With Mia’s help, she changed into a simple dress, wrapped a warm shawl around herself, and made her way to her father’s study. The mansion was recreated exactly as it had been in the past, which she had forgotten until now, and she couldn’t hide her amazement. With a slightly flushed expression, Vivian stood before her father’s study door, knocked, and steadied her trembling voice.

“Father. ……It’s Vivian.”

“Hmm. Come in.”

When she opened the study door, there stood her father—so healthy and uninjured, looking imposing. Not like the last time she saw him, soaked in alcohol and a mess, but with stiff brown hair neatly combed back with pomade, a finely trimmed handsome mustache, and a solid, sturdy build that made him look strong despite not being a warrior.

“Fa…… Father!”

At the sight of that missed figure, Vivian couldn’t hold back her tears and ran to embrace her father’s waist.

“Vivian?”

“Father! I’m sorry. Because of me…… because of me…… sob……”

Her father, Count Ezburn Raine, had fallen into drinking daily after suffering a major business failure due to incorrect information Vivian had brought him and losing his wife Selena to an epidemic. Eventually, he met a pitiful death when he was accidentally struck by a loan shark who had come to collect a debt.

But until his death, he had never once blamed Vivian. Even so, Vivian deliberately avoided her father, using the excuse that she couldn’t face him, afraid that he might someday blame her.

Though she was busy running around everywhere, sleeping less than four hours to try to pay off even a little more debt, the fact that she only learned of her father’s death a day after it happened meant that she had essentially turned her back on her already broken father.

“Vi-Vivian! What is this unladylike behavior!”

Though Ezburn tried to scold her in a stern voice, even he couldn’t hide his confusion at Vivian’s sudden strange behavior. The fact that her father, who always told her to “act like a lady,” was saying the same thing even after death was so funny that Vivian started giggling with tears still in her eyes.

Ezburn was now truly worried about his daughter. He had never seen his daughter cry and laugh like this since she entered the Pre-Academy.

“Vivian, why are you suddenly acting like this? What do you mean it’s because of you? Has something happened? Or are you ill……”

“No, Father. I’m just so happy to see you.”

“Ahem. Did you miss your father that much while I was down at the estate? You usually don’t even acknowledge your old man.”

In the past, she would have thought her father was angry, but hearing it after death, she could hear her father’s true feelings—longing for his daughter’s affection. Why had she avoided her father so much when she was alive? Even now, even in this illusion, she wanted to ease her father’s heart.

“When you told me to act like a lady, it sounded like you were telling me to keep my distance because I was grown up. But I can’t do that anymore. Because I love you, Father!”

Vivian smiled brightly, causing the tears that had pooled in her eyes to stream down again.

Though still puzzled by Vivian’s change in attitude, Ezburn’s stern voice melted slightly at his daughter’s affectionate *ssault.

No father can resist his cute daughter’s affection. He laughed with disbelief and stroked the top of Vivian’s head.

“I hear you’re taking a break from studying today? Yes, that’s a good decision. You may not like hearing this, but you don’t need to stake your life on Academy exam rankings. Who told you to be first? Instead, you should first fix that hunched posture and dancing skills that haven’t improved even though you’re seventeen. Other families complain their daughters beg for dresses and jewels from a young age until their backs bend, but how is it that the only money spent on you is for books?”

Her heart, which had been melting at her father’s affectionate scolding voice, suddenly felt a strange dissonance.

“……Seventeen years old?”

Vivian had died miserably at twenty-seven. If she was seventeen, that was exactly 10 years ago.

‘A vision of my seventeen-year-old self after death? I guessed I was in my Academy days from Mother’s mention of exams, but…… why specifically seventeen? Hmm…… will I see visions of my eighteen-year-old self when I wake up tomorrow? Or does the concept of “tomorrow” even exist here? I wish someone would explain this to me. It’s really frustrating.’

As Vivian frowned slightly with a strange expression, Ezburn looked at her even more strangely and said:

“Vivian, you’re truly acting odd today. I think we should have you examined by a doctor.”

Despite Vivian’s assurances that she was fine, Ezburn soothed her and ordered a maid outside the door to summon the family physician immediately.

