Episode 5 (Heinz’s POV): “Wife and Daughter”
Since their daughter’s death, his wife had been like an empty shell. Day by day her meals dwindled, she’d stopped going out even into the garden, let alone social gatherings, and she’d abandoned the knitting she used to love entirely.
She spent all day shut in their daughter’s room, crying, chasing after the memory of her face. He’d tried to comfort her more times than he could count, but none of his words ever reached her.
Unlike his wife, Heinz couldn’t afford to abandon his duties. Carrying the grief of losing his daughter, he had no choice but to keep quietly fulfilling his responsibilities as marquess, day after day.
Outside, he carried on as he always had. Back at the estate, he faced a wife worn down to nothing. Heinz’s own spirit was close to its limit.
But what weighed on him even more than his own state was the child still in his wife’s womb. A few months before their daughter died, his wife had become pregnant.
Their daughter, too, had been eagerly waiting for the little brother or sister on the way. So had he and his wife. They’d been pushing their work ahead of schedule, planning their first family trip since their honeymoon.
—If we lose this next child too, on top of everything else, my wife will surely break.
It was around then that Heinz found it.
A “magic doll shop” that claimed it could let you see the dead again, just once more.
“Papa, get the ball.”
“…Sorry. I was somewhere else for a moment.”
He picked up the small ball that had rolled toward him and handed it back to Christa. Taking it, she broke into a bright smile.
Now that he thought of it, he’d rarely had chances to play with her like this even while she was alive. Buried in work, he’d left most of her care to his wife and the household staff.
“My lord.”
Claudia took his hand. When their eyes met, she gave him a smile — the first he’d seen from her in a long while.
“Let’s play together. Christa always used to say she wanted to play with you too, my lord. Didn’t you, Christa?”
“Mm-hm! Papa, look. I can throw it really far now!”
Winding up with a big swing, Christa threw the ball with all her strength. It arced through the air, and with a tailwind behind it, sailed nearly all the way to the front gate.
“Amazing, right?!”
“…Yeah.”
When had she gotten strong enough to throw a ball that far? In his memory, Christa could barely even grip a ball properly, let alone throw it straight.
“That’s amazing.”
He ruffled his daughter’s hair, then turned to go retrieve the ball. But before Heinz had taken a single step, the ball came whizzing back through the air on its own — fwip!
“H-here you go.”
He turned to find Fiine wearing an awkward smile.
“…Did you use magic?”
“Just a simple wind spell. It seemed like a waste of time to go all the way to fetch it, so…”
It was true that what she’d used was probably basic magic. And yet the control needed to send a small ball flying from that distance, precisely back into someone’s hands, was anything but ordinary.
“Thank you, Fiine-san!”
As an excited Christa thanked her, Fiine replied that it was fine to throw it even farther next time.
“Hey, Papa. Now you try throwing it! Oh, but before that, can I go get Lala too?”
“…Lala?”
When Heinz tilted his head, Claudia answered for him right away.
“The teddy bear you bought her. You always used to tell her not to bring it outside because it’d get dirty.”
“…Ah.”
An oversized teddy bear, apparently popular among the children of the royal capital. He’d bought it on something of a whim, on his way back from work in the capital.
He hadn’t even known whether his daughter would like it. If she hadn’t, he’d figured he could just buy her something else instead. In other words, it had been the sort of gift meant to make up for how little time his work left him for her.
(She kept that thing so carefully she even gave it a name…)
Christa clung to him, wheedling “Papa,” and when he crouched down and reached a hand to her cheek, her soft skin really was warm to the touch.
If he hadn’t known the truth of it, he might have genuinely believed Christa had been brought back to life.
“Shall we go get it together?”
“Yeah! Lala always says she wants to play together too.”
Taking Heinz’s hand in her right and Claudia’s in her left, Christa started walking. Behind them, he could sense the two women from the magic doll shop following along.