If I Were Reborn, I Wouldn’t Marry You - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 1

“Ha, you forgot our wedding anniversary?”

We’re not even a 50-year married couple, just barely 4 years into marriage?

Can’t even play the role of a fake couple anymore, is that it?

I grabbed the wine that the maids had prepared to set the mood for once and gulped it down straight from the bottle.

“How busy can you possibly be!”

Then I got choked up, shot up from my seat and shouted, before sitting back down in dejection.

…Well, of course, he’s the busiest person in the empire.

Leonhardt was always busy.

Having overcome the rumors of being a cursed prince to become emperor, he was someone who worked more diligently than anyone else.

He was also an incredibly polite and sincere husband to me.

‘As if treating a stranger.’

I lamented while drinking wine alone without any side dishes.

“I should have listened when Father and my brothers told me to find a man suitable to be adopted as a son-in-law.”

I had thought that the joy and fun I felt when we were together was love.

So when Leonhardt proposed to me, I gladly accepted.

But once we actually got married, our relationship was too lukewarm to be called love.

‘A relationship mixed with friendship, camaraderie, some sense of responsibility and debt, I suppose.’

Various colors mixed together, coincidentally creating something that resembled the color of love.

But just as spinel and ruby are different, our emotions were also different from love.

I only realized this after marriage.

My lamentations continued with a heavy heart.

I too wanted to feel passionate love, not these lukewarm emotions.

While I still felt friendship, camaraderie, some responsibility and debt toward Leonhardt, there was no need to be bound in a marital relationship for life with just these feelings.

“Let’s see if I’d marry you if I were reborn.”

Whether it was because of the alcohol or the explosion of pent-up resentment, I don’t know, but in that moment it was completely sincere.

“Whew.”

Small hands swept away the bothersome hair from a white forehead.

Then Leonhardt was startled awake by the soft sensation of his own hands.

“What is this?”

The voice that reached his ears was childish.

Leonhardt looked around his surroundings.

“This place is…”

There was no mistake.

This was the separate palace where he had stayed as a child.

As he walked around the room examining it to understand the situation, apparently hearing the creaking sounds of the old floor under his footsteps, a servant roughly opened the door.

“Don’t wander around being an eyesore from morning, just stay holed up quietly like you always do!”

Even though it should clearly be working hours, he reeked of alcohol and his face was flushed red.

According to Leonhardt’s memory, that servant was hot-tempered and had particularly bad habits with his hands.

Whenever he lost money gambling or got scolded by his superior for his negligent attitude and was in a bad mood, he would always take it out on him.

‘I am young now.’

His body had not grown enough to withstand an adult’s beating.

Leonhardt obediently returned to sit on the bed.

Just as he had in his childhood.

Though he was abandoned for being born with cursed red eyes, Leonhardt was still a prince.

As if feeling base pleasure from such a Leonhardt following his orders, the servant laughed out loud and left the room.

Leonhardt waited for the footsteps to fade away and thought.

‘No one will come here until around afternoon when they throw in some hard bread and thin soup.’

It was time alone.

While it had been nothing but painful time in his childhood, now that he had much to think about, he was secretly glad.

Grumble.

His younger body didn’t seem to agree though.

But he would have to starve until afternoon anyway.

Continuing to think about being hungry would only make it harder to endure.

Leonhardt decided to first understand the current situation.

Certainly last night he had been a twenty-two-year-old adult.

He was the Emperor of the Arcadia Empire and Miela’s husband.

‘I forgot our wedding anniversary and got kicked out by Miela, so I was working in my office and briefly closed my eyes to rest.’

When he opened his eyes, he had become young.

‘No, is it correct to say I became young?’

Leonhardt shook his head while looking at his reflection in the dusty, clouded window.

‘This looks like when I was three or four years old.’

What if all those nearly 20 years had been his dream?

What if even Miela’s existence was something he had imagined?

His small shoulders hunched with fear but soon straightened.

Leonhardt had quite good memory of his childhood.

When he was three or four, he wasn’t a particularly imaginative child.

No, even aside from that, it was absurd to think a young child could have made up these specific memories in his head.

‘Did I really return to the past?’

