I Returned And Gained A Son - Chapter 1
Translator and Editor: Ami and Nabi
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Chapter 1
I went back and gained a son.
“So, that kid is my child.”
“Yes.”
The man nodded with a blank expression.
Owen de Glentino, the eldest son of the Duke of Glentino, was a man with whom I had no connection beyond being my fiancé’s distant cousin. That chestnut-brown hair with golden highlights that he let flow, his masculine yet fiercely beautiful face, and the way he folded his long legs as he sat, all radiated an otherworldly glow.
But he still shouldn’t talk nonsense!
I, Sophia de Bartolli, an unmarried fiancée, had no experience with childbirth, so there was no way I would have a child!
“That’s ridiculous. On what basis are you so convinced?”
Even with my reaction, the man in front of me was not embarrassed. As if he expected this, he put his hand into his jacket’s pocket and pulled out an envelope with his long fingers.
“I received this before your arrival.”
The envelope was stiff and clean, as if it’d been well taken care of. The man handed it to me, never once averting his gaze. While emotions were hard to see in those eyes, they did make me a little tense and uneasy.
The first line of the letter read:
I doubted whether I was seeing right.
‘Sophia de Bartolli.’
That was my name! Who on earth would send such a nonsensical, terrible prank letter to this man without even telling me about it?
My eyes quickly reached the sender’s name at the end of the letter…
The sender’s name was…
“Wow…”
It was so absurd that I couldn’t even say anything. My hands were trembling with betrayal.
“Eloise…!”
My deranged tomboy youngest sibling, who vowed to travel the entire continent; why on earth was this lunatic troublemaker trying to become a troubadour?!
I barely managed to compose myself and catch my breath before speaking.
“Phew… First of all, I apologize for the disrespect. That girl’s behavior isn’t usually like this…”
I couldn’t bring myself to say otherwise.
“Anyway, that’s really not my child.”
“That child does seem to believe he’s yours.”
I glanced out the window and looked at the young boy sitting at the tea table in the garden, looking up at the sky.
…A small little boy.
Somehow, with his sparkling emerald eyes, fair skin, and chestnut-colored hair, it was easy to see that he would grow up to be a remarkable man, just like the man before me.
But why on earth does he think I’m his mother?
I quickly lowered my head and gestured lightly to the man, then uttered in a whisper.
“Doesn’t he look more like you? Could he be your child, perchance?”
“Well, then let’s go with that.”
Of course, the man whom I thought would naturally deny it casually spouted nonsense again.
“Pardon?”
“Since you’re the mother, and I’m the father, let’s just go with yours and my child.”
“Yes?”
With a nonchalant face, the man set down his empty teacup before he responded.
“Let’s get married.”
Me, Sophia.
The eldest daughter of the Bartolli family.
It had been only ten minutes since I regressed, but I was trying to make sense of what was happening over a cup of tea and my favorite madeleines.
The Bartolli family was known for producing the most empresses in the Croydon Empire. Of the three sisters, my sister and I have been educated to become empress. However, it was my sister Leonie who became the empress.
We fought as if we were going to kill each other. I sent assassins after my sister multiple times, and she tried to poison me.
Unaware, I consumed the poison for decades, and it weakened me with its toxicity.
In a final act of rebellion, I was attempting to overthrow the royal family and commit treason… And, in the end, I was shot to death by Leonie, who’d become the empress.
It was a life filled with both metaphorical and real poison.
Yes, it was certainly like that…
The spasmodic chest pains that tormented me have vanished without a trace.
With a young and healthy body, I sit at the tea table in my favorite bedroom, picking up a madeleine with my hand. Once I put it in my mouth, I ate it. The savory madeleine with a hint of Earl Grey fragrance was delicious enough to make me cry.
After becoming poisoned, my body became so weak that I could only eat porridge made of herbs and water in my final years.
Truly moved by the taste, I momentarily stopped chewing to wipe away tears with my sleeve. After wiping away the tears and lifting my head, I saw a mirror in front of the dressing table. I immediately ran to stand in front of the mirror.
The eldest of three sisters, always compared to her younger siblings and trapped by an inferiority complex…
…The ugly duckling of the Bartolli family.
Young Sophia de Bartolli stood before the mirror.
As I raised my hand, the young woman in the mirror also raised hers. Our fingertips met with the cold mirror in between.
It was real.
The first thing that caught my eye was the strawberry blonde hair.
I had always disliked this ambiguous color; it wasn’t pure gold, brown, or red, and I constantly dyed it. Because of that, my hair became more and more damaged and started falling out, eventually forcing me to cover it with a headscarf.
“You were so pretty back then. What was it that you hated so much?”
I looked at my face again. Sky-blue eyes inherited from my mother, who was once a princess.
My favorite part of my face.
As a result of the poison, my eyes lost focus, and my vision gradually deteriorated. But now, as if to say, “When did that happen?” they shone with a beautiful ocean color.
When I saw my eyes sparkling with clear color, tears inadvertently welled up. As the tears fell one by one on the dressing table, I stared blankly at my own reflection without even thinking about wiping them away.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Miss Sophia.”
I quickly responded.
“Yeah, come in.”
The person who entered after I opened the door was Bess, the maid who had been with me until I returned!
Bess looked much younger and livelier than when I last saw her.
“You have to go down for dinner soon, but.. oh my! Miss!”
Yes?
Bess, with her brown bob-cut hair swaying, walks up to me with a puzzled expression.
“Oh my goodness, Miss, did you cry? Are you feeling unwell… Everything will all be alright.”
Then, after rummaging through her apron pocket, she handed me a handkerchief. I wiped my face with a smile, trying not to cry. Ah, Bess. It was so nice to see my devoted secretary until I passed away again.
She whispered in a warm voice.
“I understand it all, Miss. Miss Leonie, she’s suddenly here… and everyone’s treating it as if a distinguished guest had arrived… and the last thing you want right now is to have a family dinner together…”
Bess’s words surprised me. She had a troubled expression on her face.
Ah, I see. I now knew what this was.
It was less than a year since Leonie entered the palace as the crown prince’s betrothed. In the morning, just three days before my birthday, she suddenly appeared in front of the house.
After that, the head chef hurried to procure ingredients again. However, it was impossible to prepare the same ingredients in just one day, so as a result, I had to have a much smaller and modest birthday than usual.
Leonie, the mastermind behind it all, didn’t even show her nose on my birthday.
There was no way the crafty Leonie wouldn’t have known what treatment I would receive if she suddenly appeared, how the ingredients prepared for my birthday would be entirely used for her, and that she knew all of this would make me terribly miserable.
I thought that was when I genuinely started to hate Leonie. Still, we were already sending assassins after one another by that point.
‘Come to think of it, I always ate madeleines before the meal back then. I always get indigestion when I eat with my whole family. I wanted to fill my stomach with something before that.’
That means I was about to turn twenty-one.
…Twenty-one?
Why now? Wouldn’t it have been better to be regressed before our falling out or before I started the empress lessons?
No.
I soon corrected myself. It wasn’t too late to come back now. The important thing was that I’d been given another chance, and I was due to die.
I had no intention of repeating my previous life.
Moreover, as I died at Leonie’s hands right before regressing, I closed my eyes with a sense of relief that it was finally over. I knew that the goal of being the empress, an ambition stemming from an inferiority complex that had driven me throughout my life, was actually futile.
As I closed my eyes and opened my eyes, the woman in the mirror smiled lightly, embracing the new life.
I spun around.
“Let’s go down.”
“Yes, yes!”
I intended to firmly establish this with my younger sister.
Sophia de Bartolli was reborn, and she had no interest in your position as empress any more.
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