This is the story of how the soul of Rosa Chesterfield, by the name of Kawahara Sumie, woke up one day in the body of a baby.

At exactly seven months old, a golden-eyed, brown-haired little girl named Rosa (no last name... yet) who was unnaturally always pretty, woke up in her crib and yelled so loudly that it woke her parents up at three in the morning.

"I'M A BABY!" was what she roared, in perhaps the first ever Rosa Shout to be recorded. But alas, she was seven months old, and so what the rest of the world heard was-- "BABABADAADAAAAA!" And, perhaps because the sensitive body of the baby could not take the amount of single-minded passion this new soul was channeling, the baby burst out into noisy tears. "BEEP," the baby sobbed, though the Heroine Buff Censor was already in place, so nobody knew what she really said.

That was the day everything changed for her parents, Lily and Rickard. It was a very sudden change, too, because the baby that had been everything adorable and nice and sugar and spice had suddenly taken a swift turn into spice, spice, and only spice. 

She wouldn't be fed. Then she would cry. Her face would turn red (still pretty) with presumably anger, and she would yell out with a peculiarly loud voice at random times of the day. Then she would mutter, mutter, and mutter some more, babbling nonsense to herself.

As beautiful as the baby was, even her parents could not help but agree that this... well, this was..... strange. To say the least. After all, how could they know that their little girl Rosa was actually muttering Fibonacci numbers to herself out of pure boredom?

Two years or so later, Lily gave birth to a boy. They named him Ryan. And for the first seven months, they stayed cautious, for what if their little boy suddenly began muttering to himself or yelling out what felt like profanities but clearly weren't, like their daughter had?

Ah, fortunately for them, Rosa was a special case-- Ryan stayed the nice and happy (and occasionally irritated) baby he was meant to be. 

At two years, Rosa was saying things with an articulate tongue, and her parents loved her for all her eccentricities, including her tendency to sigh in happiness whenever she saw a perfect circle. And, at two years, Rosa befriended Filian.

No, perhaps it is more accurate to say Filian befriended Rosa. For Rosa was entirely uninterested in two year old babies, despite being a two year old baby herself. "Hmph!" she said, turning up her nose at little baby Filian. Filian, being a little baby, didn't understand the implications of this action and joyfully attached herself to Rosa instead.

At three years old, Filian's father passed away, and Rosa cried and cried and cried. She was sad for her new friend Filian, of course, since Filian was only three years old! And her father had died! How sad! ...but also because she had actually been nursing a hope within her. A hope that, perhaps, this strange phenomenon of a second life (with all her memories intact!) meant she was in heaven, or some kind of permanent afterlife, where the deaths that had so plagued her in her past life would mean no more.

Alas, with Filian's father's death, the first death she'd witnessed in this life, she had realized that she had been cursed to live once more.

It wasn't until she was five years old and turning up her nose at Ryan's three-year-old antics that she happened upon the name of the Crown Prince.

"Crown Prince Alexander," someone murmured, and Rosa wondered why that name seemed familiar. She shrugged it off-- it was a common enough name. She continued her thick-fingered attempt at twisting around leaves into Mobius Loops while Filian trounced around next to her.

Then the same person continued, "I've heard he has a new friend he practices sword-fighting with."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, delightful, is it not? The boy's name is apparently Drew Zimmerman."

Drew Zimmerman. Drew Zimmerman. Drew Zimmerman.

It was like the name echoed in Rosa's head for a good two minutes as she stood there, frozen from shock, until she gasped so loudly Filian fell backwards and she shrieked, "DREW ZIMMERMAN??!"

Filian began crying.

Lily rushed over. "What's wrong?" she cried, alarmed, gathering Filian in her arms and soothingly patting her. "Rosa?"

"No," she moaned, bringing her pudgy hands to her face. "It can't be," she squeaked. "It just can't be. Crown Prince Alexander? Drew Zimmerman?" The Crown Prince, she didn't really remember. But Glitcherman? The name she'd cursed every night before she fell asleep? The name she'd yelled at every end of a route that ended with his smarmy, smug face going 'My love!' at her? Of course she would not forget his name!

But what were the coincidences that someone of the same name as that game character would exist in this new world? No, really. What in the name of Durova... She inhaled sharply. "Durova?!"

Lily was rightly confused. Why was her little daughter looking so shocked at the name of their country?

