The public opinion about “Nelia Valentis” was mostly favorable and honorable.
‘The legitimate daughter of Count Valentis, the great magnate.’
‘The Empire’s greatest beauty, and the Lady who will represent the next generation of high society.’
‘An object of admiration that all noble girls in the Capital longed for.’
I myself did not deny it. I truly was a noble Young Lady for whom the expression “perfect” was fitting.
But, that very me, right now…
“Nelia! Can’t you stay still?”
“A mere maid dares to impertinently defy Lady Laila!”
Wearing a shabby maid’s uniform, I was kneeling like a criminal in front of my cousin, in my own home at that.
“What on earth is going on here?”
I thought I had died of an incurable disease, but when I opened my eyes again, absurd things were happening to me.
“Let go, will you? My knees hurt!”
Denying this incomprehensible situation, I shouted at the servants pressing down on my shoulders from both sides.
But they only restrained my movements with even stronger, iron-like grips.
Words didn’t get through at all. Well, the ones I had to deal with weren’t the mansion’s servants anyway.
I glared fiercely at my same-age cousin standing arrogantly before me.
“Laila!”
“I told you, call me ‘Lady Laila’. Why are you so slow to understand?”
She fanned herself lightly and mocked me.
“Nelia, didn’t I tell you? You’re not a noble, but a bastard commoner.”
“Watch your mouth! Who do you think you’re calling a bastard?”
I lashed out, denying Laila’s words, but she only looked down on me and let out a sneering laugh.
“Do you still not get it? How much simpler do I have to explain for you to understand?”
She slowly, and clearly, opened her mouth.
“Your biological father was a commoner stablehand, and you’ve been working here as a maid for eight years.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
Laila’s story was something that couldn’t possibly be real.
I had lived for seventeen years as the legitimate daughter of House Valentis, and I myself had done my best to become a perfect noble.
And yet I supposedly worked as a maid for eight years? Was this a joke?
‘What is this, some kind of parallel reality?’
“I am not a maid, and I am most certainly not a bastard! How many times do I have to tell you?”
But in spite of my protests, she let out a deliberate sigh and ordered the servants.
“Drag her outside. Even if she hit her head, sooner or later she’ll realize her place whether she likes it or not.”
“I can’t leave! I am Nelia Valentis. This is my home!”
“Wake up. You are not a Valentis, and this is not your home.”
Wearing an arrogant smile, she tapped my cheek with the folded end of her fan.
“You’d better realize your place quickly. Unless you want to be thrown out like a beggar.”
With those words, I was dragged roughly out of the mansion by the servants’ brutish hands.
“It’s a lie. Everything’s a lie!”
I really felt like I was going insane, like I was about to lose my mind completely. Was I dreaming right now?
No—before that, more importantly—
“Am I really even alive?”
As I was seized by the back of the neck and forcibly dragged away, I recalled the memory of the day I died.
***
The 13th day of the 3rd month, in the year 489 of the Daris Empire.
That day was my seventeenth birthday, yet the inside of the mansion was filled with a gloomy, somber atmosphere.
“Nel, you can’t die! Please!”
I slowly turned my head to look at the young boy crying miserably at my bedside.
“Rui.”
My younger brother, nine years my junior, had cried so much his eyes were swollen.
Dear little Ruik. Sometimes annoying, but still the beloved younger brother whose head I wanted to pat.
But my arms had long since lost the ability to move. Instead, I opened my mouth with a gentle voice.
“Rui, don’t be picky with food, and study hard. You will become the next Head of House Valentis. Can you promise your sister that?”
“I’ll definitely keep my promise! So you have to promise me too, that you won’t die. Okay?”
Instead of an answer, I smiled. Even to a little brother, I couldn’t make a promise I knew I couldn’t keep.
‘I’m going to die now.’
I lowered my gaze and looked at my fingertips, which had turned to stone like a statue.
Petrification Syndrome.
It was the name some doctor had first given my disease, since no similar case had ever existed before.
The onset had begun a year ago.
My fingertips and toes started stiffening like stone, and as time passed, the hardened parts spread wider and wider.
My parents spent enormous sums of money and called upon all of the family’s connections in search of a cure.
They even went so far as to offer half of House Valentis’ fortune to whoever could cure me.
