In This Life I Will Be The Lord Novel - Episode 2

“…Father?”
A man in his late twenties with brown hair was seen reading a book.
“…Fath— no… Dad?”
Green eyes, just like mine, moved to look at me.
“What’s wrong, Tia?”
The very voice I remembered sent shivers down my arms.
What is this, is this real?
To dismiss it as a dying hallucination, the smell of books in the library and the texture of my surroundings were too vivid.
I blinked a few times, trying to understand the situation.
I had clearly been hit by a carriage, flung into the air, and was waiting for my last breath, so why was I suddenly standing in the mansion’s library?
Why were the bookshelves so tall, and why was the desk so high?
“Tia?”
When was the last time someone called me so tenderly?
I felt like tears would well up at the sight of those familiar green eyes looking at me with concern.
Father was as young as I remembered him.
“Tia, are you alright?”
I don’t know what’s going on, but I need to get out of here.
“Can I just… go to my room for a moment?”
Father tilted his head once, then seemed relieved and nodded, his eyes crinkling kindly.
“Yes, of course. Shall I go with you?”
A large hand gently stroked my head as he asked.
“Oh, no! I can go by myself!”
“Haha. You’re even livelier today. Be careful on your way.”
“Yes. I’ll… I’ll be right back, so please stay here!”
Shouting that, I started running without a clear destination.
As I ran, the library retained its old appearance.
That is, its old appearance before I became its manager and efficiently reorganized it.
It’s weird! It’s really weird!
I ran frantically out of the library, and a familiar yet unfamiliar hallway greeted me.
My room was too far, so I just opened the nearest door and stepped inside.
The room, furnished with a bed and simple furniture, seemed unoccupied.
I wondered if it was a guest room, but that wasn’t important right now.
In Lombardi, a mansion as vast as a village, there were countless empty rooms.
“A mirror! Yes, a mirror!”
Fortunately, I found a full-length mirror in the corner of the room.
It didn’t seem that far away, but strangely, I had to take many steps to reach it.
And the moment I stood before the mirror, I understood why.
“Why am I so small?!”
My body, which didn’t even fill a third of the full-length mirror designed for an adult’s height, was ridiculously tiny.
Looking down, I saw two hands like maple leaves, a chubby baby belly, and two small feet.
“How old am I right now?”
I couldn’t ask anyone. After a moment of thought, I quickly lifted the hem of my skirt.
“I fell and got badly hurt on my eighth birthday!”
I had scraped my knee badly on a rock while playing in the garden, and that scar was so large it had remained even on my twenty-five-year-old body.
“It’s not there. The scar isn’t there.”
My knee was perfectly smooth without any injury.
“That means I haven’t turned eight yet… I looked into the mirror again, but my childhood self remained unchanged.
It would be surprising enough to wake up after an accident with no injuries, but to wake up in the past?
Even for me, who had died once and reincarnated, it wasn’t easy to accept.
This was my first time experiencing regression.
My legs were shaking, so I sat on the nearby bed.
But being so small, even that wasn’t easy.
Through the window, barely visible due to my shorter height, I could see the scenery of Lombardi.
“I really came back to the past.”
I mumbled, looking at the large evergreens that abruptly rose deep in the garden.
Those were the trees that my uncle, Viese, had cut down when he became patriarch.
He claimed it was for landscaping, but it was obvious he did it because he hated seeing the trees my grandfather cherished.
However, it was later revealed that those trees were bestowed by the first emperor to celebrate the completion of the mansion, causing him much trouble.
How could the eldest son, the patriarch no less, not even know about trees so significant to the family?
“Stupid Viese.”
I don’t know what Grandfather was thinking, but Viese was definitely not fit to be patriarch.
But in that case, my other uncle, Laurels, was just as unqualified.
If Viese was a narrow-minded and bigoted person, his younger brother, Laurels, was merely a loyal hunting dog who blindly followed his older brother’s orders.
The only one who showed promise was my father, Gallahan.
He thought excessively and was physically weak, but he was a highly learned person whom the academy would have coveted.
But my father died early, so Grandfather had no other choice…
Wait a minute.
“I can… save Father?”
Father had died of illness just before my eleventh birthday.
At the time, there was no cure, so I could only let him go without being able to do anything, but I vividly remembered hearing news that a doctor had discovered a medicine just a few years later.
“I can save Father!”
My whole body trembled with joy.
My eyes felt hot, and a single tear dropped.