***
Moving quickly, Rachel hurriedly grabbed the doll on the floor and held it in her arms.
Like an idiot. She was careless and didn’t put it away.
“This is mine.”
There was a lot of greed in Rachel’s voice as she said it was hers. She looked nervous as she hid the doll in her arms, worried that maybe the blonde girl would take something that was hers.
Then the blonde girl looked at Ian, her mouth agape as if her pride had been hurt.
“Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, I’d like to see it.”
Ian’s purple eyes reached Rachel and the doll she held to her chest.
Rachel knew exactly what the gaze meant, but never wanted to give the doll away, so she stood there pretending she didn’t understand.
Ian’s eyes became colder and colder.
The thin smile that had formed when he looked at the blonde girl disappeared and his face turned cold.
He held out his hand towards Rachel without saying a word, and Rachel couldn’t say anything else, handing him the doll she had hidden inside her arms.
Rachel’s cherished doll moved to Ian, then to the blonde girl.
Everything about the doll didn’t fit with this old house at all.
The dress that the doll was wearing was silk that could be seen at a glance, and the doll’s hair was soft like the real thing.
At a glance, the doll looked expensive.
The blonde girl seemed to like the doll.
Perhaps it was because the doll was beautiful, or maybe it was just a momentary greed.
The girl looked at the doll carefully with serious eyes.
“I want it.”
“But it’s mine.”
Rachel, who had been looking at the girl and the doll anxiously, hastily opened her mouth.
“If you want it, take it.”
However, Ian interrupted Rachel’s words. There was no one in this empty house to listen to the young Rachel.
Ian nodded and handed Rachel’s doll over to the blonde girl with a single word.
“Really? Thank you so much!”
The blonde girl’s cheeks plumped up as she smiled brightly, happy that she could now have what she wanted.
Neatly folded eyes and nicely raised lips make that girl even prettier.
“But it’s mine.’”
Rachel murmured, frustrated by her current unfair situation.
“The young master gave it to me.”
Rachel murmured as she stared at her doll in the blonde girl’s arms. Rachel wished that Ian would give the doll back to her even now.
“Hey, Ian said it’s mine now.”
But no matter how long Rachel waited, Ian did not change his words and did not return the doll to Rachel again.
“But………………………..”
Rachel realized that she would never be able to hold that doll again. It was unfair but she couldn’t forcefully take the doll back.
Rachel just walked out of the cabin with tears streaming down her face. She fled deep into the forest with the cold wind blowing in her face.
It was the first gift she had received and she had something to call it ‘hers’ for the first time in her life.
She was greedy for the first time in her life, but it was taken from her too easily.
Obviously, the blonde girl could get a better doll if she wanted, but she had to have the one Rachel had.
Maybe she already had many dolls.
But the fact that not a single one was on her side hurt Rachel more than the fact that everything had been taken from her.
“It’s mine.”
Rachel wiped her flowing tears.
She didn’t know if she was sad because the doll was taken from her, or if her heart ached because Ian looked at her coldly. No matter how much she wiped, the tears flowed down incessantly.
It was a cold winter, and a strong wind passed, scratching her face, but Rachel had nowhere to go to escape the wind.
Rachel groaned and suffered for the night as if she was having a nightmare.
It was winter that year.
It was like a fever in the cold winter air without a handful of warmth.
***
Rachel was living her second life.
Her first life had ended in the summer of her eighteenth year.
She thought it was all over, but then she woke up again, and by an unknown miracle, she came back one day when she was fourteen.
It was before she and Ian escaped from the assassins who were after him. Rachel was given another chance and she made a different choice from her previous life.
This time, in this life, she chose herself instead of Ian.
The third prince, Ian Dakendov, was the child of the emperor and a maid.
He was not fully a Prince like the first and the second Prince.
He was born from a mother of the most lowly of servants, Ian was alone from the moment he was born. Even his mother died after giving birth to him.
Ian Dakendov was called a prince, but no one would recognize him as such.