Rosa ran over and gripped onto Lily's skirt, while Filian hiccuped and shied away from Rosa. (She didn't notice.) "Mother!" she cried, shaking her. "What is the name of the academy here?"

Lily blinked. "You mean, the Academy?"

"Yes!" Then she gasped. "Is it called the Academy?"

"Y-yes, that's correct. Are you alright, Rosa?"

She gasped even louder this time, physically taking a step back. "My name is Rosa!" she shrieked.

Lily only became more bewildered, and Filian whimpered in her arms. "Y-yes, my dear, that is your name."

"Noooooo," she lamented, falling on her hands and knees. "Noo," she half-sobbed. "My name can't be Rosa."

"But it is!" Lily pursed her lips. "Do you, do you not like your name, dear?"

Rosa did not hear her. "Roosaaaaaaa," she could only say. "Roosaaaa. I am Rooossaaaaaa."

And yes, that was the day that Rosa-- or, perhaps, the soul within her, that of Kawahara Sumie-- realized that she was in the world of <Love Academy: Love Love Catcher 3>, the otome game she'd only played to win a bet against Kawahara Mitsuo, her older sister.

She shivered. She shuddered. She screamed at random times of the night again, waking up the rest of the house and scaring poor little Ryan. (That was, perhaps, the beginning of Ryan's ingrained fear of Rosa that would continue for probably most of his life.) At times she would sigh things like "Glitcherman, no way" into their potato salad. And when Rebecca, their third child, was born into her house, Rosa looked at her with eyes filled with sorrow and whispered, "Why am I me, and why are you you?"

The next day, Lily gathered her newborn child into her arms and went to the apothecary's. Not to relieve her pain from childbirth, no, but to question what she should do as a mother if your six-year-old was having an existential crisis.

(She got no answer.)

The twins were born when Rosa was eight. She eyed the man she called father suspiciously. "That's a lot of babies," she informed him, and Rickard burst out into laughter, because he loved his daughter very much and found everything she said to be just delightful.

"Yes, and they're all your younger siblings," he told her, squatting down to her eye level.

Rosa harrumphed and went to stare at the squirming twins in order to establish dominance against these new arrivals. Ryan, being six, dove for cover so that he wouldn't accidentally be caught in line of that fire. Rickard ruffled the boy's hair affectionately and left for the apothecary's, so that he could get some soothing medicine for his beloved wife.

He was a good man, Rickard-- a loyal soldier, a devoted husband, a patient father. Alas, he would have benefited much if he hadn't been so loyal a soldier.

When their youngest, Ruth, was one years old, and Rosa, their oldest, was eleven, he went off to fight at the borders. He never came back.

Rosa did not cry at the funeral. She'd cried every day at night after he'd left for the border, so she didn't need to. The only thing she did was stare up at the sky defiantly, in her blackest garb and holding the small, fidgeting hands of her little sisters, and whisper two words as fiercely as she could.

No fair.

She had done everything an eleven-year-old could do to keep her father from leaving. But what could an eleven-year-old do? She'd clung to her father and threw tantrums she had never thrown before. Mildly embarrassing as someone who'd been seventeen her previous life, but she didn't have the time to be embarrassed. Rosa's father was absent when the game began. She didn't want that to happen again.

However, as all parents are wont to do, Rickard peeled his beautiful daughter off of him and gently said that he would be back, so she shouldn't worry.

Only she knew that wasn't true.

No fair, she declared to nobody and everybody at once, not letting the tears fall from her eyes. If she was going to be given a new life, even if it was the life of an in-game character, then shouldn't she be given a happier existence? After what had happened in her previous, original life, Rosa thought she deserved it.

So she developed a fear of what if I'm not living my life, what if I'm living through pre-determined cutscenes and plot points? which became a fear of the Academy and all things game-related. After all, that meant more people would die, including one character she remembered always dying. But she also developed a rather contrary determination to prove the game wrong, which would culminate into her proclamation of preventing any more deaths she had the power to prevent.

Thus, the plan.

And then her goal widened, because she remembered the pain of her passing father, the sobs of little Becca, the grief of her mother with Ruth still in her arms, and the shadow that had set into Ryan and perhaps never truly disappeared since then. But then again, it had only been five years.

So in the garden of the Winter Palace, as she overheard two traitorous, treasonous figures talking to themselves, she was reminded of all those waves of feelings, and decided that if she could prevent a war, she would.