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Prologue
“What was I doing last night…?”
No matter how hard she tried to think, all she could remember was drinking far too much with her friends to celebrate Friday night.
She even recalled stumbling off her bed before going to sleep—but even so, there was no way it should hurt this much.
So-young slowly opened her eyes, blaming her condition on what had to be the worst hangover of her life.
“…What is this? Am I not fully awake yet?”
She blinked rapidly.
An ornate ceiling with elaborate moldings and a chandelier—something straight out of a noble mansion from the medieval era.
This was her bedroom from a past life, a place she could never return to once she left.
“What a horrible dream.”
Honestly, being chased by a madman would’ve been better.
A dream about her miserable, pathetic past life was far worse.
Just as she tried to close her eyes again to escape this unpleasant nightmare—
“L-Lady, are you awake?”
That voice…?
So-young turned toward the sound.
A woman in her early twenties stood there with brown hair and brown eyes, freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose.
“…Masha?”
Masha—her personal maid, the only person who had ever been on her side during that self-inflicted, miserable marriage—was staring at her with tear-filled eyes.
“You’re finally awake! Do you know how worried I was?!”
Instinctively, So-young tried to sit up, but a sharp pain—like her skull had been split open with an axe—shot through the back of her head.
“Ugh… what is this…?”
“Don’t you remember? You fell down the stairs yesterday.”
“…What?”
So-young’s face went pale as she groaned through the pain, eyes widening in shock.
If she had fallen down the stairs yesterday, then there was only one possibility—this was the most humiliating day of her entire past life.
“You mustn’t move. I’ll go get the physician, so please stay still, alright?”
Before she could respond, Masha quickly smoothed the edge of the blanket over her and hurried out of the room.
Left alone, So-young slowly pushed herself up, her expression dazed. She reached behind her head.
“What… is going on…?”
Under her fingertips, she felt rough bandages—and strands of hair rustling faintly between her fingers.
It was far too real to be a dream. The pain. The sensation. The weight of her body.
“…No way…”
With a stiff, hesitant movement, she turned toward the wall-mounted mirror.
Reflected there was a face she knew all too well.
Soft pink hair like spun sugar. Sky-blue eyes. A pale, exhausted face marked with heavy dark circles.
Nina Taylor, the Duchess’s daughter.
No—Nina Bayern, Duchess of Bayern.
The only stain on Duke Ash D. Bayern’s legacy… and the infamous “bad wife” of her former life.
And she was seeing herself exactly as she had been at the peak of her disgrace.
