Resetting Lady

Chapter 1

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Translator: Yonnee

—

 

00.
A 17-year-old girl

 

The beginning was always the same.

The gray sky, the drizzling rain, the muddy, barren garden.
The chill in the air, the mud-stained nightgown.
The gash on her throat that stung.
If she didn’t go back to the mansion soon, the gardener would find her.
She kicked the rope near her feet and headed to the passage used by maids—she failed again this time.
It’s cold.
This time, once again.
She gritted her teeth.
What went wrong this time.

Unlike the damp hallway, the room inside was warm.
The temperature was better due to the thick fur quilts that blocked out the cold and the fire that burned in the fireplace.

She took off her dirty clothes and threw them into the fireplace, at which, the fire died because her clothes were wet.

Cursing to herself as she turned on the lamp at the foot of her bed, she poured oil into the fireplace so that the fire would burn once more.
She stared at the woman in the mirror.
She failed again this time.

She sat on a wooden chair, and on the table was a piece of paper and a small tub of ink.
After staring at those for a long time, she grabbed a pen.
Dipping it into the inkwell, she wrote on the piece of paper.

 

117.
My name is…

 

She lost her grip over the pen and stopped writing.
What’s the point? Even her name was meaningless.
She felt empty.
This time, this time! She thought the same thing for ten years.
For the next thirty years, she tried to adapt.
The next twenty years, she only thought about how she could make herself die.
Then, the next five years were spent doing nothing.
And… And.

 

Carynne Hare.

She fell into a book.

And for 117 years, she couldn’t get out.

 

* * *

 

The book she transmigrated into was a typical romance novel.
Carynne, the daughter of a minor fief lord, was to be wed to her relative, Dullan Roid, so that her family could keep the territory.
But just like any other female protagonist, Carynne was a girl who dreamed of true love, and so she broke off her engagement.

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She couldn’t possibly love a smelly, skinny, hateful-looking man.
After that, Carynne’s family fell into ruin, so she started working as a lady-in-waiting for a young noblewoman, and there, she fell in love with Raymond, the fiancé of the young noblewoman.
Following many trials and adversities, Carynne and Raymond got married.

The novel’s timeline was roughly over a year, and she also succeeded in marrying Raymond by using the same method.
Happy ending.
Happy ending.

After this chapter ended, Carynne was murdered the very next page.
It was through poison.
After collapsing because of the burning pain, she woke up at dawn, in the middle of the garden.
She had trembled with fear.

Then, she fell in love with Raymond once again.
She fell asleep in his embrace.
Yet, when she opened her eyes, she was back in the same garden.
This was the second time she died, and she didn’t even know why.

The third loop was spent staying away from Raymond, who then married another woman, and Carynne applauded as she attended the wedding as a guest.
After the ceremony, she died after being trampled by a horse during the wedding procession.
Her whole body was mangled.

The same was true after this round.
The reason was different every time, but the end was always the same—her death.

Just in case it would work, she pushed through with her engagement a few years ago.
Her engagement with Dullan hadn’t been broken, and she had wedded him without any problems.
But when she woke up once more, she was back in the same garden.
She didn’t know which it was that sent her back, whether it was when she had died or whether it was when a year had passed.

It wasn’t until a considerate amount of time that she figured out the mechanics of the loop.

 

 

1.
The duration is one year.
It always starts in the garden while it’s raining.

2.
After one year, Carynne dies for whatever reason and will return to the same time and place.

3.
She would start anew while bringing back with her the things in her hands that she was holding as she died.

 

Thanks to the third law, she was able to have faith that she wasn’t dreaming.
The number 116 was engraved onto the flat gold coin in her hand.
After changing the number 6 to 7, she looked up at the ceiling.
She couldn’t even remember her original face anymore.

She had lived as Carynne for more than a century.
As her mind grew more than twice as old as her body, she had lost any hope of being able to leave this novel.

“I’d rather die, really.”

“You’re not supposed to say that, Milady.
I can’t imagine a world without you here.”

Nancy, a dark-skinned maid, berated Carynne lightly as she brushed her hair.
She could still remember a time where the world’s most important Missus was a woman who had the same dark skin.
It was more than a hundred years ago.
It was too vague of a memory to even call it a memory.

Whenever she saw this maid who was closest to her, Carynne would be reminded again that she wasn’t from this world.
When she saw for the first time how the maid bowed towards her, Carynne shuddered in reluctance.

But then again, if this maid did not keep her head down as she left the room, she would be punished and beaten.
This was how colored people were treated here, even the elderly.
She had witnessed it for 117 years.
Only time could change such values of humanity.

“Does Milady not like Lord Dullan to that extent?”

There’s no way she would like him.
All the people here were like ink on paper to her.
It was all meaningless, fleeting, and yet ink inherently wasn’t harmless.
Anyone could die if they drank ink.
Should she say that the ink was poison? What’s left would be but an ephemeral moment of joy.
It was a short pleasure spanning for even less than a page.

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She chuckled inwardly.
As disfigured as Dullan looked, he was worse in bed.
The last time she slept with him was a few years ago.
And he had always been a stuttering, clumsy, ugly young man who lacked vigor.

“He’s ugly.”

“…Oh my goodness.”

“If we swap his lower parts with your lover’s, I’ll consider him again.”

“…Where did Milady hear such words? Which maid said that?”

“Don’t be so uptight.
It’s just a harmless joke from a 17-year-old girl who doesn’t even know what a man’s genitals look like.”

“I’ve been taking care of you since you were a baby, but what are you talking about now? I didn’t raise you like this… In any case, after ten years of marriage, something like this would be nothing.”

That’s not it.

“Do you think it would last ten years with Dullan?”

“Then will it end after only a year? You’ll have more time.
Let’s hurry up and tighten your corset first.
You should see if you can have at it with a better man than Dullan with a thin waist.”

“…Mmh!”

If it weren’t for this bloody corset, she could have had more fun.
The whalebone corset, which squeezed her dry even of her swearwords, would more likely chew and bite at her waist than to just make it thin.
It was suffocating.
She hated this era.

“Nancy, I come from a time period where voluptuous women are popular.”

“If you live in that time period, then you’d be the slimmest of them all, what with you being such a picky eater.”

No, Nancy.
Truthfully, she was quite the g