Ye Tang had not yet woken up when she heard someone crying in front of her.
“Mother, Mother, please open your eyes, please open your eyes!!”
“We absolutely will not let that bitch’s child through the door of this house! So Mother, please, do not abandon us! Do not leave us!!”
Bitch? Child? Through the door of this house?
Had she transmigrated into some wealthy family drama this time?
Ye Tang thought as she struggled to furrow her brows, trying to force open her eyelids.
The original host must have already passed away before she transmigrated. This body was not only heavy but also wracked with pain, alternately hot and cold. The bedding, which should have been soft, felt like a several-hundred-jin iron slab welding her into a tomb; even breathing was difficult for Ye Tang.
“Water…”
As Ye Tang groaned hoarsely, she also made out the two people who had woken her with their stereo crying.
These were two extremely glamorous blonde girls. The girl on the left was a bit older; she had a pair of stunning eyes like purple amethysts, a high nose bridge, vermilion lips, and fair skin. It was that thick head of golden curls… the huge, neatly arranged spirals like springs or drill bits, which made the already bewitchingly aggressive girl look even more like a wicked villainess.
The girl on the right had twin tails, with spring-like drill bits dangling at the ends. Compared to the one on the left, her eyes were a lighter shade, a pinkish purple close to wisteria. With her particularly small face and exquisitely delicate features, the girl looked like a living doll. Yet it was precisely this delicacy that gave her a sharp, mean-spirited appearance.
Even without receiving the plot of this world from the System yet, Ye Tang was certain: these two girls in front of her were absolutely the villainous noble ladies from the original story, the ones with the scheming side character scripts.
“Mother! You’re awake?! Do you want water? I’ll go get some for you right now!”
The older gold drill bit ran out with pattering footsteps, leaving the twin tails still holding Ye Tang’s hand.
“You’ve finally opened your eyes! You have no idea how worried Dia and I were about you!”
Ye Tang’s head throbbed, and then she learned the twin tails’ identity.
The twin tails was named Gloria, the original host’s youngest daughter. The gold drill bit who brought the cool water was Claudia, the original host’s eldest daughter. The original host’s full name was Anna Rochel Hedelin. Her maiden name was Christa.
It was normal not to have heard of Anna Rochel Hedelin, but there was probably no one in the world who had not heard of the original host’s other name:
Cinderella’s stepmother.
Yes, Anna Rochel was that sly, lazy, cowardly, and venomous woman, greedy to the core, who mistreated Cinderella with her daughters, even personally chopping off her eldest daughter’s toe and her youngest daughter’s heel just to make them fit the slipper and marry the prince—the number one wicked stepmother.
Claudia and Gloria were those wicked sisters whose feet were ruined and whose eyes were pecked out by pigeons in the end.
Ye Tang drank the cup of cool water in one gulp, but she did not want to blame Claudia for giving such cold water to a sick person. After all, Claudia and Gloria clearly looked like pampered girls without even basic common-sense medical knowledge, which was normal.
Burning with fever, Ye Tang had no energy to quibble over the temperature of a cup of water. She rasped to her two daughters, “Dia, go find the doctor… tell the doctor I have a fever and need fever-reducing medicine. Lia, go get a silver coin and hire a servant woman to take care of me for five days. For the next five days, do not come see me; I need to rest properly…”
“Mother! No! Why can’t Lia and Dia come see you!?”
Gloria with the twin tails threw herself at Ye Tang’s bedside, crying like a pear blossom in rain. Claudia with the gold drill bit also had tears brimming in her eyes.
“Are you still angry? Because we unwittingly agreed to let Father bring back that child born from that bitch…!”
Ye Tang really wanted to tell Gloria and Claudia that she was just afraid of passing the cold to them.
But according to the original host’s memories, although this world’s medical level had reached the point of discovering “germs,” humanity’s understanding of “viruses” was still very shallow. The common people’s grasp of disease remained at the level of “evil things causing mischief.”
Casually mentioning “disease transmission” on one’s lips was equivalent to speaking for the devil in the common view, cursing others to catch the plague too, and it would cause panic.
“Mother, when Father mentioned that child from the bitch, he asked if we wanted another sister. Lia and I thought Father meant having another child with you, Mother, so we answered Father: ‘Yes! We want a little sister!’.”
Claudia’s tears soaked her entire handkerchief; it was clear how long she had been blaming herself for this. Ye Tang sighed inwardly, only able to lament that the original host’s husband was truly sly.
There were many versions of “Cinderella,” and in the most widespread Disney version, Cinderella’s father was a merchant. After his wife died, he quickly remarried a widow with two daughters. He wanted the widow to care for his daughter while he was away on business. But that merchant never returned home from his business trip.
