TMLWA Chapter 2
Anne staggered through the center of the hazy desert, walking the crossroads to heaven.
As the pieces of life passed by, they turned out to be as common and worthless as grains of sand.
Those who possessed precious gems were simply born with them, only those who could walk such paths.
For Anne Ferro, who had wandered between sand dunes and survived being buried alive, it was a different life and existence.
Maybe it’s okay to die.
Under the bright sky, amidst the landscape filled with blue and yellow sand, the scent of ash and fire brushed against her nose.
“Whether it’s heaven or hell, just get me there!”
Anne raised her hand bravely and shouted.
As the wind intensified between the sand dunes, Anne, covered in white cloth, leaned against the sand dune to avoid being swept away by the whirlwind.
Whoosh.
Sand began to fill from her toes, wrapping around her calves, thighs, buttocks, waist, shoulders, and arms.
“Huh-?”
As the swirling sand wrapped around her head, Anne began to be buried alive.
Death wasn’t a new world of light. What kind of heaven was it in a place full of suffocating and hazy sand?
Anne closed her eyes again, longing to meet her departed family.
* * *
“Anne-.”
“…?”
“Wake up if you’re awake.”
A woman with a faint blush and a mole on the right side of her lips looked down at Anne. Even her melodious voice seemed familiar.
“Casey?”
“Yeah. It’s your turn this morning.”
“…What?”
“If you’re any later, the housekeeper might come and slap your cheeks.”
At the mention of the housekeeper, Anne instinctively sat up. It was a reflexive action before making a rational judgment.
As Anne got up, she saw the cramped and shabby room with four beds tightly packed together.
One person was sleeping in the corner, and the other was already gone. Casey, upon confirming that Anne had awakened, lay back down and closed her eyes.
Am I not dead?
In a hurry, Anne dressed in maid attire like a familiar page from the past and rushed to the kitchen in the servant hall.
The kitchen, with its dim light reminiscent of night, was silent and still before the sun rose.
Fortunately, it seemed not too late.
“Bread is your responsibility, Anne.”
After briefly assigning tasks, the housekeeper left. Anne found herself staring at the pile of flour in front of her, surrounded by countless question marks.
I’m dead, aren’t I?
Is this a new hell?
Am I being punished for something I did over a dozen years ago?
“Madam said she liked the wheat bread you made, so stick to that today.”
As the housekeeper spoke, she left the bag of flour and walked away.
As she opened the bag of flour, Anne wandered around the kitchen basement, where her body remembered the space filled with familiar ceilings, utensils, and memories.
“Anne, stop being distracted and work. If you’re late, the madam will be displeased.”
The kitchen was busier and more chaotic than Anne remembered. Both the housekeeper and the butler were bustling around, assigning tasks.
It was a busy time because there was an event at the noble’s house.
Even though household affairs were mainly the responsibility of the ladies, managing external affairs alone was no easy task.
Especially the vast estate of Viscount Benton, one of the empire’s top nobles, took over half a year just to patrol.
“It’s been only a year. I wonder how much more splendid he has become.”
“Since the Viscount wanted a noble from his hometown for the Viscountess, he could bring him here now.”
“Would the madam just stand by? There are more than a few nobles in the capital who want to court the Viscount.”
“What time will he arrive? I heard he’s arriving this afternoon.”
Anne, placing rounded dough pieces on a wooden board, wiped the trembling tension from her fingertips on her apron.
At 23 years old, the Viscount’s son was late in returning to the estate for a reason. The reason it took not half a year, but a full year, and why he arrived not in the afternoon but well into the evening, was because today was the day a new, unwelcome family was visiting the estate.
Anne knew that the bread she had worked hard to make would eventually end up cold on the dining table and be consumed by the mouths of the servants and footmen.
Had he truly returned?
I thought I was dead, but to come back in time like this.
Anne looked down at her flour-covered fingers, her ringless ring finger feeling empty. But she liked the smooth fingers with no trace of anything, not even memories.
“Hurry up! It’s a busy day today!” the housekeeper urged, cutting through the chatter of women in the kitchen.
“Yes!!” Anne bit her lip and brushed away her distractions while kneading the fresh dough. Whether he came or not, it had nothing to do with her.
Now, she would never build a relationship with him again.
I was nothing but a grain of sand in the desert, a truckload of uncounted wheat in a pile of flour. Even buried in the earth, I was different from the man who eventually held the jewel that emitted light.
Gray Benton. He was the illegitimate child of Viscount Benton.
And he was the only man Anne had ever loved with all her heart.
The only sweet and sparkling part of Anne’s life was the time she spent with him, and even the most painful memories were about him.
Anne was sold as a maid to the Viscount’s estate from her aunt’s place, where she had been living to support her younger brother, who had lost his parents at an early age.
So she had lived, enduring all sorts of hardships since she was 15 years old. It was at the age of 17 that she met Gray Benton.
Led by the Viscount’s son, who was patrolling the estate, he was only 13 years old, the second son of the Benton family, who had come to the Viscount’s estate as a guest.
But he seemed to have no place to attach himself. Everyone around him was strange and difficult.
Neither the Viscount nor his son paid attention to him due to their work, and the Viscountess was too busy to treat him as her son, let alone show him any affection.
No one in the Viscount’s estate embraced him, and the servants didn’t take care of him either.
They weren’t starved, but they didn’t provide better and more luxurious ingredients, and they didn’t even have a maid or governess to comfort the frightened child who cried at night.
Only Anne, remembering her lonely younger brother enduring it all alone at her aunt’s house, secretly reached out to him.
She secretly gave him the expensive snacks that only the Viscount and his wife ate, and she even told him bedtime stories until he fell asleep when he cried and ran out into the corridor at night.
So the boy quickly developed an affection for Anne.
It was only natural that a lonely boy would attach himself to the only protector, like a mother or sister, who showed him kindness.
Anne cared for the boy like a mother, and after learning of her brother’s death two years later, she poured all her affection for her brother onto the boy.
When the man and woman, who filled each other’s empty spaces, grew up to become adults, becoming lovers was as obvious as seeing fire.
When Gray turned 19, Anne was around 23 years old, at the height of her youth.
There was no one in the Viscount’s estate who didn’t know the subtle atmosphere between the two.
Especially Gray’s blind affection was so evident in his eyes that even the servants looked at Anne with worry and envy.
“You’re way past the age to get married.”
However, no matter how half-hearted, the Viscount’s wife couldn’t marry a child of the Viscount to a maid.
She believed it was time to cut off Gray’s puppy love for Anne.
Just then, he was hardly ever home, as he was attending the knight academy.
Taking advantage of a busy period, the Viscountess intended to send Anne away from the mansion now.
