ASPB 1

Chapter 1

“Gasp!”

With a short cry, Ottilie suddenly opened her eyes.

Her entire body, clothes, and even the blanket were damp with sweat.

Her soft silver hair was also wet with sweat, with strands sticking to her face as if they had been soaked in water.

‘I’m back!’

Breathing heavily like someone who had just escaped from drowning, she looked around at the familiar ceiling and the room.

Relief and confusion washed over her. At the same time, her body suddenly trembled.

‘Back? Where? Where did I return to?’

Feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, she slowly tried to gather her thoughts.

But before she could even think things through, a terrible headache struck her, making her feel as if her head would split apart.

“Ugh!”

Faint wrinkles appeared on her delicate, porcelain-like face as memories she desperately wanted to forget came flooding back.

Her fiancé, Arno, whom she had loved with all her heart.

His sudden change of heart.

“I heard the princess of Welts is incredibly beautiful. I plan to send an official marriage proposal to the Kingdom of Welts soon. In terms of both status and appearance, I think she would make a much more suitable marriage partner for me.”

He smiled cruelly.

“This is my final request. Can you grant my wish and break off our engagement, Tilly?”

Then there was another love she had struggled to believe in, Duke Rotvin.

His unbelievable betrayal.

“Otillie von Falkenberg is clearly a witch. She has been deceiving people with her beautiful face and her cunning silver tongue. Be careful of her. Who knows what other false appearances she might use to tempt people?”

He looked down at Ottilie, who was sitting in the defendant’s seat, with cold eyes.

“Lady Falkenberg, don’t look at me with those pitiful eyes. It’s truly disgusting.”

And finally, there was Tillo, her husband, whom she had thought would be her last love.

His cold indifference.

“I won’t be home for several days. Don’t wait for me, Madam.”

Without even looking back, he spoke as if he couldn’t be bothered while walking out the door.

“I heard you’re sick, but I don’t have any divine power to heal you. Call a physician. Don’t just sit around helplessly.”

Before she knew it, her mind was filled with nothing but those wretched memories.

‘Wait a minute. What are these memories? Could it be that I…?’

Ottilie jumped out of bed and hurried over to the mirror.

Her soft-looking silver hair.

Her sparkling green eyes and gentle-looking features.

Her long, thick eyelashes and small, rosy lips.

‘This is definitely my face, but it isn’t quite the same. I look much more lively and a little younger.’

Could it be…?

She picked up the calendar on her desk.

January 4, 864 Imperial Year.

“Gasp!”

Ottilie covered her mouth in shock.

“Did I… go back in time? And to when I was twenty years old?”

Overwhelmed by the shock, she staggered before collapsing onto the bed.

She tried to organize her thoughts one by one.

So…

In her previous life, the Crown Prince had broken off their engagement. The next man, Rotvin, had accused her of being a witch, and her husband, Tillo, had taken a mistress.

“Ha!”

Ottilie let out a hollow laugh in disbelief.

‘How did I end up meeting nothing but bastards like them?’

She looked around the room with a cold expression.

Everything was exactly as she remembered.

This room might have looked the same yesterday, but now she knew.

This wasn’t simply a transition from yesterday to today.

The moment she accepted reality, the green eyes gradually regained their clear focus.

Ding, ding—

She rang the bell beside her bed, and her nanny, Mrs. Verena, soon entered.

“Yes, my lady?”

First, she needed to make sure.

‘What if I’ve gone mad from the shock?!’

“Nanny, could you tell me today’s date?”

“Pardon? My lady, why are you suddenly asking about the date? Today is January 4th.”

Of all days…!

Why did she have to wake up on this particular day?

“January 4th?”

“Yes, my lady. Is something wrong?”

Her nanny asked with a puzzled expression.

“No, it’s nothing. Nanny, did I happen to receive a message from His Majesty the Emperor—no, I mean, His Highness the Crown Prince, asking to meet me today?”

“Oh my! Yes, you did. How did you know? Had you already made plans to meet him?”

Her nanny answered with a bright smile, completely unaware of what was happening.

As expected!

“No, it’s nothing. Nanny, I understand. Please let him know that I’ll be there at three.”

“Yes, my lady.”

After her nanny left and closed the door, Ottilie looked at the carvings on it.

They depicted a dragon, a young girl, and an angel.

It was a scene from an old founding myth of Philanin.

‘If angels really exist, if there really is a God, then there must be a reason why I was sent back to this day. The day Arno was supposed to tell me he wanted to break off our engagement.’

But although she clearly remembered being abandoned by those men…

‘What happened to me in the end?’

Ottilie tried to piece together her memories once again.

Soon, another unbearable headache struck her, making her feel as if her head would explode.

‘I have to remember!’

