“Aaaaaaaaah—!?”
Screams echoed through the ward. Kim Hora suddenly felt a sharp pain.
Every inch of her body, even the crevices between her bones, ached terribly. Her face felt like someone had peeled the skin off it, hurting so much that she couldn’t even open her eyes.
“—Doctor! Doctor!! Call the doctor! Kim Hora has woken up!!”
In the agony so intense that Kim Hora thought death would be preferable, she heard a voice that was both unfamiliar and familiar.
It was unfamiliar because she hadn’t heard it in about three years, and familiar because it had once been the voice she hated most.
“…Lee Ji-eun?”
The natural-born singer and bare-faced beauty Lee Ji-eun—her greatest rival, the most hated eyesore of a woman.
“Oh, you can still recognize me. Not bad, not bad.”
Lee Ji-eun pressed the nurse call button and went out to summon people. Her tone was icy, but her voice trembled: “A scourge lasts a thousand years. Looks like it’s true.”
In that instant, Kim Hora remembered.
The first person to rush over after she fell down the stairs had been Lee Ji-eun. It was Lee Ji-eun who called the ambulance for her and alerted the police to arrest the one who pushed her—the pusher was none other than her ex-boyfriend, whom she had once used and then discarded when he lost his value.
Without Lee Ji-eun, she might have been burned to ashes by now.
“Damn it, Lee Ji-eun… Can’t you be a little nicer to a patient?”
“You brought this on yourself.”
“Ha… You’re not wrong.”
Kim Hora laughed, tears welling up and soaking into the bandages that covered her entire face.
Her face was twisted and swollen beyond recognition; recovery was impossible. Strangely, Kim Hora didn’t feel despair. Instead, she felt much lighter.
“…Turned over a new leaf? You’re not even arguing back? I thought you’d curse ‘Aish’.”
Closing her eyes, Kim Hora murmured dreamily: “I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
“I dreamed of Cinderella…”
“Cinderella… As in, the fairy tale?”
Lee Ji-eun was just about to tease Kim Hora for having such a girly interest—something she never expected—when the ward erupted into chaos with the arrival of doctors and nurses.
She had lost her beauty, was embroiled in a scandal of attempted murder over romantic entanglements, forfeited her chance to debut as an idol group member, and even had to repeat a year to get her high school diploma… Kim Hora’s entire future life would be spent under the pointing fingers of others.
But she had come to understand: Women had more than one way to live. Women could thrive without stepping on other women to climb up.
So she didn’t kill herself, nor did she obsess over becoming the winning bitch anymore—was a winning bitch not still a bitch?
Ten years later—
“It’s Lee Ji-eun unnie!”
“Our Ji-eun unnie is so beautiful!”
The girls stopped on the street, gazing at the electronic billboard with eyes full of admiration and envy as Lee Ji-eun gave her acceptance speech.
Lee Ji-eun, holding the award trophy, sported flawless crystal makeup, like an elf stepped out of a painting. But then the camera panned to an ugly woman seated in the audience below.
“All my glory is thanks to the support of my manager, Ms. Kim Hora! I made it this far because Ms. Kim Hora guided me and helped me every step of the way!”
“Without my friend Ms. Kim Hora, I surely would have been crushed by reality long ago, fallen without dignity on this road to stardom.”
Tears in her eyes, Lee Ji-eun waved the trophy toward the disfigured Kim Hora: “This trophy belongs half to Ms. Kim Hora!”
Thunderous applause erupted from the audience below, while sighs came from the girls watching outside the screen.
“I could never be a beauty like Ji-eun unnie, but maybe I could manage to be like Kim Hora if I tried.”
“Hahaha, you? I heard Kim Hora just donated two hundred million won to a women’s charity fund!”
“Two hundred million!?” The plain-looking girl clutched her forehead and pretended to faint: “Oh my god, I’m fainting. Maybe I shouldn’t aim to be like Kim Hora after all…”
A girl nearby scrolled on her phone and suddenly said: “Speaking of Kim Hora… Have you all read her bio? She often says online and on TV that she did a lot of wrong things when she was young and is now making amends and atoning. But I read her bio, and I don’t think what she did was that bad? Plenty of men are way worse than her! Does she really need to atone like this?”
