[The Princess’s Taming Diary]
A slice-of-life healing story about a princess growing up surrounded by the overflowing love of her doting family—that was the title of this world.
It all began a week ago.
While working overtime, Bada collapsed from exhaustion. When she opened her eyes, she had entered the body of a woman named Adelia Vita.
Adelia was a minor extra in a novel, doomed to die at a banquet three years later.
The cause of death: cardiac arrest due to a frail body.
In simple terms, she was terminally ill.
A nameless extra with a ticking clock on her life.
The only stroke of luck was that Bada had read this novel more than ten times.
“Keeping a book that basically acts like a prophecy, one that contains the original story, like this out in the open—no, it’s too risky. They might not be able to read Korean, but still, I need to hide it better.”
Adelia pulled the hidden book back out.
Though she hadn’t even finished copying half of the original novel into it, it already contained parts of the future.
She pushed the book deeper into its hiding place.
Then, she carefully rearranged the items in front of it to make sure it was completely concealed.
Only after hiding the book so thoroughly that no one would even guess it was there did Adelia smile in satisfaction and spin around.
She hummed an unfamiliar tune as she walked over to the vanity.
“Wow… I still can’t get used to this.”
Adelia stopped in front of the mirror and shivered slightly.
It had been a week, but the face staring back at her still felt like a mask.
Eyes as blue as the sea, and silver hair like misty clouds gathered from the sky.
“Being this pretty should be cheating.”
Despite the dry, unkempt hair and the frail, thin body, the face was strikingly beautiful.
She poked her sunken cheek and finally tore her gaze away from the mirror.
“If only the body weren’t so weak, she probably wouldn’t have been just an extra.”
Grumbling, Adelia picked up the brush in front of her.
She slowly began brushing her silver hair, which reached down to her collarbones.
Her hand moved smoothly at first—but once she got near the shoulders, the brush started catching and snagging.
“If they’d at least brought something cheap, it would’ve been better.”
After a few more attempts, her hair kept getting tangled, and in the end, Adelia gave up on brushing it.
With a loud thud, she set the brush down, her eyes darkening like a deep, still lake.
“So annoying.”
Adelia suddenly stood up.
The old chair toppled weakly behind her, but she didn’t care. She threw herself onto the bed.
In this mansion, Adelia wasn’t in a position to ask for anything.
A lady in name only—no one considered her the mistress of this house.
“So sick of this… How did she even live like this?”
Adelia asked herself.
More precisely, she was asking the former version of herself.
She had all the memories, so it wasn’t that she didn’t know the answer.
She just couldn’t understand how someone could live such a pathetic life, clinging only to the love of her family.
“If it weren’t for imperial law, I would’ve run away from this stupid family already.”
Adelia let out a heavy sigh, over and over again.
According to the laws of the Dekra Empire, to which she belonged, all nobles were considered property of their house’s head.
Running a business under a borrowed or false name was allowed, but leaving the family or getting married required the permission of the family head.
“If it’s the Count… He might sell me off for cheap, but he wouldn’t just throw me away.
I guess that’s the only way.”
Adelia bit her lip as she thought.
Her father, Count Vita, saw his daughter not as a person, but as a possession.
And now that his second wife had given birth to a son who would become the heir, along with a healthy youngest daughter, all of the Count’s affection turned toward them.
Naturally, the weak-bodied Adelia was pushed aside.
So much so that he didn’t even stop the abuse from her stepmother and half-siblings.
— Don’t waste money on servants or maids. Just let her be their plaything instead.
That memory came rushing back.
For a moment, it felt as though the Count was standing right beside her.
Adelia’s face twisted with disgust at the memory she had no desire to recall.
“Seriously, what a damn mess of a family.”
Only after she spat out the curse did the memory finally begin to fade.
Her face was still full of irritation, but her brows were slightly drawn, as if in pity.
“You could’ve at least lived a little happier.
Happy enough that if I gave up everything and left, I wouldn’t feel guilty about it.”
If Adelia had lived just a bit better, she wouldn’t have hesitated to abandon everything and start over as someone new.
“I already feel uneasy not knowing if I really possessed her after she died.
If I throw away even her name, it’d really feel like I stole everything from her.”
Unfortunately, she wasn’t heartless enough to completely abandon the real Adelia’s life.
Rather than live forever with that discomfort, it was better to go through a bit of trouble and find true freedom instead.
“I probably look like such a pushover, don’t I?”
But what could she do? That’s just the kind of person she was.
Adelia reached out toward the sky, her fingers moving as if trying to catch the light streaming in through the window.
“Still, I’ll get my revenge.
That way, I won’t feel so tormented every time I remember her life.”
Since she now lived on carrying all of Adelia’s memories, it was a choice she had to make.
Whether she forgave her family, or dragged them all the way down and erased them from her memory completely—
Of course, her choice was the latter.
The only one who had the right to forgive them was the real Adelia.
Not the imposter who had taken over her body.
“If I can just get a hundred mana points… Just a hundred…”
Adelia whispered to herself with her eyes tightly shut, as if brainwashing herself.
Her faint voice carried more desperation than any loud cry ever could.
