Usually, the front door of the cottage swung open with barely a tap. Today, however, it stubbornly stayed shut.
What on earth is going on inside? Adrian wondered, his head tilting in confusion.
Right as he reached out to knock again, a loud crash echoed from within.
“May! Stop right there—!”
A frantic scramble followed, and the next second, the wooden door flung wide open. Peering out from the threshold was an entirely unexpected face.
“Hi there!”
“…Oh?”
It was a small, delicate girl with striking silver-white hair tied neatly into twin pigtails. Her deep blue eyes blinked up at him with wide, unmasked curiosity. She was a child Adrian had never laid eyes on before yet she looked at him with an instant, radiant familiarity, as if they were old friends.
Does this kid actually know me?
Before Adrian could process the odd encounter, another voice cut through the doorway, breathless and panicked.
“May! I told you explicitly not to come—!”
Sabina burst into the hallway, looking entirely unlike her usual impeccably composed self. Her neat violet hair was tousled and messy, and her clothes were slightly rumpled from trying to stop the runaway girl.
“…Sabina?” Adrian blinked, entirely dumbfounded.
“Ah—”
Sabina froze dead in her tracks, turning as rigid as stone.
The unshakeable, ice-queen Sabina, actually looks like this when flustered?
While Adrian stood there blinking in sheer disbelief, something gently tugged at the hem of his coat. He glanced down to see the silver-haired girl beaming up at him.
“I’m May!” she announced cheerfully.
Before he could react, she launched herself forward and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, clinging to him like a koala to a eucalyptus tree. Caught completely off guard, Adrian instinctively raised a hand to pat her head.
“Haha… well, hello there. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but—” He nervously lifted his gaze toward the doorway, his green eyes swimming with utter bewilderment. “Um… Sabina? Would you mind explaining just what is going on here?”
Just a few minutes earlier, inside the house…
Sabina had grabbed my shoulders, fixing me with a look of absolute, unyielding sternness.
“Listen to me, May. The Hero is arriving today. You are going to stay quietly locked inside this room until he leaves. Understood?”
“Yes!” I chirped back instantly.
My over-eager nod only made Sabina narrow her eyes even further.
Tsk.
I mentally clicked my tongue. My sister knew me far too well; she could spot a fake compliance a mile away.
“Can’t you just shift back into your cat form for the afternoon?” she sighed.
“No way!”
“Ugh, when did you become so impossibly stubborn?” Sabina pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead, muttering something about a looming migraine.
But my mind was made up.
If I want to bridge the gap between Sister and Adrian, I need to introduce myself in human form first!
This wasn’t a reckless gamble; it was a calculated strategy drawn straight from the painful lessons of my past life. Back when we first arrived in the capital, the dynamic between the two of them had been agonizingly stiff and awkward.
“Um, Sabina?” Adrian would try to start a polite conversation.
“If you have nothing constructive to say, please refrain from using my name,” she would snap back like a hedgehog bristling with quills.
Adrian would spend half his time walking on eggshells around her icy exterior. In my past life, I had tried everything as a cat—rolling around with toys, nudging their ankles, trying to force them to sit close together—but a feline body simply had too many physical limitations.
Of course, I understood why Sabina was so paranoid. Mages who possessed familiars capable of humanization were practically mythical creatures. She had drilled it into me from day one: never let an outsider discover what I truly was. True mages commanded respect, but keeping a rare shifting familiar also drew unwanted, dangerous attention—something my reclusive sister despised above all else.
Even so, Adrian is different.
In my past life, I had eventually revealed my human form to him anyway. And how had he reacted? He hadn’t flinched, greedily plotted, or judged us. He had simply smiled brightly and said, “Wow, May! That’s incredible!”
Which means taking the plunge now is totally fine!
Besides, if he met me as ‘Human Maybel’ right from the start, he would never connect the dots to ‘Cat May. It neatly preserved our secret while letting me change the timeline for the better.
Watching my sister turn her back with a final suspicious glare, I waited for my moment.
Now!
I darted toward the half-open door like a flash of lightning.
