Phew.

Helena took a short deep breath and knocked on the door.

Usually, a servant or butler would have come out to guide visitors from the entrance. But there was no one to greet the visitor.

‘…That’s strange.’

Though not extravagantly, they had been quite attentive since she became the Grand Duchess.

Instead of the old, crumbling house, a proper mansion was built, and household staff were hired. Several horses were also sent along with people to help run the estate.

But now, the mansion was oddly quiet. As if all the people who should be there had disappeared.

“Is anyone there? It’s Helena. Can someone open the…”

As there was no response from inside, she was about to knock again when the doorknob turned with a click.

“…Helena?”

The door opened just a crack. A familiar voice flowed through the gap, and after a few seconds, a woman emerged.

It was Viscountess Owen, Matilda Owen.

“Have you been well, Mother?”

Matilda straightened her back after confirming the identity of the unexpected visitor.

Without hiding her displeasure, she looked Helena up and down as if searching for flaws in a product.

“What brings you here without notice? And what’s with that appearance?”

Her voice was sharper than her raised eyebrows. It pricked Helena’s heart.

Matilda looked around quickly with wide eyes, then roughly grabbed Helena and pulled her in.

“Come inside for now.”

Helena followed her in.

No sooner had she taken a few steps than a strong smell of alcohol stung her nose. A familiar sense of unease crept up her ankles, but she kept walking.

What she saw at the end thoroughly betrayed her expectations.

Bottles of alcohol were rolling around on the table, and dust had accumulated in every corner of the house as if the hired staff had all gone somewhere. There were even some pieces of broken furniture visible.

Despite it being bright daylight outside, the curtains covered all the windows, making the interior gloomy.

As Helena looked around, Matilda snapped at her.

“What kind of Grand Duchess dresses like that? Not even a single proper piece of jewelry.”

“−Hic.”

Before Helena could open her lips to respond, an intermittent hiccup sound came from behind.

Reflexively turning around, what she had thought was just a carelessly piled heap began to move.

Soon, among the array of scattered liquor bottles, a man with a bandage wrapped around his head slowly raised himself.

“Ah, our lovely daughter has come.”

The smell of alcohol grew stronger. Her head started to ache.

They were clearly her family. The only people in this world who shared her blood. Yet why did the word “lovely” sound so empty, as if it were just a shell?

Helena struggled to voice his existence as much as she struggled to hear it.

“…Father.”

He, too, like Matilda, looked her up and down before mumbling with slurred speech.

“Do you… perhaps have some money? Or even some jewelry you received as a gift from the Grand Duke would do. Anything, show us something. You wouldn’t have come empty-handed to see your family after several years, would you?”

Seemingly having heard the voices from downstairs, her stepbrother Eric also came down the stairs. Leaning his arms on the railing, he smirked.

“Long time no see, Helen.”

His eyes were sunken above his unkempt beard. His pupils were hazily dilated, and every time he opened his mouth, the smell of stale cigarettes wafted out.

His face, which had once been somewhat presentable, now looked as if he had been in a brawl.

There were sporadic blue bruises on his eyelids and the bridge of his nose. His arms and legs were wrapped in bandages, and his lips were swollen and red.

Despite this, his rotten mindset remained unchanged.

“I actually had something to say, so this is perfect timing. Can you give me next month’s money in advance now? Something came up that I need to spend on.”

Helena swallowed hard internally. They were always the type to end sentences with requests for money, but it had never been this bad.

Even if only due to their thin pride, they had never clung to her like desperate beggars before.

Moreover, Lady Owen had acted at the door as if she was being chased by someone.

Suddenly, the worst assumption flashed through her mind.

‘Surely not…’

They were contemptible people, but she had been sending them living expenses every month without fail. After all, they were still family, even if only in name.

Yet if they couldn’t even pay the servants’ wages properly and had to send them away, there was only one answer.

“You’ve been gambling again, haven’t you?”

Her head throbbed even more. It wasn’t just aching anymore; it was spinning.

“Even after killing my brother like that, your hands still itch for it?”

“How dare you say we killed him!”

Matilda snarled, raising her voice. Helena, unable to contain her rising anger, burst out as well.

“While you were chuckling and flipping those mere pieces of paper, Basil died without even getting proper medicine!”

“He was a sickly child to begin with, don’t twist things! We tried every medicine there was, but nothing worked! You can’t blame this on us!”

“You shouldn’t have hidden it in the first place. Basil… was there ever a time when Basil and I were truly family?”

“We were being considerate, afraid you’d be shocked! Do you think baselessly suspecting us will bring the dead child back to life?”

In her first life, Helena had realized too late that Basil was dying.

They had hired a doctor, and she had believed their promise to take good care of him if she just sent money regularly. She trusted their greed in the face of money.