Dr. Klein, who came rushing in, looked exactly as Vivian remembered from before—or rather, from 10 years ago. After the family’s downfall, they couldn’t afford to retain a physician, so Vivian’s last meeting with Dr. Klein had been when she was twenty-three.

At that time, he had been more bald than the Dr. Klein now before her, with gray streaks in his sideburns.

“Hmm…… aside from some weakness due to weight loss, I don’t see anything seriously wrong. I’ll write you a prescription; it would be good to get some tonics from the pharmacy on the main street. When the body weakens, nightmares become frequent, and in severe cases, one might even hallucinate or talk nonsense. Um…… what’s today’s date again?”

As Dr. Klein pulled out a prescription memo pad from his pocket to write the date, Mia, who was standing nearby, promptly answered.

“Today is October 28th, 452, sir.”

“What?”

While the doctor nodded at Mia’s answer and moved his pen, Vivian questioned with wide, round eyes.

The thought occurred to her that this was too specific for a post-death vision. If it was late October 452, she would certainly have been studying herself to death.

To beat Luciel, whom she couldn’t surpass no matter how hard she tried all year, she had planned to thoroughly prepare during the Academy’s three-month winter break. Probably with books and notebooks spread across her desk every day without rest, just like when she had opened her eyes in front of her mother.

As the pieces fit together, she began to doubt whether this was truly a vision.

Just then, something flashed through Vivian’s mind.

“By any chance…… has Jasper…… has Jasper already gone down to his hometown?”

Jasper was the Raine household’s diligent coachman who, when Vivian was seventeen, had taken special leave to visit his hometown but encountered bandits on the way. He was badly injured and left with a permanent limp.

“Yes, Miss. But he needs to pick up a newly made carriage on November 1st, so he’ll probably arrive at the mansion tomorrow. Do you need to go somewhere? Jasper isn’t here, but Alfredo is available, so you can still use the carriage.”

“Right…… Alfredo was here too. I’d forgotten……”

Alfredo was Jasper’s apprentice. A young man about Vivian’s age who had helped with odd jobs around the mansion since childhood and learned coachman duties from Jasper. He too had to leave without receiving much money when the family went bankrupt.

Vivian mulled over what Mia had just said with a slightly dazed expression and muttered:

“Jasper will take the Quiren Forest path when he comes back. It’s a shortcut. But it might be dangerous. I should ask one of Sir Noel’s apprentice knights to go meet Jasper.”

“What? Asking a knight to escort a coachman?”

The maid questioned Vivian cautiously, checking if she had heard correctly. Dr. Klein also paused his prescription writing and looked at Vivian with puzzlement.

As a result of Vivian’s earnest request, two apprentice knights from the Raine household who went to the Quiren Forest path discovered Jasper surrounded by bandits and were able to bring him back safely.

This incident improved Vivian’s reputation among the household staff, who praised her as a kind young lady who cared even for the safety of the servants.

Whatever happened to her reputation, that wasn’t what mattered to Vivian.

‘Somehow…… I feel like I’m actually alive…… this is really confusing……’

Though she had been lying in bed for quite some time, the tonic prescribed by Dr. Klein kept Vivian from falling asleep. She lay with her eyes wide open, thinking about her death.

Three days had passed since she thought she had died, but her days in what she had believed to be heaven were no different from her life at seventeen.

The fact that a day was 24 hours, that people ate, slept, and relieved themselves, that everyone she remembered appeared, that events she remembered occurred, and even that she could twist past events to create different outcomes—all of this suggested that rather than being dead, she had returned to her past at seventeen. And everything was realistic enough to make her believe this thought.

‘If this were the afterlife, there would be no point in distinguishing between life and death.’

Vivian decided to stop her expanding train of thought there. Since there seemed to be no one who could tell her whether she was alive or dead, she concluded that she should live this time as if she had returned to her seventeen-year-old self.

Her mind had been quite complicated while thinking, but once she made her decision, Vivian’s heart began to swell.

‘Yes. Perhaps Naren took pity on me and granted my wish!’

If there truly was a god, this would be a plausible occurrence.