Rastan sat down beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“It seems that child loved you very much, if she came back to you like this.”
Whether she understood or not, the baby simply smiled brightly at me as I cried.
“What do you think of naming the baby Rosette?”
At Rastan’s words, I turned my gaze toward the garden outside the window.
“That sounds right. She came to us on the day when the roses were blooming most beautifully.”
He nodded and added more meaning to it.
“It also means wishing her a beautiful and radiant life, like a rose. And…”
I understood what he was about to say and continued for him.
“And Rosette’s nickname will be ‘Rosie.'”
The tears I had barely stopped began to well up again.
“Thank you… for suggesting that name.”
Rastan raised his hand and gently wiped away the tears flowing down my cheeks with his thumb.
“You already went through so much giving birth. You shouldn’t cry so much. It will exhaust you.”
His endlessly gentle words did nothing to stop my tears.
Seeing them fall even more, Rastan smiled helplessly and played his final card.
“Our Rosie has only seen her mother’s crying face since she was born. You should show her your smiling face too.”
He was right.
I shouldn’t be crying in front of the precious child who had come back to us.
Sniffling, I forced the corners of my lips upward—and Rosie smiled brightly in return.
Since she had only just been born, I couldn’t be certain whether she was truly smiling at me.
“Baby, my Rosie. Mommy will never cry in front of you again. In this life, I will give you only love…”
I forced back the tears that threatened to fall again and held her tightly in my arms.
The warm heat of that tiny life was unbearably precious and dear.
***
“Our baby, sleeping so soundly.”
After drinking milk and fussing a little, Rosie soon fell asleep, breathing softly and evenly.
Whenever she fell asleep, I felt happy, but at the same time, I couldn’t see her eyes—that mysterious color that looked like a mixture of mine and Rastan’s, and exactly like Rosie’s from my previous life—so I also felt a little regretful.
“I will just look at them plenty when she is awake. She just fell asleep, but I already want to see them again.”
I gently laid Rosie on the bed and softly stroked her forehead, then paused.
“Our Rosie. Let’s see what kind of dream you’re having.”
A faint golden light emerged from the hand covering Rosie’s head, and an image began forming inside my mind.
“Oh.”
In truth, a baby this young wouldn’t be able to dream properly, but sometimes, while putting Rosie to sleep, I would look into her dreams to see whether she was at peace.
Since she was only a month old, her dreams were usually closer to abstract images or colors rather than anything clear.
And today, for the first time, something resembling an actual scene began to play.
The moment I closed my eyes to focus, I sharply inhaled at the familiar sight.
‘Why this scene…?’
What unfolded before my closed eyes was the moment Rosie died at the end of my previous life.
I had believed that the baby was Rosie’s reincarnation, but now it was truly confirmed.
Even now, it was never a moment I could easily recall or face.
‘Even if it was long ago, and Rosie has returned to us as our baby…’
But if my emotions were too shaken, I wouldn’t be able to properly see another person’s dream.
So I bit down firmly on my lower lip and forced myself to focus on watching the scene.
Since it was Rosie’s dream, it was naturally from Rosie’s perspective, not mine.
Through her fading, blurring vision, my tear-streaked face appeared faintly, over and over again.
The child, clinging to her fading breath, barely managed to form words.
“M-Madam… I…”
But she no longer had the strength to properly move her lips, and the rest of her words only trembled faintly inside her mouth before disappearing.
“Madam… if there is a next time… I want to be born as your daughter…”
It was the wish that child had been unable to fully speak aloud in her final moment, the desperate prayer she had made in her heart.
‘She could have wished to go to heaven, or for the wicked people of House Lansval to be punished. There were so many wishes a child might make. So why…?’
I tried to keep my emotions from wavering, but before I could stop it, tears burst forth.
Still, I kept my eyes closed, tears falling as I focused on watching the child’s dream to the end.
Fortunately, the scene didn’t break.