After the merchant died, the lonely Cinderella became the target of bullying by her stepmother and stepsisters, wearing patched gray clothes, hence “Cinderella.”
But in the original version, Cinderella’s father did not die. After marrying the widow, this father asked Cinderella and her stepsisters what gifts they wanted. The stepsisters asked for fine dresses and jewels, while only Cinderella asked for the first branch to brush her father’s hat. When the father returned from business, he really gave the stepsisters dresses and jewels but only a little tree branch to Cinderella.
Would a normal person treat their own daughter so unequally? Especially since Cinderella’s father had only Cinderella as his biological child. No matter how much he favored his remarried wife’s baggage kids with dresses and jewels, would a real father have the nerve to give his own daughter just a tree branch?
Not to mention that later, Cinderella’s stepmother and her two wicked daughters not only took away Cinderella’s dresses and jewels but also drove her to sleep by the hearth, covering her in soot and making her “Cinderella.”
Treated as a free servant by the greedy stepmother and wicked stepsisters, Cinderella had to cry three times a day at her mother’s grave, which nurtured the little tree branch into a small tree. And Cinderella’s father turned a blind eye and deaf ear, allowing his biological daughter to live in hellish days without ever trying to help her…
How could Cinderella’s father be so complacent?
Now the reason was revealed.
—Cinderella’s father had never remarried at all. His wife had always been Anna Rochel from the start. He had only cheated on Anna Rochel in another city with Cinderella’s mother.
In this era of inconvenient communication, where a person’s true identity and marital status were hard to verify, Cinderella’s mother probably had no idea at first that the man she was with was married. She certainly would not have imagined that the child she desperately bore for her beloved was an illegitimate child branded with original sin from birth.
This explained why Cinderella’s father could watch his biological daughter suffer: he was the first to betray Anna Rochel, and knowing he was in the wrong, the bullying of the illegitimate by Anna Rochel and her two children became “unavoidable” in his eyes.
This man was unwilling to fall out with Anna Rochel over one Cinderella. So better to let it be than stir up trouble.
The original host Anna Rochel had long known her husband was unfaithful. But as the saying goes, even a brief marriage creates lasting bonds; even without romantic love, Anna Rochel still had some affection for her husband. She did not want to make a scene and become the laughingstock of the streets. So she pretended to know nothing, hear nothing.
However, as Cinderella gradually grew up and her mother died of illness, the original host Anna Rochel’s last shred of dignity was torn apart by her husband himself.
The original host’s husband wanted to bring the illegitimate Cinderella home, which was tantamount to admitting his infidelity and declaring it was not a mistake. He was forcing his wife and daughters to accept his betrayal and tolerate his error.
The original host instantly became the biggest joke in Soho District.
The strong-willed original host fell ill from the blow and lost the will to live in her sickness. Ye Tang thus transmigrated, taking over this body the original host had abandoned.
“Dia, Lia, I am not blaming you.”
Ye Tang said, then coughed. This body’s condition was too poor—empty stomach and dehydration causing dizziness and tinnitus. If not for her resilient spirit, she would have fainted again just from these coughs.
“I also do not blame that illegitimate child or her mother.”
““Mother!?””
Claudia and Gloria were both stunned, staring wide-eyed with disbelief and helplessness.
Using all her strength to grasp Claudia and Gloria’s hands, her face ashen like a zombie’s as she spoke through coughs, Ye Tang said, “Do you still not understand? Who is truly to blame…”
Her throat itched terribly, painfully. Enduring the agony as if a sea urchin was stuffed in her throat, Ye Tang said word by word, “If… if your father had not betrayed me… had not had an affair, cough cough cough… then how could there be… an illegitimate child…”
“The illegitimate child knows nothing… but your father, he knows—everything—”
Ye Tang coughed violently, coughing so hard it felt like her lungs would leap from her mouth. She clutched her mouth tightly, trying her utmost not to let her droplets touch Claudia and Gloria.
“Mother, do not speak anymore!”
Claudia and Gloria together supported the nearly unconscious Ye Tang, helping her lie back in bed and tucking in the covers.
Unable to speak, Ye Tang shed physiological tears as she glanced at her two daughters. Claudia and Gloria’s hearts trembled; the sisters quickly exited the room and exchanged a look behind the door.
“…Mother is right.”
“Yeah. If Father had not had an affair, where would an illegitimate child come from? Without the illegitimate child, Father would not need to bring her home. If Father did not bring the illegitimate home, Mother would not be mocked by so many people—”
Wiping away her tears, Claudia went to fetch the doctor, while Gloria went to hire the servant woman. Ye Tang, lying in bed, burned in a daze and only fully woke up again two days later.