The perfect time to spend an ordinary, peaceful day.
I too was savoring the rich aroma of rooibos tea, said to help with sleep, and had just been about to take a sip.
“Tie.”
“Ghk—”
A cold voice shattered the peace.
“I think you’ve forgotten what you’re supposed to do before drinking tea.”
Ah.
My older sister was staring at me with lifeless eyes.
If I ignored her now, something huge would definitely happen. A chill ran down my spine.
“Unni, isn’t it troublesome to come check on me every single tea time?”
I swore to the heavens I wasn’t trying to dodge the situation.
I just thought it would be better to calm her mood first.
“Flotie Rosena.”
Apparently, that had been the wrong choice.
The color began draining from my sister’s face.
“Okay, okay.”
She looked so close to flipping the table that I hurriedly grabbed the silver spoon and plunged it into the teacup.
“……”
My sister stared at the cup as if expecting the spoon to turn black at any moment.
But even after a long while, the spoon showed no change in color, and only then did her expression ease.
“See? Nothing’s wr—”
As expected, she didn’t even wait for me to finish before turning around and leaving.
The tension coiled tightly through my body finally melted away.
“My lady, the tea must have gone cold. Shall I brew a fresh pot?”
“No, Elian. If I make new tea, my sister will come charging back immediately.”
“Lady Serphina is…”
“Even if she’s far away, she always knows. She’s watching over me no matter where I am.”
“You do realize that sounds terrifying, right?”
Elian looked worriedly toward the direction my sister had disappeared. Of course I knew. It worried me too.
I swallowed the now-lukewarm tea and let out a sigh.
“It might sound scary, but don’t take it that way. I’ve told you many times—my sister doesn’t act like this out of malice.”
“Yes, I know, but…”
Her neat green eyes shone with unwavering loyalty, like she would do anything for my sake. I couldn’t help but laugh softly.
“You don’t actually believe those rumors saying my sister stole my position as young duke and went insane, do you?”
“Of course not!”
Serphina Rosena had been called a once-in-a-thousand-years magical genius ever since she was adopted.
As the family’s greatest prodigy, she had once been expected to carry the house’s future. But after a certain point, she secluded herself within the ducal estate, and her activities outside became unknown.
That was when the rumors began—that she obstructed me from inheriting the duchy, that she still hated me. And those rumors never really died down.
But my sister never reacted to any of them.
“My sister loves me.”
“You’re just too kind, my lady.”
“No, really. She acts like this because she loves me very much.”
I know the truth.
When I was very young, I realized one very simple fact.
I was unusually perceptive compared to other people.
And the things that were painfully obvious to me somehow seemed completely invisible to everyone else.
When I was younger, I used to wonder, Is the whole world trying to deceive me? But now I know that’s impossible.
Still, if you ask whether knowing is a good thing—
Of course it isn’t. I’m on the verge of losing my mind every single day.
First of all, my older sister Serphina—the one who just interrupted my tea time and caused that little commotion—has probably regressed through time.
I know that sounds absurd, but I have my reasons.
The first time I suspected it was when I was thirteen and my sister was fifteen.
I had always been sickly since childhood, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to spend days bedridden. On that particular day, I had just woken up late from another illness.
“Flotie!”
My sister burst into the room, face pale, and immediately grabbed my shoulders to inspect me from head to toe.
At the time, she hadn’t been adopted into the family for very long, and I still felt awkward around her, so the whole thing was deeply confusing.
To thirteen-year-old me, how was I supposed to calmly accept the fact that an older sister I barely knew had suddenly appeared in my life?
Especially since she normally ignored me whenever I spoke to her and spent all her time shut up in her room reading books.
“Are you okay? Why is your complexion so bad? Did you eat ludwig fruit again? Did it reflux? Or did you take laurelvine herbs again—!”
“U-Unni?”
The very same sister who had eaten dinner with me perfectly normally the previous evening suddenly clung to me and cried for a long time, as though we’d been separated for years.
But at that moment, I didn’t think it strange at all that a fifteen-year-old girl was rattling off advanced medicinal herbs and treatments only healers should know.
And I truly mean that.
Maybe because her first impression had been so cold, it simply felt nice to have her holding me and letting me close.
But after that, my sister started acting a little strange.
Really, only a little.
“Flotie, in about three days, the viscount’s family will probably send over some tea leaves. When they do, you must give them to me.”
“You have a feeling a viscount family is going to send tea leaves in three days? And you want me to hand them over to you?”
“Yes. No matter what, give them to me. Absolutely. They know how much you like tea.”
I was baffled by such nonsense, but three days later, tea leaves actually arrived from the viscount’s household.
“Unni, are these the tea leaves you were talking about?”
“They came from House Ross, didn’t they?”
“Ah, yeah. They said they managed to obtain something rare because they know I like tea.”
Curious, I handed them over exactly as she’d asked.
I figured she must really want to drink them, but the moment I gave them to her, she threw the leaves straight into the brazier and burned every last one.
“This time, I won’t lose you, Tie. I’ll destroy everything that could put you in danger.”
It was strange.
She sounded as though I’d once fallen into danger because of her mistake—as though she had already lost me once before.
Honestly, if she’d only acted that way toward me, I might have simply remained suspicious and moved on.
But her bizarre behavior didn’t stop there.
No, calling it bizarre didn’t do it justice.
It was an achievement. A historical event.
“I am your true daughter.”
On the day of her debutante, my sister personally broke the dark magic cast upon our parents and revealed herself to be the legitimate eldest daughter, throwing the entire empire into chaos.
The two noble houses identified as the masterminds were exterminated, but even after reclaiming her family, my sister’s attention remained focused solely on me.
“I won’t lose you again by wasting time on trivial matters like this.”
She even made shocking declarations like that. I couldn’t exactly argue that the affairs of a ducal house were “trivial.”
She even caused an uproar in the magical world when she rejected the Mage Tower’s recruitment offer—despite them praising her extraordinary memory magic—simply because she wanted to stay by my side.
“If there’s no place for Flotie there, then I won’t go to the Mage Tower. In the first place, if I hadn’t gone there back then, this child would never have been left alone that night…”
I used that opportunity to hand over the position of young duke to her.
That burdensome role had never suited my tastes anyway, and since I spent most of my childhood bedridden, I couldn’t properly undergo successor training.
My sister accepted the title happily, saying she would gladly bear my burdens if it meant sharing them with me.
“Unni… do I die?”
“Why would you die?!”
Whenever I asked that question after seeing her suspicious behavior over and over, my sister always reacted explosively—as though she had personally witnessed it happen.
And even now, when I’m seventeen, look at her behavior.
Every time I eat or drink something, she checks whether it’s poisoned.
And every night, she storms into my room with bloodshot eyes to lock the windows and secure the doors.
“I have to see you live past nineteen and reach adulthood. There are only two years left now, and the preparations are complete.”
At this point, wouldn’t it be stranger not to realize it?
For whatever reason, my sister had turned back time.
And in her previous life, I must have died before turning nineteen.
Ah, but don’t be too surprised by one person hiding the fact that they regressed.
Because this is only the beginning.
Didn’t I say so?
Everyone in this world is hiding something—everyone except me.
