IBDF 02

Chapter 2

Rowena Whitfield.

An orphan from Townsend Orphanage who had just turned ten this Thanksgiving.

Until not long ago, that single sentence was all there was to describe Rowena.

A perfectly ordinary orphan girl with nothing particularly special about her. That was who Rowena was.

Other children might have been described as having freckles or ginger hair, but those things had nothing to do with Rowena.

To begin with, even the name “Rowena” was simply the eighth orphan name used by Townsend Orphanage, so what could possibly be special about her?

But Rowena had exactly one secret she kept hidden.

She had reincarnated into a book!

‘No, more accurately, I should say I retained memories of my previous life.’

Of course, Rowena hadn’t known from the beginning that she had reincarnated into a novel.

In fact, she had only realized it recently.

A few days earlier, on Thanksgiving Day.

The orphans at Townsend, none of whom knew their real birthdays, celebrated them all together on that day.

They would stick candles haphazardly into a large cake, five or six children sitting around it, blowing at one another’s faces through the bars of candlelight.

But while celebrating her birthday that day, Rowena suddenly collapsed before she could even blow out a single candle meant for her.

Was it because she had spent too much time in the cold wind?

Or perhaps because she had ignored the teacher’s scolding not to roll around in the grass so much?

No one knew the exact reason, but Rowena had suddenly fallen ill with an unknown disease.

After suffering through three days and nights before finally waking up—

‘Maybe I’m really just unlucky.’

That was what Rowena thought.

There were two reasons why such a thought, one she had never entertained even when people mocked her for being parentless and hit her over the head, suddenly came to mind.

The first was that the illness which had bedridden her for three days and nights was a serious incurable disease.

The old village doctor, who usually doted on Rowena quite a bit, delivered a death sentence to her before her fever had even fully subsided.

“If this is the disease I think it is, the child will live at most another five years. There’s no hope for this illness. There isn’t even a cure… You’d best prepare yourselves.”

“What a pitiful thing.”

Clicking his tongue sympathetically, the doctor patted Rowena’s small head a few times.

Truthfully, even then, Rowena hadn’t really thought about luck or misfortune.

‘Looks like Grandpa’s finally gone senile.’

That was all she thought, glaring resentfully through fever-clouded eyes.

And reasonably so—Rowena was only ten years old.

‘What kind of nonsense is that? If I only have five years left, that means I’ll die at fifteen. But I’m perfectly healthy!’

Right up until the moment she collapsed, Rowena had been bursting with energy.

So once the fever passed, she would obviously go right back to being healthy again. Rowena pouted inwardly.

That clueless old man. Next time I find two four-leaf clovers, I’m never sharing one with him again. I won’t split boiled eggs with him either.

‘And my dreams have been strange lately too…’

Maybe it was because of the fever. During her illness, Rowena had very strange dreams.

Dreams of living in a completely unfamiliar world she had never seen before.

Oddly nostalgic and familiar dreams, vivid beyond belief.

‘I can barely remember the details anymore…’

But there was one thing she remembered vividly—the final scene of the dream.

She had been crossing the street while reading her favorite novel on a small device called a smartphone, when suddenly a truck hit her.

Even the sensation of being struck by the vehicle had felt so real that remembering the dream made her shudder.

‘It really was vivid. I even remember the contents of the book I was reading before I died.’

It was definitely a novel about a heroine suffering from an incurable disease and living on borrowed time.

What had the disease been called again?

Uh…

“…White Lily Disease. That’s the name of the illness.”

Right. It had definitely been White Lily Disease!

Its symptoms began with a fever so severe the victim would lose consciousness, and after the fever subsided, there would seem to be no symptoms at first, but gradually—

“That’s correct. At first there’s a high fever severe enough to cause unconsciousness. Once the fever fades, there won’t seem to be any symptoms, but little white blotches will gradually appear on the body. Eventually, the flesh rots away, and the patient dies.”

“…Huh?”

A dumbfounded sound escaped Rowena’s cracked lips.

That day was the third day after Rowena had turned ten.

The day she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

And the day she realized she had reincarnated as an extra in the novel she had once read.

‘Back then, I really wanted to cry.’

Recalling the past, Rowena nodded solemnly.

It had taken her a little more time after that to fully match her memories from her previous life with reality.

The fact that Rowena secretly cried every night during that period was an extremely confidential secret.

‘As if being reincarnated as an orphan wasn’t miserable enough, now I have an incurable disease too!’

Even though a whole week had already passed, the thought still made her feel wronged and bitter.

But it was too early to despair over something like that.

