Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 283

On the afternoon of the day she had four days left to live—

Freesia barely managed to stagger to her feet, still reeling from the aftermath of an intense night of lovemaking. Though her body was slow to recover, her mind was remarkably clear.

Freesia pouted her lips as she smoothed over the spot where he had last lain.

‘He said he would stay with me. That man, honestly.’

But she couldn’t keep up her sulking expression for long on purpose. After all, when you think of the person you love, your expression inevitably softens.

Even though she didn’t have much time left, thinking that he would stay by her side made her no longer afraid.

‘And the letters I wrote to Nova… He must have read them, right?’

She had a feeling that Izar would open the seals and read them, so she’d chosen her words carefully, indirectly expressing feelings she couldn’t bring herself to say aloud.

‘Come to think of it, I was really childish, wasn’t I? What do I do?’

Her cheeks flushed hotly. She said they were letters for Nova, but it felt like she’d just written endlessly about Izar…

‘I should write new ones.’

She needed to leave a proper letter for both of them. But first, she had to go find her husband, who had gone off in a hurry saying he was headed to the underground lake.

When Freesia’s bedroom door opened, Nova, who had been waiting in the connecting corridor, ran into her arms.

“Mama!”

“Nova. Did you sleep well?”

“Mm!”

Nova nodded vigorously, smiling brightly. But then she poked at the round mark left on her mother’s collarbone, tilting her head in curiosity.

“Mama, is this a bug bite?”

“……”

“It’s really big!”

Freesia fixed her eyes straight ahead, forcing herself to tidy up the edge of her neck. She deliberately raised her voice, switching to a different topic.

“Shall we go look for Papa together, Nova? Let’s go out far tonight and look at the stars.”

“Ah, okay!”

“And this time, make sure you call him ‘Papa’ properly.”

“Umm…?”

Nova, excited in her mother’s arms, wiggled her bottom, then bit her thumb, her face looking slightly guilty.

Riegel was kind, but a man of the imperial blood through and through, so he never made exceptions to proper etiquette, even for a child. That’s why, when her usually flustered ‘grown man’ of a father had shown up, Nova must have gotten a little carried away with excitement.

‘But he was scary, almost waking Mama the wrong way…’

Nova couldn’t quite grasp how Freesia was feeling, so she hugged her mother’s neck tightly and whispered,

“Mama, do you… like Papa?”

“……”

Freesia mulled over that simple yet complicated question.

A man she had died resenting, a man she couldn’t let go of, no matter how much she lost her memories. The love that made her return, even if she only had one year left to live, just to be with him.

How could she express that with a mere ‘I like him’? But Freesia held her daughter tightly and whispered,

“Yes. Very much.”

“……”

“So I hope you’ll love Papa very much, too…”

In the end, the wish that made her return to this life was going to come true. She would leave this world after receiving his love—regretful, but having said her farewell to the surface first.

Still, so that her absence would be a little less sad, she hoped Nova would support Izar as much as possible.

At Freesia’s heartfelt request, Nova nodded her head, looking subdued.

“Good girl, my Nova.”

Freesia gave a tender smile. For the remaining days, she would truly be able to show them a harmonious family.

‘But why did Izar go to the underground lake?’

Was there something left to look after there? Still, now that she was up, he could have gone together with her.

Now, even the briefest separation felt unbearably sad. As she stepped forward, once again keenly feeling how fickle the human heart could be, Freesia suddenly sensed a chilling wrongness.

The air felt oppressively cold.

Above all… at some point, her daughter had started trembling in her arms. As if having a nightmare while wide awake.

“Nova?”

“M-Mama.”

“Nova, what’s wro—”

But before Freesia could finish asking, a noise that had been rumbling outside suddenly erupted, drowning out everything with a bellow sharp enough to split her eardrums.