RWMU 01

Chapter 01

“Hah, you forgot our wedding anniversary?”

We haven’t even been married for 50 years—it’s only been four years!

So now you can’t even pretend to be a proper husband anymore?

I uncorked the wine the maids had prepared for me—telling me to “set the mood for once”—and gulped it straight from the bottle.

“Am I the only one who’s busy?!”

The words burst out before I could stop them. I jumped to my feet and shouted, then slumped back down helplessly.

…Well, that’s true though.

He is probably the busiest person in the Empire.

Leonhardt was always busy.

Having become emperor despite the rumors of being the “cursed prince,” he worked harder than anyone else.

And to me as well, he was an extremely polite and dutiful husband.

‘As if he’s dealing with a stranger.’

Drinking wine alone without even any snacks, I sighed.

“I should have listened when Dad and my brothers told me to find a man worth bringing in as a son-in-law.”

When I was younger, I thought love meant the feelings of fun and excitement when you were together with someone.

So when Leonhardt proposed to me, I happily accepted.

But after we got married, I realized something.

Our relationship was too lukewarm to call it love.

‘It’s more like friendship and comradeship… mixed with a little responsibility and guilt.’

All those different emotions mixed together, and by coincidence they ended up looking something like love.

But just as spinel and ruby are different gemstones, our feelings were different from love.

I only realized that after getting married.

My complaints continued as my sadness welled up.

I wanted to feel passionate love, not this tepid emotion.

I still felt friendship, comradeship, a little responsibility, and even some guilt toward Leonhardt.

But did that mean we had to stay bound together as husband and wife for the rest of our lives?

“If I’m reborn, there’s no way I’ll marry you again.”

Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was all the resentment I had bottled up finally exploding.

But at that moment, I meant every word.

* * *

“Hoo…”

A small hand brushed away the messy hair on a pale forehead.

But the soft sensation of that hand made Leonhardt jump in surprise and sit upright.

“What… is this?”

The voice that came out of his mouth sounded strangely young.

Leonhardt looked around.

“This place…”

There was no mistake.

This was the detached palace where he had lived as a child.

As he walked around the room trying to understand the situation, the old floor creaked under his feet.

Perhaps someone heard it.

The door suddenly burst open, and a servant stormed in.

“If you’re unlucky enough to be awake this early, stop wandering around and stay quietly where you belong!”

Even though it was working hours, the man reeked of alcohol and his face was flushed red.

If Leonhardt remembered correctly, that servant had always been hot-tempered—and especially quick with his fists.

Whenever he lost money gambling or got scolded by a superior, he would take his anger out on Leonhardt.

‘I’m… a child right now.’

His body wasn’t strong enough yet to endure the blows of an adult.

Leonhardt quietly returned to sit on the bed.

Just like he used to do when he was young.

Even though he had been abandoned for being born with cursed red eyes, Leonhardt was still a prince.

Seeing him obediently follow orders seemed to give the servant a vulgar sense of satisfaction.

Laughing loudly, the man left the room.

Leonhardt waited until the footsteps faded away and thought:

‘Until the afternoon, when they throw in a chunk of hard bread and watery soup, no one will come here.’

It was time alone.

When he was a child, this time had been nothing but suffering.

But now, with so much to think about, he found himself oddly grateful for it.

Grrrrk.

His younger body clearly disagreed.

Still, he would have to stay hungry until afternoon anyway.

Thinking about hunger would only make it harder to endure.

Leonhardt decided to first understand the situation.

Just last night, he had been twenty-two years old.

The Emperor of the Arcadia Empire.

And Miella’s husband.

‘I think… I got kicked out by Miella for forgetting our wedding anniversary… and I fell asleep while working in my office.’

But when he opened his eyes, he had become younger.

‘No… did I really become younger?’

Leonhardt looked at his reflection in the dusty window and shook his head.

‘At this rate… I must be around three or four years old.’

What if the nearly twenty years he remembered had all been a dream?

What if even Miella herself was something he had imagined?

Fear made his small shoulders shrink for a moment, but he soon straightened them again.

Leonhardt had always had a good memory of his childhood.

And the three-year-old version of him had not been an imaginative child.

Besides, it was impossible that a child could invent such detailed memories.

‘Did I really return to the past?’

Fortunately, Leonhardt would soon receive the answer to that question.

* * *

“What? Why am I younger?”

Last night I drank wine and passed out in the Empress’s palace.

But when I woke up, I was in my room at my family’s house.

‘I thought maybe I had run away drunk…’

But the unusually low point of view felt strange.

Looking into the mirror, I saw a child who looked like she should be drinking grape juice instead of wine.

There was also no small scar above my eyebrow—the one I got when I fell at age seven.

So I looked about six years old.

‘Is this a dream?’

Just in case, I pinched my soft cheek as hard as I could.

“Ow.”

It hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes.

So it wasn’t a dream.

Rubbing my cheek with my right hand and wiping my tears with my sleeve, I thought:

“Is this that thing… regression, possession, reincarnation?”

In the future—well, about ten years later—romance novels about those things became extremely popular.

Stories about a duke’s daughter who regresses to take revenge after being killed by her uncle…

Or a poor baron’s daughter who transmigrates into the body of a princess and ends up with the prince she secretly loved.

‘I did joke once that with how popular those stories are, maybe I’d regress too…’

But I never thought it would actually happen.

Magic that twisted time only existed in legends.

‘But I don’t really have anything I desperately want to change by going back to the past.’

My life had been smooth sailing.

I was the daughter of the most powerful duke family in the Empire.

My parents were hopelessly devoted to me.

And my brothers suffered from severe sister complexes.

“So why?”

I unconsciously brushed my hair back the way Leonhardt did when he was frustrated.

Then I froze.

“Ah, right. Leon.”

I suddenly remembered one blemish in my life.

When I was growing up surrounded by love from my family, I once wandered into an abandoned palace and met Leonhardt, the “cursed prince,” who was six years old at the time.

At first, I just felt sorry for a child two years younger than me living alone without adult care.

At that time, the Crown Prince was trying to destroy our family, so our house also needed another candidate for the throne.

Because I strongly recommended him—and because the adults needed it—Leonhardt ended up growing up in our ducal household.

‘And after that…’

I made a bitter expression that didn’t suit a child.

Now I knew something.

Marriage shouldn’t be based on affection alone.

Anyway…

‘If I’m six now, Leon must be four.’

Leon had been abandoned in the detached palace as soon as he could open his eyes after birth.

So right now, the four-year-old Leonhardt should still be living there.

Yesterday I hated him so much.

But now… I was worried about him again.

‘I’m not saving you because you’re cute.’

I’m just saving you for my own peace of mind.

Biting my lip, I steeled my resolve.