ECD 01

Chapter 01

After My Death, Everything Changed

My funeral had begun.

Once, I had thought that I wanted the weather to be clear on the day of my funeral.

After experiencing my father’s funeral on a rainy winter day, I had thought that I did not want it to be such a miserable and cold day.

As it happened, the weather was clear today.

People dressed in black, with black veils hanging down, placed one flower at a time in front of the gravestone.

Finally, it was my turn.

I placed the white flower I was holding in front of the gravestone and lowered my head.

Who would have thought that the day would come when I would place a flower on my own gravestone?

I heard people whispering.

“How can she not shed even a single tear when her twin sister died?”

“They said she was an idiot. I guess the rumors were true.”

“I heard she was jealous of her. Who knows? Maybe she is secretly happy about it.”

“She gives me the creeps.”

“What a heartless person.”

If they were saying such things even though they knew I could clearly hear them, it meant they did not care whether I felt bad or not.

Sickly Irene, stupid Irene, the burden of the Mergen family.

Some people pitied Irene, treating her as though she had a short time left to live.

That was the behavior of what people called good people.

Most people of the Mergen family thought she was nothing more than a burden dragging the family down.

Well, hadn’t even I treated Irene that way?

An annoying, weak girl.

And now, overnight, I had gone from Deborah, the heir of the family, to Irene.

“Deborah really died……. It was right after the banquet, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t believe it. Then what will happen to the Mergen heir?”

The biggest topic surrounding my death was their concern about the vacant position of heir.

Not mourning the short and empty life that had come to an end.

I had died last night after arguing with Irene.

The doctor had announced the cause of death as acute cardiac arrest caused by poison.

My heart had stopped.

And yet, I was alive like this.

Not in my own body, but in Irene’s.

Then what about Irene?

Considering my current situation, the most likely conclusion was that she had died in my body after we switched.

That day, we had definitely switched bodies.

An ability like this was extremely rare.

It was a strange phenomenon that one could only dream of if they possessed at least the special power of the Mergen family.

But I had no reason to cause something like this.

Then, was it really Irene?

Why would kind and foolish Irene switch bodies with me?

If she had the ability to exchange souls, why had she lived all this time being treated like an unwanted child?

The questions continued endlessly.

‘Foolish until the very end…….’

My lower lip hurt from biting it tightly.

Whatever the reason, Irene had made another foolish choice.

The light pink hair falling beside my cheek annoyed me.

When I straightened my back after placing the flower down, everyone immediately fell silent as if they had never been talking.

Hypocritical people.

Then, I heard people begin to murmur again.

I followed the source of the noise with my eyes, and there was a man running toward us, his silver hair flying behind him.

He was wearing armor that did not suit a funeral at all, as if he had not even had time to change after rushing here.

“Abel!”

My stepmother, Chloe, smiled brightly when she saw him.

The people began to stir.

Abel Mergen.

My younger brother, who had constantly threatened my position as heir.

‘So he really was returning from the battlefield.’

Abel had returned from the battlefield while receiving the admiring gazes of the people, and Chloe was looking at him with an emotional expression.

As I looked at the two of them together, a suspicion suddenly came to mind.

Could Abel’s timely return to my funeral really have been a coincidence?

There seemed to be some connection between his return and my death.

I coldly looked him over beneath my black veil.

Abel ran straight toward my gravestone.

He could have at least glanced at the people he passed, but he walked past me as if I were invisible and went straight to the grave.

‘He really is heartless.’

At least, he had never been this rude to me before.

I turned my head and looked at his back as he knelt in front of my gravestone.

His shining hair fell down like a waterfall, his large body had collapsed forward, and his hands were clutching the soil.

At first glance, he looked extremely grief-stricken.

His trembling shoulders were enough to make me think that he might even be crying.

‘As if.’

Although we had been close when we were young, we were fundamentally incompatible like oil and water because he was the son of Chloe, who was full of ambition.

I turned my gaze away and started walking.

When I turned around, I saw the long line of people standing in front of me.

