“Now that you’re awake, stay in bed and rest.
Don’t worry about the fields.
You can think about helping again after you’ve recovered.”
After saying that, Agnes turned to Martha.
“There’s still some chicken broth in the kitchen.
Warm it up for her later.
She just got over a fever, so don’t give her nothing but dry bread.”
“All right.
I know.”
Martha nodded.
Elena sat against the headboard without speaking, quietly watching her grandmother.
Agnes had worn a stern expression from the moment she entered the room, and there was nothing particularly gentle about the way she spoke.
But judging by what she had said, she was not nearly as cold as she appeared.
She did care about her granddaughter.
She simply showed it very differently from Martha.
While Elena was thinking, Agnes glanced at the bandage around her forehead.
“The doctor said you’re not to go running around for the next couple of days, so stay inside and behave yourself.
You frightened the whole family badly enough yesterday.
If you fall again, your father probably won’t even be able to think about the wheat.”
At the mention of yesterday’s accident, Agnes’s expression darkened.
“That wagon was coming right up behind you.
When you heard the driver shouting, why didn’t you move out of the way sooner?”
Elena did not answer.
It wasn’t that the original Elena had not tried to move.
She had always reacted more slowly than other people, and the sudden fright had only made things worse.
Agnes did not seem to expect an answer anyway.
“You’ve been slow about everything since you were little.
Someone tells you something once, and you have to think about it forever before you understand.
Next time, don’t go that far by yourself.
Wait for your father or one of your brothers to come back and have them go with you.”
Then she turned toward Martha.
“And you.”
Martha blinked.
“Me?”
“You know perfectly well she’s likely to get into trouble on her own, yet you still sent her all the way to the wheat fields by herself.”
Agnes frowned, clear disapproval in her voice.
“She was lucky she only fell yesterday.
If that wagon had actually hit her, it would’ve been too late for regrets.”
Martha lowered her head.
“I didn’t think it through.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Agnes did not soften her words.
“You keep thinking that because she’s sixteen, she ought to learn to do more things on her own.
But you know what she’s like.
Just because an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl can do something doesn’t mean Elena can.”
Elena’s eyes shifted slightly.
What she was like?
From the scattered memories she had received and the way Martha had been caring for her since she woke up, Elena had already suspected something was unusual.
But hearing Agnes say it so plainly made that suspicion much stronger.
The original Elena had not simply been innocent or a little slow.
She really had been different from other people her age.
Agnes did not notice the change in Elena’s expression.
She turned to leave, but just as she reached the door, she seemed to remember something.
“Oh, right.
Those two apples from yesterday are still in the kitchen.”
Apples?
Elena immediately remembered what had happened at the village entrance.
One of them had been the apple the original Elena had carefully chosen for Adrian.
Unfortunately, Adrian had refused it.
“The basket was broken when they carried you back from the slope,” Agnes continued.
“The apples were fine, though.
I picked them up and put them in the kitchen.
If you want one later, ask your mother to bring it up.”
She paused.
“But don’t eat both at once.
You’ve only just gotten over your fever, and your stomach is empty.
Have some broth first.”
Elena was silent.
She had been seriously considering the original owner’s condition, but that last comment interrupted her thoughts completely.
Apparently, her grandmother knew her appetite very well too.
Martha could not help smiling.
“I know, Mother.”
“Good.”
Agnes adjusted her brown wool cardigan and turned toward the door.
Before leaving, she glanced back at Elena.
“Get some rest.”
With that, she finally left the room.
Her footsteps faded down the wooden stairs, and the bedroom became quiet again.
Elena remained against the headboard, slowly sorting through everything Agnes had just revealed.
Sixteen years old.
Slow to react.
Often unable to understand something after hearing it only once.
Not trusted to travel far alone.
Her family worried about letting her handle things by herself.
Then there was the way Martha had been taking care of her since she woke up.
The more Elena thought about it, the more obvious the situation became.
She lowered her eyes to her hands.
After a brief hesitation, she spoke.
“Martha…”
The moment the name left her mouth, she stopped.
Martha, sitting beside the bed, froze as well.
Elena immediately realized her mistake.
This woman was her mother now.
For someone who had already been an adult in her previous life, suddenly calling a stranger Mother felt more than a little awkward.
