Episode 1
A beautiful mansion stood tall, and five gardeners worked tirelessly for days to make the roses in the garden bloom. The flowers were in full bloom under the soft glow of the gas lamps on a summer night.
If wealth could be transformed into a landscape, it would look like this.
It was a sight too stunning to merely gaze upon, but Monica couldn’t bring herself to appreciate it fully. Her attention was fixed on the man standing before her.
“You’re not Garcia…?”
Monica felt a wave of embarrassment.
One might wonder if Monica was more captivated by the man’s face than by the mansion’s grandeur.
The man was that handsome. He was tall—remarkably so—with striking blond hair that could amaze anyone, and his deep-set eyes added an air of mystery around him.
“How many times do I have to tell you? That’s not my name.”
The man’s voice was cold, his expression equally icy.
Monica scrutinized him carefully once more.
Now that she thought about it, he was wearing ornate clothing, completely unlike the person she knew.
Is this really someone else?
Of course, mistaking someone for another wasn’t unusual. In fact, Monica had made the same error twice recently.
…Wait. This situation feels oddly familiar.
Monica pressed her fingers to her furrowed brow.
Hadn’t she mistaken Garcia for Luis at first? Confused, Monica blurted out before her thoughts could settle.
“You’re not going to tell me your name is Luis now, are you?”
“Right.”
A faint smile appeared on the man’s otherwise cold lips.
It was entirely different from Luis’ warm, sunlit smile, but their faces were undeniably similar.
The man, however, refuted her words with a new name.
“My name is Enrique Solivan.”
“…What?”
Monica was incredulous. She had recently encountered two men with the same face.
Blond, blue-eyed, and impossibly tall—they all looked exactly like the man standing before her.
Now, here was a third man with the same face.
Three identical faces, yet they were all different people?
“That’s ridiculous… it’s a lie.”
Monica’s eyes widened in disbelief.
When he smiled, his right cheek twitched momentarily, almost like a spasm.
Just then, the lights from the banquet hall cast shadows on the man’s face, highlighting sunken spots at the corners of his eyes.
“I’ve wasted enough time.”
The man turned on his heel and walked away without hesitation. Monica felt a sudden surge of anxiety.
On the corner of the man’s eye, barely noticeable, was a scar. She knew that scar all too well.
“Wait!”
Monica grabbed the hem of the man’s shirt. He turned back, frowning.
“Sir, are you… no, are you by any chance, triplets?”
As she stepped closer, she saw the faint scar near his right eye more clearly through his sweat-dampened hair.
There was also a small scar at the corner of his lips. Monica knew those marks.
“But I’ve never heard of twins or triplets sharing the same scars…”
Or maybe… is it a multiple personality disorder?
—
A Few Days Earlier
To explain Monica’s encounter with a man who might be either a liar or suffering from multiple personalities, we must go back in time a few days.
And first, we should know a little more about Monica.
Monica hated it when people asked for her name.
“What’s your name?”
“Monica.”
It wasn’t that she disliked the name itself. In fact, she quite liked it after learning its origin—a noble princess from a distant kingdom.
But the problem was the inevitable follow-up question.
“What’s your last name?”
“…Uh…”
Whenever Monica hesitated, the person would prod further.
“What is your surname?”
She would respond with an ambiguous smile or roll her eyes and reply, “I don’t have one. I’m an orphan.”
The reactions were always awkward. Some would offer a quiet, pitying “Oh, I see…” before hastily changing the subject.
The truth was Monica did have a surname, but she chose not to acknowledge it.
The orphanage director had given all the children the same last name when registering their births for additional kingdom support.
Their shared surname was both meaningless and mortifying.
The director would always shrug and say,
“You’ll change your last names when you’re adopted, anyway.”
But for those who weren’t adopted and aged out of the system, the name remained—a cruel reminder of their origin.
For Monica, her given surname was simply a variation of the word orphan: Offen.
—
Present Day
“Miss Offen!”
“Oh! Yes!”
Startled, Monica snapped out of her thoughts and answered loudly. The surrounding patrons glanced her way before quickly returning to their own conversations. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
Monica Offen—what a terrible surname.
But now, she had no choice but to use it. She was applying for a job, after all.
The person addressing her was a middle-aged woman with neatly styled hair. They were seated in a small teahouse on a sunny commercial street.
The woman, Madame Orange, was a maid employed by a wealthy noble family.
“I apologize. I arrived by train this morning and still feel a bit out of sort.”
“I understand. Those trains can be quite bothersome,” Madame Orange replied, though her tone suggested she didn’t truly empathize.
Monica offered a polite smile, despite the disparity.
Straightening her posture, she allowed the sunlight filtering through the opaque windows to illuminate her face.
Monica was confident about her appearance—not in terms of beauty, but in presenting herself as intelligent and composed.
She wore her best navy taffeta dress, neatly tied her black hair into a bun, and exuded the demeanor of someone perfectly suited for the position of a tutor for noble children.
And this was precisely the job she was applying for.
—
