The Radiant Young Lady of the Dark Family - Chapter 1
“A hero who protected the Empire from the Great Demon…… a peddler?”
As Julie was reading the newspaper, spelling out each word, she hesitated at the name written in elaborate cursive. Theo interjected.
“That’s not it, it’s Wolfgang Lamberth.”
He read the name as if to show off, crossing his arms, implying she couldn’t even read that.
“I knew you were slacking off in your Imperial language studies.”
Irritated by Theo’s arrogance, Julie puffed her cheeks and muttered.
“Must be nice to know how to speak a foreign language.”
“Of course. It’ll become even more important in the future. Not just Lord Lamberth, but also the warrior Oswald and the strategist Malana. They all exert influence across the entire continent, beyond just the Empire.”
Theo mimicked what the tutor had said during their last world history lesson, not missing a single word.
Proud of this fact, he shrugged his shoulders, and Julie snorted.
“Imperialist.”
Despite her words, the Empire’s stories were of interest to everyone, enough to make the front page of the main newspaper in the Kingdom of Yursia.
Especially when it came to those three people Theo mentioned.
“They’re over forty, but they’re incredible people.”
As Theo’s praise, deepened by the recent world history lessons, was about to continue, a woman caught Julie’s eye.
A woman in a wheelchair had been sitting in front of the greenhouse terrace, though it was unclear how long she had been there. With pale pink hair and porcelain-white skin.
At a glance, she had a faint impression as if she might disappear into the light. She was the wife of their recently deceased uncle.
At that moment, Julie, as if suddenly remembering, looked at the still excited Theo and asked quietly.
“Come to think of it, isn’t our aunt also from the Empire?”
She was a woman who had been the mistress of the Count’s household since before Julie and Theo were born.
However, her presence was so faint that even young Julie knew she was called a ‘ghost’ among the servants.
Julie stared blankly at that pale pink ghost.
“Her maiden name was certainly Hartbisa Cellie.”
Whenever the wind blew through the open window, Hartbisa’s hair would sway like scattered cherry blossom petals.
Julie, mesmerized by the sight, unknowingly opened her mouth.
“Should we go ask her?”
Theo, as if just now noticing their aunt’s presence, stared at her intently before nudging Julie’s side.
“Don’t. Aunt’s family was exterminated long ago.”
“Ah.”
Julie finally recalled the stories the servants had been gossiping about.
Although everyone was hushing it up, after their uncle’s death, rumors spread as if their aunt had killed him, saying that murderous blood doesn’t change.
Julie too had heard those ghost-story-like tales.
It was said that before their extermination, the Cellie family, their aunt’s family, wouldn’t hesitate to kill innocent civilians if it was the Emperor’s will.
But for someone who was supposedly from such a dark background, their aunt, sitting there like a painting, looked incredibly delicate.
As Julie kept staring at her aunt, Theo shook his head slightly and advised.
“Don’t bother her. They say she’s not in her right mind due to the accident’s aftereffects. She’s a pitiful person.”
“But still.”
Just as Julie’s curiosity was persistently clinging, a maid approached their aunt.
“Madam. Let’s go inside now.”
It seemed she had been out for a short walk, as their aunt soon disappeared with the maid.
Just before their aunt returned to her room, Julie’s eyes met hers. Although she quickly averted her gaze, Julie thought their aunt was an incredibly beautiful woman, wondering why she hadn’t noticed before.
Despite her gaunt appearance, she looked like a prince’s first love straight out of a fairy tale.
Perhaps because of this, Julie tilted her head in confusion.
“But why did aunt marry uncle? Uncle was ugly.”
Her muttered words were filled with genuine incomprehension.
***
Hartbisa raised her heavy body and sat up, leaning against the headboard of the bed.
Since the carriage accident, even moving alone was not easy, so sitting in a wheelchair and strolling around the Count’s mansion once a week was all she could enjoy now.
Hartbisa remembered what the doctor had said to her when she woke up alone right after the accident.
“It’s a miracle that you’re alive.”
It was an accident that occurred on the way back to the Count’s mansion after an outing with her husband.