Ian’s father, the emperor of the Levskaya Empire, only gave the child born of his mistake a few maidservants and a teacher. The emperor thought that was all he had to do.
He gave him no more attention or love.
The Imperial Palace was unkind to a child who could have nothing, and the First Prince and the Second Prince were merciless to their brother who had nothing.
Even though they were young, they were very shrewd.
They instinctively sensed people who were lower than them and showed great talent in trampling them down.
The Third Prince, the toy of those little demons, never had a day when the bruises disappeared from his body. Their behavior was too much to be called mischief.
But in spite of the situation, no one protected him. They knew very well that nothing good would come out if they stepped up.
Thus, the third Prince had to endure the violence alone, amidst the neglect and indifference of his attendants.
Fifteen years later, he got used to their violence and their indifference towards him.
His otherwise painful life became increasingly cruel when he turned fifteen. The year Ian turned fifteen, a prophecy came.
[A lowly man will rule the empire. He will be the master of the empire, since time means nothing and high difficulty loses its power in front of him.]
The prophecy appeared and all the people thought of the third Prince who was considered lowly as the hero of the prophecy. Everyone was convinced that the prophecy was about him.
The abandoned Prince would become the master of the empire…. But who knew if he was actually pleased to hear this prophecy.
No one knew if the future success of the prince was more important to him than the present danger. Perhaps it was more important for him to maintain his daily life today than any sunny days in the future.
Up until now, all he had received was beating from his older brothers and the cold indifference of the adults.
But after the prophecy came out, he had to run away to escape the schemes of the nobles who supported the empress and the first and second Prince.
At the age of fifteen, when he was still young as such, Ian fled from the Imperial Palace to save his life. All he had at the moment he was running away from the castle was his share of the money he had saved so far and a servant girl younger than him.
The place where Ian and the maid, who had to flee in order to sustain their lives with a definite future they had never wanted so much, hid themselves was Avery territory, south of the capital.
One day while they were living a perilous life there, they met Diana, the daughter of the Lord of Avery.
The moment Diana Avery saw the tall and handsome Ian Dakendov, she fell head over heels in love with him. She kept it a secret so that Ian could live hidden in her territory. After living in hiding for about three years, in the year when Ian turned eighteen, the empire suffered a catastrophe.
A dragon attacked the Levskaya Empire. The second Prince who wanted to take over the throne stole the dragon’s child. He thought that if he killed the dragon and gained the title of Dragonslayer, the Emperor would give him the throne.
He thought that if he became the first dragon slayer to appear in a thousand years, he, not his brother, would become emperor. Knights of the second Prince stole the baby dragon secretly from his mother and brought it to the Palace, but unfortunately, he was quickly caught by the mother dragon.
The fire-breathing dragon quickly made a mess of the castle and the capital. No matter how hard the Knights of the Castle tried, it seemed impossible to catch the dragon.
That was when Ian Dakendov, a member of the royal family who was hiding in a small, old hut on a hill in Avery territory, made his way to the capital, and the Imperial Castle was a sea of fire.
It was not known why he risked his life to jump in the fire. Was he that greedy for the throne? Ian didn’t hesitate to head to the capital, and in a week he had done what even the Knights of the empire could not do. For the first time in a thousand years, there was a new Dragonslayer.
The situation was under control and the second Prince committed suicide. However, according to some rumors, the emperor, not wanting to harm the reputation of the royal family, killed him without bringing him to justice.
After capturing the dragon in that way, Ian became the crown prince that the second prince wanted and came down to Avery again to pick up Lady Diana Avery and Rachel.
Rachel, who followed Ian and returned to the Imperial Castle, died in the summer of her eighteenth year, on the day the first prince revolted.
But somehow, life gained again.
Once again, Rachel returned at the young age of fourteen, and she did not stay by Ian anymore. In her second life, she abandoned him first and ran away before he could abandon her.
In her first life, when she ran away from the imperial castle with Ian, all she brought with her was the doll he gave her.
That was it.
But when she got her second life, she got a bag full of money from her savings.