Chapter 1
The lush green garden was very clear, as if showing off the sunny season.
Flowers in various colors, lush trees, and grass that gives a fresh feeling. All of these things change color and appearance as time passes. Because of this, we can see that even the daily life that is always the same is slightly different. Those who love nature highly praise their refreshing changes as truly lovely and precious.
As if daring to object to such praise, Siss Milan was staring at the scenery outside the window with a rather cold gaze. A sharp contrast was lingering in her green eyes that sparkled with the same color as nature.
She slightly lost focus as she gazed down at the garden. Then, a beautiful face was reflected on the clear glass window without a single mark. Eyes and eyebrows with elegant lines, a nose bridge that was sharp enough to feel sharp, lips with a lovely red color that looked lovely even without putting on anything. Pale skin like white jade.
Some people are extremely afraid of wrinkles on their skin as they age, but Siss desperately wished that even a single wrinkle would be engraved on her skin. She raised her hand with an
indifferent expression and caressed her cheek. Her skin was as soft as it looked.
Her gaze moved like flowing water to her wrist.
Up until now, countless wounds have formed on her. Scars from a knife, burns from fire, and other minor scratches. At the time, she thought that her skin would just be torn apart. She might have secretly hoped for that. However, completely disappointing her expectations, her skin returned to its original state, clean and clear.
Tsk, Siss clicked her tongue and turned her head away from the window to look at the desk.
There was a mountain of paperwork to be processed today. The signature line at the very bottom was written with elegant letters: ‘Dalian Millan.’
That was her name, but it wasn’t her actual real name.
She is the only living head of the Millan family in Sith, but due to personal circumstances, she has been hiding from the world and avoiding external situations such as social circles. Only a handful of people in the empire know of this, and even among the counts, it is rare.
Her circumstances were such that she was an ‘immortal’ who had lived for hundreds of years without dying.
I don’t quite remember where it started.
Siss was the eldest daughter of the Count of Millan, and her family was very harmonious and loving. She had a kind father, a loving mother, and a younger sister who was sometimes was troublesome but was very lovable. Anyone could see that they were a happy family of four.
When she was young, she was relatively ordinary and did not attract much attention from others, but as time passed, her appearance became as beautiful as a flower in full bloom, and even before she entered the social world, she was famous in the capital. As she became an adult and a successful debutante, her status continued to rise day by day.
It was in her late 30s that Siss began to notice something odd about herself.
If she had been a noble young lady, she would have married into another family by the time she turned twenty, but as the eldest daughter, she was busy preparing to inherit her father’s position and had no interest in getting married.
Her younger sister, Sheila, who was four years younger than her,
had a cute image rather than a pretty one. Sheila, who had been innocent and cute since childhood, went through many changes as she got married and entered her 30s, losing her baby fat and showing a more mature vibe than before.
But Siss was the same. There was no change. Her skin was still fresh, her hair was shiny, and she was very beautiful, just like the day she first debuted in society. While she maintained the same appearance as a wax doll, her kind father, her loving mother, and her cute younger sister were gradually accumulated by time.
While everyone else’s clocks were running normally, she was the only one standing still.
Even though Siss was in her 40s, she still looked like she had just become an adult, and more and more people began to look at her strangely. The rumors that started from a few people quickly spread throughout the capital through the mouths of the wealthy. It started out as half praise for her beautiful appearance and half jealousy, but as time went on, they changed into ridiculous rumors that she was a witch with evil powers.
From then on, Siss never appeared in social circles again and remained secluded in her mansion.
By then, Count Millan and Countess, who had initially had taken
it lightly, also realized that something was strange and tried hard to find out about the phenomenon. However, their efforts were met with no results. They asked the capital’s famous magicians, priests, and others who were said to be able to wield special powers, but they all shook their heads. No one knew about her phenomenon, where time seemed to have stopped for her.
Even in the face of the old Count’s death, she still retained the sad and beautiful face of her twenties, like a single flower.
Even when Sheila, the only family member of her left the world, she was still beautiful and graceful.
I vividly remember holding Sheila’s hand just before she passed away.
Sheila’s hands were very old, withered, wrinkled, and shriveled, but they still had warmth in them. On the other hand, Sis’s hands were still soft and pale, but lifeless.
The day her family left, Siss swallowed her tears. The loneliness of being left alone in the world swept over her like a tidal wave.
