Chapter – 02
Rowena Whitfield.
An orphan from the Townsend Orphanage who had just turned ten in time for Thanksgiving.
Until very recently, that had been the only sentence used to describe Rowena.
There was nothing particularly special about her.
She was simply an ordinary orphan girl, completely unremarkable.
If it had been another child, perhaps there might have been something to add, such as freckles or ginger hair.
But neither of those things applied to Rowena.
In the first place, even the name Rowena was simply the name assigned to the eighth orphan in line at Townsend Orphanage.
So what could possibly be special about her?
However, Rowena had exactly one secret she had been keeping.
She had been reincarnated into a book!
No, to be more precise, I suppose I should say that I have the memories of my past life.
Of course, Rowena had not known from the beginning that she had been reincarnated inside a book.
In fact, it had only happened very recently.
A few days ago, on Thanksgiving.
The orphans of Townsend, who had no idea when they had actually been born, celebrated their birthdays on this day.
They would stick candles rather haphazardly into a huge cake, then have five or six children sit around it and blow out the candles while looking at one another through the bars of candlelight.
But during Rowena’s birthday celebration that day, she suddenly collapsed without even managing to blow out her own candle.
Was it because she had been exposed to too much cold wind?
Perhaps it was because she had ignored her teacher’s repeated warnings not to roll around so much in the grass.
No one knew the exact cause.
For some unknown illness, Rowena suddenly collapsed.
She remained sick for three whole days and nights before finally waking up.
Maybe I’m really unlucky.
That was what Rowena thought.
There were two reasons such a thought had suddenly occurred to her, despite the fact that she had never thought herself unlucky even when people had insulted her for being an orphan and hit her over the head.
The first was that the illness that had kept her sick for three days and nights was apparently a serious, incurable disease.
The elderly doctor in the village, who had always been rather fond of Rowena, delivered what was essentially a death sentence while her fever had not even completely gone down.
“If it is the disease I believe it is, this child has five years at most. There is no hope for this illness. There is no medicine for it either… You would be wise to prepare yourselves mentally.”
Poor thing.
The doctor clicked his tongue sympathetically as he said this, then gently patted Rowena’s little head a couple of times.
Up until that point, Rowena hadn’t thought anything about being unlucky.
The old man must have finally lost his marbles.
That was all she could think as she glared resentfully at him with her feverish head.
And really, could she be blamed?
Rowena was only ten years old.
What kind of thing is that to say? If I only have five years left to live, that means I’ll die when I’m fifteen. But I’m perfectly healthy!
Until the moment she suddenly collapsed, Rowena had been bursting with energy.
So once this fever went away, there was no doubt that she’d be energetic again.
Rowena secretly pouted.
What an ignorant old man. Next time, even if I find two four-leaf clovers, I’m not giving you one. And I’m not sharing my boiled eggs with you either.
Though, come to think of it, I’ve been having strange dreams lately…
Perhaps it was because of the fever.
While she was sick, Rowena had an incredibly strange dream.
A dream in which she lived in a completely unfamiliar world she had never seen before.
It was vivid.
Strangely familiar and nostalgic, too.
I can barely remember the details now…
But there was one scene from the very end of the dream that she remembered perfectly.
She had been crossing a street while reading a novel she liked on a small device called a cellphone.
And then, of all things, a truck came and hit her.
The sensation of being struck by the vehicle had been so vivid that merely thinking about the dream made her shudder.
It really was such a vivid dream. I even remember the contents of the book I was reading before I died.
It had definitely been a book about a female protagonist who was diagnosed with an incurable illness and given only a limited time to live.
What was the name of that disease again?
Um…
“…Lily Disease. This child’s illness is Lily Disease.”
Right!
It had definitely been Lily Disease!
Its symptoms began with an extremely high fever severe enough to cause the patient to lose consciousness. After the fever subsided, there appeared to be no particular symptoms, but gradually…
“That’s right. At first, the patient develops a high fever severe enough to lose consciousness. After the fever goes down, there don’t seem to be any other symptoms, but gradually, white spots begin to bloom across the body. Eventually, the entire body rots away, and the patient dies.”
“…Huh?”
A dazed voice faintly escaped Rowena’s cracked lips.
That day was exactly three days after Rowena had turned ten.
It was the day she was diagnosed with an incurable disease and given a limited time to live.
And it was also the day she discovered that she had been reincarnated as an extra character in a book she had read in her previous life.
I really wanted to cry back then.
Remembering the past, Rowena nodded solemnly to herself.
It took a little more time after that for her to completely reconcile the memories of her past life with the reality she now lived in.
During that period, the fact that Rowena secretly sniffled and cried every night was a highly classified secret.
It was bad enough being reincarnated as an orphan. And now I have an incurable disease, too!
It had already been a week, but even now, thinking about it made her feel wronged and miserable.
However, it was still too early to despair.
