My Dear Aster

And Lihen Copland woke up.

She looked at the ceiling, looked at the duvet covering her, and then looked at the ceiling again. That ceiling wasn’t the appalling ceiling in Baron Hadley’s bedroom that she saw every time she woke up for 23 years.

‘Home……?’

It was her home, the mansion of Viscount Copland. This is the room she used before she got married. Lihen wondered.

She was seriously injured in a carriage accident. The coachman and her maid died instantly. It must have been heaven’s help that saved her life. Her consciousness seemed to come and go.

<The heaven helped save her life.>

<The heaven has already helped her once, so won’t it help her twice? Save her life.>

<Unless it’s a miracle…….>

She remembered listening to her husband and the doctor talking back and forth.

She vaguely remembered seeing her daughter’s crying face and her husband’s worried expression.

It was very painful. The pain was so excruciating that she couldn’t even tell where it hurt or where it was painful. She could only vividly feel that her daughter was holding her hand tightly.

She also remembers her daughter saying something in her ear. However, it was unclear whether that really happened.

Now both her eyes were open and she was feeling well. Did she get better while she was unconscious?

Why is she in her parents’ home? This room must have been turned into her niece’s bedroom.

Or was the accident a dream? Then it was a terrible dream, Lihen thought. Her memory was hazy. Did she fall asleep here after coming to her parents’ house?

She slowly reached out of the duvet. Then the door swung open.

“Miss! Get up now.”

“Nanny?”

Lihen asked in surprise. The nanny strode over to her and snatched the duvet.

“Today is Monday! Are you not going to class?”

“Nanny, how……?”

The nanny died six years ago. When Lihen looked at her with a dumbfounded face, the nanny reached out in fluster and touched her forehead.

“Miss, are you feeling unwell?”

“No, no. I’m fine. I’m fine……. But, nanny should be dead? I, because of an accident…….”

“Did you have a dream? You don’t have a fever……”

She asked worriedly. Lihen then remembered what her daughter had whispered in her ear.

<Mom, don’t forget, if you live again……>

Did she live again?

Or is her life flashing before her eyes after hearing that?

Lihen sat there in a daze, clutching the hem of her nightgown, and rolled over the bed and jumped past her nanny. Then she ran barefoot and checked the mirror first.

“Oh my gosh.”

She looked at her face and took a deep breath. There was a girl’s face that she never thought she would see again.

“Miss?”

This time, she hurriedly headed for her desk. She didn’t care about the nanny seeing, and opened the secret book with the lock and took out the diary from it.

Oh my god.

Lihen Copland was now 19 years old.

＊＊＊

It was October. October at the age of nineteen means it’s time to graduate from the academy.

By royal decree, all nobles of the Kingdom of Elda were required to enter the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen.

The boys received a proper education in politics, economics, theology, swordsmanship, and other considerations for their family and future.

There were a few exceptional cases.

Even commoners could enter the school if their parents were very wealthy or were gifted with extraordinary talents and intellectual abilities. Sometimes, a noble family selects a talented commoner boy from an early age and educates them with their heirs or supports them separately.

Most importantly, however, was the case of being born with magical talent.

Among the reasons why girls were admitted to the academy were their rare magical abilities, which are difficult to find in ten thousand.

But they couldn’t let a handful of wizard girls attend an academy full of boys. It was even more so because there were girls from noble families among them.

That’s why the academy started accepting female students.

But while the academy wanted to teach magic to girls with magical talents, they didn’t want them to compete with boys in other areas.

Thus the academy taught the girls one or two kinds of art according to their sophistication, manners, and tastes as ladies.

<You will learn what it takes to be the mistress of a family in the future.>

During the academy’s entrance ceremony, the dean always tells this to the female students.

Even so, it was not so important an education that they couldn’t miss a single day. The young ladies knew it best.

After graduating from the academy, marriage awaits. On the contrary, this was important to the girls.

Following this custom, Lihen entered the academy at the age of fourteen. And she is about to graduate.

When she graduates, she will soon be introduced to Harold Hadley and get engaged.

‘Again……?’

She thought so in a daze, sitting in the carriage and looking out the window.

Viscount Copland was neither particularly wealthy nor poor in comparison to other noble families of similar status. There was tradition, but there was no history of having meritorious people or producing archmages.

He had one vote in the House of Lords[1], but his influence was only one in hundreds. Lihen’s father, Viscount Copland, was also actively involved in politics. He was honored for his integrity and uprightness, but he was far from powerful because he was not good at walking on a tightrope or as a schemer.

So did Lihen. She wasn’t a girl with a pretty face or outstanding grades. She was not overflowing with talent and was not skilled enough to glimpse into a man’s realm or succeed in her own family business. The only thing that was special about her was that she was tall for a woman, and wearing high-heeled shoes would cause her head to rise above that of a shorter man.

Growing up, she was loved by her parents and lived with her classmates without thinking about the future. After graduating, she met Harold, the eldest son of Baron Hadley, through matchmaking by her father’s friends. Within two months, she got engaged, and then married after a year.

The marriage wasn’t great either.

Harold was a man of integrity. He kept his family’s fortunes well, and did not start a reckless business or waste money. He did not gamble, become an alcoholic, smoke opium, nor was he crazy and spent money on courtesans.

He was a hard-working man. He found a small but stable source of income, saved money, and loved his daughter. He didn’t even have an illegitimate child.

That was the great pride of Baroness Hadley ― Lihen’s mother-in-law.

<Where in the world can you find a husband as good as my son? One who doesn’t cheat, gamble, or fail in his business, making you poor? He is kind, faithful, and good to you.>

From Lihen’s point of view, he wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t a perfect husband either. Instead of wasting his money, he tried to save the lace on his daughter’s dress, and instead of drinking, he didn’t know the joys of life.