Thud, thud—

Ottilie struck her own head hard several times.

Before long, the headache began to subside, and scenes from her past started becoming clearer.

‘That’s right. That day was truly an unlucky one.’

December 27, when she was twenty-five years old.

It was the day she had met all three men.

Arno, who had become Emperor, had visited her father’s ducal residence to ask him for something and happened to run into her.

Duke Rotvin de Altenbrick had crossed paths with her by chance in the city.

And Tillo Haldin, her husband at the time, had come home after a long absence and invited her to have dinner with him.

‘And all three of them gave me boxes of chocolates, didn’t they?’

Of course, in the Philanin Empire, where she lived, there was a tradition of exchanging chocolates at the end of the year.

Back then, she had simply thought it was an unpleasant end to the year.

There was even a superstition that refusing someone else’s chocolate would bring misfortune the following year.

Although she felt uneasy about it, she eventually accepted all of them.

Never realizing that those chocolates themselves would bring her nothing but misfortune.

That night, she had stayed alone in the small tea room, planning to enjoy some tea and refreshments.

Among the several boxes of chocolates that her maid, Lize, had prepared, she seemed to have picked up the one that caught her eye first.

She put a piece of chocolate with a sweet aroma into her mouth and began chewing it with a satisfying crunch.

Just as she turned her head—

“My lady, that chocolate…”

Lize’s voice trembled.

“…was the chocolate given to you by…”

Before she could finish speaking—

Ottilie suddenly spat blood from her mouth and collapsed helplessly to the floor.

“My lady!! My lady! Lady Ottilie!! Lady Ottilie!!”

The last thing she remembered was…

Just like the heavy snow falling endlessly outside the window now, tears streaming nonstop from Lize’s eyes.

Lize had desperately reached out to catch the blood flowing from Ottilie’s mouth. She had tried rubbing Ottilie’s limp hands, holding her in her arms, and pressing her cheek against Ottilie’s face…

Lize had been completely frantic, not knowing what to do.

And her voice, crying out in unbearable grief until her throat was raw.

A little later, she heard the footsteps of people entering the room.

That was Ottilie’s final memory.

‘Who had given me that chocolate?’

No matter how hard she tried to remember, she couldn’t recall what Lize had said.

That particular part of her memory had been completely erased, as if someone had cut it out.

‘If Lize was that shocked when I ate the chocolate, then it must have been one of the three men’s gifts, right?’

Remembering the moment of her death sent a chilling shiver through her entire body.

Who was the culprit who killed her?

Who was the person who had led her into ruin and eventually pushed her off the cliff?

And how had she…

How had she managed to return here?

Ever since she had accepted the fact that she had traveled back in time, these questions had been haunting her more persistently than anything else.

‘How?’

The very possibility of such a thing was strange. It made no sense at all.

Yet what felt even stranger was how naturally she was accepting it herself.

‘Did God really give me one more chance?’

Ottilie raised her head and looked out the window.

The swirling snow had grown even heavier.

However, the thick snow piled up on the tall fir trees and the beautiful winter scenery covering the pointed spires of the ducal residence were just as lovely as ever.

Well, what did it matter how it happened?

All she had to do was protect them.

Everything.

Ottilie turned her head and looked at the small pocket watch lying on her desk.

The clock hands had already passed ten.

Her meeting with the Crown Prince was at three.

It was time to pull herself together and start preparing.

To prepare herself to kick away the tragic fate that awaited her.

Normally, today was the day she was supposed to be told by him that he wanted to break off their engagement…

‘But I can’t let that happen. Being abandoned once is more than enough.’

Morris, the Crown Prince’s butler, greeted Ottilie politely before escorting her to the glass greenhouse in the Crown Prince’s palace.

Click, click—

Listening to the sound of her own footsteps, Ottilie fell into thought.

Come to think of it, he really was a cruel man.

This glass greenhouse was the place where the two of them had met most frequently within the Imperial Palace.

In Philanin, where winters were exceptionally long, maintaining a greenhouse was no easy task, even for renowned experts. Only the Imperial Palace and a few of the most powerful noble families in the Empire had greenhouses.

Among them, the glass greenhouse in the Crown Prince’s palace was undoubtedly the finest.

It had been built over several years by Philanin’s founding Emperor for his beloved Empress.

Ottilie had always loved this greenhouse.

And he knew that better than anyone else.

She recalled the moment he had asked her to break off their engagement.

“Ottilie, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

He whispered affectionately, smiling brightly.

“Hmm? What is it?”

Ottilie looked into his gray eyes.

“Can you break off our engagement?”

In the same tone he usually used when asking her for a kiss, he asked her to end their engagement.

It had been five years since they had become each other’s fiancés after getting engaged at the age of fifteen.