Melina Solberg sits alone in a hospital, secretly waiting for her test results. The brain tumor has returned and grown. Surgery is no longer possible. She may only have three months left to live.
She tells no one. She doesn't want to burden her fiancé, Adrian Falk. She has spent her whole life trying not to be a burden.
When she was a child, her mother Elise died in a fire while saving her. After that, Melina's father Henrik blamed her for the tragedy. He remarried Vivian, his former secretary
Reborn: No Longer Your Fool - On the morning I turned twelve, I had twenty-five years of memories.
If I closed my eyes, that light was still there.
Headlights. The frozen night air. The sensation of my body slamming against the road. The taste of blood. And then, the sirens fading into the distance.
—This is it, I thought.
And yet.
"U... ah..."
What leaked from my throat wasn't an adult's voice. It was thin, childish. A voice I didn't recognize.
I opened my eyes. A white ceiling. Fluorescent light. The sharp smell of disinfectant stinging my nose.
I tried to sit up, but my arms had no strength. My limbs felt strangely light. As if this wasn't my own body.
Melina Solberg slowly looked at her hands.
They were small. The fingers were thin and short. On her left wrist, there was still a red, puckered burn scar.
(What... is this?)
Two sets of memories flooded into her mind at once.
Her twenty-five-year-old self. The days she'd walked the streets of Frosthavn with blood seeping into every step.
Her twelve-year-old self. The days she'd just lost her mother in a fire, lying in a hospital bed doing nothing but crying.
Both were her own memories.
"Lady Melina! Oh, thank goodness, you're awake."
The curtain was yanked open with force. A middle-aged woman in a white apron. A servant of the Solberg household.
Her name was Marta, if she remembered correctly. In her first life, she'd only known her as a much older woman.
"I'll go fetch the doctor right away. Please don't move."
With just those words, Marta hurried out of the hospital room.
Melina didn't move. She couldn't move.
Her mind was eerily calm, yet the trembling from deep within her body wouldn't stop. Her fingertips twitched faintly atop the blanket.
(Didn't I... die?)
Frosthavn. A port city facing Frost Bay. Population approximately 420,000. A Nordic city where the old stone-built district and the modern waterfront area coexisted.
There, at twenty-five years old, I was certainly hit by a car.
It might have been a truck.
It was a cold night. Mid-February. The season when daylight lasted barely three hours.
Watching my fiancé being stolen by my stepsister, my mind went completely blank, and I ran, dashed into the street, and then—
(Ah, that really was the worst life.)
A dull ache throbbed deep in my chest.
My twenty-five-year-old heart was already worn through, like a used-up rag.
I'd long since given up on being properly loved by anyone.
And yet.
"—"
The words I'd just been told repeated in the depths of my ears.
'I'm sorry to say, Miss Melina. Your remaining time... is approximately three months.'
The doctor's pale mouth.
A brain tumor recurrence. In a location that couldn't be operated on.
Unable to tell anyone, I'd sat freezing in the hospital waiting room.
Elise Natural Company. The company my mother, Elise, had left behind as its founder.
I, its rightful heir, was a low-ranking employee in the general affairs department.
My father, Henrik Solberg. Head of the Solberg family, a prominent house in Frosthavn.
But the one who had truly supported the company was my mother. After she died, my father fell apart, and my stepmother Vivian took everything.
Vivian Solberg. My father's former secretary.
In social circles, she was known as a perfect philanthropist.
If that woman hadn't existed, would I have walked a different path?
My heartbeat jumped.
(Stop it.)
That's not what I should be thinking about now.
Marta returned with the doctor.
"You seem to be fully conscious. Good. You're a very strong girl."
The doctor said it in Norwegian.
A slightly accented pronunciation. The intonation common to this region, Frosthavn.
Melina silently looked up at the doctor.
—A strong girl, huh.
What had my twelve-year-old self been thinking at this moment?
More than anything, I'd missed my mother, cried and screamed every night, wanted to see my father—but he never came, not even once.
(I won't cry this time.)
Melina quietly drew a breath.
"...Um, where is this? Why am I here?"
She didn't use any emotion tags.
The doctor tilted his head slightly.
"There was a fire. You were at the old mansion with your mother, weren't you?"
"...A fire."
The moment she spoke, memories surged in like a wave.
Thick smoke. The staircase. Her mother's back. 'Melina, hide here.'
—That night, my mother saved me, and died.
Officially, it was the Elise Residence fire. It occurred at the Solberg family's old mansion.
The Linden district, near the foot of the Elden Mountains, northwest of the city.
Officially, it was concluded as an accidental fire caused by aging electrical wiring.
But.
(Is that really true?)
In my first life, I never doubted it.
Thirteen years after the fire, when my twenty-five-year-old self tried to investigate, it was already too late. The evidence had been cleanly erased.
In that case.
(If I start now, I can still make it.)
A hot mass formed in the pit of her stomach.
Not fear, not anger—something quieter and sharper.
There's something behind my mother's death.
The adults who wanted to treat that mansion fire as a mere accident.
I'll expose their schemes, reclaim the inheritance and the company.
And then—Adrian.
The second son of the Vester family, one of the five old port families of Frosthavn.
The man I'd trusted most in the world.
That man had been casually involved with my stepsister, Lisa Kraft.
The woman who'd brought Lisa in, trampled into our home with muddy shoes, and tried to steal the Solberg family fortune.
Just like her mother, Vivian.
That mother and daughter pair intended to take everything from me.
The trembling in her body receded.
The twitching in her fingertips vanished.
What I need to do right now, in this place, is just one thing.
"—Um."
Melina looked at the doctor.
"Would it be all right if I took a short walk? I'd like to breathe some outside air."
