Prologue
‘What on earth did I do last night…?’
No matter how hard she tried to recall, all So-young could remember was drinking heavily with friends to celebrate Friday night.
She had stumbled out of bed before falling asleep, but still—how could it hurt this much?
Thinking that today’s hangover was unusually brutal, So-young forced her eyelids open.
‘…What is this?
Am I still half-asleep?’
She blinked rapidly.
Ornate ceiling moldings, a glittering chandelier—like something out of a medieval noble’s mansion.
This was the bedroom from her previous life, the one she could never return to.
‘What a nasty dream.’
She would rather dream of being chased by a madman.
But a dream about her own wretched, miserable past life?
Just as she was about to close her eyes again to escape the nightmare, something stopped her.
“M-Milady, are you awake?”
That voice…
So-young turned her head toward the sound.
A young woman in her early twenties, with brown hair, brown eyes,
and a dusting of freckles across her nose, stood there.
“…Marsha?”
Her personal maid—Marsha, the only ally she had during that nightmarish marriage she had brought upon herself—was standing by her side, eyes brimming with tears.
“You’re finally awake!
Do you know how worried I was?”
Overwhelmed with relief, So-young tried to push herself up, but the moment she moved, a searing pain exploded at the back of her head, as if struck by a hatchet.
“Ugh—what on earth…?”
“Don’t you remember?
You fell down the stairs yesterday.”
“What?”
So-young’s eyes flew open wide despite the agony.
There had only been one day in her past life when she had fallen down the stairs—the single most humiliating day of all.
“You mustn’t move yet.
I’ll fetch the physician.
Stay right here and don’t even think of getting up, understood?”
With her face drained of color, So-young froze.
After tucking in the blanket, Marsha hurried out of the room.
Left alone, she reached back with trembling fingers to touch her head.
“W-What is this…?”
She felt the rough texture of bandages, the brittle strands of hair rustling between her fingers.
The pain, the sensations—everything was far too vivid for a dream.
“No… it can’t be…”
Her stiff neck creaked as she turned to the mirror against the wall.
Staring back at her was a gaunt face with cotton-candy-pink hair, sky-blue eyes, and deep shadows under them.
Nina Taylor, the Duke’s daughter.
No—Nina von Bayern, Duchess of Bayern.
The only stain on Duke Ash D.
Bayern’s name, and the notorious shrew of high society.
It was her former self, captured in the very moment of her darkest disgrace.
1.
Everyone has at least one memory like that.
The kind of memory that makes you want to scatter into cosmic dust and vanish the moment you recall it.
‘Nina’ had such memories too.
The problem was that she didn’t just have one or two—she had so many she couldn’t even count them.
“Ughhh…”
So-young—or rather, Nina—groaned, burying her face in her palms.
She had woken up only to find herself back in her past life.
How was she supposed to process this?
One might think she should take it in stride.
After all, she had already experienced the miracle of reincarnating into the modern world with all her memories intact.
What was there left to be surprised about?
“No… This can’t be happening…!”
After the physician declared her condition stable,
Nina was left alone.
Her body trembled, and with a face twisted in grief, she let out a cry of despair.
It wasn’t about clinging to the life of ‘So-young Jang.’ The problem was that this very moment marked the day after ‘Nina’ had set a new record in her personal hall of shame.
This was the time when her infamy spread like wildfire across high society.
An obsessive wife consumed with delusions about her husband.
A notorious shrew given to luxury and tyranny.
And soon, the rumors would multiply—whispering that she had even begged her husband for a single night, only to be coldly rejected.
…For the record, that rumor was true.
The first part had been true all along.
The second part?
She had just committed that very sin last night.
“Wh-Why did it have to be this moment I returned to…?”
Nina muttered in a daze, her expression hollow.
Back then, what kinds of madness had she committed, obsessed with a husband who never loved her?
She bribed servants with money—or, if that didn’t work, blackmailed them with secrets—to turn them into her eyes and ears, shadowing his every move.
She rifled through his belongings, suspecting he might be having an affair, and she had no qualms about secretly tailing him.
If she caught any woman speaking with her husband, she would hurl insults,
even slap them across the face, disgracing herself with her tantrums.
The shame of what she had already done was enough to make her want to bury her head forever.
But last night, she had cast aside even the last shred of dignity and self-respect she had left as a human being.
Drunk out of her mind, she had stumbled into his bedchamber.
“…What kind of spectacle is this?”
“We’ve been married for two years now.
Isn’t it time we fulfilled our duties as husband and wife?
How much longer are you going to neglect me?”
“And I told you from the very beginning—no matter that we married, there will never be anything between us.”
“How can you say that?
What kind of married couple sleeps apart for two whole years?
Do you have another woman hidden away?
Or… is it that you like men instead?
Otherwise, how could you possibly…!”
He looked at her—screaming, thrashing, utterly desperate—as if she were nothing more than a stranger.
“At the very least, my body would have to desire you for me to lie with you.”
How could anyone keep their sanity after hearing such words?
That her husband felt not even the faintest attraction to her?
“Aaah!
Aaaahhh!”
Nina had gone on a rampage in his chamber, smashing things in a frenzy.
Then, like a madwoman, she had stormed down the corridor—only to tumble down the stairs.
That was what had happened just last night.
“…God, this is insane…”
With a bitter look, Nina rubbed her face with both hands.
No matter how many times she checked, the reflection staring back was undeniably her past self.
Messing up her hair, pinching her cheeks—none of it changed a thing.
This was no dream.
“I heard you recently lost a trial to become your nephew’s guardian.