“May?!” Sabina shrieked in horror from behind me.
Sorry, Sister!
Even in human form, my instincts were entirely feline. I scrambled across the floor, threw the heavy front door wide open, and burst out into the bright afternoon sunlight.
And waiting right there on the porch was the man himself.
Golden blond hair catching the light like spun silk, sharp forest-green eyes widening in surprise—it was Adrian. The warm, gentle soul who had stood by us through thick and thin before everything went wrong.
Seeing him looking so healthy and vibrant, entirely untouched by the tragedies of the past timeline, my heart swelled with an emotion I couldn’t contain.
“Adrian!”
Before I could stop myself, I leaped forward and threw my arms around him.
“She’s my sister.”
Sabina appeared at the doorway a second later, firmly taking my hand with a grip so tight it practically telegraphed her internal panic, though her face remained an unreadable mask.
“Your sister?” Adrian echoed, looking between the two of us in pure shock.
As far as he knew, Sabina lived a completely isolated life with nothing but her cat for company. Seeing the fierce young mage looking this cornered caused him to blink dumbly.
“My younger cousin,” Sabina declared, her voice absolute and chillingly flat.
Adrian stared at us. To be brutally honest, there wasn’t a single shared physical trait between the two of us—no matching hair, no matching eyes, nothing. But Sabina’s expression was so intensely terrifying that he wisely decided not to question it.
‘Well, this is certainly a twist,’ Adrian thought once the initial shock wore off.
A quiet amusement began to bubble up inside him. The usually unapproachable Sabina looked completely rattled, while this energetic little girl was clinging to him like she’d known him for years. The gloomy, ice-cold atmosphere that usually suffocated this cottage suddenly felt remarkably lively.
‘Is it just me, or has this place gotten a lot warmer?’
Suppressing a chuckle, Adrian looked down at the child holding his hand. “Did you say your name was Maybel?”
I nodded vigorously, my silver pigtails bouncing up and down with every jerk of my head.
Adrian smiled, though a sudden thought crossed his mind. He glanced past me toward Sabina.
“Come to think of it, Sabina… what happened to that cat of yours?”
Uh-oh.
In perfect synchronization, both Sabina and I stiffened like boards.
‘Sister, save us!’
‘I swear, this is why I told you to stay in the room!’
Exchanging a split-second look of sheer panic, Sabina cleared her throat, forcing her shoulders to relax into an air of nonchalant indifference.
“…I named the cat after Maybel,” she stated smoothly, not missing a beat.
“You named your pet after your own younger cousin?” Adrian raised an eyebrow, a deeply skeptical look crossing his face.
Sabina didn’t even blink. “Yes. Because she is a cousin I hold very close to my heart.”
“Ah. I see.” Adrian nodded slowly, though he still looked mildly unconvinced. He glanced around the room again. “So, where is little May hiding today, then?”
He was asking about Cat May. A fresh wave of cold sweat broke out down Sabina’s spine.
“She’s out for a stroll.”
“Ah, makes sense.”
Adrian didn’t pry any further. After all, the cat frequently wandered off around the property to patrol its ‘territory,’ so the excuse sounded entirely plausible.
Sensing her window of escape, Sabina immediately seized the initiative and changed the subject with ruthless efficiency.
“Anyway. What brings you all the way out here today?”
“Ah, well about that—” Adrian suddenly developed a very intense interest in the patterns on the floorboards, subtly avoiding her gaze.
Sabina crossed her arms, her violet eyes narrowing dangerously as the outer corners tilted upward into a lethal glare.
“Word reached me that you went charging into another massive monster subjugation campaign recently.”
“Um, Sabina…?”
“Don’t tell me you ran headfirst into danger and played the hero all by yourself again?”
“A—A hero…?” Adrian winced, looking like a chastised puppy under her searing gaze.
Sabina offered no quarter.
“Unbelievable. I patch you up, only for you to go right back out there and get yourself mangled over and over again.” She let out a long, exhausted sigh, tapping her foot. “At this rate, I’m starting to wonder if your ultimate goal in life is to work me straight into an early grave.”