A cute little girl, appearing to be around the sa age as the boy whose body he now inhabited, ca running from down the gentle slope of the hill.
She was waving enthusiastically at him, her movents full of childish energy, her small hand making cute, exaggerated gestures.
Her dress was a simple, light fabric, adorned with embroidered flowers.
"Huh?? What??" Klaus looked at the girl, completely confused.
The sight of a child running towards him was jarring, given his recent life of constant combat and solitary dungeon clearing. He had no context for this.
The girl, as if possessing superhuman strength or an innate mastery of the terrain, quickly climbed the grassy hill.
Strangely, Klaus did not find this scene out of place. It felt natural for her to be so agile, as if his current child’s body accepted it implicitly.
As soon as she closed so distance between them, her face beaming with pure, unadulterated joy, she launched herself forward.
then she tackled him with such unexpected force that they both went rolling for so distance down the gentle slope, a tangle of small limbs and soft fabric.
Finally, they ca to a halt. Klaus was utterly powerless, pinned beneath the giggling girl. She lay atop him, her small body light but surprisingly effective at keeping him down.
The girl, anwhile, giggled delightedly, her small hands reaching out to playfully pull at the cords of his tunic.
"Finn!" she squealed, her voice a pure sound of happiness.
"Finn!" she repeated, her voice a little louder.
"Finn!" she exclaid a third ti, her tone demanding attention, her face close to his.
"Aahhh... yes, yes," Klaus finally managed to reply, still dazed and trying to process the situation, the identity of "Finn."
"Whewe... you... been?!" she demanded, looking at him with wide, curious eyes, her head tilted just so, a lock of hair falling across her forehead.
Her small hands were still pulling at his shirt, a gesture of childish insistence.
"I was... s-searching... for youuuu!" she added, her voice trailing off into a playful whine, her grip on his shirt tightening slightly as if to prevent him from escaping again.
Klaus’s mind was racing, trying to comprehend this entirely new, bewildering reality.
----
---a few minutes later---
Klaus looked at the antics of the little girl, Julie, who was still playfully pulling at his shirt. His expression was a mix of stoicism and a rare, internal exasperation.
He was trying to process everything that had happened.
His sowhat blank expression, however, irritated the girl.
She stopped giggling and looked at him, her wide, innocent eyes clouding over.
"What happened to you?" she asked, her voice losing its playful tone.
"Are you angry at ?" Tears imdiately threatened to well up in her eyes as she spoke, her lower lip trembling emotionally.
Klaus just looked at her, barely stopping himself from asking the question, "Are you a fucking child?" Because, unfortunately, she was.
And he, in this new body, was also a child. He quickly composed himself. He gently patted her head, controlling his eyes to soften his gaze, and said
"I have forgotten everything, so I don’t know where I am." He hoped a simple mory loss explanation would suffice for a child.
"Huh?" The girl was genuinely surprised at the revelation.
Her tears paused, her attention captured by his words.
"So... so you don’t rember ?" she asked, her voice small and uncertain.
"Did you hit your head sowhere?"
Klaus’s face twitched. He wondered why every instance of mory loss in these fictional scenarios was always associated with hitting one’s head sowhere.
It was a cliché, but apparently, a universal one.
The girl, Julie, quickly wiped off her initial tears with the back of her hand.
Her sadness seed to evaporate as a new idea ford in her mind.
She reached out and confidently took Klaus’s small hand in hers.
"Don’t worry, Finn," she declared with a serious, determined expression, her voice gaining a surprising conviction.
"Once we are married, I will save you from hitting your head every day." And with that bold declaration, she leaned in and planted a quick, soft, cute kiss directly on his cheek.
"Aah!" Klaus exclaid, genuinely surprised by the sudden declaration and the unexpected physical contact.
His child’s body reacted with a jolt.
"Wh-when did I say that I would marry you?" Klaus said, pulling his hand away and instinctively creating so distance between them, scrambling backward a few inches on the grass.
Klaus was sweating buckets, even in this pleasant, cool environnt.
Marrying a minor, a literal child, just after his probably second transmigration? This was an entirely new level of bizarre.
His mind struggled to reconcile his adult consciousness with this childish reality.
"Ooh, I forgot you have lost your mory," Julie said, her eyes widening slightly in realization.
She then launched into an explanation, her voice animated, recounting a past event with vivid detail.
