The garden was preparing for spring.
Every rosebush was packed with green buds. The flowers had yet to bloom, but the tips of the branches had already begun to swell. Ariella and Liriella walked side by side through the garden, listening to the names of each bud one by one. They were names Liriella had come up with herself: “Pointy,” “Pink Princess,” and “Morning Star.” They were adorably cute names for someone who carried the title of Saint.
“This one is ‘Grumpy.’ It has the most thorns.”
Liriella pointed to a rosebush as she spoke. She wore an elegant smile, but her naming sense hadn’t changed since she was ten.
“Grumpy? If it has a lot of thorns, that makes it a grump?”
“Of course. You used to be like that too…”
Liriella’s voice trailed off. Her eyes wavered anxiously. Her face showed that she’d realized what she had been about to say. She tried to keep a calm expression worthy of a Saint, but her lips trembled faintly. She instinctively took half a step back. The Ariella of the past would have snapped coldly at even a comment like that.
Ariella saw that half step. She loved her, but she was afraid of her too. She wanted to approach her big sister, but the fear of being hurt again made her body retreat first.
Ariella smiled.
“You mean I used to be like Grumpy? You’re right. I was a grump.”
Liriella looked up at her. After confirming she wasn’t going to be scolded, she cautiously smiled. But her shoulders were still slightly hunched. That wariness pierced Ariella’s heart. Liriella was fifteen years old, a child carrying the burden of being a Saint, and she was used to watching her sister’s mood. The Ariella of the past had made her that way.
Ariella gently draped an arm around Liriella’s shoulders. Liriella flinched. Instinctively. But when the hand softly settled around her shoulder, her tension slowly eased.
“But I’m not anymore.”
“…Really?”
There was a desperate longing in Liriella’s voice. It was the voice of someone who wanted to believe, but still couldn’t completely trust her.
“Really.”
Liriella’s eyes sparkled. The elegant composure she had been maintaining collapsed. She clung to Ariella’s arm. The dignity of a Saint vanished, leaving behind nothing but a little sister who loved her big sister. But Ariella could feel it. Even as Liriella clung to her, she couldn’t put all her strength into her grip. The fear of what might happen if Ariella pushed her away lingered in her fingertips.
There was a gazebo at the end of the garden.
Rose vines curled around its white stone pillars. They were still thick with leaves and had yet to bloom, but the buds were climbing up along the pillars. Two people were sitting beneath them. Ariella stopped walking.
Silver hair. A dignified jawline. A man drinking tea.
Red hair. A woman with earrings glinting between her neatly pinned-up locks.
Grandis de Belfior Rosher. Helenia de Belfior Rosher.
Her father and mother.
Ariella’s heart sank with a thud.
Her knowledge of the original novel unfolded in her mind. Grandis was one of the greatest archmages in the Empire and the head of House Belfior. He was dignified and taciturn, but endlessly kind to his family. Helenia possessed perfect refinement as a duchess, but in front of her children, she was a woman with tears always close at hand. They were both hopelessly doting parents.
In the original novel, these parents suffered greatly because of Ariella. Watching their daughter behave arrogantly and cruelly, they agonized over where everything had gone wrong. But they never gave up on her. Not until Ariella’s doom ending.
Ariella drew in a breath.
Parents. They were something Seoha had never had in her previous life. When she was five, she and her younger sister had been abandoned in front of an orphanage. She didn’t know her parents’ faces. Their names, their voices, nothing. All she knew were the cold halls of the orphanage and her three-year-old younger sister, who had clung tightly to her hand in those halls.
But here, she had parents.
Parents who loved their daughter.
“Father. Mother.”
She called out to them, putting strength into her voice so it wouldn’t tremble.
Grandis set down his teacup. His eyes turned toward Ariella. They were dignified eyes, but there was something in them. Concern. Or perhaps expectation. Maybe both.
Helenia rose first. Her eyes swept over Ariella. They were a mother’s eyes, searching for some hint in her daughter’s face.
“Ariella. You came out to the garden.”
Helenia’s voice was gentle. But cautious. The habit remained from when she spoke to the old Ariella. It was the tone of a mother accustomed to a daughter who would turn cold and walk away if touched the wrong way.
