Chapter 2
The pattern on Raphaella’s neck was about the size of a finger’s width.
“Rafi, wait a moment.”
Ria gently brushed the child’s neck with the end of her sleeve.
Thinking it might not be gentle enough to avoid erasing it, she tried rubbing a little harder.
“Mom, it hurts!”
Raphaella recoiled from the pain inflicted on her neck.
Only then did Ria realize that she had been rubbing the child’s neck as if she were crazy.
“…I’ve lost it. Even so, what if I rub Raffi’s neck so hard like this!”
Raphaella’s neck was turning red.
The pattern remained unchanged, shining as brightly as ever, without any sign of erasure.
“Sorry, Raffi. Does it hurt a lot?”
She apologized while holding the child in her arms.
The future she had seen with her daughter in her dreams wasn’t just some nightmare.
She brought Raphaella into the house and offered her a mirror.
“Raffi, can you see this on your neck?”
Raphaella tilted her head as she looked at her neck in the mirror.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Nothing on your neck?”
“Yeah. Why, is something on it?”
“….”
Raphaella couldn’t see the pattern…
It was so clear to my eyes.
“Take another look, can you really see nothing?”
“There’s nothing there! Why are you acting like this today, Mom?”
Raphaella frowned at Ria.
‘I hoped it was just a dream.’
Feeling the warm breath of the living Raphaella, Ria wanted to reassure herself that it was just a dream.
She didn’t want to believe in a tragic future for herself or for Raphaella.
However, the goddess had marked Raphaella’s neck with a pattern, reminding Ria that it wasn’t all a dream.
So that she wouldn’t forget her daughter’s final moments.
“Is it fortunate that only I can see it? Surely, anyone who sees this pattern will find it strange.”
Ria had now resolved to acknowledge and accept it.
Whether it was the future foretold by the goddess or a return to a life she had already lived.
“…The goddess said to change my life if I wanted to change my daughter’s fate.”
Changing the fate of someone dying from an unknown illness would be difficult, but the remaining year and a half needed to be lived differently for Raphaella’s sake.
To do that, for starters:
“Mom, Mom!”
“Yeah?”
“But you said you were going somewhere early this morning.”
“…Me?”
“Yeah! You said you were going to the city to sell something, remember yesterday?”
Ria looked to where Raphaella’s finger pointed.
There lay a greatsword wrapped in linen.
The only thing her husband, who had collapsed while losing his memory, had owned.
She recalled the day she sold the sword as if recalling a past memory.
Ria lived in a small village halfway up Loran Mountain, where people lived self-sufficiently by what the mountain provided.
Unless something very special occurred, they rarely descended below the mountain.
Most of what they needed was up on the mountain.
Among the villagers, only her grandmother occasionally visited the city, and she herself had never left Loran Mountain.
The reason Ria went to the city was because of the village headman’s rare visit to the city.
The village headman had gone to the nearest city for his son’s upcoming wedding preparations.
Returning with a marriage permit from the clergy and blessings in wedding attire, he came to Ria with an excited face, holding a piece of newspaper in one hand.
The newspaper he held out had a picture of a young couple.
Though it was just a drawing, the man bore a striking resemblance to Ria’s husband, who had suddenly disappeared one day.
Below, there was an article stating that the returned Duke Blomhart and the empire’s princess were engaged.
From a newspaper issued about two years ago, she could learn about her missing husband’s whereabouts.
The only word the man, who remembered nothing else, had remembered was ‘Hart’.
Ria learned that it was not her husband’s name but his surname.
“…He left us and went back to where he belonged.”
Her body trembled with anger and betrayal towards her husband like a quivering leaf.
As time passed, her anger grew like a wildfire in her heart.
The betrayal of the man who used to speak of ‘love’ was too painful for her.
Then her husband’s sword caught her eye.
“…I can’t stand the sight of it!”
Ria fetched a linen cloth and wrapped the greatsword.
And the next day, she entrusted Raphaella to a friend for the first time in her life and went to the city to sell the sword.
Enveloped in anger, she didn’t even bother to explore the city on her first visit. Instead, she sold the sword at the weapons store and immediately returned.
“It came back to me as naturally as recalling something I’d already experienced.”
Not only memories but also emotions felt incredibly vivid.
“…Was I not receiving foresight from the goddess through dreams, but rather experiencing a life I had already lived?”
Regression.
“Haha….”
Could such a thing be possible?
Clunk.
Lost in thought, Ria snapped back to reality at the sound coming from her daughter’s belly.
“Oh my goodness, we haven’t even had breakfast yet!”
She quickly prepared a meal and resolved breakfast-cum-lunch with Raphaella.
