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Chapter 65 Part 1 – A rose that blooms on a snowy day. An unattainable first love.

Before heading to the ballroom, Countess Rosenthal stopped by a hidden room.
It’s a treasure vault that only she, the owner of the mansion, can open.

Without sparing a glance at the glittering gold and silver ornaments or the sparkling jewelries, the countess walked across the room.
On a shelf at the far end of the room, she carefully picked up a small, old jewelry box.
Then she gently opened the lid.

There was an artificial rose corsage inside the box.
A small accessory that was meant for a child.
It had been made for a hair ornament.
The countess put her lips so close to the faded rose that she nearly kissed it.
It was as if she was going to kiss the snow that would vanish when her lips hit it.

‘…… Wendell-sama, I am probably not qualified to wear …… this rose that you gave me. However, please allow me to at least …… secretly keep it in my heart.’

She pleaded inside her heart as she pressed the rose against her forehead.
The reigning socialite noblewoman was nowhere to be seen.
The person in the room was a girl praying to her unattainable first love.
This is the side of her that she shows only when no one is around, even though she is an extremely influential woman.
The faint moonlight from the window illuminated the transient scene as if a spotlight had been put on her.

「…… If the nobles find out that I was doing something like this, they would definitely laugh at me.」

After some time, the lady mocked herself, but her hands were gentle as she held the rose close to her chest.

The rose corsage is a precious memento.
A gift from the prince who had miraculously landed in her miserable life.
It was proof that he accepted her, whom she herself hated so much that she wanted to die.

…… Countess Rosenthal was given a valley and a castle where roses bloomed, just like the meaning of her name, by the previous king of Hydrangea. But to her, this single rose was far more valuable than all that. It was the only link between the countess and her first love.

「…… An old, withered wild rose is better suited to me, after all.」

She clutched her ample bosom and muttered to herself self-deprecatingly.

Wendell had once compared her to a winter rose and put this corsage on her hair.
He said that the winter rose heals people’s hearts in the freezing winter.

But she could never be that winter rose.
Nor could she become the blooming spring rose or the fragrant autumn rose.
Everyone praised her as the woman who was most suited to the name of rose, but she herself never felt that way. That is why Cornelia’s appearance at the ceremony was even more dazzling to her.

Her gorgeousness is just for looks.
Because she considers herself as such a dirty person, not only in the body, but also in her way of life.

The countess recalled her past.

As a child, she lived in the slums.
Rona was her real name.

She had two energetic twin younger brothers named Ronny and Teddy.

Rona was a girl full of dreams.
She believed that one day she would meet a wonderful prince as in the fairytales.
Of course, she didn’t wish for something as overambitious as becoming his wife or anything of that magnitude.
All she wanted was a glance from afar.
And she would treasure that memory for the rest of her life.
Such a modest imagination was enough to fill her little heart.

「Sister’s prince disease came out again.」

She often got teased by her younger brothers.

Her mother was kind, but sickly.
Rona’s mother was beautiful in a way that was disproportionate to the filth of the lowest class dump.
And Rona inherited her mother’s beautiful looks.

Their family used to be wealthy.
She has a faint memory of her mother singing to her while playing the piano.
However, the family’s fate took a turn for the worse when her father fell victim to a fraud and was saddled with debt.
Their father could not accept the reality of being penniless.
And so he turned to alcohol as an escape.
The kind father melted away in the alcohol.
The red-faced man staring at his wife and children was an empty shell of a human being.

Her mother pushed herself too hard to protect the young Rona and her children from the drunken husband.
She worked so hard that her body finally broke down and passed away.
She was worried about her children right up to the moment of her death.

「I’m sorry. I’ll work hard tomorrow and give you something warm and delicious to eat.」

Those were her mother’s last words.

When she passed away, she was a shadow of her former self.
She had worn out her beautiful looks in order to raise her children.
She was a woman who did not hesitate in the slightest to do so.

Their father was drunk and snoring loudly while the children were holding on to the corpse and breaking down in tears.
Their mother was buried as if she had no family.

After the loss of their hard-working mother, Rona and her younger brothers quickly found themselves in dire straits.
Even so, their father’s addiction to alcohol did not stop.
All he wanted to do was to get himself into a blissful state of intoxication.
He had no intention of facing his family.

Then, in exchange for three bottles of cheap gin, the body of the young Rona was sold to a stranger.
Rona is a beautiful child.
Soon there was a buyer.
In her father’s drunken eyes, Rona was no longer a biological child of his, but only a convenient ornament that could be used to exchange for alcohol.

She still gets nauseous when she thinks about it.
She hated it. She didn’t want to do it even if it killed her.
But her younger brothers were starving to death.
To make matters worse, her father was going to sell them if Rona didn’t do it.
Rona didn’t have the option of running away.

Rona killed her heart and smiled ingratiatingly at the men like a prostitute.
She pleaded to those men and said that she’s willing to do anything so please secretly give her a tip, so that her father would not notice.
With a father who would take everything to exchange for alcohol, that was the only way for them to get a meal.

She felt so pathetic that she cried.
But what else could an uneducated girl with no power, no lore, and no skills do?
Fortunately, their father was drunk and asleep.

That was the moment the door to the nightmare opened.