Fortunately, Leonhardt got an answer to that question shortly after.

“What the heck, why did I become young?”

I had passed out in the Empress Palace after drinking wine last night, but when I opened my eyes, I was in my room at the family home.

‘I thought I might have run away from home while drunk.’

But the strangely lowered line of sight felt unfamiliar, and my reflection in the mirror looked like a child who should be drinking grape juice rather than wine.

Judging by my reflection and the fact that the small scar above my eyebrow from falling when I was seven was gone, I appeared to be about six years old.

‘Is this a dream?’

Just in case, I pinched my soft cheek hard.

“Ow.”

It hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes, so it was reality.

I rubbed my cheek with my right hand and dabbed away the tears with my left sleeve while thinking.

“Is this that thing? Regression?”

These days, or rather in the future decades later, romance novels dealing with so-called regression, possession, and reincarnation were popular.

Stories about a duke’s daughter who falls into her uncle’s scheme, loses her title and gets murdered, then regresses to get revenge, or a poor baron’s daughter who possesses a princess’s body and ends up with the prince she could only admire from afar due to their status difference.

‘I do remember laughing that regression novels were so popular that I might regress too at this rate…’

I never thought it would actually happen.

Magic that twists the axis of time only appeared in legends.

‘But I don’t have anything I desperately want to change enough to wish to return to the past.’

My life was smooth sailing.

My status was that of a young lady from the ducal house with the greatest influence in the empire, my parents were serious daughter-fools, and my brothers were severe sister-complex patients.

“Why then?”

I was sweeping my forehead just like Leonhardt does when he’s frustrated, when I flinched.

“Ah, right. Leon.”

One blemish in my life came to mind.

Growing up receiving only love from my entire family, I happened to enter an abandoned separate palace where I met six-year-old Leonhardt, who was called the ‘cursed prince.’

At first, I felt sorry for a child two years younger than me living alone without adult care.

At that time, the Crown Prince was constantly looking for opportunities to eliminate our family, so we had to choose the option of putting someone other than the Crown Prince as the heir to the throne.

Through my active recommendation and the adults’ necessity, Leonhardt grew up in the ducal house.

‘Well, after that…’

I made a bitter expression unbecoming of a child.

At least now I knew that marriage shouldn’t be based on mere affection.

That aside.

‘If I’m six years old, then Leon is four?’

Leon was sent to the abandoned Separate Palace as soon as he was born and could open his eyes.

So right now, four-year-old Leon would be growing up in the Separate Palace.

Yesterday I hated him so much, but now I was worried about him again.

‘It’s not because you’re cute that I want to save you.’

I’m just saving you to ease my own conscience.

I bit my lips firmly and steeled my resolve.

“Young Lady, are you that happy about going to the Imperial Palace?”

“Yes, Nanny!”

I deliberately answered in a way that seemed purely cheerful.

Nanny just shook her head as if she couldn’t help it.

She seemed to have suffered a lot because of me throwing tantrums and causing trouble lately, which was unlike me.

“You know that children under ten years old normally can’t enter the Imperial Palace unless they’re direct imperial family members residing there, right?”

Of course I knew that.

If it weren’t for that rule, I would have gone to meet Leonhardt long ago.

How much did I throw tantrums and cry to get permission to enter the palace?

In the end, Father, unable to overcome my relentless tantrum that even included a hunger strike, specially requested the Emperor and obtained permission for my palace entry.

‘Good job, me.’

I stopped reminiscing about the past week when I, with the mind of a twenty-four-year-old, suddenly acted like a child who desperately wanted to go to the Imperial Palace after reading a fairy tale book.

Let’s not think too deeply about it.

It would only add to my embarrassing memories.

I pushed the memories of the past to a corner of my mind.

Then I spoke in an energetic voice as if I was extremely excited about going to the Imperial Palace.

“Yes, specially! So I have to behave and just look around before coming back.”

However, despite my efforts, the brown eyes that were always gentle became clouded with anxiety.

It looked like Nanny was about to repeat the lecture she’d already given about twenty times.

‘I am going to cause trouble though.’

I’ll cause trouble and get scolded!

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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