1440 - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 1
Prologue
1
‘It hurts. It’s so loud. I’m burning… and yet I’m freezing.’
That day was unbearably sorrowful—a day when even a child’s fragile mind understood that living itself was suffering. But this was nothing new.
Barely six years old. It had been only a year since I came to this place at five, and yet my short life felt so endlessly cruel.
Since arriving at this house, there had not been a single day without sorrow. But never had I suffered as I did that day.
Small, frail, and wretched, I dragged my aching body from that cell of a room—absurdly vast—and fled toward the Annex Building, avoiding the eyes of my Stepmother and Stepbrother.
Even standing left me dizzy and swaying. In this state, I couldn’t endure their contempt and their kicks.
Though six years old, I was far smaller and thinner than children my age, making the sprawling Main Building difficult to measure against. The Annex Building, by contrast, felt modest—even though it had a rear courtyard and was an unusually tall wooden structure for its kind.
That sense of modesty came not from its size but from its appearance. The building was so old and worn that its decrepitude lay exposed, utterly unlike the gleaming Main Building.
The door itself was unremarkable. It was made of wood, so weathered that peering through its gaps didn’t seem impossible.
A doorway barely wide enough for one person to pass through was always secured with a lock disproportionately large. That day, it happened to be open, and I hurried gratefully inside.
I shuffled my unsteady feet across the Corridor of this place I’d never entered before. Creak, creak-creak. The old floorboards groaned beneath my light weight as if crying out in distress.
I pressed my hand against the weathered wall and continued inward. I had no mind to explore the depths of the Annex Building. I only wanted to escape the eyes of others, to crouch in solitude where I could ache freely.
Past the silent Corridor of the empty Annex Building, I reached the true end of that short passage.
I arrived at the Veranda—the end of the Annex Building—where I could see only a small earthenware jar in the Inner Courtyard, a bamboo grove dusted with snow, and the high surrounding wall.
The winter Veranda was cold enough to freeze my toes numb. I lowered myself slowly onto that icy floorboard. It was all I could manage. I couldn’t move even a fingertip further.
The fever that had been raging since last night wouldn’t break, no matter how much Fever Medicine I took. My body burned while my heart felt as though it would freeze solid.
The delicate joints of my small frame ached as if trampled. It was as though a massive fireball sat upon me, deliberately crushing every fragile place.
For a child not yet old enough for kindergarten, it was unbearable pain.
The unbearable part was the absence of my real mother’s arms to run to, to cry into.
“Does it hurt? Where does it hurt? How long will you endure?”
“So weak. So fragile. I could swallow you without leaving a crumb. So tender, so delicate. Such sweet meat, hmm?”
Auditory hallucinations came again—different from the voices that had buzzed through my head all last night, making it throb. New, terrifying voices seemed to speak to one another, taunting and laughing at me.
A small whimper escaped me.
I wanted only to burrow into my mother’s arms, to cry out that I was afraid, to hide myself in her warmth and surrender this aching body to her tender hands.
The breath leaving my nose and mouth sounded distant, as though it belonged to someone else entirely.
The winter air was bitterly cold, and my burning body was even colder. My skin felt as if it were scorching, yet my heart and core seemed frozen solid. Cold sweat streamed down and soaked into my clothes. My body burned so fiercely it transformed the sweat into vapor. Behind my eyes throbbed a dull, relentless ache. I couldn’t keep them open.
Is this how I die?
It was not ordinary for a child of six to contemplate death. But I had grown accustomed to such thoughts in this environment.
Everyone dies eventually. The soul passes into another world, waits for Reincarnation, and returns to this world. Therefore, death held no fear for me. It only felt sad.
Moreover, I wondered if my death now would be right—not only for myself, but for everyone else: my father, my Stepmother, my Stepbrother, and even my real mother.
As I squeezed my eyes shut, tears pooled and rolled down my temples. Through my blurred vision, white began falling gently. Snowflakes drifted closer and closer, settling on my eyelashes before melting slowly away.
‘How beautiful.’
Large clumps of snow were falling thickly. Over the Inner Courtyard, where snow had already accumulated once, white began settling again like a quilt, tender and soft.
The thought came to me that if I died as snow fell like this, then surely the gods in heaven welcomed me—and the sadness eased a little.
“…Do not suffer.”
It was not a sound traveling through my ears, but a resonance that touched directly inside my mind. It carried a peace entirely unlike the voices of spirits.
Then a cool hand descended onto my burning forehead. I slowly opened my eyes and lifted my chin. Through the fever-blurred haze, I saw a hand, pale as porcelain.
That hand, with its long, dark sleeve rolled back, was as white and luminous as falling snow as it gently touched my brow.
I blinked hard, opening my eyes wider, struggling to see. A white hand glowed before me in my clouded vision.
How beautiful was the person whose hand this was? What was the warmth that flowed from them, as if it came from my own mother?
For the year I had spent in this house, I had never once received such warmth. That touch—it caressed my forehead as though carrying away my pain, and it patted my hands and feet with such tenderness.
With difficulty, I opened my eyes. A face appeared—translucent as white porcelain. My vision blurred again too quickly for me to see their features clearly, yet I could perceive their hand’s shape distinctly, and their scent most of all.
It was the scent of water.
More precisely, the scent of flowers holding water—water lilies.
It was the fragrance of pale pink petals that my mother had once kept in a small pot in the yard.
“Do not suffer. Do not ache.”
The calm, clear voice seemed to carry that same fragrance.
As that lovely voice spread through my mind, the terrible sounds that had tormented and frightened me vanished instantly.
In peaceful silence, only that gentle voice remained, singing softly that I need not hurt.
They repeated the same words as though singing a lullaby to a child. With each repetition, with each touch, the pain diminished bit by bit.
The fever gradually subsided. The loud hallucinations and foul odors vanished entirely, leaving only their voice on the Veranda of the Annex Building. How vast was the relief I felt in that place.
“Still the same.”
This place was.
I walked down the Corridor toward the Annex Building, remembering that day from nearly twenty years ago.
I carried my shoes in one hand and pressed my stockinged feet deliberately against the polished floorboards of the Main Building. The well-maintained wood was smooth beneath my soles.
The traditional wooden house, built centuries ago, had been so meticulously restored that not a single creak escaped it. The floorboards gleamed with wax, so polished they verged on slickness.

I know this gleaming expanse is the result of what the Mansion’s servants do every dawn before the master wakes—emerging soundlessly, kneeling until their knees bruise, scrubbing away every trace with devotion. Every crevice between floor and wall has been tended to with such extravagant care.
I passed through that long corridor and opened the concealed Back Door. Beyond the wooden panels that swung outward lay a sprawling Inner Courtyard.
In truth, it was far too neglected to be called a garden. Grass and trees had grown wild and tangled, as if left to some untamed forest. There seemed to be no path worn by human footsteps.
Only by pushing through that wilderness could one reach the Annex Building, separated from the Main Building by a low wall and gate.
The Annex Building stood oddly distant from the Main Building, and it was decayed—deeply, unmistakably decayed.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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