"One day, when John and his friends were bullying , saying that I didn’t know how to speak properly, you ca in as a hero! You declared, ’I will marry Julie in the future, so stay away from her, otherwise, I will beat you all!’"
Julie concluded, imitating Klaus’s tone and delivery with surprising accuracy, a deep blush spreading across her small face as she recalled the brave declaration.
As she finished her story, Julie stood up, her cheeks still flushed, and went to sit beside a nearby tree, looking at the colorful flowers blooming at its base.
She seed to be waiting for his reaction, or perhaps just enjoying the mory.
Klaus, anwhile, was internally screaming.
"What the fuck? It must be a dream! This can’t be real! I don’t talk like that!" The idea of his past child-self making such a grand, romantic declaration was utterly alien to his pragmatic, cynical adult mind.
"What is this fucking cliché childhood love fantasy?" he thought, exasperated by the sheer absurdity of the situation. He had never experienced such saccharine sweetness in his life.
"Hey, Finn, give this flower!" Julie called out, her voice bright, pointing at a bush of vibrant purple heliotrope flowers.
These flowers, he vaguely rembered from so obscure lore, represented eternal love.
Klaus turned around, his face still a mask of confusion and utter disinterest in the romantic implications of the flower. He just wanted to understand his situation.
Julie, looking at his completely uninterested expression, visibly paled.
Her eyes, which had been so bright, imdiately started tearing up again, her lower lip beginning to tremble.
Klaus was alard. He did not want to hear the "ringer" again, the high-pitched wail of a crying child.
He imdiately got up, moving quickly.
He walked to the base of the heliotrope bush and, with a gentle touch, plucked a few of the purple flowers.
The heliotrope petals shimred faintly under the sunlight, catching the light. He turned back to Julie, forcing a smile onto his face, a gesture he had rarely used in his previous lives.
"These are for you, Julie," he said, extending the flowers towards her, his voice as gentle as he could make it.
To his surprise, Julie looked at the side with a small pout, her blush deepening, making it hard for her to hide her embarrassnt. She seed to be trying to play coy.
She then said, her voice soft and shy, "I have seen Daddy decorating Mumma’s hair. Mamma said Daddy loved her, that is why."
She then looked back at Finn with a shiny, expectant gaze, her eyes wide and full of anticipation. She was clearly hinting at sothing specific.
Right now, even Klaus, with his years of experience and his hardened deanor, was embarrassed.
"Fuck, couples of this world do it in front of children?" he thought, his mind reeling, after all he had just seen his parents fighting in his last life.
"Where the fuck have I landed now? This is too much." He was out of his depth in this realm of overt affection and childish expectations.
Klaus, however, quickly realized he had no choice but to comply with the childish request. Refusal would likely lead to more tears, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs.
"Okay, sit there," he said, gesturing for Julie to sit down on the grass in front of the heliotrope bush.
He then quickly collected a few more multicolored heliotropes, stuffing so into his pockets and holding the rest in his hands, before sitting down behind her.
He began the delicate task of fixing the flowers in her hair, one by one.
His fingers, accustod to wielding daggers and swords, moved with surprising gentleness as he carefully wove the petals into her soft, dark hair.
He focused on the task, trying to make the arrangent look aesthetically pleasing.
Occasionally, he could see Julie giggling in a shy, delighted tone, her small shoulders shaking slightly with suppressed mirth.
She clearly enjoyed the attention and the gesture.
Suddenly, as only a few flowers were left to decorate, a strange sensation washed over Klaus. His vision blurred, the vibrant colors of the flowers and Julie’s hair swirling into an indistinct haze.
"Aah, fuck, why is my head spinning?" he thought, a wave of intense dizziness washing over him.
The pleasant sounds of cicadas warped into a high-pitched whine. "Am I dying again? Is this it? Did I finally push my body too far?" The thought flashed through his mind, a familiar fear.
"Will I reincarnate as a sli now?" he wondered, a desperate, absurd thought from his past life’s web novel knowledge.
Klaus felt an overwhelming wave of dizziness, a profound disorientation, before his vision went completely black.
He felt himself falling, not physically, but as if his consciousness was plumting through an endless void.
Klaus woke up with a gasp, sweating profusely.
His body was tense, his muscles aching, and his heart was pounding against his ribs. He imdiately looked around, his eyes darting frantically.
He was back. He was in his hotel room, the familiar, sowhat sterile environnt of the inn. The sounds of the capital city, muffled but present, filtered through the window. The experience was over.
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