Ezra gave the order, but Beate shook her head. As Beate stubbornly refused to swallow, Ezra used one hand to grasp and squeeze both her cheeks.

“Mm….”

Ezra’s grip pressed her cheeks so hard that she couldn’t hold out for long. With a gulp, the bitter medicine slid down her throat.

“This is something you brought upon yourself from the start, so I hope you won’t resent it too much.”

His voice was emotionless and businesslike. Watching Ezra turn away indifferently, not caring at all about her circumstances, Beate felt miserable and started to cry.

This wasn’t the time for this. Wiping her tears, Beate hurried off to a secluded place. She stuck her fingers deep into her mouth and retched.

“Ugh—ugh….”

She forced out every last drop from her stomach. She couldn’t let go of this hard-won opportunity so easily.

The only things in her stomach were the medicine and bile. The burning pain in her throat from the regurgitated liquid made cold sweat run down her body. Only after vomiting until nothing was left did her stomach finally settle.

Beate tore her petticoat under her skirt and wiped up the liquid on the floor. No matter how much she scrubbed, the floor stayed wet. Tears fell endlessly, so she had to stifle her sobs and keep wiping for a long while.

* * *

As memories from before her regression surfaced, Beate’s eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision of Ezra in front of her.

Ezra, seeing Beate freeze after spotting him, was the first to approach.

‘Is this girl really someone who might become part of our family?’

His deep green eyes, lush as a May forest, held a look of displeasure.

Beate looked up at the approaching Ezra, whose long, beautiful silver hair shimmered like waves. Facing his cruel beauty head-on made her chest tighten.

The sorrow from that dawn, which she had buried deep inside, surged up again. Unable to control her emotions in a child’s body, she let out a sob.

Ezra stopped in his tracks.

“Huh? What’s wrong with her? What did I do?”

Ezra, usually composed, couldn’t hide his confusion at the unexpected reaction of this unfamiliar girl.

“Hey, why are you making Beate cry?”

Ailis, who arrived at the lobby right after, scolded Ezra.

Lotus and Sophia also witnessed the scene as they came down the stairs from the second floor.

The butler, servants, knights guarding the main building, Laura, and the head maid with other maids followed behind.

In front of all of them, Ezra suddenly became the villain who made a little girl cry.

“I didn’t make her cry. She just started crying when she saw me.”

Excuses, explanations, justifications—words that didn’t exist in his vocabulary, yet that’s exactly what he was doing. Ezra questioned Beate in a voice full of resentment.

“Hurry up and tell them. It’s not because of me.”

Ailis came to Beate’s side and spoke for her.

“It’s totally because of you. Anyone can see that.”

Thwack. Ailis flicked Ezra on the head.

“Sis!”

Ezra called out, his face full of injustice. The siblings seemed desperate to get the better of each other.

The staff watched them calmly. Their bickering was a daily occurrence and brought a bit of liveliness to the otherwise quiet mansion.

Usually, Ailis teased Ezra, and Ezra would snap back.

Sophia received a handkerchief from Laura and wiped the tears from Beate’s face.

“Why are you crying? Is it because of Ezra?”

‘It is because of Ezra.’ But that was the Ezra from her previous life, not the current one—so how should she answer?

Unable to give a proper explanation, Beate blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Yes. Because he’s too beautiful….”

“Excuse me?”

Sophia, thinking she’d misheard, asked again. Because he’s beautiful?

Beate tried to make her excuse sound more plausible while stifling her sobs.

“He’s prettier than me. With such a beautiful brother and a wonderful sister, I thought there’s no way you’d want to take in someone like me as your adopted daughter.”

Sophia smiled gently, and Lotus suppressed a laugh at the corners of his mouth.

Ezra frowned at the word “beautiful,” which he hated, while Ailis, looking like she found Beate adorable, patted her head like a puppy and took her side.

“Why wouldn’t you be pretty? In my eyes, you’re prettier than Ezra. Isn’t that right, Ezra?”

Ailis wiggled her eyebrows at Ezra, signaling and waiting for his agreement.

If he answered “no,” she’d probably put him in a headlock until he gave in. Ezra glanced at Beate and replied.

“Of course.”

Huh? Even the staff were surprised when Ezra agreed so quickly, expecting him to make a biting remark.

He was infamous for his brutally honest and harsh assessments, making young ladies cry even at formal occasions where he was supposed to compliment them.

Ailis lifted one corner of her mouth and seized the chance to tease Ezra.

“So you can admit it when it’s true. I thought you were as blind to girls’ looks as His Highness the Prince, since people who like someone like this can’t express it and end up bullying, insulting, and making them cry. Did you make Beate cry because you actually like her?”

Ailis teased mischievously. Ezra’s face instantly turned red at her joke.

“Why are you saying that! What I meant was, it’s not that she’s prettier than me, but that it doesn’t make sense to compare a boy to her in the first place. And I told you, I didn’t make her cry. How many times do I have to say it? She just cried on her own.”

Sparks flew between the two again. Beate tried to step in and calm them down.

“I’m sorry. It’s because of me. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but the tears just came out on their own.”

“Yeah, because of you… mmph….”

As Ezra tried to complain, Ailis quickly covered his mouth.

“Why don’t you step aside for a bit.”

Sophia approached and gently held Beate’s hands.

“It’s all right. You’re still young, and you don’t have to force yourself to hide your feelings. It’s okay to cry if you want to. Even adults find it hard to hide their emotions.”

After all, she herself still couldn’t hide the pain of losing Riley and had become ill, causing worry for her family and the staff.

Beate steeled herself. Even in her first regression, she had the mind of an adult in a child’s body, but she hadn’t cried this much.

Of course, in the grand duke’s house, showing tears only brought more hardship, so she had to grit her teeth and endure it.

Now, in her another regression, her tears seemed to flow even more easily.

It was partly due to her changing experiences with each regression, but also because the emotional wounds accumulated through two lifetimes in a child’s body made it difficult to control her feelings, especially her tears, which now flowed like a broken faucet.

If she were in the grand duke’s house, the cold atmosphere would have frozen her tears, but the warmth of the marquis’s house made her memories leak out like water.

She couldn’t let this happen every time. She resolved not to think about her past life, to firmly shut off the flow of emotions, and to remain composed.

Ailis, who had been watching Beate and Sophia closely, spoke absentmindedly as she looked between the two.

“Hm. Somehow, Beate looks more like Mom than Ezra or me. I’d believe it if you said she was your real daughter. Maybe it’s the similar hair and eye colors.”

At Ailis’s words, Ezra glanced indifferently at the two and added,

“She cries a lot too, just like Mom. Ow! Again, why?”

Right after he spoke, Ailis flicked his forehead again.

“Geez. Why would you say that!”

He always had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Ailis glared at him with narrowed eyes.

The marquis’s children all took after their father, with silver hair and green eyes.

Sophia loved her children who resembled her husband, but sometimes wondered what it would be like if one of them looked like her.

Sophia and Beate did resemble each other somewhat. Their hair differed in brightness, but both were shades of honey, and their eyes were in the violet family. Listening to the children, Sophia smiled.

“That’s true. It does seem like quite the coincidence.”

Sophia saw her own reflection in Beate’s clear, transparent eyes. Perhaps that’s why she’d felt a sense of familiarity from the first time she met the girl.

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence, but fate.”

Lotus watched the two with a pleased expression. He hoped Beate’s presence could bring some energy back to Sophia.

Ezra, on the other hand, looked sullen, as if he disagreed. Lotus looked at the indifferent Ezra and asked,

“So, Ezra, have you formally introduced yourself to Beate?”