If you were to marry me, I could help ensure you win the case.”
This marriage had been nothing more than a political bargain—forced into existence after Nina, having fallen for the Duke of Bayern at first sight, schemed and blackmailed him into submission.
At the time, he was embroiled in a fierce legal battle with his relatives, fighting to become the guardian of his orphaned nephew after his half-brother’s death.
The rigid judicial system favored married guardians over bachelors, and his relatives seized upon this point to argue that he was unfit.
Worse still, they painted him as a shameless opportunist coveting his nephew’s inheritance—emphasizing that he was only a half-brother to the boy’s late father and the son of a concubine’s line.
Because of this, the Duke of Bayern lost both the first and second trials and was facing his final appeal.
“If I refuse you?”
“Then, Your Grace, you will lose again.”
“…So it was you manipulating the courts all this time.”
Yes.
The reason he had suffered defeat in every trial was because Nina had forged her grandfather’s handwriting—the hand of a sitting Supreme Court justice—to intimidate the presiding judges.
“…Very well.
I will marry you.
But understand this—you will never gain from me what you truly desire.”
A Supreme Court justice.
If her grandfather—the equivalent of a modern-day Minister of Justice—had truly intervened, then even marriage would never have secured the Duke guardianship of his nephew.
The only reason he had agreed to marry her on the eve of his final trial was because he believed her grandfather had been behind the court’s decisions.
He never knew that the man had nothing to do with it.
‘I was a fool…’
Back then, she had believed without a doubt that once they were married, he would eventually have no choice but to accept her as his wife.
A prestigious family, striking beauty, impeccable accomplishments.
There was no woman in society with better credentials than her.
But her expectations had been utterly betrayed.
…Her husband kept his word to the letter.
He had skipped their wedding night entirely, then spent the following two years sleeping in separate rooms.
They ate apart, drank tea apart.
Even in public, where appearances forced him to show the bare minimum of courtesy, it was always with a look of unwillingness.
Though married, they remained nothing more than strangers.
‘…I should’ve learned how to endure rejection.’
As a child, she had been frail and often ill, so she was cherished like a jewel.
As an adult, she was treated like a queen in high society, thanks to her powerful family background.
Living such a life, she had never built up any tolerance for coldness, contempt, ridicule, or scorn.
It was only after marriage that she learned how merciless the world could be—and it steadily broke her down.
‘I tried in my own way to change our relationship, but all my efforts went in the wrong direction, and things never improved…’
And in the end, it all led to last night’s disaster.
Afterward, she was divorced by her husband, then sank into a miserable life too sordid for words, before finally leaving the world altogether.
“God… this is insane…”
The world’s scorn, ridicule, contempt-
those she could somehow endure.
Even when she felt like dying, she hadn’t actually died.
But what came a year later, when her husband brought down her grandfather to push for divorce—that she could not endure.
Her grandfather, once a Supreme Court justice, and her relatives who had risen to high offices within the Imperial Court, were all demoted one after another.
The family collapsed at breakneck speed, and ‘Nina’s life’ plummeted into ruin.
Her grandfather and parents were imprisoned through the schemes of their enemies.
Creditors came knocking day after day.
Shameless men mocked her by proposing she become their concubine.
Even then, she had clung to denial, believing her family could never truly fall…….
But after her only younger brother died, their mansion was seized, and she wandered the streets until she met a pitiful end.
And now, as if she had purchased a round-trip ticket to this world, she had been dragged back into her past life by the hair.
“…Should I just pretend I’ve lost my memory, since my head’s already busted?”
Nina touched the back of her head, hesitating, then quickly shook it.
And then what?
The physician had already declared her perfectly sound, and even if she faked amnesia, the scorn and contempt directed at her would never change.
‘The sooner I get divorced, the better.’
No matter how she thought about it, that was the best course of action.
A year from now, when her husband finally drew the blade he had been sharpening all along, her family would collapse, and she herself would be dragged into the abyss.
‘…I’ll end this marriage and start over somewhere no one knows me.’
She had already resolved to give up her life as a noblewoman.
High society?
Her reputation was already in ruins.
Her nerves weren’t strong enough to brazen it out with her head held high.
Parents?
She felt guilty, but in this life too, she planned to walk the path of the unfilial daughter.
The moment she returned home after divorce, they would surely try to arrange another marriage, and marriage was the one thing she was thoroughly sick of.
‘But Grandfather’s downfall… that I must prevent…….’
Because every tragedy that had swallowed her family began with his fall from power.
‘The situation is rotten, but…’
This regression might be her only chance to undo the catastrophe she herself had caused.
So before she left, she would clean up the mess she had made and settle her husband’s grudge.
The despair in her eyes hardened into a soldier’s resolve, burning with a desperate determination.
***
As Marsha changed the bandages, she asked anxiously,
“Milady, how are you feeling?
Does your head still hurt?”
“I’m good.”
Though her body was covered in bruises from tumbling down the stairs, thankfully nothing had broken.
Even the wound on her head would heal as long as it was cared for properly.
“If you feel even the slightest pain, you must tell me right away.
Head injuries have to be treated with caution.”
“Yes, don’t worry so much.”
Nina gave an awkward smile as she looked at Marsha’s tearful, worried face.
Normally, she would have stormed out of bed the moment she woke, raising hell as she went in search of her husband.
The fact that she had been quiet for days must have made her maid uneasy.
‘…To be fair, it would’ve been strange if she weren’t worried.’
In her past life, she had flown into a rage when her husband didn’t so much as glance at his injured wife, choosing instead to spend the night away from home—and had turned the entire household upside down over it.