Resetting Lady
A 17-year-old girl
The beginning was always the same.
A gray sky, drizzling rain and the barren garden. The bone chilling air or the mud-stained nightgown. The stinging gash on her throat or the bloody wheeze. And despite all, first of all she had to return to the mansion to avoid running into the gardener. So she abandoned the rope near her feet and headed to the passage used by maids. She failed again this time. Her teeth clenched as she pondered what went wrong this time on her way back to her room.
The room, unlike the damp hallway, greeted her with immediate warmth. Any breeze that managed to get past the thick fur quilts would fall prey to the fire that burned in the fireplace. The cozy ambience was a heaven on such a rainy day but the lady did not feel any comfort.
She clawed at her mud caked clothes and threw them into the fireplace in disgust. The fire died from the clothes' dampness and it seemed to irk her.
Cursing to herself, she gripped on the lamp at the foot of her bed and threw it into the fireplace to reignite the fire. Her breathing quickened with fury and it only rose further when she she stared at the woman in the mirror and was now certain that she had indeed failed.
She sat on a wooden chair and glared at paper and ink for a long time before actually grabbing a pen. Dipping it into the inkwell, she wrote.
117. My name is- Her grip on the pen lost. Her name. What is her name?
.
.
.
When nothing came to her mind, she sighed.
'So I have finally forgetten my name?'
A moment's resignation later, the pen finished its stroke.
Karen Heyer.
That's who she was now. The protagonist of a cliché romance novel she had read. The plot, as mentioned, was typical. Karen, the daughter of a minor fief lord, was to be wed to her relative, Dulan, in order for her family to keep the territory. But like all young noblewomen, Karen dreamt of true love, and so she broke off her engagement.
She couldn't possibly love a waif, dull looking man. After that, Karen's family fell into ruin and she was forced to be a lady-in-waiting for a young noblewoman, where she fell in love with Raymond, the said noblewoman's fianceé. Overcoming many trials and adversities, Karen and Raymond got married.
The first time when she got here, Karen followed the timeline perfectly and married Raymond, roughly a year following her arrival.
However.
The very next 'chapter', Karen was murdered through poison. The last thing she remembered was retching up blood—as crimson as her hair—before waking up at the same spot she had found herself today. Ever after coming to her senses, she could feel the burning sensation swimming in her throat.
The second time around, she stuck to the script again. Fell in love with Raymond and married him. Yet when her eyes opened, the garden was there to mock her. She had died twice and she didn't know why.
The third loop was spent staying away from Raymond, who then married another woman, and Karen applauded as a wedding guest. But after the ceremony, she died after being trampled by a horse during the wedding procession. Her whole body was mangled.
In other loops, she tried to remain single. She tried to marry Dulan. Do something, anything.
The trend never broke. No matter how the story progressed, whatever Karen did, whatever changes she tried to bring, all of it lead to her demise. Everytime, the perpetrator changed.
But not the victim.
Never the fate.
The next ten years, she tried to escape. The following twenty, how to end herself. Then the next thirty years, she tried to adapt. And the next five were spent doing nothing.
For 117 years, she had remained trapped in a year long time loop that soiled itself with her death and cleansed itself with her blood.
She didn't know what caused her to be sent back—perhaps it was when she had died or whether it was when the year long time limit had expired.
It wasn't until a considerate amount of time that she noticed a few "rules" of the loop:
1. It lasts a year and always starts in the garden on a rainy day.
2. After the year, Karen dies for whatever reason and anyone can kill her.
3. The things she held while dying would return alongside her.
The third conclusion was what helped her confirm that she had not gone mad. Her hand clenched the gold coin in her hand as if to reassure herself. After changing the carved number be 117 instead of 116, she turned her eyes at the ceiling. Her real self was now a memory of past.
Her name has been Karen for about a century. As her mind grew more than thrice as old as her body, she had lost any hope of escaping this tragic existence.
"I'd rather die, really."
"You're not supposed to say that, My Lady. A world without you is unimaginable." Nancy's chiding brought an end to Karen's mumbling. She stared into the distance as the maid brushed her hair. Karen could vaguely remember a time when she was surprised to have a personal maid. But it was too hazy to be called a memory now.
"Does My Lady dislike Father Dulan so much?"
It is not only Dulan Karen doesn't like. Everyone around her were merely ink on paper to her. It was all meaningless, fleeting because this was a novel, not the real world. But the ink here—it wasn't harmless. The ink was poison to her soul. All was endless and folly but the ephemeral moments of joy she seldom experienced. It was a short pleasure spanning for even less than a page.
She chuckled inwardly. As malnourished as Dullan looked, he had a worse personality. The stammering mess of a...man was clumsy, ugly and a tad bit misogynistic given his position as a priest in this rather conservative setting.
