Chapter 1
***
Emily, the eighth concubine of the Serbian Empire, was loved by the Emperor despite being a commoner, but Emily, who ignored the Empress and the concubines, was framed and hanged as soon as the old Emperor died.
“Your Highness! I have not committed any crime! Empress! The Empress framed me!”
Emily stared at the indifferent Crown Prince. He looked at her with a stiff face, as if he was a stone statue. Her beautiful blonde hair was covered in dust, and her pure white face was dirty from not washing. Emily, the old emperor’s concubine, was the same age as the Crown Prince.
A simple commoner woman… How could an empty-headed woman who lived for the pleasure of dressing up in gold and silver try to poison the rest of the rearguard? It seemed obvious that it was a ploy by the empress, but there was no need to let his father’s concubine live when he was already dead. Even though he felt sorry for her.
The Crown Prince looked at Emily, who was the same age as him, and felt pity for her. It was the first time he had ever seen a concubine who wasn’t afraid of the Empress, and it was interesting to watch.
“What are you doing? Hurry up and execute the sentence.”
But that was it. It had nothing to do with him. He could see the Empress smiling in the distance.
‘It’s the Empress’s turn next.’
The Crown Prince stepped out of the execution chamber, raising both ends of his mouth.
Emily bowed her head.
Twenty-eight years old, just when her life was about to bloom, she had to die.
‘If I were a commoner, I would have lived for a long time. Why did I come into this palace as a concubine of the old emperor….His Highness hates me, too..’
Emily was glad that the emperor liked her. She couldn’t believe the emperor of this country loved her. Her nose went up in the air and her heart filled with joy as if she was the empress.
However, when she saw the Crown Prince, she despaired. The moment she saw him for the first time, she fell in love. She wished she could be the Crown Prince’s woman for just one day. If only the Crown Prince would look at her…. The Crown Prince was a man who looked at women like they were rocks, and there was no such thing as a common scandal.
The commoners who were watching started throwing stones at her, accusing her of being a witch. A stone hit Emily on the head, causing blood to spurt, bruises and scars all over. Tears welled up in her eyes and she could not see ahead of her. They put her head in a trap made of rope, and the rope tightened around her neck.
This face caught the emperor’s eye. If she didn’t have this face, she wouldn’t have become the emperor’s concubine. This face was a curse.
‘God, if I were to be born again, I would like to live a long and ordinary life.’
The foothold that had been supporting her was gone, and Emily’s body drooped.
***
“Ugh…no!”
Emily sat up quickly and looked at my hands, her tattered clothes were the first thing she saw. She stroked her slender neck with my hand.
“Am I alive? Where’s the rope mark on my neck?”
It was an old room in the crumbling shack where she had lived with her parents. In her room, Emily began to look around for her favorite item. It was the wall mirror that her parents had given her for her fifteenth birthday.
Emily quickly ran to the mirror. She couldn’t help but look at the mirror with disbelief.
“No way!”
There was a strange woman standing in front of the mirror. She was short and thin with tousled black hair. She had a square-shaped face with small eyes. Her skin was dark with many freckles and moles. Her eyes were small and purple, and she looked like she was a sick person.
“…Who is this woman?”
This was her room. But who was the woman reflected in the mirror?
Suddenly, the door opened and Anna, Emily’s mother, came in.
“Emily! Are you awake now?”
“…… mother?”
“Can’t you even recognize your mother’s face?”
Anna was quite pretty, and like her, Emily should have been pretty too. Emily’s father, Jackson, who followed her mother, complained.
“She’s so weak…Tsk, tsk. Where do you want to use her? Are you thinking of marrying her to someone because she has a happy face?”
Emily’s eyes darkened when her father, who had always said she was beautiful, said something like that. She was fifteen years old and had collapsed while helping with the farm work, so it seemed like now was the time. However, unlike before, her face and body were not the Emily of her previous life.
Emily returned to being an ugly woman.
She had a poor family and six younger brothers. As the eldest daughter, Emily had to go out and work. And because she had a pretty face, she got a lot of money for her vegetables and free grain from the neighbors.
“Hey! I can’t believe I’m seeing that face in the morning! It’s not a good day.”
“Oh. Is that a human face?”
The people in the village were startled by the mere glimpse of Emily’s face, as if she had something dirty on her. The grocery store didn’t want to sell vegetables. The fruit stand didn’t sell any fruit. She thought her father would complain if she went home without anything, so she sat in the clearing and looked up at the sky.
‘My face in my previous life was cursed, but I never thought that I would live again with this face.’
The sky didn’t seem to know what “appropriate” meant. With a face like this, she would never be able to go to the imperial palace, and would never become the emperor’s concubine.
“Is it rather good?”
With six younger brothers and parents, she had to worry about her living first. Emily jumped up and plucked up her courage again and went around several stores.
“Excuse me, if you let me do any work, I’ll do it!”
The shopkeeper looked her up and down and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to look elsewhere. All the customers are running away.”
Emily came back home in vain. At home, she ate boiled water with a few vegetables in it, but the soup, with only the vegetables floating in the bland water, was not good.
”It’s not good. I want to eat meat.”
But they had only one meal a day. Her younger siblings gobbled and her parents ate even less. Her mother got paid to sew for other people’s houses, and her father got crops from helping other people farm, so they were very poor.
Her siblings didn’t have enough to eat, and they were so thin that their ribs were seen clearly under their skin. In her previous life, Emily became the emperor’s concubine, and her parents and younger siblings lived plentifully.
In the end, Emily couldn’t eat and put the spoon down. She could still vividly recall the food she ate in her previous life, so there was no way this kind of food was good for her palate.
“….. sister. Can I eat the rest of the food?”
Her second brother, Noah, asked Emily cautiously. Looking at her brother’s dented cheeks, Emily nodded. She felt sorry that her siblings were suffering because of her.
‘I must find a job tomorrow.’
The mirror she once wanted so badly, but now she covered it with a black cloth. Emily didn’t want to look at her ugly face. She hated mirrors the most in the world now.