Saved Him, Now I'm Obsessed (10 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 15
Simmons opened the tin box’s lid as if it were familiar to him, popped a buttery-smelling cookie into his mouth, chewed it in one bite, and then spoke with a troubled expression.
“Hmm… I’m not sure if I should even be telling you this… You do know, don’t you, that to serve in the Imperial Household for a long time, one must keep one’s mouth shut.”
It was the same thing he always said whenever he started sharing various stories connected to the royal court. Despite saying this every time, he always went on to spill everything—after all, carrying so many secrets while being tight-lipped by nature was inevitably exhausting.
“Of course. I understand very well. I also know that the reason you’ve been respected and employed by the Imperial Household for so long is precisely because you guard secrets so well.”
“Ha ha. As expected, only Miss Jane understands me. Since I know you wouldn’t recklessly spread this around, I’ll tell you. Truth be told, I’ve been wanting to confide in someone.”
I gave him a reassuring smile—the very same expression I usually wore to give anxious patients hope that they could be healed. It worked well on Simmons too.
“Though, to be honest, it’s already common gossip throughout the capital. Do you know about Lady McKane saving His Highness Prince Daniel from nearly being trampled by a horse?”
I nodded at his words. The story of a delicate noblewoman stepping in front of a wild horse to rescue His Highness had become quite famous.
“I’ve heard a rough version of the incident… But why was that horse acting so wildly? They wouldn’t normally put His Highness on a dangerous horse—He nearly suffered serious harm!”
“In truth, that horse belonged to Crown Prince Ian.”
“His Highness the Crown Prince’s horse?”
“Yes. It was a horse long trained by His Highness Ian himself. Originally a wild stallion—stubborn and unwilling to submit to just any master—but Prince Daniel insisted on receiving it as a birthday gift and stubbornly tried to ride it against everyone’s advice…”
So it seemed this whole mess had stemmed from the prince’s unnecessary stubbornness. Only poor Lady McKane had gotten hurt trying to save him.
“Is she doing all right?”
“Lady McKane, who performed such a heroic act, shows no signs of recovery…”
“Well, being thrown by a panicked horse like that…”
Apparently, there was little hope she’d regain consciousness.
“The Imperial Court is still holding official meetings, struggling to decide how best to reward her. Meanwhile, His Highness the Crown Prince remains troubled by that dream and personally instructed this old man to come check on you, Miss Jane…”
“I’m perfectly fine, as Chief Steward Simmons can clearly see.”
He nodded in satisfaction at my words. To calm his still-shaking hands, I poured him a bit more brandy into his cup.
He thanked me and took another sip. As he drank his tea, his eyes suddenly drifted toward the grandfather clock tucked away in a corner of the apothecary.
“By the way, about that grandfather clock…”
“Oh… It really doesn’t fit here at all, does it?”
In this modest pharmacy—packed tightly with medicinal herbs in every nook and cranny, without even a single small ornament—the golden dragon-adorned clock stood out starkly.
“It’s not that it doesn’t fit… It’s just that people who own items decorated with dragons, the symbol of the Emperor, are quite rare.”
“That’s true.”
Jane merely smiled vaguely to brush it off.
That grandfather clock had been gifted to her great-grandfather by the Imperial Household. Originally, it had been decorated with genuine solid gold.
But as the family fortunes declined, they sold the golden dragon and asked a carpenter friend to carve a wooden replica, painted gold to match the original design.
It was an item her grandfather had never been able to part with, even while wandering from country to country.
By now, the rain had considerably lessened. Simmons neatly folded the blanket he’d draped over his shoulders, placed it on the chair, and stood up.
“Then I should be off. I must inform His Highness the Crown Prince that Miss Jane is perfectly well.”
“Please take care on your way.”
Even as I saw Simmons off, I still thought the incident involving Lady McKane had absolutely nothing to do with me.
I viewed it merely as a tragic event involving a young lady—never imagining her fate would soon become my own.
[This is the timeline separator]Moving an ornate silver-tipped pen—so exquisite that merely holding it felt like an honor—I wrote smoothly across the fine paper.
