“Do you really not remember anything? Not even me, your brother?”
The large man said this while pointing to himself, as if he was indeed my brother. Did I have a brother I didn’t know about? No, my grandfather had never mentioned any half-siblings to me.
My parents had married young, had me, and then died in an accident soon after. It was impossible that I had a hidden sibling.
“I don’t have any siblings…”
Not even any relatives. Since my grandfather passed away ten years ago, I’ve been living alone. The idea of having a brother was absurd.
“What in the world is going on!”
“Are you sure you treated her correctly?”
The man claiming to be my brother grabbed the healer by the collar, shouting at him. The healer, lifted off his feet by the enormous man, looked pitiful.
Well, it was a common occurrence. Patients’ relatives often lashed out at pharmacists or healers in anger.
I understood their feelings, but healers and pharmacists couldn’t easily cure every illness. However, explaining this to patients or their guardians was even more challenging.
Regardless, since the man’s anger seemed to be about me, I tried to calm him down with a steady voice.
“Please don’t use force… Wouldn’t it be better if you explained things so I could understand? Intimidating the healer won’t make me this Claire person. So, start with an explanation. Why are you calling me by that name?”
“Claire….”
The large man, with tears brimming in his eyes, threw the healer aside and looked at me with a pitiful expression. His expression was like a tragic heroine, but his actions…
It was strange to see such a grown man crying so childishly. I felt guilty, even though I had done nothing wrong.
But in this situation, wasn’t the healer, sprawled on the floor and coughing as if he might die at any moment, the most aggrieved?
I had thought healers were treated better than pharmacists… Well, life is the same everywhere, I guess. Putting aside my sympathy for the healer, I turned to them for an explanation.
“Do you prefer me to call you ‘Little Cherry’ like when you were young?”
The man, with his eyes red and swollen from crying, asked me. I looked at him as if he was the most ridiculous person in the world.
“Cherry?”
“Little Cherry… Your hair was a deep pink when you were young, so you looked like an unripe cherry… You were as tiny as the smallest circle in the world and so cute. Of course, you still are…”
He sobbed, his voice cracking. I felt as if I was dealing with someone delirious with fever. Maybe it was the man, not me, who needed medical attention…
My hair is indeed reddish, but it’s a dark red, more like a ripe cherry, not an unripe pink one.
Moreover, ‘tiny’? I was always on the taller side, faster in development than my peers. I’ve never been called ‘little’.
Especially not by this man, whom I met for the first time today. Since when were we close enough to use such nicknames?
Even funnier was that the three other people in the room, excluding me, were looking at me as if they couldn’t understand, as if it was perfectly reasonable for me to be Claire or Little Cherry.
It was frustrating. Surrounded by people insisting on calling me Claire instead of Jane, I almost felt like I was the one who was mistaken.
“What in the world is this…”
Even stranger was that my hair, which fell long below my shoulders, was a pale pink, almost like an unripe cherry, just as they said.
And my usually stiff, red hair? When I ran my fingers through it, it felt soft as expensive velvet.
“Even my fingers are small and delicate…”
The hands attached to me were small and pale like those of a noble lady, without a single scar.
Not the rough hands I had, marked from handling herbs, but as if they’d never touched water in their life. They felt alien to me, and I flexed and unflexed them repeatedly. Awkward, but they moved according to my will.
“So, you’re saying I’m Claire?”
“Yes, Claire McKain, my little Cherry…”
Ah, this ‘little Cherry’ thing again… But it seemed like this body wasn’t mine, and I couldn’t keep insisting I wasn’t Claire in front of these people who acted like the world was ending whenever I said something.
But Claire McKain… That name sounded familiar…
“Sorry, I’m a bit out of it right now… Could you tell me more about who I am? And also introduce yourselves?”
I asked the large man and the beautiful woman.
They introduced themselves awkwardly. The large man was ‘Shuri McKain’, Claire’s brother, and the woman in the sky-blue dress was ‘Elaina McKain’, his wife.
And I was introduced as their only sister, ‘Claire McKain’.
Claire McKain. The name was certainly familiar. Where had I heard it before…
I struggled to recall. It was a name that had been frequently mentioned in the Carlobanian Empire recently.
About a fortnight ago, during a hunting event hosted by the royal family, Prince Daniel, Ian’s brother, almost lost his life. His horse, startled by something, had thrown him off.
As the frightened horse reared up to trample Daniel, who sat on the ground with a terrified expression, everyone was too stunned to react.
That’s when a young lady bravely threw herself at the horse to save him.
This lady, who made a name for herself, was Claire McKain.
Thanks to her, Daniel only suffered minor bruises. Claire, however, was seriously hurt.
She was kicked in the head by the horse’s leg and had been unconscious for almost a fortnight. Rumors were that she might not survive; some even said she might have already passed away…
The problem was that these people here were calling me ‘Claire McKain’, not ‘Jane’.
It wasn’t until I asked for a mirror that I was sure. This body was not Jane’s but belonged to a lady I had never seen before.
I understood why Shuri McKain called her ‘little Cherry’ when she was young.
With her pink hair, small stature, and round features – eyes, nose, mouth – all perfectly shaped, Claire McKain was indeed, a ‘little Cherry’.
‘But it’s shorter and paler now. More importantly, what happened to me?’
I rubbed the back of my neck, which was beginning to throb with a headache, trying to recall my last memory.
Although not clear, I remembered being crushed under a clock decorated with a golden dragon in my burning pharmacy.
‘Have I died and entered the body of this lady named Claire? Then, what about Claire herself?’
Lost in thought, the physician, having regained composure, explained my condition to the others.
“It seems that Lady Claire sustained damage to her memory when she hit her head during her fall. We cannot yet determine if it is temporary or permanent.”
The physician diagnosed me with ‘amnesia’. It was a reasonable diagnosis for someone who couldn’t remember her own family or herself.
I had no complaints about his diagnosis. Even if I tried to explain, ‘I’m not Lady McKain, but a commoner pharmacist named Jane!’, they would probably just consider me delusional instead of amnesiac.
‘Inside this body is McKain’s lady, but the one inside is me, Jane.’ Who would believe such a thing?
It seemed unrealistic even to me. If I explained it, they might think I’m possessed and call a priest. And what if the priests sprinkle holy water? Would I be exorcised and Claire return? But no, Claire was likely already deceased.
Even if I disappeared, it would be hard for her to come back. Considering the high mortality rate in horse-related accidents and her being unconscious for a fortnight, survival seemed improbable.
Worrying about being exorcised made me feel like I was indeed possessed.
But what about my own body… Better not to think about it. It wasn’t a minor fire, and surviving such a massive blaze unscathed was unlikely. I decided to stop imagining further.
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
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