But if she did not want anyone to notice something was wrong with her, she could not make mistakes over something as basic as this.
After a short pause, she tried again.
“Mama.”
Martha went completely still.
Elena looked up at her in confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
Martha said nothing.
She simply stared at her daughter.
Elena was about to ask again when she noticed Martha’s eyes slowly turning red.
“You…”
Martha opened her mouth, her voice suddenly much softer.
“What did you just call me?”
Elena became even more confused.
“Mama.”
This time, she said it clearly.
Martha’s eyes immediately filled with tears.
Elena stared at her.
It was only one word.
Was it really that serious?
Then another fragment of the original Elena’s memories surfaced.
The images were incomplete, but Elena could vaguely remember that the girl had learned to speak much later than other children.
Even after she eventually learned how to talk, her speech had remained slow.
Longer sentences were difficult for her.
Sometimes she would forget what she wanted to say halfway through.
She did call her parents Mama and Papa, but most of the time, she spoke in single words or short phrases.
It was rare for her to clearly call out “Mama” and immediately follow it with another question.
Elena finally understood Martha’s reaction.
Sure enough, Martha quickly reached out and took her hand.
“Elena, just now…
did you ask me what was wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what you just said?”
Elena looked at her.
“Yes.”
Martha fell silent.
Her grip around Elena’s hand tightened, and the surprise in her eyes slowly turned into joy she hardly seemed willing to believe.
The old Elena had never been completely unable to speak.
She could call people by name.
She could say when she was hungry, thirsty, or in pain.
She could tell her family when she wanted something.
But putting her thoughts into complete sentences had always been difficult.
The longer the sentence, the more likely she was to get stuck or forget what she had wanted to say.
Now, however, something was different.
Elena had not spoken much since waking up, but her eyes had remained clear and alert.
And the few sentences she had spoken had come out clearly, without hesitation or confusion.
Martha studied her for a long moment, almost as if wondering whether a sleepless night had made her imagine the whole thing.
“Elena.”
“Mm?”
“Do you know where you are?”
Elena paused.
Of course she knew.
“Home.”
Martha’s eyes brightened.
“And where do we live?”
“Oakridge Village.”
This time, Martha simply stared at her.
She had only meant to test her with a simple question.
She had never expected Elena to answer so quickly.
Her reaction confirmed what Elena had already begun to suspect.
The original Elena really had struggled mentally, and it had been obvious enough that everyone around her knew it.
Otherwise, no mother would become this emotional simply because her sixteen-year-old daughter could clearly say what village she lived in.
Elena did not know what to say.
In her previous life, she had undergone years of training.
She knew how to use different weapons, track targets, gather intelligence, fight at close range, and survive dangerous missions.
Now she had somehow ended up in the body of a girl who had once struggled even to express herself properly.
The contrast was almost ridiculous.
Martha, however, had no idea what was going through her mind.
To her, it felt as though something she had stopped allowing herself to hope for had suddenly happened.
“Say something else to Mama.”
Elena stared at her.
“…What should I say?”
“Anything.”
Martha could barely hide the expectation in her eyes.
Elena thought for a moment.
Then she decided to ask the question she most wanted answered.
“Mama, was I…
different from other people before?”
The smile on Martha’s face slowly faded.
Elena did not rush her.
After a moment, Martha forced a small smile.
“Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
“Because of what Grandmother said.”
Elena answered naturally.
“She said I couldn’t always do the things other sixteen-year-old girls could.”
Martha fell silent.
She clearly did not want to answer.
Elena could already guess the truth from her expression, but she still wanted to understand exactly what the original girl’s condition had been.
“Was I very slow?”
“No.”
Martha denied it almost immediately.
The answer came so quickly that Elena raised an eyebrow.
Martha seemed to realize it as well.
After a brief silence, she gently brushed a loose strand of brown hair away from Elena’s face.
“You just learned things more slowly than other children.”
“How much more slowly?”
Martha did not answer at once.
“Mama.”
Elena looked directly at her.
“I want to know.”
Martha froze again.
Her daughter had actually said that she wanted to know.
The old Elena had never asked questions like this.
In fact, she had never really understood that she was different from other people.
Martha looked into the eyes of the girl in front of her.
They seemed far clearer than she remembered.
At last, she stopped trying to avoid the subject.
