IPAHW 02

Chapter : 2. The Truth Is, I Was Reborn as a Baby (1)

“Shana!”

The voice calling someone was desperate and full of affection. It sounded like a mother searching for a lost child.

“Shana, you’re safe! Dear God, thank You! Thank You…”

I had no idea she was talking about me.

“Your lips are completely blue. Oh my goodness, how could this happen…?”

Someone lifted me up and placed me into the arms of a sobbing woman.

The sensation of being picked up by another person felt like riding an amusement park ride.

Like a brief trip on a Viking ship ride.

A chill ran down my spine, and my toes curled on their own.

In a word, it was terrifying.

But I endured it.

I had my dignity as an adult. I couldn’t just start crying over something like this!

When I tightly shut my eyes and opened them again, a woman’s face greeted me. It was covered in tears and mucus. She looked to be in her late twenties.

She was beautiful, with bright blonde hair, a slender face, and vivid green eyes.

No matter how many times I looked, she was obviously a foreigner.

What was I supposed to do? I wasn’t confident in my English conversation skills.

Hello, hi…

‘Ah, right. I could understand what she was saying…’

This ridiculous fear of English.

She looked as pretty as a movie star, but she had cried so much that her eyes and nose were red and swollen.

This wasn’t the face of someone crying beautifully like an actress.

It was the face of someone who had been crying as if the world had ended.

She looked at me, and when tears welled up again, she squeezed her eyes shut before looking once more.

Then she burst into tears, her beautiful face twisting with emotion.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

This wouldn’t do.

“Waaah…”

Making that sound was incredibly embarrassing, but if it would comfort her, it couldn’t be helped.

The moment I made a noise, her eyes widened into perfect circles.

It was adorable and strangely satisfying.

I stretched out my arm, trying to touch her startled face.

That’s right.

I had arms and legs!

They were short, but they existed!

“Shana… You’re trying to comfort me…”

That’s right! Exactly! You got it immediately!

“Mommy… Mommy is sorry…”

Ah, so she really was my mother.

The feeling was incredibly strange.

The woman before me looked about the same age I had been just before I died.

“It was because I fell asleep. You almost died.”

“How is that your fault?”

“But if I had stayed awake, Shana wouldn’t have been kidnapped!”

“You only dozed off for a moment. The one at fault is that woman. Who could have imagined that your former nanny would kidnap a child and abandon her?”

Still in my mother’s embrace, I turned my eyes toward the speaker.

He appeared to be in his late twenties as well.

‘Judging by the conversation, that’s probably Dad…’

The moment I saw the man who was presumably my father, I sincerely wanted to look in a mirror.

‘Are they both actors or something?’

Good grief, he’s ridiculously handsome…

Both of my parents were absurdly attractive, and suddenly I became curious about the face I had never seen.

If those two were the ingredients, even the worst possible combination would still be incredible.

“Stop blaming yourself, Anais.”

“But the place where Shana was abandoned was a hunting ground! If His Imperial Highness hadn’t happened to find her, Shana would already have…”

“Enough.”

“Look at her. She’s still so pale…”

So that’s what happened.

I’d been kidnapped.

‘I thought that kid looked unusual. He was actually a prince…’

An imperial prince was basically the same thing as a prince, right?

Quietly rolling my eyes, I tried to understand the situation.

‘This isn’t Korea. And it doesn’t seem modern, either…’

Well, the moment a wolf showed up, it had already stopped being Korea.

The wolf had quietly left.

For a while, I wondered what would happen after I was left alone with the most handsome child I’d ever seen in my life, but fortunately, he had taken me to a group of people.

The first thing they did was warm me up with hot water.

While that was happening, the surroundings became increasingly chaotic.

And then the person who came rushing in—

Was this woman.

My mother.

The woman who had probably given birth to me.

‘So I wasn’t abandoned.’

I had been worried that I might be unlucky with parents in this life too, but apparently not.

My mother had cried so much she looked as though she might collapse at any moment.

My father looked just as exhausted.

I understood that they were my parents, but it didn’t feel real.

Of course it didn’t.

I was still struggling to accept that I had become a baby.

Still, people were simple creatures.

Once the freezing cold was gone and my safety was assured, everything else suddenly seemed unimportant.

My entire body, which had been stiff with tension and cold, relaxed.

The arms holding me were strong and steady.

Her embrace was warm.

No one had held me like this since my parents died.

I had always been the one comforting and carrying my younger sister.

‘So this is what it feels like when someone holds me…’

It made me feel safe.

Warmth spread through my chest.

‘Maybe it’s because my body’s so small, but even though I haven’t done much, I’m already tired…’

And hungry.

The moment the thought crossed my mind, a ferocious sound echoed out.

Grrrrrrr—

Wow.

For a second, I thought it was thunder.

‘D-Did they hear that?’

Even though I now knew they were my parents, they were still strangers to me.

I was shy around them.