Ariella noticed that caution.
Her chest hurt.
These people had to be careful even when speaking to their own daughter. In case she acted cold. In case she turned away. Parents who doted on their daughter were watching her every move.
Ariella didn’t hesitate.
She approached Helenia. Then she hugged her.
Helenia froze. Her entire body went rigid as stone. Her eyes widened.
“Ari…ella?”
“Mother.”
Ariella buried her face in Helenia’s shoulder. She was warm. She smelled of perfume. Roses. Instead of the roses that had yet to bloom in the garden, the scent of roses came from her mother.
“Thank you. For giving birth to me.”
Helenia stopped breathing.
Grandis froze with his teacup still in his hand. His eyes trembled. Cracks were forming in the dignified face of the duke.
Behind them, Liriella stood with both hands clasped, holding her breath.
Helenia’s hand slowly rose. Her trembling hand wrapped around Ariella’s back. At first, cautiously. Then tightly.
“…Ariella.”
Helenia’s voice was wet with tears. Tears streamed down her face.
Ariella closed her eyes. It was an embrace she had never once received in the modern world. Her mother’s embrace. Her mother’s warmth. Her mother’s scent. Something she had longed for all her life now surrounded her.
Grandis rose from his seat. Slowly. As if trying to maintain his dignity. But his eyes were red.
“Ariella.”
Grandis called her name in a low, weighty voice. But the end of it trembled.
Ariella turned her head from Helenia’s arms and looked at Grandis.
“Father.”
Grandis’s lips moved. He tried to say something, but no words came out. Instead, his large hand settled on top of Ariella’s head. Carefully. As if he were afraid she might break.
Ariella smiled.
“Please don’t cry, Father.”
Grandis turned his head away. He looked up at the sky. The dignified duke was gazing at the sky, trying to hold back his tears.
Liriella quietly came over to them. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she bit down hard on her lip to keep from crying. It was the desperate effort of a fifteen-year-old trying to preserve the dignity of a Saint.
“…Big sister.”
Liriella’s voice trembled. Her face said she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Father’s crying.”
Ariella hugged Liriella. Liriella let out a small sob in her arms. The tears she had been holding back while pretending to be grown-up finally burst free.
Helenia embraced Ariella. Grandis looked up at the sky until he couldn’t take it anymore, then hugged all three of them at once. His large arms wrapped around the entire family.
Inside that embrace, Ariella closed her eyes.
It was warm.
Warmer than anything in the world.
“So this is what family is.”
For the first time, she understood the weight of that word.
After the embrace ended, they sat together drinking tea.
Helenia was running her fingers through Ariella’s hair. She slipped her fingers between the silver strands and brushed her daughter’s hair without saying a word. Ariella sat quietly. She liked this touch.
Grandis was drinking tea with a face that had regained its dignity. But the hand lifting his teacup was gentler than before.
Liriella leaned against Ariella’s shoulder with her eyes closed. She looked tired after crying, but the corners of her lips were turned up.
A spring breeze blew past. A chill still lingered in the air, but beneath the sunlight, it was warm.
Ariella was gazing between the buds when she saw something among them.
Light.
Tiny particles of light. They danced between the buds. Transparent, sparkling, moving as if they were alive.
She blinked.
The light didn’t disappear. If anything, it multiplied. One became two, two became three. Particles of light danced in the spring breeze.
“…What is that?”
She looked at Grandis and Helenia. Neither of them seemed to see anything. Liriella’s eyes were closed too.
Only Ariella could see them.
One particle of light landed on her fingertip. It was warm. It tickled. It spun around on her hand as if it were alive.
She held her breath.
A line from the original novel came to mind.
“Not a single human in the history of the Empire has ever seen a spirit.”
Light danced on Ariella’s fingertip.
The spring breeze stirred her silver hair. Liriella leaned against her shoulder and murmured in her sleep. Helenia’s hand continued brushing through her hair.
As she gazed at the light on her fingertip, Ariella thought,
“This world is far stranger than I knew.”
The particle of light seemed to look up at Ariella. It had no eyes. No face. And yet, unmistakably, it was looking at her.
Ariella smiled faintly.
“…Hello.”
The light flashed once. As if answering her.
It was the first secret of her new life.