He occasionally sent jewels and baskets of flowers to Lihen, but he considered it futile to buy her clothes, dress her up, and take her out. He was also indifferent to making time to travel or spend quality time with his family.

He seldom found pleasure outside the house, so he would not engage in horseback riding or even picnics, let alone men’s hobbies such as fishing and hunting.

As her mother-in-law said, he did not have nor raise a lover. From time to time, however, he went to an event with his friends, and it was not considered an affair.

He wanted to be filial to his mother, but his method was usually to tell Lihen, “Go somewhere with my mother.”

His face was ordinary, and so was his body. His stature was rather short. He was the same height as Lihen, so she had to wear her wedding shoes in flats with no heels. As he grew older, his hair was balding and his belly came out, but Lihen didn’t even point it out because she had no expectations for her husband’s appearance.

Perhaps Harold was also dissatisfied with her, but the couple were courteous to each other and didn’t talk about it. It’s just that they don’t go out together more often, which was originally less, so by the time their daughter went to the ball, they didn’t go out together at all.

There was nothing exciting about life with Harold. During the engagement, she had already given up on the sweetness of newlyweds. It was a boring and tedious life. Conversely, it also meant that Harold had given her a stable life enough not to suffer from ups and downs.

The only thing unusual about her life was that her daughter was born with magical talents. However, the talent was also a little vague, ‘It’s not bad, but there’s no need to pay tuition to learn it to the end’.

Still, that child was Lihen’s incomparable joy.

<You don’t have to give birth to me.>

It was just a joke, so she didn’t really think about it, but did she know something and say something like that?

Or is the conversation stuck in her mind and she is just dreaming of this?

If not, was Baroness Hadley’s life a dream?

Lihen thought it wouldn’t be the last one. She could remember more vividly the day before the carriage accident than in October when she was nineteen. She could recall everything that had happened during the birth and raising of her daughter. If she was a real nineteen-year-old girl who had never had children, she couldn’t have dreamed in such detail.

However, the time that unfolds before her is not a dream, but a reality.

<Mom, don’t forget, if you live again……>

She remembered the whispers of her daughter she had heard in the face of death.

The moment she remembered it, she rushed out like a wanderer. The nanny followed and screamed.

“Miss! Miss Lihen! You’re not wearing an outer garment!”

“Mother! Father!”

There was something she really wanted to do when she lived again. She had told her daughter about it before.

Before her mother died, she couldn’t tell her that she loved her. Her mother became deaf and irritable once she turned seventy. She became annoyed when she was talking with her because she couldn’t hear. However, her mother didn’t like being alone in silence, so she made her talk to her and she shouted at her from the side, but she still couldn’t understand.

Every time she went to meet her mother, she screamed because she was frustrated, and by the time she left, she was exhausted, so instead of saying “I love you”, there were many cases where she just beckoned “I’m leaving.” It was the same the last time they met before she died.

“Mother!”

But the Viscountess was not in the room. Lihen asked the Viscountess’ maid, who was organizing her clothes.

“Where is Mother?”

“She went out early in the morning to look at the flowers. The flowers for the garden party the day after tomorrow were wrong, so she decided to go to the flower garden herself. But Miss.”

“Okay!”

Lihen retorted and ran out again. And this time she rushed to the Viscount’s study.

“L, lady! You can’t go inside in your nightgown!”

A passing maid shouted, but Lihen couldn’t hear it properly.

She doesn’t know how long it has been since she ran to the point of running out of breath. It has been a few decades.

She burst open the study door. Viscount Copland stood up in surprise.

“Lihen?”

“Father…….”

Lihen was in tears.

The last image left in her memory of Viscount Copland was when he had dementia. He was a man who looked like he was going to die sitting upright forever. But seeing him rapidly age and turning into a child was very painful.

The Viscount eventually fell down the stairs and died. He died unexpectedly at an unexpected moment, and his head was broken and the undertakers covered his head with a black cloth so as not to see him like that.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“Father!”

She jumped into his arms. Viscount Copland was startled, so he accepted and hugged her, hurriedly looking around to see if there was anything to cover her.

Lihen sobbed. She couldn’t remember when was the last time she had been hugged by her father. Probably during her childhood before she entered the academy.

“Lihen, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

Viscount Copland asked cautiously, feeling awkward. He didn’t know what was wrong with his grown-up daughter, but it seemed like something big had happened, so he turned his eyes and told the guest.

“Lord Schudermel, I’m sorry, but will you wait here for a while? I’ll be back soon.”

“Yes. I don’t mind.”

Lihen stiffened in surprise. She was so caught up in the thought of her mother and father that she had just run over, not knowing that there was a guest.

Of all people, it was Lord Schudermel. She had no idea that Schudermel and her father were acquaintances. It didn’t matter anyway.

She was barefoot and bare-faced, dressed only in her nightgown. It wasn’t a proper chemise gown[2], it was a real chemise[3]. At this moment, she realized that even the ribbon on her chest had been untied.

Oh no. She couldn’t lift her head off the chest of Viscount Copland. If she looked up and made eye contact with Schudermel, she felt like she wanted to die. Instead of making up for her mistake by living again, she had a huge accident that she didn’t even commit in her previous life.

Schudermel Laft was her first love.

TL Notes:

          [1] The House of Lords is the parliament that makes up the British Parliament.

          [2] The chemise gown here refers to a loose, unfitted “round gown”.

          [3] The other chemise is a loose, shirt-like garment worn by women in the European Middle Ages under their gowns or a smock (women’s underwear).