In response, the Empire’s most renowned doctors, pharmacists, and mages threw themselves into the search for a cure, but there were no results.
Thanks to the family’s overwhelming investment, medical research advanced and cures were developed for several incurable diseases.
But that good fortune never came to me.
Not only was there no complete cure for Petrification Syndrome, they couldn’t even find a way to slow its progression.
In the end, two months ago my arms and legs became completely paralyzed, to the point where I could no longer leave my bed.
‘And now—’
The petrification had spread into my internal organs, leaving me unable to even sustain my life any longer.
It was a sad thing.
“Nel, why won’t you answer? Just hold on a little longer. Then I’ll become a great knight and defeat your illness for you!”
“Even if it were Sir Hilde Halschritte, your idol, he wouldn’t be able to defeat my disease.”
“Then I’ll work really hard and become a knight stronger than Sir Hilde!”
…Even if Ruik tried, he could never surpass that silver-haired, golden-eyed prodigy swordsman.
But I wasn’t such a cold sister as to speak that truth aloud.
For a growing child, dreams and hopes were more important than anything.
“Right. Rui will definitely become the strongest knight in the Empire. So you must study and train hard.”
“Yeah!”
Even while crying, Ruik answered in a loud voice. Encouraging him, I then turned my head to the other side.
There, my eyes met Mother’s.
“Nel, my precious daughter.”
She was holding my hand tightly with her white, delicate hands, but to me there was no sensation at all.
The fact that all feeling in my limbs had disappeared felt especially sorrowful today.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Tears welled up in Mother’s beautiful pink eyes.
“That’s not true. You gave me everything, Mother. So please don’t say that.”
“Nelia, my child!”
At last, Mother could not hold back her tears any longer.
Father wrapped his arm around her shoulders and came closer to me.
“My beloved daughter, Nelia. Happy seventeenth birthday.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Your existence is our joy and happiness. The day you were born is still vivid in my mind…”
The shoulders of my father—who had always shown me only a steadfast and dignified figure—were trembling.
‘I want to live.’
I took in the faces of my parents and Ruik, and sincerely wished it.
But it was impossible to resist a fate already sealed.
“Neria, if there is a next life, will you be our child again? We promise we’ll become better parents.”
“You are already wonderful parents. The best in the world.”
As my vision narrowed, their faces stood out especially clearly.
“I love you. I… I always wanted to be a daughter you could be proud of. If there is a next life, then I will—”
Beyond the fading of my consciousness, a thought suddenly came.
Because I had been with the ones I loved, even though my life was short, it was a happy one.
On a spring day at the age of seventeen, I closed my eyes forever.
***
…Yes, that was how it had been.
After the tearful farewell with my family, I was certain I had died.
“I’m alive?”
With trembling hands, I covered my face.
The first thing that brought me back to consciousness had been the scream of someone echoing inside my head.
‘Why do I have to go through this?’
‘I hate being born like this. I wish someone would take my place!’
It was a voice drenched in resentment.
It chilled me to the bone, and I raised my arms in distress to cover my ears.
“Please, stop—!”
But at that very moment, I realized the miracle that had happened to me.
“I just moved my arms on my own?”
Could it be that the so-called incurable Petrification Syndrome was actually cured?
The voice that had been echoing in my head had already disappeared.
I lifted my upper body and stared blankly at my arms and legs, moving freely by my own will.
“My God…”
Overcome with emotion, my throat tightened so much I could barely produce a sound.
The first faces that came to mind were those of my parents. If they saw me awake, they would surely be even happier than I was.
So, first I had to find them, right? I was just about to leave the bed with that thought.
It was only then, overwhelmed by the shock of my illness being cured, that I noticed something I had failed to realize until now.
“Where am I?”
The place where I had been lying was not my room.
The cramped space contained nothing but a small bed and a shabby wardrobe.
“Why am I in a place like this?”
Could it be that my family had squandered the entire fortune trying to cure me and had to move?
…But House Valentis was one of the wealthiest families in the Daris Empire.
Puzzled, I walked toward the window and saw a bronze lion statue standing in the middle of the garden.
It was carved in the shape of a roaring lion, the symbol of House Valentis, a familiar sight visible from the annex.
Thankfully, it didn’t seem that the family had moved. I let out a sigh of relief.
