Summer Must Die (16 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 15
Thud.
I lowered my head, following the fluttering strands of brown hair.
Mary’s face, collapsed on the ivory carpet, was unnaturally pale.
No one would help her. Because Mary was an anomaly in this world—an anomaly that had created yet another anomaly.
After that, even Summer’s memory grew hazy.
Frantically sobbing, she dragged Mary and hauled her onto the bed, then yanked the bell cord—but no one came.
“Somebody… please…”
Mumbling incoherently, not even knowing to whom she was speaking, Summer clung tightly to Mary.
She was terrified—terrified of absolutely everything, too scared even to speak the words aloud.
In her frenzied state, Summer didn’t even hear the door opening.
“Young miss?”
Startled as though she’d seen a ghost, Summer leaped up at the cautious voice calling her.
Only then did she realize there was another maid in the room besides Mary and herself.
“Please… please help Mary…”
“You don’t mean…”
The maid’s gaze drifted toward the open window. Only now did Summer notice the curtain slightly torn loose during her struggle with Mary.
With an air of deep concern, the maid carefully approached Summer and checked her for injuries.
“Young miss! Could it be… could it really be…?”
“Please save Mary…!”
“Mary?”
“Yes. I’m begging you, okay?”
“Good heavens! I’ll go fetch the physician at once—just a moment!”
Only then did the maid finally grasp the seriousness of the situation upon seeing Mary collapsed, and she hurried out of the room.
The physician who arrived afterward was startled first by the audacious maid lying on the young lady’s bed, and startled a second time by the maid’s deathly pale complexion.
Fortunately, Mary regained consciousness not long after the physician’s visit.
After that incident, Summer was confined to a storage room with no windows. Her heart was utterly shattered—tangled like a hopelessly knotted thread.
Yet apparently, this damn book wouldn’t allow her to die on a whim, after all.
The moment she started throwing tantrums about dying, the characters—who until then had parroted their scripted lines—finally began reacting.
A maid arrived again today, carrying soup.
Summer sharply turned her head away. It didn’t matter what they thought; after all, they were merely puppets in a story.
Their emotions and thoughts would vanish as soon as the story reset and returned to the first page. Only Mary felt slightly different.
“Do you… have a life of your own?”
“What do you mean, young miss?”
The maid, startled by the unexpected question as she set down the soup, was the very same one who had fetched the physician for Summer that day.
“Why did you do that back then?”
The maid pondered Summer’s words carefully, realized she was referring to that day, and answered:
“Because you looked like you were about to jump.”
Speaking with firm resolve, the maid pushed the small table with the simple meal right up to the edge of the bed.
Clearly, the state of the room made everything painfully obvious.
But that wasn’t what Summer wanted to ask.
“That wasn’t your scripted line, was it?”
“Excuse me?”
“You weren’t supposed to be remembered by me.”
The maid had no name. Her face was as featureless as an egg—no eyes, nose, or mouth.
Summer had felt a strange kinship with this extra, knowing the maid hadn’t chosen this life either.
This world flowed precisely as its Creator—the author—had ordained.
And those who hadn’t received the Creator’s favor became “nameless existences,” filling empty spaces without even a name to call their own.
“Young miss?”
“Ah…”
Summer blinked slowly, her eyes opening to find the plain but deeply worried face of the maid filling her vision.
…Huh?
Summer reached out and gently stroked the maid’s brown hair.
She now had eyes, a nose, and a mouth—her face now clearly showed an expression of curiosity. Summer studied the maid’s features carefully:
Round eyes, a small rounded nose, and tiny lips moving softly.
“You look just like a daisy.”
“A flower? That can’t be. But thank you for the compliment, young miss.”
The maid beamed with a bright smile. Summer stared at her, dazed.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m just… me.”
As expected—an existence without a name. After a moment of silence, Summer spoke carelessly:
“Then I’ll call you Daisy.”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Daisy, young miss.”
Satisfied by the maid’s changed reply—perhaps because she’d experienced something similar with Mary—the fear she’d felt back then was now replaced by a sense of gladness.
When someone called your name and remembered you, you could exist—as a living, breathing being.
Because the male lead remembered Summer, the extras began perceiving her as a living existence and responding accordingly.
Because Summer imagined Mary and recalled her name, Mary was born—her head practically bubbling over with it.
And when Summer called out “Daisy,” Daisy became Daisy.
After Daisy left, Summer lifted the soup bowl and filled her mouth.
It was savory and delicious.
“…Is it too selfish to hope that even after I disappear, you’ll keep on living?”
Summer let out a faint laugh along with her quiet murmur. It seemed even in a world like this, she couldn’t help growing attached—as a human would.