“Upon reflection, there’s more than just one or two suspicious things.”
Had nothing extraordinary happened to me, these would have been ordinary, forgettable days. But since I’d actually died and awakened in someone else’s body, even the smallest details now weighed heavily on my mind.
“Moreover, this jumbled memory is also strange…”
What I was writing down now was everything that had happened to me over the past month—the month before I died.
“My memories really are fragmented.”
Of course, no one remembers every past moment down to the second; memories are naturally fleeting and evaporate easily. But my recollections from that month were absurdly chaotic.
I’d only realized just how scrambled my memory was by pure coincidence.
While talking with Ileina, the Portree Festival came up. The Portree Festival is a celebration where people throw red powder at each other to dispel misfortune for the coming year.
On that day, the streets fill with a red haze. Everyone wears white and tosses red powder at one another—an impressive sight, yet one I, as an apothecary, never welcomed.
The pharmacy always became busy with people suffering eye pain from red powder or injuries from being swept up in the crowds.
The fact that I remembered absolutely nothing from that day—spent treating people completely covered in red powder—was clearly abnormal.
That was when it started: when I first felt uneasy, wondering if I’d forgotten something truly important. It felt like wandering through a foggy forest. That’s why I was forcing myself to dredge up and organize my memories.
“So right now, what seems odd is Ian’s prophetic dream about me being crushed by a dragon and the Chief Steward’s remark about ‘the day the dragon descends to earth, casts magic, and departs’—does that mean all this is somehow the dragon’s magic?”
The utterly unrealistic notion of a “dragon” momentarily paralyzed my thoughts, but I still wrote it down—since the very event that happened to me was already unrealistic, perhaps its cause was equally so.
Strangely, my memory of the night the pharmacy caught fire remained unclear. Ironically, the only vivid memory was of being pinned beneath the dragon-shaped grandfather clock.
I had a vague sense that someone had entered the pharmacy that night… But with my memory in such disarray, I couldn’t solely blame an intruder for the fire. My memories weren’t clear enough—I might mistakenly accuse an innocent person.
“Still, I should write it down for now.”
As I prepared to continue my list, I instinctively moved the pen tip toward my tongue, then suddenly froze.
“If my tongue and teeth turn black, Ileina will be shocked.”
The ink used in the apothecary was cheap and full of impurities. After writing just a few characters, the nib would dry and clog.
When writing lengthy texts, I’d often moisten the nib with my saliva to prevent the ink from clumping. But the ink here in the mansion was different.
It flowed smoothly without drying quickly, so there was no need to wet the nib with saliva. Yet out of habit, I’d almost touched it to my tongue—such habits, formed over a lifetime of poverty as an apothecary, weren’t easily broken.
Suddenly, irritation flared up.
“Honestly, why does that month’s memory even matter? Just adapting to this body is already overwhelming enough to kill me…”
I grumbled, flinging the pen down onto the paper.
“I thought nobles just relaxed and enjoyed life! Do I even need rules for breathing?!”
Feeling an irrational surge of anger, I downed the cold tea in my cup in one gulp.
After hearing the attending physician’s diagnosis that I’d lost my memories, Ileina decided to re-teach me all the basic etiquette expected of a noble lady from the very beginning.
I’d protested, asking why I had to learn such empty formalities, but it was useless. She insisted nothing was more important to a noble than dignity.
Faced with her firmness, I reluctantly nodded. Since I was no longer Jane the apothecary but Claire the noble lady, I had to accept this new life.
I usually didn’t resist learning new things and was confident I picked them up quickly. I was certain I’d master noble etiquette in no time—but that was merely my arrogance and a grave misconception.
When I suggested first studying the theory from books, Ileina handed me a volume titled “Etiquette of the Social World.” It was an enormous tome of 380 pages.
Seeing my dismayed expression, Ileina added matter-of-factly, “This is this year’s edition. A revised version comes out annually, but social trends change even faster, so you’ll need to learn the important parts hands-on. Just treat this as a reference for basic manners.”
Though I’d been confident I’d learn quickly, that only applied to acquiring new knowledge—not to unlearning a lifetime of habits.
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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