She had been deeply saddened for a day, and the next day, as if she had made up her mind, she took out the dagger from the third drawer of her father and cut her wrist. Blood spurted out like a fountain, and the pain that struck her made her vision blur
in an instant. Her unconscious body fell over.
After that, she lost consciousness and when she woke up, she was lying on a large bed that seemed to have been moved by someone.
‘Why am I alive?’
He should have clearly died from excessive bleeding.
She looked at her wrist urgently. Suppressing the pain that was surging through her, she searched for traces of where the knife had been inserted. However, there was no trace of the wound that had gaped open and spurted a huge amount of blood. Siss felt goosebumps at the unbelievable phenomenon that she had seen with her own eyes.
The one who moved her to the bedroom was the butler, who already knew that Sis’s mainspring was fixed in a certain section. According to the butler, she had collapsed without any injuries, and there were thick blood stains around her, so he quickly moved her to the bedroom and cleaned up the study. As he told the story, the butler begged her with a sad face not to do such an extreme act again.
However, despite his pleas, Sis attempted suicide many times in order to follow in her family’s footsteps, because she could no
longer live in this world without the family that had embraced her so warmly.
But she came back to life every time. She never died. Her heartbeat, which had been so weak that it seemed as if she would die, would beat fiercely again at some point every time.
Only then did Siss realize that she was immortal.
After that, she changed her methods. She started to investigate the cause of this curse-like immortality. The investigation lasted for a hundred years, but it didn’t feel like that long, since the time given to her was infinite anyway.
While she was busy with her research, time passed by, and as if to show that quite a long time had passed, the empire prospered remarkably. The emperor who ruled the empire changed five times, new weapons called firearms were developed, and countless magnificent and luxurious buildings were built to form the capital.
In the flow where the spring had stopped, she stood alone like a broken doll, living as if dead to see her end.
But despite her efforts, no similar phenomenon could be found in any book or medical material.
Immortality was a phenomenon unique to the world, something only she could experience, the first of its kind.
“Phew.”
Sis let out a long sigh.
The only people who knew the details of her circumstances were the butler, the head maid, and one maid, named Becky.
Even she knew nothing about her own phenomenon, so Siss wanted to keep it as a secret, if possible, keeping only a very few people by her side as each century passed.
The butler and the maidservant have been by her side for hundreds of years, through generations of descendants, and Becky was caught by them when Siss showed signs of unusual recovery from an accidental injury. She begged them not to kick her out, saying she would keep the secret.
Only after hearing the head maid’s reputation among the servants as being sly and reserved did Siss grant her the request. It was better than kicking her out and then letting her spread strange stories in revenge.
The business of the Count family that has continued to this day is all managed by Siss. Originally, she was going to hand it over at
a high price and take the money she earned and go to the countryside, but she couldn’t hand over the business that her father, Count Millan, had devoted himself to and willingly built to someone else. That’s why she has continued the business to this day.
Of course, she hid in her mansion and only took care of state affairs, and to the outside world, she pretended to inherit the position of head of the household by changing agents every 30 to 40 years. The agent she put forward now was a commoner who had traded his life and the fake name of ‘Dalian Millan’ for a huge sum of money.
So she lived like a ghost in the dark shadows, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
Smart. A sudden knock on the door brought Sis out of her reverie. Derrick, her butler who had followed in the footsteps of her faithful father, entered the office.
“Master.”
He bowed politely and approached Sis.
“It’s what you told me to find out last time.”
After continued investigation, the conclusion finally reached was
that it was a magic tool.
Before, she had no particular talent for magic and had not been interested in it, but after learning about the existence of magic tools, things were different. Unlike magic that can only be activated by a wizard drawing a magic circle, magic tools contained magical power, so even ordinary people could use their power.
During the investigation, Sith thought that perhaps this mysterious phenomenon could be solved with a magical tool, since it was something strange that could not be explained by immortality, magic, or logic.
And soon, as expected, she discovered a solution.
“Is this the music box of the dead?”
The music box of the dead. It is said that magical powers are contained within it, and anyone who listens to the music box until the end will die instantly on the spot.
Siss learned of its existence by chance through a book of magical tools a long time ago. However, since she could not find it, she thought it was something that existed only in records and did not exist in the world.
Then, contrary to her expectations, a rumor began to spread that this mysterious magical tool would be auctioned off underground in the capital city of Mariella.
Siss quickly ordered to investigate the rumors, and the results were true.
The reason she was looking for this magic tool was obvious. This time, she was going to end her long life. Derrick, who could not have been unaware of this fact, answered obediently, “Yes,” but with a displeased expression.