“After eating, I’ll have to think about what to do next.”
As she washed the dishes, she dredged up memories from before the regression.
When she went to find her husband, who had abandoned her and their daughter after much suffering in the face of death, she heard something absurd.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you.”
“…What?”
“I’ve never seen you or that kid before today.”
He spoke with such coldness, claiming to have no memory of the time he had spent with Ria and their daughter, not even recognizing his wife and child.
Truly, he remembered nothing at all.
“At first, I thought he was lying, but his demeanor and gaze were so unfamiliar that I had no choice but to believe that my husband had truly lost his memory.”
Meeting him again, he looked exactly like the husband she had known, but everything else was different.
Because he truly had no memories, he treated the daughter he suddenly had to care for with only a sense of obligation.
He left her lonely and sad after her mother left, without giving her any love or attention.
Her own life was vividly etched in her memory, while her daughter’s life only appeared fragmentary, as if seen in a dream.
“Still, I could understand.”
Raphaella, raised without love in neglect, had become severely warped, and by the time her husband realized this fact, it was already too late.
Despite his belated efforts to change his daughter, who had grown up like a villain, regardless of his memory, it was in vain.
“It seemed like big Raphaella couldn’t feel anything in neglect.”
To avoid this tragedy, her husband had to love their daughter, regardless of his memory.
“To do that, I must bring my husband and Raphaella together as soon as possible.”
She needed to help them get closer while she was still alive.
“…Winter is coming soon, and if I don’t leave soon, the passage might be blocked.”
Loran Mountain, where Ria lived, was in the north, and winter arrived earlier in the northern part of the empire than in other regions.
“When winter comes, the passage for ordinary people is blocked due to fierce snowstorms and monsters coming down from the ‘Black Mountains.'”
“The sooner, the better, so I should leave tomorrow morning.”
Having made her decision, Ria stopped by her village friend’s house and told them that she would be away for a while.
During dinner, she broached the subject with Raphaella.
“Rafi, don’t you miss Dad?”
“Dad?”
Raphaella chuckled while eating stew.
“Dad is very, very far away.”
When her husband disappeared, Ria didn’t know what to say to her daughter who was looking for her dad.
She lied to her young daughter, fearing she would be shocked, saying that her dad had gone far away and wouldn’t be able to come for several years.
“Dad can’t come to see us, but we can go see him.”
“Really? So are we going to see Dad then?”
Raphaella’s eyes sparkled with joy as she kicked her legs from her chair.
“Yeah, but Rafi, Dad is a little sick.”
“Sick? Where?”
“Well… Dad hurt his head and forgot about us.”
Ria’s throat tightened.
Could her child understand and accept that her dad didn’t remember them?
“…He forgot about us?”
“Yeah, so Dad won’t recognize us.”
“Mom and Rafi?”
“Yeah.”
Raphaella’s emerald eyes began to fill with tears.
“Is there such a sickness?”
To console the crying Raphaella, Ria approached her side.
“Yeah, that’s why we should go and let Dad know who we are.”
“…Mom, will Dad be able to remember us again?”
“Then, someday he’ll remember us again.”
Ria said so, kissing her on the forehead.
“Let’s go to Dad so that can happen, okay?”
“Yeah! Let’s go!”
Raphaella stopped crying and tightly clasped her small hands together.
After washing Raphaella and laying her down to sleep, Ria began to pack for the long journey ahead.
Since they were going to the island where she had only been once before, before the regression, and taking Raphaella along, she had to pack only what was necessary.
It would be very difficult with too much luggage on such a strenuous journey.
Having packed everything, she looked at her husband’s sword wrapped in cloth.
It had been so tender when she didn’t know the reason for his disappearance, and so dreadful when she found out about the betrayal.
Now, it didn’t stir any feelings within her.
She placed the sword next to her bag.
When she had gone to the Duke’s residence before the regression, she had been treated like a con artist by the people there because there was no evidence of her being with her husband, despite Raphaella bearing a striking resemblance to him.
Until the test with the stone confirmed their blood relation.
She could withstand being treated as a con artist two or three times.
But she couldn’t let her daughter face such humiliation in the Duke’s residence where she would live in the future.
“So you better do your job well, sword.”
* * *
The next early morning, Ria got up from bed and changed her clothes. Although the sun hadn’t risen yet, she knew she had to hurry to catch the carriage from the city to the island today.
After finishing her preparations, she strapped on her bag and lifted her sleeping daughter. With one hand supporting Raphaella’s bottom, she held the sword with the other.
“Raphaella, this time I’ll make sure you don’t have to live like that. I’ll do my best to ensure you can live in love.”