Fortunately, Rowena knew the entire story of this book!
Which means I also know what the cure for Lily Disease is.
But it was still too early to celebrate.
Because the cure for Lily Disease would not appear for another seven years.
The book Rowena had been reincarnated into was titled Until the Lilies Wither.
It was usually shortened to Until the Lilies Wither, or simply Lily Wither.
It was a typical dark romance story in which a beautiful, terminally ill heroine—beautiful as a single lily—went through all sorts of hardships among several men who developed an abnormal obsession with her.
The fact that the heroine only has a limited amount of time left to live was especially important.
She contracts Lily Disease and travels to the capital in search of a cure.
There, she becomes entangled with the male protagonist, the story’s hidden mastermind—the only person in the entire empire who possesses the cure.
And that is where her suffering truly begins.
In particular, the mastermind male protagonist, Seymour, was abnormally obsessed with the heroine, which meant that she went through an enormous amount of suffering.
They said it was because she looked remarkably similar to his dead wife.
He mistook her for his wife come back to life and clung desperately to her.
And as a result, the heroine was the one who suffered.
In fact, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that most of the hardships in Lily Wither were caused by that very mastermind.
At least she was eventually saved by the male protagonist at the end…
Anyway.
The important thing was that the cure for Lily Disease appeared seven years later.
And that was precisely when the story of Lily Wither began.
At that point, it became known that a new medicine Seymour had imported from abroad was a cure for Lily Disease.
The heroine then came to meet him, and that was where the entire story began.
You might think that at least it was fortunate that the cure eventually appeared.
But no!
By then, I’ll already be dead!
Fortunately—or unfortunately—the elderly doctor who sometimes shared boiled eggs with Rowena had once served as an imperial physician before retiring to his hometown due to his age.
That was why he had been able to recognize that Rowena had Lily Disease.
But…
Then his diagnosis that I’ll die in five years must be accurate, too.
What good would the cure do once it appeared?
By then, Rowena Whitfield would already have been erased from this book forever.
Rowena had nothing more than the same disease as the heroine of Lily Wither.
She was merely an extra.
So she couldn’t expect some miraculous stroke of luck like the heroine, who managed to cure her incurable illness at the perfect moment.
Rowena stood in front of a mirror.
The little girl reflected in it had moderately short, wheat-colored hair and was staring back at Rowena with deep green eyes.
Her complexion had completely recovered from the signs of illness.
Her cheeks were plump, like a doll stuffed with an excessive amount of cotton, and her skin had a pleasant, apricot-like flush.
Seeing herself like that made her feel choked up all over again.
I don’t want to die.
I’m still alive.
But if she wanted to survive, she needed the cure.
And I need it much earlier than it appears in the original story.
But how?
She had spent the entire week sniffing and worrying over the problem.
No matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t come up with an answer.
The mastermind, Seymour, is a duke. And I’m just a little orphan girl.
Getting the cure wasn’t even the problem yet.
Simply meeting him was already a huge obstacle.
First you had to look up at the sky before you could reach for the stars, and she had to meet Seymour before she could even begin thinking about getting the cure!
But in this tiny child’s body, as an orphan without a single penny to her name, finding a way to approach Seymour seemed utterly hopeless.
Isn’t there any way?
Rowena pressed her plump, baby-soft cheeks with both palms and sank into serious thought.
At that very moment, the church bell rang outside the window, announcing noon on Saturday.
Dong—
Then the door suddenly flew open, and a girl around Rowena’s age poked her head into the room.
“Rowena! Are you ready?”
“Huh? Ready?”
She had been so preoccupied with thinking about what to do next that she had completely forgotten something.
When Rowena blinked her large eyes, the girl giggled.
“Honestly, you must still be out of it from being sick! Today is the day we go volunteer at the homes of the people who sponsor the orphanage!”
“…Oh.”
Only then did Rowena remember.
Townsend Orphanage regularly sent its children to visit the homes of its benefactors, where they would perform volunteer work such as singing songs or keeping them company.
And today was one of those days.
“You looked distracted even during morning assembly. Hurry up and get ready! We’re going to the Hayworth estate today, so you need to make an extra effort!”
“…Hayworth?”
Rowena unconsciously muttered the name.
The girl nodded emphatically.
“That’s right, Hayworth! Hurry up and get ready if you don’t want the strict old mistress to find fault with you!”
Bang.
The girl closed the door and left.
But Rowena remained standing there as though she had been rooted to the spot.
Hayworth.
The moment she heard that word, a passage from the book suddenly came back to her.
[-The only person capable of handling Seymour, who was arrogant beyond measure, even to some extent, was his mother-in-law, Lady Hayworth, who was practically like a mother to him.]
Lady Hayworth!
A smile slowly spread across Rowena’s little face, which had been downcast only moments before.
That’s it! I can meet him through Lady Hayworth! How did I not think of that?
She had found a way to meet Seymour!