“You learned to speak very late.”
She spoke carefully, choosing her words.
“By the time other children were already talking a lot at two or three years old, you could still only say Mama and Papa.
You learned more as you grew older, but everything still took you longer than it took the other children.”
“Your father and I tried teaching you to count.
We taught you some simple letters too.
Sometimes you’d remember them that day, but a few days later, you’d forget again.”
“Sometimes I’d ask you to go into the yard and bring me something, but by the time you got outside, you’d already forgotten what you were supposed to get.”
Martha’s voice grew quieter.
“We took you to the village doctor.
We even went to Greenwood to see other doctors.
Some said you were simply developing more slowly.
Others thought it might have been caused by an illness when you were very young.”
She shook her head.
“But no one could ever tell us for certain.”
Elena listened quietly.
“So I never went to school?”
Martha paused again.
She seemed increasingly unaccustomed to her daughter asking one question after another.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“When the village children are young, some of them attend lessons near the church.
Families who can afford it sometimes send their children to school in town later.”
“We wanted to send you too, but you couldn’t sit through the lessons, and you had trouble understanding what the teacher was saying.”
Martha stopped there.
She did not need to explain the rest.
Elena could already guess.
The original Elena had remained at home.
No wonder Adrian was seventeen and studying in Clearwater, while Elena, at sixteen, still needed her mother to repeat the directions several times just to deliver lunch to the wheat fields.
The two of them might have been engaged since childhood, but they had grown up living very different lives.
Looking at it that way, Adrian’s refusal to accept the engagement was not difficult to understand.
Their parents had arranged it.
No one had ever asked him whether he wanted it.
And the original Elena might not even have fully understood what an engagement meant.
She had simply grown up hearing that she would marry Adrian one day and had accepted it as something that would naturally happen.
Elena remembered the girl standing at the village entrance with the basket in her arms, asking for directions even after being rejected.
For a moment, her feelings were complicated.
She had no reason to blame the original Elena.
Nor did she hate Adrian for refusing the marriage.
That had been their lives, not hers.
Now that she was here, she certainly had no intention of clinging to someone who did not want her.
More importantly, she had other problems to deal with.
Elena looked down at her current body.
Sixteen.
Overweight.
No proper education.
And physically weak.
She had only been sitting upright for a while, yet her back was already beginning to ache.
Dealing with this body might prove more troublesome than some of the missions from her previous life.
While she was considering what to do next, Martha suddenly took her hand again.
“Elena.”
“Yes?”
Martha looked at her, unable to hide the hope in her eyes.
“Do you feel like…
your head is clearer than before?”
Elena paused.
She could hardly tell Martha that her real daughter had most likely died in yesterday’s accident and that the person sitting in front of her had come from another world.
At least, not now.
After a moment of silence, Elena touched the bandage around her head.
“I don’t know.”
That was not entirely a lie.
She truly had no idea how any of this had happened.
“I just feel like, after I woke up…
things suddenly became easier to understand.”
Martha stared at her.
Then tears spilled from her eyes without warning.
Elena stiffened.
She had faced loaded guns with less uncertainty than she felt right now.
“Why are you crying?”
Martha quickly wiped at her face, but the more she tried, the more tears fell.
“It’s nothing.”
She was crying, yet she was smiling at the same time.
“Mama’s just happy.”
Over the years, Martha had imagined countless times that her daughter might one day speak to her like other children did.
That she might understand what people said.
That she might slowly learn to take care of herself.
After being disappointed again and again, she and Thomas had eventually stopped allowing themselves to hope for too much.
But now Elena was sitting right in front of her.
She could ask questions.
She could think about the answers.
She could even explain that things suddenly seemed easier for her to understand.
Martha had no idea whether this change would last.
Right now, she did not care.
She leaned forward and gently wrapped her arms around her daughter.
“It’s all right.”
“You don’t have to remember everything.”
“As long as you’re all right, that’s enough.”
Elena stiffened slightly when Martha hugged her.
But she did not pull away.
After a moment, her body gradually relaxed.
Still, as she rested against Martha’s shoulder, the question from earlier returned to her mind.
Had the original Elena really been that slow?
From everything she had learned so far…
Apparently, she had.
Elena closed her eyes.
Fine.
Whatever she had been before, that was before.
From today onward, things would be different.