Jonathan James Crotsfield didn’t want to accept it. He was only in his fifties. There was still so much he hadn’t enjoyed, yet he was being told to prepare for the coffin? And to die because of eating habits ruined by Karen’s betrayal, of all reasons.

Crotsfield immediately put the doctor’s advice into action from that day. Whenever he wanted to reach for alcohol or sweets again, he would recall Karen’s sneering face. He had taken in girls who were about to be thrown out on the streets after losing their parents, and look at how blatantly they betrayed him. He couldn’t close his eyes until he punished the traitor with his own hands.

Surprisingly, Crotsfield succeeded in returning all his body’s risk indicators to near-normal levels within a year. His personal physician described it as a miraculous event.

By the second year after receiving his terminal diagnosis, Crotsfield’s health had improved even beyond what it was before the onset of his illness. It was thanks to consistent exercise and diet management. In the third year, he gained physical strength that didn’t fall behind the young officers in the Intelligence Bureau.

Then, in the fourth year, news spread rapidly across the sea to the Devon Empire that a research team led by a scholar named Frederick Banting had succeeded in developing insulin, a diabetes medication.

By then, Crotsfield had already regained his health, but he still heaved a sigh of relief at the news of the development of the diabetes medicine.

Human affairs are unpredictable. What if diabetes recurred a few years later? After the terminal diagnosis, he had become particularly sensitive about health issues. But now a treatment had been developed. Even if it recurred, he wouldn’t have to just wait for his death.

“After struggling so hard to survive, only to die after 38 hours, 38 goddamn hours of torture. My already battered and miserable corpse, those bastards wouldn’t have left it alone… They would have disposed of it without a trace. I wouldn’t have been laid to rest in the Crotsfield family tomb…”

With no body, he would have been treated as missing. What about his children, desperate to inherit? They would have pestered lawyers for ways to confirm their father’s death. Unfortunately, his children weren’t even a quarter as smart as Karen Liere. Nor did they have the guts, so they wouldn’t have been able to procure a body like Karen did.

“Incompetent fools.”

Crotsfield clicked his tongue. The thought of his body being burned in some random crematorium without even receiving a priest’s prayer irritated him immensely. Yet that Karen girl had managed to hold a funeral befitting the Viscountess Wintermore with a complete stranger’s corpse.

“Wintermore.”

Crotsfield gritted his teeth anew. Karen was one thing, but Ivlik was truly someone who deserved special treatment in this life. He had never imagined that the Bluebeard pervert would be so obsessed with Cedine.

“At first, I thought he had taken both sisters at once, but that wasn’t it. Karen was a cover, and the one he really had his heart set on was Cedine. Of course… It doesn’t make sense for a man’s eyes to go crazy because of his ‘sister-in-law’s’ death.”

Ivlik meticulously carved off Crotsfield’s flesh with Bluebeard’s special tools. Throughout the process, Ivlik’s expression remained unchanged. They say he feels ecstasy hearing his victims’ screams, but the Ivlik torturing Crotsfield was utterly impassive.

[Do you admit to your crimes?]

Ivlik, who kept repeating the same question, didn’t show even a hint of anger. Crotsfield found that even more chilling.

“This is a chance given to me by heaven.”

He had clearly died at Karen’s hands, but when he opened his eyes, he was on the luxurious bed in the Duke’s mansion. His body, which had been in tatters, was now pristine without a single injury. Dazed, Crotsfield looked around and then, as if possessed, approached the calendar.

Unbelievably, he had regressed seven years before his death.

After grasping the situation, the first thing Crotsfield did was to check the documents and keys in the safe. The items he had handed over to Karen in a moment of misjudgment. Seeing the items that had caused years of mental anguish intact in the safe almost brought tears to his eyes.

With the items recovered, all that remained was revenge.

This is a chance for revenge given by heaven. The Duke believed this without a doubt. Go ahead and kill those two despicable bastards, Ivlik Wintermore and Karen Liere, as you please. Even God has permitted it. He thought he only needed to decide when, where, and how to kill them.