My grandfather, the head of the Mergen family, with his retainers gathered around him like a swarm of bees, and my stepmother and the people who supported her.

I saw the faces of nobles who had been connected to me through business, and beside them…….

‘Henry.’

I saw my fiancé.

No, more precisely, Deborah’s fiancé.

‘Our engagement will be broken.’

We had not been in love with each other.

If I had to put it simply, ours was a political relationship, and neither of us expected affection from the other.

‘In that regard, he was the perfect fiancé.’

Even at this moment, I was roughly calculating the losses that would come from the relationship being broken by my death.

But soon, I let out a hollow laugh.

What was the point of worrying about that now?

Just as I was about to turn my head away from him, our eyes met.

I lightly lowered my head in greeting and avoided his gaze.

And at the end of the direction my eyes had moved, as if I were escaping, I found an unwelcome guest.

‘Lahan…….’

Grand Duke Lahan Vahel.

He was a man who owned lands neighboring Mergen and had competed with us at every opportunity.

People called men like him sworn enemies, didn’t they?

Had he come to my funeral to enjoy my death?

Well, no matter how bad our relationship was, perhaps death could still make someone feel sympathy.

Honestly, I did not like him because his personality was completely different from mine.

He was open and straightforward, perhaps too much so, and had a transparent personality with little sense of dignity.

I had no tolerance for people like that.

‘Everyone who was supposed to come is here.’

I stopped for a moment and looked over each of the many people who had come to my funeral.

And then I thought.

‘Who killed me?’

I must not have lived a very good life.

After all, anyone I saw seemed to have at least one reason to want me dead.

Squeak.

A rough sound came from the mirror when my hand touched it.

I had been staring blankly at my reflection in the mirror for more than thirty minutes.

Skin so white that it looked pale.

Light pink hair scattered over my nightclothes like spider webs.

My blue eyes, almost completely lacking pigment, looked as if someone had moved a piece of a stream into them.

Every time I blinked, my long eyelashes trembled and cast shadows.

Suddenly, I remembered Irene’s appearance from the night I died.

“I made a recovery potion. I wanted to give it to you…….”

“Please stop doing these useless things.”

It had started with worry.

At least, I thought it had.

I had not liked the fact that she had used her already sick body to make something like a recovery potion.

“If you really thought about me, you should have attended the banquet instead of making this useless potion! That’s the only way to make people feel reassured!”

But I did not have to say it so coldly.

“I did something wrong again, didn’t I……?”

What had I said to her when she looked so dejected?

Whatever it was, it probably had not been anything nice.

“I’m jealous of you, Sister.”

After all our little arguments, those words had burst out of her like a confession, and I had finally lost my temper.

“Do you know what I hate most about you? You always make people show their ugliest side.”

I had told Irene that she made me feel dirty, as if I were the one who had done something wrong.

“Please, just stop.”

I had told her to stop acting spoiled.

That she was not the only one suffering.

That we simply lived in different hells.

So how had our conversation ended again?

“I don’t have time to listen to your complaints. If you want to whine, find someone else.”

Of course, there was no way the conversation could have ended well.

But if I had known that would be our last conversation, I would not have ended it like that.

‘Is this really reality? What if I’ve gone crazy?’

But the person in the mirror was looking back at me with a sharp expression that Irene would never have made, as if proving that this was reality.

Once the emotions disappeared from Irene’s face, which had always shown such a variety of expressions, I could finally see that she and I actually looked quite similar.

“……Irene.”

My smooth fingers, without a single callus as if they had never held a pen, wandered in front of the mirror.

When I touched the cheek in the reflection, the long sleeves of the nightclothes slipped down.

My thin wrist was revealed.

Blue veins were clearly visible through the pale arm, which looked as though it would break if someone tapped it.

I noticed needle marks on one part of her arm.

There were more than one or two.

‘Did Irene receive this kind of treatment too?’

I stared at those ugly marks for a long time before looking away.

Well, she had always been extremely sickly.

“Hah.”

My head was complicated.