“… … Master. I don’t want my master to change.”
Derrick struggled and struggled all the way to the office, trying to figure out how to bring up the subject. His master looked tough at first glance, but within inside she was already a bit bruised and torn.
A life where she couldn’t close her eyes even though she wanted to. A life she lived reluctantly because of that. And yet, a life that was not at all joyful. Derrick could never have imagined how much sorrow and pain was contained within it.
But selfishly, he wanted her to live.
When I first heard about her from my father as a child, I couldn’t
believe it. There was someone who had lived for hundreds of years. And my father was serving such a legendary person.
She seemed like a living, breathing fairy tale character, and Derrick had been longing to meet her since he was a child.
And when he first met her as an adult, he couldn’t help but be surprised. The head of a countess family who meticulously managed numerous businesses and at the same time lived an immortal life, she was very beautiful, but at the same time, ordinary. If he had met her in the square, he would have passed by without noticing anything strange.
As his expectations were shattered, cold reality poured in. However, a white sense of anticipation seeped into the tidal wave of reality, causing his heart to beat wildly. The way she did not allow even a single wound on her body made him feel as if the Lord had temporarily stepped into this world by borrowing a human body. Sis immediately captured her devout believer’s heart.
From then on, Sis, to whom he had been watching from the side, was a pretty good owner. Although she was hiding her appearance, he was always informed of everything that happened in the mansion, and she never neglected her work of managing the numerous businesses.
Above all, I felt that she trusted me. At first, I had simply been attracted to her because of her mystery, but now that I was older than her in appearance, I was serving her as my master with all my heart.
How can you feel at ease when someone like that is trying to take her own life?
Sis, who easily understood Derrick’s intentions, smiled softly.
“You are capable, so you will do well wherever you go.”
“Master.”
Sis got up from his seat and walked towards the window. Derrick, now with wrinkles around his eyes, remembered the first time he had met her. She was still standing there back then. Her face was so beautiful, as if it had happened yesterday. While Derrick’s time passed calmly, his mainspring stopped without a single movement, as if it had broken.
“Derrick, I’ve lived too long.”
“… … .”
“It’s hard to live several times longer than other people. Above all… … I feel so lonely and isolated.”
Her life was like a dark night sky. At first glance, the endless abyss may seem mysterious and beautiful, but in reality, it is very desolate and lonely because it only appears in the quiet hours when everyone is asleep.
She couldn’t reveal her secrets to anyone because she didn’t know what the consequences would be, and for that reason, there weren’t many people who stayed by her side.
Going back many years from now, I have tried love and made friends, but those relationships did not last long without sharing my secrets.
Men always left saying, “You don’t seem to rely on me,” and close friends always left saying, “You seem to have too many secrets.” She tried her best, but in the end, she was left alone like this. Sis, who was chewing her lips as she counted the faces she couldn’t remember anymore, looked back at Derrick.
“Attend the auction and get the deceased’s music box.”
It was an answer that ignored his request that he not change his master’s will, or more precisely, that she shouldn’t die.
Even so, her eyes, shining in the sunlight, were dark as if she were dead, and the dark loneliness hidden within them was so clearly
visible that Derrick could only nod.
* * *
“It was taken away?”
The sky was gloomy because it had rained in the morning. Even in her office, which had a good view of the garden, darkness had fallen here and there today, and a chilly air was blowing.
Derrick nodded, standing in front of her with his hands clasped together neatly.
“Yes. The amount they asked for was too high… … .”
“Who took it?”
“It’s a servant of the Vegas family.”
“Vegas?”
Sisae’s eyes widened at the unexpected name.
“Are you mentioning about Duke of Vegas?”
A powerful figure in the empire. It was not difficult to guess the title that followed his name alone. However, that did not mean that she knew him well. She had long since closed her ears to the
news of the world since she began living like a ghost.
“So, does that magical tool belong to the Duke of Vegas now?”
“Yes. They said that the auction house carriage carrying the goods entered the duke’s residence that day, so perhaps… … .”
“Then I guess I’ll have to get it from the Duke.”
Sis gave some instructions to him to obtain the magical tools at the price offered by the Duke, or even if it meant by adding money.
And exactly three days later, Derrick came to her office and said,
“I’m sorry, Master… … but I failed.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t plan on handing it over, no matter how much money you give him.”
Derrick added that he was so stubborn that he was thrown out before he could even reveal that he was a count’s servant. It was a shocking report to Sis, who was waiting for good news.