Still, it was undeniably strange that I was in such a shabby room fit only for a storeroom.
But the shock of being cured of an incurable disease was far greater, so I pushed away those questions and left the room.
Walking from the annex to the main building didn’t take much time.
Humming to myself, I stepped with my own feet along the grassy path until I reached the front lobby of the main building.
“…Huh?”
Stopping at the entrance, I tilted my head as I looked inside the mansion.
The main hall was completely different from what I remembered.
Only the family banner hanging at the entrance was the same; the decorations adorning the mansion were of types I had never seen before.
‘This isn’t Mother’s taste, is it?’
Feeling puzzled, I carefully looked around. But the more I examined the interior of the mansion, the stranger it felt.
This was definitely our home, yet the entire mansion gave off a sense of alienness, as if I had stepped into a foreign place.
On top of that, the eldest daughter of the family had supposedly recovered from an incurable illness and come back to life, but the servants passed me by without even acknowledging me.
‘What on earth happened?’
I considered calling over a servant, but meeting my parents came first.
Even as I felt this inexplicable unease, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. And as I walked down the hallway, passing by the door to my room, I suddenly stopped.
It was just intuition. This was certainly my room, yet for some reason an unpleasant foreboding gnawed at me.
‘…Should I just step inside for a moment?’
If I simply walked past, it would only bother me more.
I decided it was better to shake off this needless anxiety, so I flung the door open.
I imagined the familiar space I had used for seventeen years.
But they say negative premonitions rarely turn out wrong.
“L-Lord Levi? Was the door left open?”
What I witnessed there was a scene I could never have imagined.
In the middle of the day, a man and a woman were pressed together on my bed, their lips locked.
The woman was someone I had never seen before, but the man’s face was one I knew all too well.
Shocked by this absurd situation, I opened my mouth.
“Levi? What are you doing in someone else’s house?”
The man’s name was “Levi Valentis.”
A problematic cousin who had drowned himself in women and alcohol, exposed for having an affair with a wealthy married woman, even causing a violent scandal—ultimately he was expelled from the family.
He was no longer even allowed to be called a Valentis. So why was he here, in the mansion? And why was he acting like the Master in my own room?
“Lord Levi?”
The woman on the bed called out to him softly, and Levi got up with an annoyed expression.
“Who the hell is it? I told you not to disturb me.”
Levi swaggered out into the hallway.
He glared at me with intimidating eyes, as if to scare me, but I didn’t find him frightening. It was only ridiculous.
Before I knew it, Levi had come right up to me, looking down at my face with a cocky air before letting out a nasty, mocking laugh.
“Ah, pink eyes. So it’s you, Nelia.”
“What are you babbling about? Just explain why you’re here.”
But he ignored my question and instead extended his finger to poke my head. Again and again.
Tap. Tap.
My head rocked with each push. It was a deeply insulting, disrespectful gesture.
“What the hell are you trying to do with me right now?”
Since he was the one picking a cheap fight, I felt I should respond in kind.
Just as Levi went to push my head with his finger again, I quickly seized his finger and twisted it back.
“Argh! My finger—!”
With a crack, a scream of pain burst from his mouth.
“Are you insane?! You broke my finger!”
Levi groaned and hiccupped as if he couldn’t endure the pain.
His behavior, showing not a shred of noble dignity, made me want to sigh, but I held it back and opened my mouth.
“Do you think bones break that easily? Stop exaggerating and just answer me prop—”
But I couldn’t finish my words directed at him.
Because Levi suddenly kicked me in the stomach with his boot.
With a thud, I toppled backward and slammed my hips against the floor. A pain like my stomach had been pierced shot through me.
‘…What did he just do to me?’
In disbelief, I looked up at Levi.
He kicked me with his foot? Me?
For someone like me, who had lived her whole life wrapped in honor and pride, it was an insult I had never experienced before.
“Levi, you…!”
I twisted my expression, unable to hide my furious feelings.
But at that moment, Levi’s enraged voice struck me.
“So you jumped off the roof saying you wanted to kill yourself, and now you’ve gone crazy from hitting your head?”
“…What?”
“If you wanted to die, you should’ve just died quietly! How dare a thing like you hurt me?”
At Levi’s words, it felt like I’d been struck on the back of the head.
Suicide? When did I ever—?
