Chapter 2

When I woke up, I… Eltriede, was in a bed.

What? Why?

I had no idea what was going on at all.

I was supposed to have been executed, so wasn’t it a given that once you died, you never woke up again?

There was no mistake that I had died.

My head rolling off after being severed, my vision spinning along with it… that spectacle was burned into my mind and refused to leave.

Are you trying to tell me that scene was an illusion? Was everything from the moment I was captured by the prince until my execution just a dream?

There was no way that could be true.

Memories of something so vivid and actually experienced, there was no way that could have been a dream.

However, if it was not a dream, waking up here on a bed was equally impossible.

Could it be that right now is the dream?

When I looked around, the interior of the room looked familiar.

This was definitely the main residence of the Eldenvalk Duke family where I was born and raised. Until I went up to the castle for the crown princess selection, I had lived and slept here every day since I was a child.

Did waking up here mean I had returned home without being executed? Or did it mean everything from being nominated as a bride candidate and going up to the castle was already just a dream?

While I was entirely confused as if not understanding anything at all, a sound knocked.

The sound of a knock?

Reflexively, I answered, “Come in.”

“Pardon me. Good morning, my lady.”

“Noah?”

The person who opened the door and entered with a click was an adult woman wearing a maid uniform.

Moreover, a face I knew.

“Noah? Why are you here?”

“When you ask me why…”

Noah trailed off, looking troubled.

She was a maid serving the Duke of Eldenvalk, where I lived.

As my personal maid, she had served me for a year from when I was nine until I was ten, but after that, she was supposed to have quit and returned to her hometown.

“You should have quit, right? Why are you still in the duke family?”

“N-No, there is no way… Um, my lady… does that mean you are already dismissing me?”

Noah asked timidly.

That was right… back when I was in the duke family, I used to throw temper tantrums often and immediately fire the servants assigned to me.

The servants also looked down on me for having “no magic.”

Even if I could endure it among aristocrats, I could not bear being looked down upon even by low-level servants. Therefore, using my maximum power as a duke’s daughter, I drove everyone who defied me out of the mansion.

This Noah as well…

And now that Noah was right in front of me.

Furthermore, in a state hardly different from when I drove her out.

The time she served me should have been when I was around ten years old.

If so, wasn’t that ten years ago from now?

If that were the case, she should have aged at least a little… though she wasn’t really at an age where people “age” noticeably from back then, either…

Either way, maintaining the same appearance for ten years was impossible.

The maid I fired ten years ago looked the same as she did ten years ago.

At that moment, it dawned on me. A certain possibility regarding the situation I was placed in right now…

“Noah, how old am I right now?”

“Huh? Nine… or rather, will you be turning ten on your birthday next week? Congratulations.”

Hearing that, my entire body froze.

I was ten?

That was absurd. I was supposed to have been executed at twenty.

The panicked action I took was looking down at my own body.

Though from the position of lying in my own bed, the most I could see was roughly both hands.

Yet just from that, I understood.

What slender and small hands they were.

They were completely different from the mature arms of a twenty-year-old woman that I had grown accustomed to seeing until last night.

They were hands of a girl still in the process of growing.

Come to think of it, the irritatingly large chest that triumphantly asserted itself every time I cast my gaze downward was now flat and docile.

That nostalgic sensation from before my growth period…

“Noah, Noah?!”

“Y-Yes?!”

“Bring me a mirror, please!”

“Um, a full-length mirror? Or perhaps a hand mirror?”

While both of us, including the maid, were confused, I stood in front of a large mirror where I could see my entire body anyway, and finally understood despite receiving a shock.

What had happened to my own body?

“Is this me…?”

Reflected in the mirror was a ten-year-old girl who still retained a lingering childish innocence.

The nightwear I wore was a cute one adorned with plenty of ruffles; if a grown-up twenty-year-old me wore it, it would surely look completely unfitting and draw bitter smiles.

Yet it suited the current ten-year-old girl well.

Yes, my reflection in the mirror was unmistakably a ten-year-old girl.

Could a twenty-year-old woman actually rejuvenate into a ten-year-old girl?