[This is the timeline separator]Thanks to Daisy, Summer soon regained her strength.
Seeing her improved condition, Earl Lindsey and his wife allowed her to return to her original room.
The moment her body fully recovered, Summer began forming her next plan.
After all, there was still plenty of time before the male and female leads fell in love and married.
It would be best to leave before her soul fully took root in this body—but with about half a year remaining, there was no need to rush.
Having sorted her thoughts, Summer pulled the bell cord.
“I’d like to go for a walk. Please get me ready.”
The maid who entered was Daisy. Summer deliberately avoided meeting her eyes—Daisy’s gaze was brimming with an eager brightness that made Summer uncomfortable.
“That’s a wonderful idea! Fresh air will lift your spirits.”
“It will. The weather’s lovely today. Spring must be here already.”
Indeed, just as Summer said, the weather outside was perfect.
The sky was blue, and a few white clouds drifted lazily across it.
The rustling of green leaves sounded like music, and with each gentle breeze, a faint floral fragrance drifted in.
The Lindsey estate was famed for its springtime beauty.
In truth, the family’s atmosphere was as gentle and warm as spring itself. Seeing such scenery, even a demon might turn into a soft, white soap bubble and float up into the sky.
Daisy seemed genuinely excited about the walk.
“Right? Especially the spring scenery here—it’s breathtaking! That’s probably why Duke Bertrand came to visit today.”
Ah, that person.
Summer nodded. Duke Russell Bertrand. In the story, he was just as crucial as Julian and Ian.
Though he had no romantic plot with the female lead, he consistently supported her actions.
Because of this, readers often commented that precisely because he lacked a romance subplot, they wished even more fervently for him to have one.
A translucently beautiful man with deep blue hair and light violet-tinged blue eyes—
in an empire that revered purple as the color of nobility, Russell Bertrand was clearly born to be adored.
‘He definitely saw me.’
Of course, as one of the main characters, he might be capable of recognizing Summer.
Yet during the main episode where even Julian couldn’t perceive Summer, Russell had been the only one watching her from afar.
When she was with Julian, she’d felt like a mere extra—sharing that strange sense of kinship.
But when Russell looked at her and opened his mouth to speak, it felt entirely different.
For the first time, Summer felt like a main character herself—accompanied by the foreboding sense that something significant was about to happen.
“Hmm… I won’t cross paths with Duke Bertrand, will I?”
Summer muttered anxiously. Ever cheerful, Daisy caught even this whisper and instantly replied:
“I heard the Duke is having lunch with the Earl first, and afterward he’ll only take a brief stroll around the nearby area, so your paths shouldn’t cross.”
“Good. Please help me get ready for the walk.”
“Then I’ll prepare sandwiches and juice!”
Daisy clapped her hands together with pure joy. *Sorry*, Summer silently apologized.
To her, this was merely a return to her original world—but to them, she would simply be a cold, lifeless corpse.
‘Ah… or maybe not?’
Would the soul meant for this body arrive and settle in peacefully? If so, that would truly be the happiest of endings—
because then no one would have to grieve.
“Young miss, shall I brush your hair?”
“Go ahead.”
After Daisy left, the usual nameless maids entered—spouting their preordained lines—and began assisting with her grooming.
Summer had been waiting for this moment. This was precisely the time when the maids would chatter mindlessly about how wonderful a walk sounded while dressing her up.
It was during just such a walk that she had previously witnessed Mary’s transformation.
“Young miss, you truly are stunning!”
“…”
After a few strokes of the brush, her hair shimmered and swayed gently around her waist.
The maids applied light makeup and fastened flower-shaped earrings. Summer’s hair was pinned up with golden hairpins.
Once dressed, Summer quietly surveyed the many gowns hanging in the dressing room.
Normally, she’d choose the simplest, most comfortable dress—but today was different.
After the other maids left, Summer asked Mary, who had just entered:
“Can you dress me more extravagantly?”
Mary, acting as if it were only natural, approached and began recommending various gowns.
“How about this green one?”
“Nice.”
“The orange would suit you too. And the wine-red.”
“Hmm… I’ll take that one over there.”
After much deliberation, Summer chose a deep blue dress.
Mary’s expression flickered with confusion—after all, strictly speaking, deep blue didn’t suit Summer particularly well.
But so what?
‘If I like it, that’s all that matters.’
Summer let out a small smile as the blue fabric slipped softly into her hands.
By the blue lakeside, wearing this blue dress—
she would soar back to her own world.
And there she would live, forevermore—in her own world.
She would never again touch this novel. Never.
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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Hahaha what a stubborn male lead, leave her alone.
They’re always like this, thay think it is always about the male lead.