As the carriage fell off the cliff, the coachman and her husband died instantly.
Originally, she should have died there too, but Hartbisa didn’t die.
The vassals reproached her, who had returned alone alive, saying she was living a useless life without even bearing a child, and among the servants, there were even ominous rumors that she, born with the blood of a ‘demon’, had finally killed her husband.
But none of these words reached Hartbisa’s ears.
Because an even bigger shock had struck her.
“That accident made me remember everything.”
Hartbisa murmured softly to herself, gently closing her eyes.
As her vision turned pitch black, vivid memories soon arose like blooming flames.
She had been sold off to marry into a Count’s family in the Kingdom of Yursia right after her coming-of-age ceremony. Although it was an unwanted marriage, the reason she endured stubbornly was clear.
She didn’t want to bring shame to her family.
“Hartbisa, you are the face of the Cellie family there. Remember, if you act stupidly there as you did here, you’ll be disgracing the family with your own hands.”
Her aunt, who raised Hartbisa in place of her mother, pressed down on her shoulders and repeated those words countless times until she left the family.
“I’ll take care of the family, so you just focus on your behavior there.”
She believed those words, but before a few years had passed, the family was exterminated.
Her father and younger sibling died, and all the property was taken by the vassals and her aunt, who didn’t even write her a single letter.
The feelings she felt when she heard about her family’s death from a servant’s mouth.
“You already knew, didn’t you? How could you not tell me a single word? Let me go back to the Empire, at least to hold a funeral.”
“What for? It seems you want to spread rumors about inheriting that dirty blood, but I won’t let you disgrace my family.”
Unable to make a single ally in the Count’s household, she couldn’t even attend her family’s funeral.
After that, Hartbisa withered away like a plant, left with only a shell in a corner of the Count’s mansion.
But ridiculously, all these misfortunes were the contents of a romance fantasy book she had read long ago, which she realized belatedly.
Hartbisa suffered from severe headaches right after waking up from the accident. The doctor said it was an aftereffect of the accident, but it was different.
At first, she saw unfamiliar images in fragments, and later, someone’s entire life flashed before her.
A petite woman working as a writer for a broadcasting company, it didn’t take long to realize who she was.
‘It’s me. Me before I was born as Hartbisa in this story.’
Sometimes when she looked at the scattered flower petals outside the window, she thought: Although this life is fading away like this, if there’s a next life, I’ll live differently.
But the past life that came to mind mercilessly trampled even on her small wish.
The woman in her memories believed that her spotlight would come soon, even as a much younger junior launched a program first and her senior won a broadcasting script award with her idea, enduring and persevering.
And the spotlight found her in a different way.
The vote manipulation incident of a survival competition program she worked on with her senior.
The incident was the doing of her senior who had taken bribes, but the senior directed all the arrows at her without a moment’s hesitation.
“You think I took that money just to do well for myself? What do I lack? It’s all because of you. Look at yourself, unable to have your own program even after eight years because you lack ability.”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you think anyone would have taken you in if it weren’t for me?”
At that moment, her heart sank, and it felt like the ground was crumbling beneath her.
It seemed meaningless, all that she had endured and persevered for until now.
But what was most unbearable was herself, unable to give any answer to her senior’s words.
Recalling her weakness in trying to understand her senior even in such a situation made her completely disgusted with herself.
Not wanting her life to be ruined any further, she decided to visit a lawyer’s office, but on the way, she had a traffic accident.
That was the end of her past life.
Hartbisa gently opened her eyes, pushing back the darkening final memory.
A shabby room came into view. It was a room so poor it didn’t seem like it could be the mistress’s room of a Count’s household.
Hartbisa smoothed out the worn blanket with one hand.
In her past life and in this life, she was stupidly used and betrayed, ultimately left alone.
All the memories that surfaced right after the accident seemed to tell her, who didn’t have much time left in this life, to give up. That even if there is a next life, it wouldn’t be any different.
Hartbisa touched her dry eyes. She thought tears might form at her pitiful state, but they had dried up long ago.