The sound had been ridiculously loud, but they were in the middle of a conversation.

Maybe they hadn’t heard it…

“Oh dear, look at me. Shana, you must be hungry. You’ve gone hours without eating…”

My mother began fumbling with her clothes.

Ah.

Right.

I was a baby.

‘I’m not hungry! I’m not hungry! I won’t be hungry!’

No. No. No!

This couldn’t be happening.

I had only just opened my eyes as a baby.

My consciousness was still that of a perfectly normal adult.

Even if it was necessary for survival…

Mmph.

“Eat as much as you like, Shana. I will never lose you again. Don’t worry. Trust us.”

“Yes. We will never make the same mistake twice. We will protect you.”

…It’s delicious.

Before the instinct to survive, reason was nothing more than a sandcastle before a wave.

So what if it was breastfeeding?

It was a noble act.

That’s right.

Whether adult or baby, you have to eat to live.

Suckle, suckle.

Humans are remarkably simple creatures.

‘I didn’t want to realize it this way.’

Once my frozen body thawed, and I became aware of my hands and feet—which I’d thought were gone because they had been too stiff to move—I got hungry.

Then, after my stomach, which had been rumbling like thunder, was finally filled, overwhelming sleepiness descended upon me.

‘This is so embarrassing… So humiliating… I’m basically operating on pure instinct.’

My stomach didn’t even feel bloated, and my body felt light.

And the cleanliness around my bottom…

Let’s not think about that.

That’s the only way to preserve my dignity.

I must have fallen asleep while drinking milk in my mother’s arms.

I say “must have” because I don’t actually remember it.

But judging from the fact that I was now carefully laid down in a dim room, it had to be true.

I didn’t even get the chance to thank her for the meal.

‘No, wait. I can’t talk, so I couldn’t have thanked her anyway.’

Dad always said that you should greet people properly no matter what.

I’d taught my younger sister the same thing.

No matter what happened, always greet people.

‘Let’s stop avoiding reality…’

It’s time to think properly, Han Yeon.

Back in the snowy field, it had been too cold to think straight.

But now?

I was warm, full, and comfortable.

I’d slept enough, and my mind was completely clear.

First of all—

‘Did I really die?’

What if I didn’t?

‘It felt similar to when I collapsed from overwork, but also different.’

There had been times when I’d fainted from working too much.

But this time felt like falling into a far deeper place.

Instinctively, I had thought:

Ah.

So this is death.

…If I was mistaken, that would be incredibly embarrassing.

Still, if I hadn’t died, there was no other way to explain why I was now a baby.

I must have died and been reborn.

Probably.

‘Is this what they call reincarnation?’

Whatever it was called, it definitely wasn’t normal.

Normally, people weren’t supposed to remember their previous lives after being reborn.

I blinked.

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out vague shapes.

I couldn’t see my new parents’ faces clearly from here, but I had been able to see them up close.

The handsome blond boy too.

My eyesight didn’t seem fully developed yet.

‘Since I can see at all, maybe I’m around a hundred days old?’

I wasn’t sure.

But I definitely wasn’t a newborn.

Maybe nearly dying after being abandoned in the snow had triggered my memories of my previous life.

Something like that.

Wow.

This is fantasy.

An actual fantasy world.

My younger sister probably would have loved this.

Every time I nagged her to study, she’d insist that reading novels improved reading comprehension.

We used to argue about it all the time.

‘She only just became an adult. And now she’s ended up like me.’

Just as I had lost my parents in the spring when I turned twenty, my younger sister had lost her guardian as soon as she turned twenty as well.

But I…

I was too exhausted to continue thinking about it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, as though I could hear my younger sister blaming me.

‘Let’s assume I really died and was reborn. Then where am I?’

If this wasn’t Korea and wasn’t the modern world…

Then where exactly was it?

The language my new parents spoke was unlike anything I’d ever heard.

And while I could tell they were foreigners, I had no idea from where.

The only thing I knew for certain was that they were beautiful.

‘And they were talking about a hunting ground earlier. The place the blond kid took me looked like something straight out of Game of Thrones… I couldn’t pay much attention because their faces were so distracting, but their clothes definitely weren’t modern.’

If it wasn’t modern, then was it the past?

Some kind of historical Western setting?

There were dramas and movies about time slips too.

But it was impossible to identify a specific era.

Their faces had distracted me so much that I’d gathered almost no useful information.

My eyesight wasn’t even good yet, but handsome faces somehow appeared in high definition.

“Gyuung…”

No!

That was supposed to be a groan!

I was trying to express that my head hurt!

Why did the sound that came out make me sound like I needed to poop?!

“Ahh! Ah! Ah!”

I desperately flailed my arms and legs, trying to sit up.

But all I managed was some weak wriggling.

The blanket covering my stomach slipped off.

I hate being cold!

“Auu… Uu! Ah, ah?”

“Not sleeping, are we?”

“Ah?”

The blond kid.