Fortunately, Rowena knew the entire story of this novel!

‘Which means I also know what the cure for White Lily Disease is.’

However, it was also too early to celebrate.

Because the cure for White Lily Disease would not appear for another seven years!

The title of the novel Rowena had reincarnated into was Until the Lily Withers, commonly shortened to Wilted Lily.

A typical dark romance story in which a terminally ill heroine, beautiful as a single white lily, becomes entangled with several men obsessively attached to her.

‘And the key point was that the heroine didn’t have long to live.’

After contracting White Lily Disease, she traveled to the capital in search of a cure and became entangled with Seymour, the hidden mastermind male lead and the only person in the Empire who possessed the cure. That was where her suffering began.

In particular, Seymour’s obsession with the heroine was far from ordinary, so the heroine suffered terribly.

‘They said it was because she looked unbelievably similar to his dead wife.’

He mistook her for his wife returned from the dead and clung to her desperately.

As a result, the heroine was the one who suffered.

It wouldn’t even be an exaggeration to say that most of the hardships in Wilted Lily were caused by that hidden mastermind.

‘Though she is eventually saved by the male lead in the ending…’

Anyway.

The important thing was that the cure for White Lily Disease appeared seven years later—the exact point where Wilted Lily began.

At that point, the medicine Seymour had newly imported from overseas was revealed to be the cure for White Lily Disease, and the heroine came to seek him out. That was where the story truly started.

Wasn’t it fortunate enough that a cure appeared at all?

No!

‘By then, I’ll already be dead!’

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the old doctor who occasionally shared boiled eggs with Rowena had once been an imperial physician before retiring to his hometown.

Thanks to that, he had recognized White Lily Disease.

‘Which means his prediction that I’ll die in five years is probably accurate too.’

What good was a cure if, by the time it appeared, a person named Rowena Whitfield would already have vanished forever from this world?

Rowena merely suffered from the same illness as the heroine of Wilted Lily. She was only an extra.

She couldn’t expect the same miraculous luck as the heroine, who conveniently got cured of her terminal illness.

Rowena stood in front of the mirror.

A little girl with wheat-colored hair cut not too long and dark green eyes stared back at her.

The child’s cheeks, now fully rid of any sickly pallor, were plump like a doll stuffed with extra cotton, and her skin carried the healthy rosy hue of an apricot.

Seeing herself only made emotions surge inside her again.

‘I don’t want to die.’

I’m still alive.

But in order to survive, she needed the cure.

‘And much earlier than in the original story.’

But how?

She had spent the entire week crying and thinking about it, but no matter how much she wracked her brain, she couldn’t come up with an answer.

‘Seymour is a duke. And I’m just a little orphan girl.’

Forget obtaining the cure—meeting him at all seemed impossible.

First you needed to see the sky before you could pluck a star, and Rowena had to meet Seymour before she could even think about obtaining the cure.

In this tiny child’s body, as a penniless orphan, there seemed to be no way for her to approach Seymour.

‘Isn’t there any method at all?’

Rowena pressed her chubby cheeks with both palms and sank into serious thought.

At that moment, the church bells outside rang to announce noon on the weekend.

Dong—

Then the door burst open, and a girl around her age poked her head into the room.

“Rowena! Are you ready yet?”

“Huh? Ready?”

She had been so absorbed in thinking about what to do next that perhaps she had forgotten something.

When Rowena blinked her large eyes, the girl burst into laughter.

“You really are out of it because you were sick, huh? Today’s the day we go do volunteer work at the homes of the people who sponsor the orphanage!”

“…Ah.”

Only then did Rowena remember. Townsend Orphanage regularly sent its children to the homes of donors to sing songs or keep them company as a form of volunteer service, and today was exactly that day.

“You’ve looked distracted since morning assembly. Hurry and get ready! We’re going to the Hayworth estate today, so be extra careful!”

“…Hayworth?”

The moment Rowena muttered the name, the girl nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, Hayworth! If we don’t want the strict dowager lady finding fault with us, hurry up and get ready!”

Bang. The girl shut the door and left, but Rowena remained frozen in place.

‘Hayworth.’

The moment she heard the name, a line from the novel suddenly surfaced in her mind.

[The only person capable of controlling the arrogant Seymour even slightly was the Dowager Lady Hayworth, who was practically his real mother-in-law.]

‘Dowager Lady Hayworth!’

A smile slowly spread across Rowena’s previously gloomy little face.

‘Right. I can meet him through the Dowager Lady! Why didn’t I think of that before?’

She had found a way to meet Seymour!