your mouths because of your dire circumstances. I believed that when you became affluent, you would at least become human. As you said, perhaps having a full belly has made me blind.”
Helena continued in a voice that was hard to discern whether she was crying or laughing.
“To think I believed I could pretend to have a family with such trash.”
