Falling petals

Too much of a Coincidence.

"To start with, the dreams had started since the moment I woke up from the accident 4 years ago."

"Four years ago...! When you fell into the water!"

Uriel muttered the comment and his eyes widen when remembering that moment. Sakura was only three years old at that time, just a month or two after her birthday.

A celebration was going to happen just after it so everyone was hurrying for the preparations, leading Raphael little time to watch the maids actions while caring for Sakura. He couldn't even leave a steward to watch over them because he was that much of need of help with the preparations.

He thought since they were the ones who watched over Sakura the longest without being fired, Raphael decided to leave them without watch. Who would have thought those maids the moment they don't have someone to scold them around or spy on them, they would leave her highness alone in the garden and have a relaxed moment of tea with her highness's drinks and snacks.

At that time Sakura wanted to be liked and allowed those maids to do what they wanted in exchange they had to tell her how much they liked her.

She was a lonely child and always grew happy when someone told her she was loved or liked, even if deep down she knew it would be lies just to get her little mind to be used by them. She accepted it because she just wanted someone to be beside her to tell her they cared for her.

All the maids who was made to take care or her knew this and knew how to use her innocent naive mind for their benefits. They always told her a princess has to be proud and look down on others, that she has to demand for things and yell if she doesn't receive it.

They would have her demand for drinks or desserts the maids like but made it seem she wanted it, they never took the blame and even spread some things to make them seem pitiful for being made to serve the spoiled princess.

That was why there was so many negative rumors of Sakura when she was little and that's why Raphael never liked having any of those maids around to influence her in such a horrible way, but because he had fired many maids before, many of the old aristocrats were angry and complained how he always fired another noble daughter for no reason.

It was an endless war of words that in the end he had no choice but to oversee the maids or have someone watch them so they don't lead Sakura astray. Yet he was the head butler, and he can never truly stray there for long or have a steward stay too long because it wasn't their job to babysit her highness either.

It seems one of the maids told her highness to go and play, that they had "adult things" to speak about.

Her highness just nodded and ran to play around the garden and not a few minutes later a splash was heard.

The maids quickly stood up and headed to the direction and saw her highness struggling to get out of the water. Her small arms flailing around, her voice screaming for help but slowly became hiccups and coughs with the water entering her lungs.

Those foolish maids stand in disbelief rather than call for help, they even took time to discuss what they should do because they were afraid to end up being caught not watching over her highness.

Before they could make up a solution a yell filled the garden and a young knight in training came running and jumped inside the pond and rescued her highness from the lake, other knights in training quickly went to notify their trainer, and he went and sent a messenger to Raphael to explain what just happened.

At that time Sakura took in a lot of water and stopped breathing. Her face was a blue pale and the knight in training who saved her quickly checked for a pulse, he felt chills when he didn't feel one.