Soon, the soul that had left the child’s body looked down blankly at me, crying uncontrollably as I clutched her lifeless form.
At that moment, a beam of light shone down from above her soul.
As the child raised her head and looked toward it, a dignified voice spoke from above.
“Child, I have heard your wish.”
“Y-yes…?”
It was only natural that the child, experiencing such a situation for the first time, would stammer in surprise at the unfamiliar voice.
“The final wish of an innocent child’s soul, at the moment it fades, is delivered directly to me. Tell me, do you truly wish to become Evelyn Krone’s daughter?”
The child turned her head and looked at me, still sobbing desperately below, then nodded.
“Yes. I… want to call her Mom.”
“Very well. It is not impossible. But since this is no ordinary wish, a price must be paid.”
The child raised her head again, looking toward the source of the voice above.
“You possessed considerable magical potential. Unfortunately, your life ended before you could develop or use it.”
Rosie seemed to have had some awareness that she possessed magic.
‘Well, it was likely that her mother also had magic.’
Perhaps the aunt who had actually raised the child had told her.
That she possessed magic, but had to hide it. That unless she wanted to be subjected to a witch trial, she must never let anyone discover it.
God continued speaking.
“I can grant your wish in exchange for the magic latent within you. Is that acceptable? If you choose this, the magic you possess will not remain when you are reincarnated.”
If God’s words were true, it seemed Rosie could have been reincarnated somewhere while retaining that magic.
But Rosie nodded without even the slightest hesitation.
“It’s okay.”
“Very well. Then it shall be done according to your will.”
The next moment, the child’s soul was engulfed in light.
And below, the soul that had just left my body on the ground was also engulfed in the same light and disappeared.
The baby’s dream ended there.
I opened my eyes, tears still flowing.
‘So that was what happened. God turned back time in exchange for Rosie’s magic.’
I remembered what Frederick’s ghost had said before.
‘He said that I was the center of this phenomenon where time turned back.’
It meant my regression wasn’t mere coincidence, and I wasn’t just a supporting figure in this phenomenon.
‘Time turned back because of Rosie’s wish. Because she wanted to be happy together with me.’
Because of that wish, I was given a second chance at life.
Knowing the future that would have led to unhappiness if I did nothing, I acted decisively—no, I completely destroyed House Lansval and escaped.
And after going through all of that, I was able to become the true mother of the child I had longed for so desperately.
In the end, my regression had been brought about by Rosie’s desperate wish.
‘Her final wish in life—the wish she wanted to fulfill even at the cost of exhausting all her magic—was to become my true daughter.’
All this time, I had thought that I, the adult, had loved and cherished Rosie more. But that wasn’t true.
‘Your feelings for me were far greater.’
To think that such a small body had held such immense love.
Looking at my baby Rosie, sleeping soundly without a care in the world, I felt like I might cry.
In this life, I would fill this great vessel of love that the child possessed until it overflowed, using only the love she received.
I would make sure she never even knew emotions like loneliness or fear of abuse.
I would give her a life where no desperate final wish like that would ever remain.
I recalled the vows I had made when I first regressed, dreaming of a happy life with Rosie.
That I would fill the life of this child, who had come such a long way to become my daughter, with nothing but happiness.
Gently patting the chest of the deeply sleeping baby, I made my vow.
In my previous life, I had thought I died alone, with no one on my side. So I had tried to make this life different.
But now I finally understood.
Rastan and Rosie weren’t people who newly became my side in this life.
They had loved me far more than I had realized, even in my previous life.
I simply hadn’t known, and the circumstances hadn’t allowed us to be happy together.
Those who had been on my side, whom I lost in that miserable previous life, were now all gathered beside me once again.
Now all that remained was to give them even greater love than what I had received, and to live happily together.
‘In this life, I will love you more.’
As if she had heard the words in my heart, Rosie’s lips, sleeping peacefully without a care in the world, curved faintly upward.
I bent down and lightly kissed the child’s forehead.
It was a warm and peaceful afternoon.