Another girl shrugged indifferently: “If she wants to atone, let her. What interests me more is that dream she wrote about—”
“Ahh! The one about Cinderella and her stepmother, right!? I read it too!”
“Did you really read it properly? It’s not the stepmother anymore—”
The girls chatted and laughed as they walked away. On the electronic billboard, Kim Hora clapped wildly for Lee Ji-eun with a smile of contentment and fulfillment.
“Gulp.” Having witnessed it all, the two pigeon spirits left that world and returned to their own.
“Somehow… it doesn’t feel like punishment at all. Hope, didn’t we let that soul off too easy?”
Hope glanced at the covertly sadistic Fian: “Her living on allows her to benefit more women, doesn’t it? Rather than saying we let her off easy, think of it as her serving other women.”
“You say that, but…”
Fian wanted to complain more, but Hope had already leaped down from the tree and entered the palace from the terrace.
“Hope, wait up!? No stealing the lead… Ah!”
“Madam, may I have this dance?”
Ye Tang, who had danced with Cinderella, Claudia, Gloria, even Daisy and Charlotte, had sweat beading on her forehead. She wanted to take a break.
“Hope…?”
Hope gentlemanly extended his hand, waiting for her response. All eyes were on her. Though Ye Tang wondered how Hope had slipped into the palace, she hesitated only briefly before placing her hand in his palm.
This was a slow waltz; it was easier to talk cheek-to-cheek than to find a secluded spot.
“Wah! That Hope guy!”
Trailing a step behind, Fian puffed out his cheeks in anger. Though a pigeon, he had the air of a hamster.
Hope spun Ye Tang around the dance floor. At such close range, he caught the intensified rose scent on her body from her rising body heat.
It was the scent of the Millennium Rose.
“You two… Don’t abuse your magic just because you have it.”
Ye Tang’s tone held a hint of reproach. Unaffected by magic herself, she had realized Hope and Fian had altered the surrounding people’s memories. Now, everyone looked at Hope and Fian as if they were ordinary nobles.
“What if someone ends up with conflicting memories?”
“That won’t happen.”
With his arm around Ye Tang’s waist, Hope whispered softly in her ear: “We didn’t forcibly alter human memories. We just gave them a slight fuzzy feeling, like ‘I can’t quite remember’.”
“Fine…”
Ye Tang didn’t understand magic. She could only take Hope’s word for it.
The ball had now passed smoothly two-thirds of the way. A few more slow dances, and it would conclude perfectly.
The king and princes hadn’t appeared yet; father and sons likely planned to just observe from the walls today… Makes sense, with so many nobles and merchants present. Whatever their schemes, they still needed to mingle and recognize faces first.
Cinderella wasn’t wearing any golden gown or slippers today, nor dressed like a foreign princess. The king and princes probably wouldn’t notice her… She had dressed so eye-catchingly precisely to draw attention away from Claudia and Gloria, preventing ill-intentioned stares. Though her efforts had backfired, luckily the two young men by Duke Wilson’s side had helped out.
…After this dance, time to head home.
Dancing with Anna Rochel was nice, but she was clearly distracted—not looking at him, not thinking of him. This left Hope a bit unhappy.
He suddenly tightened his grip on Ye Tang’s hand in his palm, trying to pull back her wandering thoughts: “Anna Ro—”
At that moment, the symphony halted abruptly. The musicians stood as one, and the trumpeters blared a triumphant fanfare.
“His Majesty the King and His Highness the Crown Prince, His Highness the Second Prince, His Highness the Third Prince—have arrived—!”
Ye Tang’s shoulders twitched. She suddenly felt like an old general with flags sprouting from her back, covered in death flags.
—The king had come, and all three princes too.
Ye Tang couldn’t even force a smile.