Chapter 2
Rowena Whitfield.
An orphan from Townsend Orphanage who had just turned ten this past Thanksgiving.
Until recently, that single sentence was all there was to describe Rowena.
Just an ordinary orphan girl with nothing special about her.
Other children might have been described as having freckles or ginger hair, but none of that applied to Rowena.
Even her name, “Rowena,” was simply the eighth name assigned to orphans at Townsend Orphanage. There was nothing special about it.
However, Rowena had one secret she kept hidden.
She had been reincarnated into a book.
Well… more precisely, I have memories of my past life.
Of course, Rowena hadn’t known from the beginning that she had been reborn inside a novel.
It was something she had only realized recently.
Just a few days ago, on Thanksgiving.
At Townsend Orphanage, children without known birthdays celebrated them all on that day.
They would stick candles roughly onto a large cake, and five or six children would sit around it, blowing at each other’s faces through the forest of candles.
But during her birthday celebration, Rowena suddenly collapsed before she could even blow out a single candle.
Was it because she had been exposed to too much cold wind?
Or maybe because she had ignored the teacher’s warning not to roll around in the grass?
The exact cause was unknown, but Rowena fell ill with a mysterious disease.
After suffering for three days and nights, when she finally woke up—
Maybe I’m really unlucky.
That was the thought she had.
It was a thought she had never even had when she was insulted or hit for being an orphan.
There were two reasons for that.
The first was that this illness that had kept her bedridden for three days was a serious, incurable disease.
The old village doctor, who usually had a soft spot for Rowena, gave her what was essentially a death sentence while her fever hadn’t even fully subsided.
“If this is the illness I think it is, the child will live at most five years. There is no hope. There is no cure… It would be best to prepare yourselves.”
“How pitiful.”
Clicking his tongue, the doctor patted her small head a couple of times.
But even then, Rowena didn’t think about luck or misfortune.
Looks like the old man has finally gone senile.
That was all she thought, glaring at him with her feverish eyes.
After all, she was only ten years old.
What kind of nonsense is that? If I only have five years left, that means I’ll die at fifteen. But I feel completely fine!
Right before she collapsed, she had been perfectly healthy.
So once the fever went away, she was sure she would be fine again.
That clueless old man. Next time I find two four-leaf clovers, I won’t give him one. I won’t share my boiled eggs either.
And my dreams have been weird lately too…
Maybe it was because of the fever, but while she was sick, Rowena had very strange dreams.
Dreams of living in a completely unfamiliar world.
And yet, somehow, it felt nostalgic and familiar.
I don’t remember the details anymore…
But there was one thing she remembered vividly.
The last scene.
She had been crossing the street while reading a novel she liked on a small device called a smartphone—
And then a truck hit her.
Even the sensation of being hit felt so real that it made her shudder whenever she thought about it.
It felt so real. I even remember the story I was reading before I died.
It was definitely a novel about a female protagonist who had an incurable illness.
What was the name of that illness again…?
“…White Lily Disease. That is the name of her illness.”
Right. It was White Lily Disease.
It started with a high fever severe enough to cause fainting, and after the fever subsided, there seemed to be no symptoms at first, but gradually—
“Yes. At first, there is a high fever that causes loss of consciousness. After that, there appear to be no symptoms, but gradually white spots bloom on the body. Eventually, the entire body decays, and the patient dies.”
“…Huh?”
A faint, dazed sound escaped Rowena’s cracked lips.
That day—
It was the third day since she had turned ten.
The day she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
And the day she realized she had been reincarnated as an extra in the novel she had read in her past life.
***
Back then… I really wanted to cry.
Rowena nodded to herself as she recalled the past.
It took a bit more time to fully piece together her current reality with her past-life memories.
And the fact that she secretly cried every night during that time was a strictly guarded secret.
It’s bad enough I was reborn as an orphan, but now I have an incurable disease too?!
Even though a week had already passed, it still felt unfair and upsetting.
But it was too early to despair.
Fortunately, Rowena knew the entire story of the novel.
Which means I also know the cure for White Lily Disease.
But it was still too early to be happy.
Because the cure wouldn’t appear for another seven years.
The novel she had been reborn into was titled Until the Lily Withers.
A typical dark romance story about a terminally ill, beautiful heroine who becomes entangled with several obsessive men.
The key point was that the heroine didn’t have long to live.
She traveled to the capital to find a cure for White Lily Disease, and there she met the only person in the empire who possessed the cure—the hidden mastermind male lead.
And that’s when all her suffering began.
Especially because the male lead, Seymour, was obsessively attached to her.
They said it was because she looked exactly like his dead wife.
He mistook her for his wife returned to life and clung to her.
And as a result, the heroine suffered terribly.
In fact, most of the hardships in the story were caused by him.
Well… she does get saved by the official male lead in the end, but still.
Anyway.
The important point was that the cure appeared seven years later—that was when the story began.
That was when it became known that the medicine Seymour had imported from abroad was the cure, and the heroine went to meet him.
“Then isn’t it a good thing that a cure exists?”
No!
By that time, I’ll already be dead!
Fortunately—or unfortunately—the old doctor who sometimes shared boiled eggs with her had once been a royal physician before retiring to his hometown.
That was how he recognized her illness.
Which means his diagnosis that I’ll die in five years is probably accurate too.
What good was a cure if she would already be gone by then?
Rowena Whitfield was just an extra in the story.
She simply had the same illness as the heroine.
She couldn’t expect a miraculous recovery like the protagonist.
Standing in front of a mirror, Rowena stared at herself.
The girl reflected there had short wheat-colored hair and deep green eyes.
Her cheeks were plump like a well-stuffed doll, and her skin had a healthy peach-like glow.
Seeing that, her chest tightened.
I don’t want to die.
I’m still alive.
But to survive, she needed the cure.
And much earlier than in the original story.
But how?
She had spent a whole week thinking about it, even crying over it, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find an answer.
Seymour is a duke. And I’m just a poor orphan child.
Getting the cure was one thing—just meeting him was already a huge obstacle.
I need to meet him first before anything else!
But as a penniless orphan in a child’s body, there seemed to be no way to approach him.
Isn’t there any way…?
Pressing her chubby cheeks with her palms, Rowena sank into deep thought.
Just then, the church bell outside rang, signaling noon on the weekend.
Ding—
The door suddenly burst open, and a girl her age poked her head inside.
“Rowena! Are you ready?”
“Huh? Ready?”
Had she forgotten something while thinking about her future?
As Rowena blinked her wide eyes, the girl giggled.
“You really must still be out of it from being sick! Today is the day we go do volunteer work at the houses of our sponsors!”
“…Ah.”
Only then did she remember.
Townsend Orphanage regularly sent children to their sponsors’ homes to sing or keep them company.
And today was that day.
“You looked distracted even during roll call. Hurry up and get ready! Today we’re going to the Hayworth estate, so be extra careful!”
“…Hayworth?”
Without realizing it, Rowena repeated the word.
The girl nodded energetically.
“Yeah, Hayworth! You don’t want to get on the strict madam’s bad side, so hurry!”
Bang.
The girl left, closing the door behind her.
But Rowena stood there, frozen.
Hayworth.
The moment she heard that name, a line from the novel came to mind.
[-The only person who could control the arrogant Seymour, even a little, was his mother-in-law, the Grand Lady of Hayworth.]
The Grand Lady of Hayworth!
A smile slowly spread across Rowena’s small face.
Right. I can meet him through her! Why didn’t I think of that before?
She had found a way to meet Seymour.
