"A-Are you sure you're okay, sweetie?! You must s-still be t-tired, right?! Take it easy!! O-Oh no, where's the d-doctor?! Doctor!! DOCTOR, WHERE ARE YOU!!"

"F-Father...! I'm alright, so please calm down," I reassured my father as I tried to balance myself on my own two feet for the first time within weeks.

"W-What?! Are you sure?? How can you be so sure that you are already recovered?!" my father rambled as he helped support me up by my arms.

"Don't worry. I'm quite healthy and strong, father..." I sighed.

Unlike on Earth, where a single incident could leave you bedridden for life, here, it was possible to recover quickly thanks to the power of magic.

"Besides..." I mumbled as I turned my gaze to Ace, who was watching me intently like a hawk, "...the doctor said that I was alright now."

Ace's eyes softened at my words, albeit his expression was still a bit stiff at the fact that I was attempting to walk on my own now.

"Nooooo!!! But it is still too dangerous!!! Right, Ace?! My sweetie should rest for the next whole year!!!" my father cried as he shook Ace's shoulder, begging him to stop me.

"But if I were to stay in bed for another year, I would miss the day of your wedding, Father...and that wouldn't be very good...right?"

"B-B-But..."

"It's alright, Father. I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world!" I said as I gave him a reassuring smile.

"Oh...my sweetie...is such a...a-a-a...an...AN ANGEL!!! OHHH, HOW DO I HAVE SUCH A PERFECT LITTLE ANGEL AS MY DAUGHTER?!?! MY HEART- OH! THE END MUST BE NEAR!! MY HEART!!!" my father cried dramatically as if an arrow had been shot through his heart.

And once he calmed down, my father rose from the ground as if he were being revived and stumbled his way over to me, squeezing me tightly in his arms.

"I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, SWEETIE!!" my father cried as he held me close in his chest.

When I was young, his squeezes used to be so tight that I couldn't breathe.

But now that I was older and stronger, I could tell that there was so much warmth behind his embraces.

A type of warmth that I had not noticed before...

And if I had never returned to Earth briefly, I would have never remembered just how terrible my past father was...and how precious my father in this life was...

"I love you too..." I murmured, "...Dad."

My father stiffened at the sound of my words.

I blushed a little at his reaction.

"Dad...?" my father gasped a little with his eyes round.

When I returned to Earth, I had reunited with my...other "father" there.

I realized just how awful my father was in that life...and how precious my father in this life was.

And so I think it'd be weird to call both of my "fathers" the same thing when there is only one father that has truly cared for me throughout my life.

"Y-Yeah...Dad..." I mumbled, slightly embarrassed.

This was too cheesy and sappy for me to keep a straight face.

My father, who had never once heard me refer to him casually after I grew up, widened his eyes, speechless.

This was the first time I had ever seen him so quiet from something sweet that I had said.

"I'm so...I'm so happy you're all better now, sweetie..."

His head was out from my view and his shoulders were slightly shaking.

I wonder...

Was he crying...?

"Mmm...thanks, Dad."

.

.

.

.

.

It had been too long since I had last been productive that I started to feel a strange sense of guilt somewhere in the back of my head.

There were many things that I needed to do but so little time to accomplish them.

"Dang it...this coma wasted too much of my time..." I clicked my tongue as I walked down the halls and into my own private bedroom.

There were approximately two more weeks until the day of my father's wedding and, before then, I needed to relearn etiquette, learn the newest trends of high society, focus on rebuilding my strength, and also...

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened up my mental, spatial storage.

It had been a very long time since I had gone into my mental storage room, a place that the gods had gifted me when I was young since there was no reason that I needed to use it in the first place.

But now...there were a few things in here that I needed to find before it was too late.

When I blinked open my eyes, I found myself in a dark, black room filled with various items from jets to magic wands to memes to anime souvenirs and more.

There were so many things in my storage, in fact, that I was quite surprised when I found a death note lying around on the ground.

When and why did I create something like this with my magic in the past, I wonder.

But, unfortunately, I wasn't willing to sell my soul to the gods of death in order to carry out my plans, so the death note itself was useless.

Ever since I went to Earth and back...I realized how much I had grown attached to this world...

That...

Even though this world had brought me so much joy and pain, I truly loved it from the bottom of my heart.

Which was why...

There were a few last things that I needed to do before I could live out the rest of my days in this life until the end.

To find Lilly, the heroine of this game world...

Carry out my revenge against the Marquis and Marquess...

And lastly...

...Annul my engagement with Florence...

I bit my tongue.

After that, I'm sure...I'm sure I will finally be live a life as freely as I want in this world...together with Ace by my side.

Definitely.

But, first, I needed to regain my strength.

Because, without strength, there is nothing that you can do in this world.

There were three things in my storage that I wanted to find:

My sword, a token of my travels through the dragon labyrinths...

My anti-magic amulet, a trinket that I had obtained from a pair of pedophilic assassins from my youth during the Royal Festival...

And the Marquis's diary, the most important piece of evidence that I owned for my revenge.

All three of them were stored somewhere in my large, spatial storage room.