And a woman whose head was severed on the execution block, at that?

That’s right, I was supposed to have died.

If so, was this a dream seen by dead old me? But it was far too realistic in its various sensations to be called a dream…?!

“Noah, won’t you hit me?”

“There is no way I could ever do something so terrifying!”

“If this is a dream, shouldn’t getting hit wake me up?”

Noah wept and begged for forgiveness, but by this point, I couldn’t help but realize it.

I had indeed been executed on that day at age twenty.

And I had rewound back to today at age ten.

Could this be what they called “returning by death”?

Anyway, does this mean I was supposed to die, but gained a chance to redo things?

After that…

I chased Noah, who was suspicious of my mood, out of the room and sat alone on the edge of the bed.

Right now, I desperately needed time to think alone.

Unless I sorted out what had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to take a single step forward.

“Time went backward… is that fine to assume?”

There was nothing else to think.

A younger version of myself, a servant who should have been gone.

Crossing paths with them again was impossible unless I had been cast back to the time when they were present.

Time regression?

Did such magic exist?

In this country, the transcendent power called magic certainly existed.

However, no matter how much it was magic, manipulating time—such a grandiose phenomenon—couldn’t possibly actually exist.

Even magic, which looked capable of doing anything, had a proper system, and basically possessed the four major attributes of earth, water, fire, and wind. Above those was a special light attribute, capable of stirring up phenomena conforming to each characteristic.

Yet whether it was fire, water, earth, wind, or even light… there was no attribute that could act upon time.

Even in magic books I had read in the past, magic for time manipulation did not exist.

At most, I think there was magic within the light attribute that could make people’s perception of passing time faster or slower. It couldn’t even hold a candle to large-scale time regression on a decade-long scale.

Perhaps it might be recorded in the forbidden books hidden deep within the royal castle, which even I was unable to read…

…No, there’s no end to it if I start talking about possibilities.

At present, elucidating why something like this was happening was impossible. Therefore, it was more constructive to consider what I should do under these circumstances.

I had become my ten-year-old self.

Not just myself alone. This entire world surrounding me had rewound ten years from the point when I was twenty.

Everything that happened between my tenth and twentieth years was temporarily wiped away… or so it meant.

The fact that I was executed and all the crimes leading up to my execution had vanished along with the ten years of time.

Furthermore, the crown prince’s bride selection that caused it all as well.

If time went back ten years, he should be twelve years old right now.

He was still an ignorant child for whom bride selection was thought to be far off in the future.

Everything had vanished?

All my crimes and punishments alike.

And leaving only my memories, could I redo things all over again starting from ten years ago?

Because time was flowing once again.

“If I play my cards right… can I become the crown princess this time?”

The moment my thoughts gathered, that was what floated to the surface.

Whether I could call it my previous life—I wasn’t quite sure—but twenty-year-old me from back then had certainly died with her neck severed.

Since my life started over again from ten years ago right after that, calling the events of my former life a past life might be accurate enough.

Anyway, in my past life, I tried desperately to become crown princess, and even used dirty methods to knock down rival young ladies, but ultimately my wish was not granted.

Instead, I was convicted and killed by the very crown prince I was supposed to marry.

I figured the crown prince was also the one who ultimately decided my execution.

Since even the capture was carried out under his leadership, it was easy to imagine that he had spearheaded the sentencing as well.

There was no doubt that a large amount of his own will was mixed into my death.

“That means I was an eyesore to the extent that he wanted me dead…”

Well, that made sense.

In an event intended to decide his lifelong companion no matter how you looked at it, I successively framed those candidates and in the end tried to stand right beside him.

Naturally, he would despise such an evil woman.

To the point of wanting to stop her breathing.

Even if I desired marriage with that person, lacking magical power meant I would never be chosen as the prince’s wife.

If so, there was no possibility of me being chosen other than knocking down rival young ladies by any means necessary, but doing so would cause the prince himself to resent me.

Either way, I couldn’t become the crown princess.

“Doesn’t that mean the possibility of me being chosen was zero from start to finish?”

How foolish I was.

To not realize until dying and having time rewind over something to this degree.

What a foolish woman I had been.