I was foolish to be lost in memories.
Lowell’s feet stepped on the dead garden. She watched from beyond the shadows as the garden rapidly lost its life. She witnessed the complete disappearance of her memories, of the evidence that someone once loved her.
She felt suffocated the entire time.
Why? Was she recalling the Hessen fire here?
‘It’s just a memory.’
A memory that should have disappeared 10 years ago, now rightfully reaching its end.
Yes, that’s all it was…
But why did it hurt her heart so much?
She took a few steps and a red petal caught her toes. Bending down, Lowell picked it up.
In the colorless garden, this petal, plucked earlier, remained red. Soon, it too would become like the rest of the garden. But having fallen early, it alone survived the garden’s fate.
Much like herself.
Only this petal would prove that red roses once bloomed here.
Only this would testify that life once existed in this space, now turned to ashes.
Only…
‘…only me.’
Tears streamed down Lowell’s cheeks. She hurriedly wiped them away, but they quickly soaked her face again. Laughing at her own tears over a mere dead garden, feeling kinship with a single plucked petal, was absurdly foolish!
She, who remained unshaken through the harshness of Operetta, was now shaken by a soon-to-die garden. The fact that she still harbored tender longing, that she reconsidered her revenge for such shallow emotions, felt damnably stupid!
‘Yes, I was foolish.’
Peter’s thoughts don’t matter. The reason the Hessen house burned, my father’s wrongdoings, the real story behind it – none of that matters. How ridiculous to wonder about such things now!
Why should Lowell know the reasons, the circumstances of the perpetrators?
‘Knowing won’t bring back the dead.’
It won’t diminish the lives lost in vain, nor erase the past decade!
Thinking of the day she faced her burned home, Lowell felt so ashamed she could barely breathe. If anyone deserved to die, it was her, not the people of the Hessen house.
She was ashamed of surviving every day, waiting to die while everyone else perished.
What would her unjustly dead family say, seeing her now?
Would they scorn her for carrying the world’s pain, acting like she’d die tomorrow, yet she’s the only one alive?
Every night, Lowell prayed in her dreams. She knelt before the burned house, begging her family, the dead servants.
‘I’m sorry for being the only one alive.’
Yet, she didn’t choose death. Lacking the courage to face her family, she clung to her memories with Peter and survived pathetically.
But that Peter, the boy in her memories that kept her alive, was her target for revenge.
That fact alone made Lowell a sinner again.
If she was guilty for surviving before, now every moment she recalled Peter to live was her sin.
Peter, by his mere existence, easily turned her into a sinner.
Knowing this…
‘I again…’
I couldn’t let go of this petty hope and became a sinner again.
My hesitation was foolish.
Lowell’s face, now drained of any mirth, was colder than before.
After escaping through Rene’s shadow, she spoke.
“Rene, I need a favor.”
The black cat was already standing on Lowell’s shadow. Lowell felt that the cat’s golden eyes seemed to be smiling. But then, she always remembered Rene with a smiling face, so maybe that was to be expected.
She lightly dropped the petal she was holding and continued.
“I need you to fetch something for me. Send it to Devona, not Ruben.”
There’s a shortage of maids. The cat’s black tail swayed slowly as it listened to Lowell’s instructions and her subsequent words.
No verbal response was given, but it wasn’t needed. The mere disappearance of the shadow familiar in the blink of an eye was enough for Lowell to read it as an affirmative signal.
Exiting the shadow familiar always brought a similar sensation.
A disagreeable feeling, like pulling oneself out of a clinging mire.
As Rene retracted his power, his view shifted swiftly from the imperial palace to the Martineck mansion.
The silver-haired gentleman, leaning back in his chair, smiled lightly as he fully returned to his surroundings. A servant standing beside him spoke up.
“You seem in good spirits, Master.”
“Ah, Ruben. I was quite lucky today. Such days are rare.”
He could have burst into a merry tune, so elated was his demeanor as he stood up. Buttoning up his vest, donning his leather gloves, and ringing a small silver bell, his every action was the epitome of aristocratic grace.
Soon, there was a knock at the door. A woman with short lavender hair entered.
“Did you call for me, Master?”
Her name was Devona, a servant who had followed Annette around Operetta, having her life saved by her. Now, with Annette gone to the palace, she was effectively unemployed.
“Devona, Annette is calling for you. It seems she needs someone to attend to her.”
“Really? I’ll leave right away…”
“Ah, as eager as you are, there’s something you need to take with you. Annette specifically asked for it to be sent with you.”
Ex-husband Wants Reconciliation
One-line summary: Chasing the wife to the crematorium (making an effort to attract someone who has become indifferent), the female lead doesn’t look back, the second male lead takes the position.
Intro:
To repay the kindness of the older generation, Su Mu crossed into a female-dominated world and became a live-in daughter-in-law of the Yan family, single-handedly saving the Yan family from fire and water.
But her husband, Yan Jiyue, the eldest son of the Yan family, treated her with sarcasm and never showed her a good face.
It wasn’t until after Su Mu’s death that this pampered and arrogant young master shed a few fake tears and pretended to want to die for love.
This life’s kindness was enough. If there was a next life, she would definitely kick Yan Jiyue away.
Who knew that the heavens would be so kind as to allow her to be reborn, returning to the time when she had just married into the Yan family.
Su Mu glanced at the Yan eldest son, who still spoke coldly to her, and threw a divorce letter in front of him.
“Let’s divorce!”
***
Yan Jiyue never imagined that he would be reborn. He happily went to find Su Mu, wanting to make up for the mistakes he had made in his ignorant youth.
Wasn’t the reason the heavens allowed him to be reborn to let him reconcile with Su Mu?
But when he pushed open the door to Su Mu’s room, the person lying on the bed was another man.
Su Mu’s personal attendant, Xie Yi.
Yan Jiyue hated him so much that his teeth itched. In front of Su Mu, Xie Yi was a gentle and considerate whisperer of sweet nothings, but in reality, he was vicious-hearted and deliberately sabotaged their husband and wife relationship.
In the previous life, it was he who secretly hid in Su Mu’s coffin and committed suicide, stealing a step ahead of him to be buried with Su Mu.
Yan Jiyue’s eyes were filled with hatred as he cursed, “What kind of thing are you? Your background is lowly, what right do you have to occupy Su Mu?”
Xie Yi looked at the sleeping Su Mu and no longer pretended to be a whisperer of sweet nothings.
He proudly stuck out his belly, “I have the right because my belly is capable of giving the Wife-master a daughter.”
***
Yan Jiyue was consumed with jealousy. He spread rumors that Xie Yi had once been branded with the mark of a “harlot” on his chest.
But on the night Xie Yi cut off the flesh bearing that mark, Su Mu suddenly realized something was amiss.
“How did you know the exact moment I was poisoned? And why did you show up a month early?”
Xie Yi remained silent, blood from his wound soaking through his robes. His sapphire eyes brimmed with anguish – or was it just a flawless act?
Between a once-arrogant husband now seeking redemption, and a gentle soul willing to die for her – who truly held the darkest secrets? And could it be that Su Mu and Yan Jiyue weren’t the only ones given a second chance at life…?
[Reading Guide]
1. True divorce, chasing the wife to the crematorium, the female lead doesn’t look back, the male lead is Xie Yi.
2. The ex-husband did not cheat, he just realized too late and didn’t realize that he liked the female lead.
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