Chapter 1
The grumbling sound pulled me up from the deep water.
“Lari… Open your eyes.”
I flinched against my heavy eyelids, then opened them wide at the sound of a gravelly voice.
“…Your Highness?”
It was only a whisper, but Thierry’s head snapped up. He had been clutching my hand desperately the whole time, leaning his forehead against the back of it.
His gray eyes were watery in the candlelight, and he looked so young, so full-grown, and yet so ungainly.
“C’mon, Your Highness, how are you here?”
I stared in surprise and tried to raise my upper body, but gave up when I couldn’t move at all, and managed to get the words out. The more I spoke in a deep, raspy voice, the more the grip on my hand tightened.
“I was worried about you…”
“…”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
It was just a cold, and I’d been confined to my room for two days in case I caught it, but apparently the young Prince hadn’t been able to resist visiting my quarters.
“Not at all! I’m just a little weak, but after tonight I’ll be back to normal.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“I can’t keep seeing you, and here I am, and you don’t wake up when I call you…”
“I’m sorry, did you freak out?”
“…Yes. I was scared that Lari wouldn’t wake up like this.”
Her face looked unusually pale today, white against her black hair. Even though the corners of her eyes were red because of the water.
A desperate face, thirsty for affection, leaned closer to me.
“Lari. You remembered to stay with me, didn’t you? Will you keep your promise?”
The voice of whispering in a hurry, wondering if someone would hear it and obstruct it, was very sad. I couldn’t laugh and held the boy’s hand tightly. My hand, which used to be small for a long time, was now as big as my hand.
“Of course,” I said, “I’ll keep that promise as long as you want me to.”
I don’t even know if that’s the last time.
***
I was not originally a ‘Lari’.
One day, I lost my footing on a footbridge and fell, and when I woke up, I was possessed by this body. The body of the heroine of One Wish, the novel I was reading just before I fell.
‘I’m the maid of honor who dies at the hands of the master…’
The male protagonist, Thierry Rainerio, was an ill-fated Prince. He lives alone in a remote villa because he doesn’t have the power of fire, which only appears to the imperial family of the Fodia Empire, the guardians of fire.
Her future was already bleak, as dedicated maid, Lari, a commoner, was responsible for stealing his mother’s only possession, a necklace, breaking it and dying at his hands.
You might be thinking, That’s all it takes to kill a person? The life of a minor character is a life of routine.
Lari was just a springboard for male lead growth. A way for him to go from feeling no emotion to raging and awakening his fire powers.
Then we can move on to his opening his heart to his mistress, defying the Empress and the Crown Prince, and taking the Emperor’s seat.
I was overcome with a strange emotion as I remembered Thierry, the man who had wept for me earlier.
It was so hard, sweeping and polishing that big villa in a twelve-year-old’s body, being so good to a seven-year-old Prince, almost a parent by heart.
Of course, the desire to return to the original world was strong, but the memory of the painful final moments of her previous life quickly dampened her motivation.
So I decided to stay alive for now.
‘No matter what, it’s better to live than to die again.’
At first, I thought I would run away secretly. However, Lari was a merchant who made a living by earning a day, and if she ran out of the Imperial Palace right away, she would have to live on the road.
In the end, there was only one way. Collecting money is hard on male lead side.
If I didn’t steal the necklace, I wouldn’t raise any dead flags, but I never know, so I decided to take good care of him, to make sure I didn’t get into trouble.
I truly did my best without regret.
The closed-minded child treated me as if I didn’t exist, but over the course of six years, his gaze gradually began to linger on me, as if he was rewarding the care I had shown him.
Finally, today, she opened her heart and shed tears for herself.
‘In the original novel, Thierry was ruthless and cold, but this Thierry is different. He’s a child. It’s all about the environment you grow up in. Cancer and all.’
I’d been saving up to run away, but my future seemed secure enough that I didn’t need to.
I frowned, thinking of spending the whole day with Thierry, who would be very surprised tomorrow.
‘The only problem is, I’m worried that Thierry won’t realize his fire abilities…’
I cursed the author for putting in such a stupid setup, wondering why My Lord would need to realize his powers based on anger when the other imperials naturally acquired them.
Maybe I should try to find a way to help Thierry realize his power…
“Well, I don’t know. For now, let’s just get well and get up.”
Before I knew it, the time had turned into a wild dawn.
I opened my eyes for a moment, thirsty from sleeping, but the sound of rain outside the window reminded me of Thierry’s cries, and my contemplation was prolonged.
‘Come on, let’s go back to sleep.’
I tried to clear my head to go back to sleep.
Snooze.
