Im too hopeful sometimes smh

Heh, at least its not usagi drop

Unfortunately for you, the General is the ML.

It's not super creepy, though. He stays as JUST the FL's friend and ally until she bonds with Spica once more, at which point he regains the memories of his past life/alternate future. So he remembers that he used to be in love with her and preparing to propose to her before he discovered her death.

The general keeps his feelings to himself, though, and remains JUST her friend and ally until she is fully grown, and their enemies have all been dealt with, allowing them to move on with their lives. So they only get together in literally the last chapter of the novel.

But this is a manga adaptation, so who knows how much it will be changed. In the novel, he didn't ever compliment her on her appearance, because he was careful about being labeled a pedophile. ╮(￣▽￣)╭

Even tho you made it sound somewhat ok it still feels like grooming, like he a grown ass adult starts to develop feelings for a girl he knew since she was a kid

Then you need to stop reading time-travelling novels, because he flat-out DIDN'T fall in love with a child, and DID NOT groom a child. If she didn't tell him that she was going to die, he would not have married her. Straight up. That's why he turned her down in the previous timeline. Children aren't his interest, and the marriage was, in his mind, just providing her with a legal guardian who had her health and wellbeing in mind. (Compare to her abusive relatives, he's right to be concerned.)

He never fell in love with her as a child. They literally lived together for three years before he got his past life's memories back, and he remembered that he fell in love with an Actual Adult Woman. Who is now inexplicably a child, but "five minutes ago" was an adult woman.

But she's a child. So what does he do? Continues to treat her the exact same way as before, AS A CHILD whom he is in no way attracted to, and wait TEN YEARS before he even tells her that he liked her in the previous timeline. It took TEN YEARS for him to say anything about a whole other timeline, nothing about their CURRENT relationship, and they STILL didn't get together right away; the novel ends with their first date (months after his confession). With the implication that it's baby steps, testing the waters to even decide if they want to be together or if they should annull their marriage.

Honestly, possession and regression novels are FULL of problematic "grooming" situations. It would be just as bad if she got together with someone closer to her physical age, because she'd mentally be a decade older than him.

The only one CLOSE to her age, who also has memories of the previous timeline (making him her physical and mental peer) is the prince. Who was involved with her murder. What a catch.