But...

As I looked at the wide room filled with mountains of random things, I gave a heavy sigh.

I guess...I'll spend the rest of the day looking for it then...I guess...

.

.

By the time I had found what I needed to find, a whole day had past and I was left utterly exhausted.

Why did the younger me spend so much time experimenting with her creation magic???

Seriously!!

Once I had found everything that I needed from my storage room, I destroyed the rest of it all with my destruction magic without regret.

Everything in that storage room...were imitations of things that I had seen in my past life back on Earth...

And I have finally decided to cut myself off completely from that world so...things like these weren't needed anymore...

As I saw everything crumble away into dust from my destruction magic...I felt a little...empty somehow.

But I immediately shook my head and turned away, leaving my mental, spatial storage room.

Any attachment to that world was now behind me...

Because now...

My entire everything was here, in this world.

.

.

When I left my spatial storage room, I almost had a heart attack.

The moment I blinked open my eyes, I could see Ace standing hardly an inch away from me.

"W-Woah," I stuttered as I stumbled backward a few steps.

Honestly, I had no idea what I looked like when I was in my spatial storage room.

Did I look like I was sleeping...?

Did I vanish into thin air...?

I simply did not know.

"How did you do that...Cordelia...?" Ace asked me as he grabbed me into his embrace.

"H-Huh? Do what???" I asked in surprise.

I was incredibly stunned by his sudden display of affection and was about to hug him back in return when I realized that there was something wrong.

Wait...

For some reason...

Now that I looked closely, Ace seemed to be very out-of-breath and he had a very wild expression on his face.

"Y-Your heart...you were dead," he said, stumbling over his words in a way that I couldn't understand.

"Ace...What's wrong? Are you okay?" I asked as I tried to calm him down.

Did something happen while I was searching for my things in my storage room...?

"You were dead...most definitely dead..." he rambled.

I had never seen Ace so...disheveled and confused before.

What could have happened??

"I'm okay, Ace...I'm definitely not dead. See? I'm right here, talking to you normally," I said as I gently gave him a few pats on the back.

"You weren't...you weren't breathing just a second ago...your heart wasn't beating...how did you..." he murmured as he pulled himself away from me and frantically examined every inch of me with his eyes.

He seemed to be going on the verge of insane.

"What are you talking about, Ace? Don't you remember? Our contract..." I murmured as I pointed down to the small dragon's mark on my ankle, "...we promised that our lives would be intertwined for life. No matter what, we will live and die at the same time."

"...the same time?"

"Yes, that's right. There's no way you would ever find my dead body because...if I was truly dead, you wouldn't even be alive to see it. Of course, the same is true if you die as well..."

The wild, crazed expression on Ace's face slowly disappeared without a trace as he listened to my words of reason.

"That's...that's right...I must have been mistaken for a moment..." Ace whispered as he collapsed on the ground of my room as all the tension left him.

I gave him a moment to breathe as all the fear and madness in his eyes were replaced with relief instead.

For some reason, a tingly, fluffy feeling invaded my heart the moment I realized that Ace was only so worried because he believed that there was something wrong with me.

But I shooed the emotion away and drew my attention to Ace, who had his hand held against his face as he tried to process what was going on.

"Why did you think I was dead...? Did something happen...?" I asked as I decided to sit down next to him.

Ace lowered his eyes toward me and gave an apologetic smile.

"You...for a moment...I couldn't hear your heartbeat...and I guess...I must have lost myself for a moment, I'm sorry," Ace mumbled as he buried his head in his hands, clearly embarrassed.

"My heartbeat...?"

My heart...stopped...?

How strange...

I held the palm of my hand on my chest and felt my own heartbeat against my chest.

Perhaps I was just being overly sensitive since I was diagnosed with incurable heart disease in my past life but Ace's words sounded oddly eerie to me somehow.

Surely...

There was nothing wrong with Cordelia's body...

...Right?

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A/N: Wahhhh!!! It's another short chapter this week again!!! I'm so sorry, but this week is the beginning of AP exam season for me...GAH! I HATE EXAMS!!!

And, because of these exams, it has officially become impossible for me to write long chapters like usual...I'm sorry, but the length of chapters may be a bit uneven for the next few weeks!!

Anyways...AHAHAHA~~~ Y'all have been getting too cocky lately with those past few happy, lovey-dovey chapters!!! Soooooo...I guess it's time to bring y'all back to reality. THE REALITY WHERE I LOVE BREAKING ALL OF YOUR MINDS WITH DRAMA, A STUPIDLY COMPLICATED PLOT, AND HEARTBREAK!!! AHAHAHAHA~~~

Do you guys think that this is a happy, smooth-sailing romance? WRONG. I'm the author who tortured- I mean...blessed y'all with 80-something chapters before the male leads finally confessed so...Let's just assume I'll never make things easy for you guys...

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Anyways, thanks, again, to my readers/voters/commenters for everything that you do! I've been getting an insane amount of support lately and I just want to say that I really, really, really do appreciate you all!!

Stay safe, everyone~

Okie byeee!

Word Count: 1972