Having been married off like property, she felt too guilty to show Basil that she was living better than him.

She was also afraid that if she fell out of Eugene’s favor, she might not even be able to send money for medicine. He wanted her to abandon her old habits that didn’t suit a Grand Duchess.

“Evergail is now your responsibility too. Please act according to your position, Helena.”

In the end, she had to swallow the words that Basil was a person, not a habit. Gradually, she stopped visiting.

And in a winter when snow came unusually early.

‘You were already gone.’

Helena held Basil’s funeral on her own birthday.

Every year that repeated due to her regression, she begged and begged, but there was no change.

Even if she brought him to live with her in Evergail, even if she sent him to a hospital ward where professional treatment was always available.

“I’m sorry, sister.”

As if it had to be that day, as if cursed to happen only on that day. Without fail, Basil would leave on her birthday.

So she practiced letting go of her greed out of habit. At the moment when she forced herself to accept this as her fate, it was enough to be able to stay by Basil’s side just a little longer for the time she had gone back.

It was the only thing Helena was grateful for in this cursed regression.

But even this meager gratitude was truly difficult. In this life, she had opened her eyes at a point after Basil had already departed. Basil would have been neglected just like in her first life.

Yet life, which had never been easy, seemed determined to be difficult until the very end.

Helena rushed to Basil’s room, following an ominous feeling. The chilly air that hit her as soon as she flung open the door was biting.

“Huh.”

The room was empty. It was clean as if it had always been an empty room.

The navy blue suit she had first bought for his 16th birthday, the canvas and painting supplies she had prepared so he wouldn’t be bored alone, the pretty wave-patterned bedding that still held Basil’s scent. Everything was gone.

Helena crumbled down as if facing ruins. Matilda’s shadow approached from behind.

“Don’t take it too hard. Keeping a dead child’s things only makes the house gloomy. It’s better to at least get some money for them.”

That damn money, money. Bile rose in her throat. Helena stood up on shaky legs, holding onto the doorframe.

“You… are you even human?”

“What?”

“Even beasts cherish and raise their young. Even with only thorns, they embrace their own offspring.”

“This girl has gone completely mad, living alone with a swollen belly, now you’ve lost all sense!”

Turning to face Matilda, the bitterness of bile grew stronger. It was too bitter to swallow anymore.

So Helena spat it out like a final struggle.

“Even if you’ve given up on being human, you shouldn’t be worse than beasts! You’ve lived off that bastard all your life, and you still have the audacity to speak so loudly, but what will you do now? You won’t have anything to beg for anymore.”

“W-what?!”

“Instead of spending time shuffling card decks, you should start looking for a gravesite where you won’t starve to death.”

Matilda faltered for a moment. Her face turned red and blue as she froze. Viscount Owen and Eric, who had been watching the argument, suddenly looked at Helena. Their sunken eyes were burning red.

Even the piercing gazes were imbued with a vulgar nature.

Helena let out an exasperated sigh. Amidst all this, they were still worried about that.

“Where is your rock bottom?”

“Y-you, say that again. What did you just say? Are you saying you won’t send money anymore? Do you know who you have to thank for getting into Evergail?”

“Really, until the very end… If you had even a shred of conscience, you couldn’t do this!”

“How dare you try to lecture your parents!”

Slap!

In an instant, a sharp sound rang out. Her vision spun drastically. Her cheek burned.

Was that sound from my flesh? Her eyes grew hot.

“Parents. You call yourselves parents.”

Helena remained still, not even thinking to touch her swollen cheek. The inside of her mouth had burst, and she tasted blood.

“You stole my food to fill your own bellies first, made me learn to read people’s expressions instead of letters, dressed me in the smell of sewage instead of proper clothes, and you call yourselves parents?”

She pressed her burning eyes, trying hard not to show a pitiful sight in front of these people.

She only recited each word as if engraving a curse.

“If this is what parents are, it would have been better not to have had any from the beginning.”

“You still haven’t come to your senses…!”

This time, Viscount Owen raised his hand. Helena stood her ground, eyes wide open until the end. If she blinked now, she felt tears would fall.

Mother, Father, Brother.

All of them were looking at her with distorted faces, as if staring at an insect.

Acknowledging this, unbelievably, she felt like laughing. It leaked out like air from a deflated balloon.

“Because you’re the kind of people who would crawl out of your graves for money, because you’re spitting out such sharp words due to your dire circumstances. I believed that at least you’d become human once you became affluent. I guess, as you said, I’ve lost sight of things after patting my full belly a bit.”

Helena continued in a voice that was hard to tell whether she was crying or laughing.

“To think I believed I could at least pretend to have a family with such trash.”