“Dad, have you heard? Miss Liere is going to marry Lieutenant Colonel Wintermore! Everyone’s in an uproar about it!”

“I see… So it was around this time that Karen married that bastard.”

“What? I must have misspoken. It’s not the older sister marrying the Lieutenant Colonel, it’s the younger one. Miss Cedine Liere.”

Something was off. The Duke asked his daughter, who was well-versed in social affairs, to find out more. The Duke’s daughter left the mansion with a bright face, telling him to just trust her.

According to the news his daughter brought back a few hours later, Ivlik was the one who had courted first. He had already fallen for Cedine when he briefly taught her last summer, but he held back thinking it might trouble her as a trainee. After parting like that, far from forgetting Cedine, his longing for her only grew.

This third-rate romance novel-like story, ill-fitting for that bastard Ivlik, had spread widely through the mouths of gossipmongers. Seeing his daughter gush about how truly romantic it was, it seemed like a story that would appeal to the rest of high society as well.

The Duke couldn’t care less about Ivlik Wintermore’s image-making, which wouldn’t satisfy him even if he killed him a hundred times over. The Duke’s focus was elsewhere.

‘If by any chance Wintermore has also regressed with his memories intact like me…’

He recalled the eyes of the man who had gone mad because of Cedine’s death. He had deliberately raised the Duke’s bound hands to eye level, then slowly pushed needles under his fingernails. The most chilling part was that Ivlik’s face showed not even a hint of thrill while doing this. Just thinking about it again sent chills down his spine. The Duke involuntarily shuddered.

‘If he regressed with his memories intact, and seeing Cedine alive and well drove him mad, leading to this marriage.’

He could guess Ivlik’s ultimate goal. He must be thinking the same as himself. To kill the other before dying. Realizing this, he thought he should pretend not to have regressed.

‘But I can’t not test the waters carefully either.’

The Duke tested the Liere sisters. Surprisingly, both Karen and Cedine seemed to know nothing. Karen responded to the Duke’s probing words with a sullen face full of discontent. Cedine, who had a carefree side that made it hard to believe she was born from the same womb as Karen, seemed to be enjoying her life as a viscountess.

Both were their original selves as the Duke knew them. That is, before the regression, before Karen left for her final mission. In a world where everything was flowing as expected, only Ivlik Wintermore showed a different course of action from before.

“Alright… Let’s see how this plays out.”

The Duke planned to use the seemingly oblivious Cedine Liere this time as well. But there was one thing the Duke himself didn’t know.

That in this life, Cedine was not in an ‘oblivious’ state like before.

* * *

Many couples live with secrets hidden from each other. There might be secrets that seem trivial to others but are serious to oneself, and secrets that can never be told to anyone, including one’s spouse. The Wintermore viscountcy couple, who had been the talk of the town since their marriage announcement, was similar.

The wife suspected that her husband might have been her sister’s murderer before the regression. Cedine spent her time searching for traces of him in the mansion after Ivlik left for work at the Army Ministry. She made excuses to the employees she encountered, saying she was just exploring the house.

On the other hand, the husband secretly met his wife’s sister to protect his wife.

He wanted to eliminate Duke Crotsfield to protect Cedine. When he bluntly brought this up first, Karen coldly retorted, asking if he was testing her. Karen was more cautious than he had expected. If they failed, the Duke’s gun would immediately be aimed at her sister. She asked if he was prepared for that. It took several days just to persuade Karen. After persuading her, they had to make plans. Of course, it wasn’t something that could be finished in a day or two.

Cedine and Ivlik. Both had to keep lying because they couldn’t let the other know what they were up to.

Then one day, Cedine heard a certain story from a maid she had befriended. In fact, the maid named Nelipa was so close to Cedine before the regression that she used to call her by the nickname ‘Nelly’.