The doctor frowned.
"Not yet. You inhaled smoke. We need to be cautious. Your father is worried about you too."
My father.
Worried.
(As if he would be.)
But she didn't let any of that show on her face.
"...Yes, you're right. I'm sorry. I'll sleep a little longer."
The doctor left, and Marta considerately opened the window curtains.
White winter light streamed in.
—I'll escape.
Pretend to sleep obediently, then slip out.
There was something I needed to confirm.
I want to verify it. With my own eyes. With this body.
That this moment right now is Frosthavn, thirteen years in the past.
◆
Night fell.
The hospital was silent, with only the corridor lights glowing white.
Marta was lying down. She seemed to be asleep on a simple cot.
Melina slipped out of bed without making a sound and left the hospital room.
Kvist Central Hospital. The city's largest general hospital, located on a small hill two kilometers northeast of Frosthavn's city center.
Six hundred twenty beds. Approximately one hundred eighty doctors. Was I going to start my life twice in this hospital?
She turned down the corridor, avoided the elevator, and descended the stairs.
Her twelve-year-old body was light.
She wasn't even injured. She'd only inhaled a little smoke.
A fleeting sense of exhilaration, like an elementary schooler sneaking out of the nurse's office, passed through her.
(How ridiculous.)
Carrying the memories of a dead woman, descending the stairs like a child.
She stepped outside.
The wind was cold.
A damp northern winter wind that froze to the marrow.
Frosthavn's winter was particularly harsh this year.
The night sky was covered in thick clouds, no stars visible.
Melina walked alone through the night streets.
Cobblestones.
Much newer than she remembered, with fewer uneven spots.
(Was this street always so narrow?)
Strand Street. A roughly six-hundred-meter thoroughfare running through the heart of the old town.
During the day, cafés and boutiques were open. At night, it fell silent like this.
There was a shop still open before closing time.
A small café.
A sign that read "Morgen."
(Ah, it's still here.)
The first floor of an old stone building. The owner was Birgitta Ek. Fifty-five years old. Forty-five kroner for a cup of coffee. Their specialty was cinnamon rolls.
In my first life, I'd been a regular at this shop.
I'd cried here so many times.
While waiting for Adrian, while remembering my mother.
(I'd like some coffee.)
In a twelve-year-old body, she couldn't enter a café alone at night.
But she'd wanted to confirm it. Whether that shop was still here.
Her breath was white.
She could see Harbor Tower.
An eighteen-story office building in the waterfront district overlooking Frost Bay.
The first floor housed the Elise Natural flagship store. The twelfth through fourteenth floors of that building had been her mother's company offices.
The shape of the sign was slightly different from what she remembered.
Old. Of course it was. It was still thirteen years in the past.
(In two years, that company will be taken over by Vivian.)
Twelve months after her mother's death, her father remarried Vivian.
And two years after that, Vivian already held the real power of the company.
(I need to finish middle school, then high school, as quickly as possible...)
No, wait.
My body is twelve, but my mind is twenty-five.
What can I legally do?
(...Nothing yet, I suppose.)
She couldn't go to the company alone, couldn't go to the bank. Couldn't even meet with a lawyer.
She sighed.
(Don't rush. There's plenty of time. This time.)
Something creaked deep in her chest.
—Because there won't be a next time.
Absently, she listened.
The smell of the tide, and far away, the sound of waves breaking. Frost Bay.
The northern sea. The cold sea.
This city opened to the sea on its western side, with the Elden Mountains rising like a breakwater to the east.
During winter, the shallow parts of the bay froze.
When she was a child, her mother often said:
'Look, Melina. All that white area—that's all ice. Long ago, when the bay froze, people could walk across to Hervik on the other side.'
Nostalgic.
That voice.
The back of her eyes grew hot, but no tears came.
Instead, the hot mass in her gut returned.
—This time, for certain.
◆
How long had she walked after that?
Melina stood alone on the cobblestones of the old town.
An old streetlamp cast orange light.
Powder-like snow danced within the particles of light.
(Snow, huh.)
Her breath puffed white.
"...Oh?"
A voice came from behind.
A young girl's voice.
Melina didn't turn around.
"Could you be... Miss Solberg?"
This time, she heard it clearly.
She slowly turned.
There stood a girl.
Dark brown hair, nearly black, cut in a bob. Her bangs were trimmed straight across above her eyebrows.
Large brown eyes.
Always sparkling with curiosity.
(Sofia.)
The name almost slipped from her lips, but she swallowed it down.
Sofia Nilsen. A classmate, if she remembered correctly.
The friend she'd met at Frosthavn University—the only person she'd eventually be able to speak honestly with.
"I knew it. Good evening. It's been such a long time."
She gazed steadily at Melina.
(A long time, huh.)
For the twelve-year-old Melina, Sofia was a face she saw at school.
But for the twenty-five-year-old Melina, Sofia was a friend she'd exchanged words with just days ago.
The timeline wavered unsteadily.
"...Good evening, Sofia. It's been a while."
Her voice was a twelve-year-old's voice.
Sofia tilted her head with a little bob.
"Are you okay? Out at this hour. Are you dressed warmly enough?"
Without hesitation, she took off the thick gray coat she was wearing and draped it over Melina's shoulders.
"Ah, n-no, I don't need it. I'm not cold."
"No. I'm the older one here."
In fact, Sofia was slightly older.
Her kindness, acting like an older sister, seeped into Melina.
(This girl is just like that.)
Aspiring to journalism, always clumsy yet straightforward.
"Hey, Miss Solberg."
"What?"
"Something about you has changed. A lot. Before, you were, well, more... hmm, how do I put it—more timid, I guess."
Melina smiled slightly.
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