"He is ugly."
"But you're promised to him since childhood. And he knows you better than anyone." The maid said in a placating tone.
"Then you have him. Let me have your man. I heard he's handsome."
"Oh? What are you saying?" Nancy uttered a fake laugh.
"It was a joke." Karen added. In one of her previous loops, she had attempted to seduce Nancy's man and fallen victim to strangling by the maid herself. She would very much not prefer a repeat of that.
"If not for Father Dulan, dress up to find a better man." Nancy said as she tightened the corset on Karen to a choking extent. The coming of age ceremony she experienced two days after her returns was an event that she particularly hated.
But the thoughts of food come to Karen's head unbidden. She liked greasy meat, sweet snacks, all the kinds of food that would melt in her mouth. But the food in the manor didn't suit her palate. The bread was hard and the meat smelt fishy. Salt was expensive, so she could eat savory food only once a week before she married Raymond.
A major reason why she liked Raymond was the good food, his devoted love and that handsome face. Karen swallowed the words she couldn't utter.
"Then you shall be absent from the worship service as well?"
"I will listen to such prayers five times a day after I get married anyway. What's the point?"
Dulan, being a priest, would inherit the local parish and the Heyer family land once we get marrried. And he would recite God's name from their first night as a wedded couple and for all the days to come. The thought almost made Karen feel like throwing up.
"My Lady is a little different today." She paused before shrugging. "But everyone is like this before marriage. You will be fine."
She has not been fine for 117 years, Nancy.
* * *
Karen's 100th 17th birthday was a big deal but since the capital was far, it was not a grand event. The dilapidated roads surrounding the fief and the nearest estate being at an entire day carriage ride away made the hall lackluster AND quiet.
Relatives and people—connected to the fief more in terms of business than camaraderie—wandered into the hall. The musicians looked like they had been forced to be here. Their expression made it clearly that they just wanted to get paid.
But even in such a place, Karen was the center of attention. Being the star of this event, her beauty shone brighter than usual.
Her red hair, skillfully styled by Nancy, was naturally wavy, and the tight corset she wore emphasized her figure elegantly. She was breathtakingly alluring. Those who killed time while prattling on with perfunctory conversation would grow lively when chatting with her.
Karen knew what they were thinking even if they wouldn't say it aloud. She was a woman who was in a tentative engagement, so they couldnt approach her openly. But the moment Karen announces her displeasure with Dulan publically, they would cry out with joy.
"K-Karen Heyer." Her train of thoughts came to an abrupt stop as she turned to the man who called her.
"Y-Your husband has come to you, yet y-you make that face?"
'God please no.' Karen sighed inwardly. Of course it was Dulan.
It was embarassing how he wore his black robe even at his fianceé's coming of age banquet. He knew it was embarassing too. She had gotten used to it but her brows would still furrow at the unpleasant sight of him being unbearably self-conscious.
And the whispers that followed them when together—so full of pity and sympathy—irritated her even more than Dulan.
His attire didn't match the occasion, and there were mud stains clinging onto the edges of his pants. Everyone was looking, noticing.
The smell of medicine, wine and acrid rain wafted off him. His eyes resembled a dead fish's. And the black shadows underneath them would make a child cry at the mere sight of him. He had even occasionally startled the maids.
Having gotten used to the ghastly gaze over a hundred years, she wasn't fazed.
"W-What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing."
Dulan was tall but skinny and had no money. He was a man who didn't love Karen and neither did she. Apart from that, he was arrogant and rude. Carynne loathed him, yet at the same time, she hated herself for feeling so strongly towards mere ink on paper.
If he was even the least bit attractive, none of the conflict in the novel would have happened!
It was a laughable thought. Just what the hell was this man? She had tried marrying him, but that didn't work. Back then, she had lived compassionately like a nun, but it was all for nothing.
Life is meaningless.
"B-But After getting m-married, a-"
"All women who are about to get married feel the same way but all these concerns disappear afterwards. You're not a fairytale princess, Heyer. Is what you were about to say?"
"S-Similar."
'Not similar. Same. It was verbatim.' Karen knew that argument by heart. Marriage would fix nothing.
Her demands aren't even that much.
All she wants is to grow old. Or die. No, she just want to leave this place. She was tired of it all. The same conversations, the same responses even after 100 times! Even the stuttering.
Swallowing a frustrated groan, Karen settled on a pout and Dulan used the chance to admire her beauty a little. He thought that Karen was being immature, and he might be right.
Karen was already 117 years old, but there was no one who would treat her as such and so she found no need to act her age either.
While Karen had been glaring at her fianceé, the soft hum of music had already seeped into the hall and ensued a dance. Her gaze travelled to the couples dancing around them before setting on Dulan's outstretched hand.