At that moment, the sound of creaking hinges rang out softly. I opened my closed eyes again, my gaze shifting towards the door as it cautiously opened.
‘Is it Thierry again, huh?’
It was dark in the room, but I could tell about the physique of the person coming in. So I soon found out that my guess was wrong.
I reflexively tried to raise my upper body. In an instant, my vision was filled with black shadows and a towel was clamped over my nose and mouth.
“Eup, ugh!”
A tremendous force crushed me. And an unidentifiable, poisonous smell numbed my sense of smell, clouding my mind.
‘Am I dying again? Why?’
I felt my breath catching in my throat and my mind fading, despondent that this life had been lost again.
‘Who the hell…’
My vision finally faded and my breathing stopped. It was a perfect blackout.
“… Hhh!”
I felt my breath come back in a rush.
“She’s responding!”
“What, you’re saying she regained consciousness?”
I gulped in a deep breath and opened my eyes like a person who’s been drowned and pulled up.
“Princess has actually opened her eyes!”
“Hhhh, hhhh…”
There was a commotion around me, but I was too busy trying to catch my breath to pay attention to it.
What the hell? Am I alive?
I thought I was dead. Because I could definitely feel my breath being taken away.
Everything was so vivid, like being pressed down by scissors, and I felt like I almost blacked out for a second and then opened my eyes. I woke up in a room that was strangely bright and unfamiliar.
‘… It’s not my room. Is this a dream? Or the afterlife, what’s that?’
I rolled my eyes in disbelief: an ornate bedroom with high ceilings, and people surrounding the bed I was lying on, staring nervously at me.
“Alicia, are you awake?”
One in particular, a blonde, middle-aged woman in a colorful uniform, turned to me.
“… Me?”
Are you asking me? I managed to get the words out in a voice that seemed to come and go from my lips.
‘What is going on?’
There were so many things I wanted to ask. But my throat felt tight, as if it had been stuck in something for too long, and it hurt like it was going to tear apart when I let out a cracking sound.
“Alicia. I’m so glad you’re awake…”
The middle-aged man looked into my eyes as if to confirm, and gently stroked my hair. His trembling fingertips touched mine for a moment, then pulled away.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m just grateful you’re awake again.”
The crowd bowed deeply towards the middle-aged man, who furrowed his brow and suppressed his intense emotions.
“Your Majesty, we’re cutting you a break!”
… No, this is wrong.
I gazed around in disbelief, speechless, and then, in a fit of desperation, surreptitiously pinched my thigh as hard as I could from under the covers.
“Ouch!”
Tears stung my eyes as the pain ripped through my flesh.
“Princess, are you all right?”
“Courtier, what are you doing, without checking her condition?”
“Princess, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, could you look at this light?”
I rolled onto my side and rubbed my thighs together quickly, then opened my squeezed eyes.
… If this isn’t a dream, what the hell is it, and why does he keep calling me a Princess, and what the hell is Alicia?
The words began to ring in my ears. The hand that had been rubbing my thigh came to a screeching halt.
‘No way…’
At that moment, an unknown sensation flashed through my mind.
“Princess?”
“Alicia?”
I woke up in a strange place after a near-death experience, and they called me by a strange name. Different, yet so familiar, as if I had been there before.
My vision cleared, and I saw a disheveled blonde and slender white hand on the bed.
‘It’s not my body.’
The hand trembled in front of my eyes, as if it were shaking in response to my emotions.
I stared at the hand, ignoring the commotion around me, and then squeezed my eyes thightly.
***
Sure enough, it was the second possession.
“My God… You’ve been bedridden for seven years, and you’re so healthy, it’s a miracle!”
It’s been a month since I opened my eyes, but ‘Norman’ of the palace is still thrilled every time he sees me.
I thought it would take a long time to recover after being bedridden for so long, but I am already healthy enough to lead a normal life.
“It’s because everyone has taken such good care of me.”
“Oh, Princess… Huhuhu.”
“… Isn’t it time you stopped crying?”
I stared at Norman in bewilderment, who at first had become thoughtful and trembled every time I opened my mouth, and now burst into tears whenever I said anything.
“I’m sorry this old man has been so disrespectful. The way you’re trying to get along despite the fact that your memory isn’t intact is really touching my heart, so I’ve had enough…! Ughh.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Now, in the old days, you would have told me to get out of here where I was showing my tears, but you’re even listening to me like this, this old man, even if I were to die tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to afford it!”
I swallowed my laughter as if I knew what he was talking about, wondering if all the pent-up emotions he’d been holding back were about to burst.
‘I heard that people became kind when they died and came back to life.’
It was a comment about me that I could hear in my ears even when everyone around me was quiet.
