Surviving as a Terminally Ill Heiress - 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

“I never got to truly enjoy life, and now I’m dying.”
At Mother’s parched voice, I swallowed hard.
It was a brutally cold winter day.
A biting wind and snow swirled beyond the window, while my younger siblings slept soundly, oblivious to everything.
A sacred farewell was upon us.
“Mother…”
I held back my tears and gripped her hand tightly.
Then I spoke firmly.
“Father fathered three other children—surely that was enjoyment enough.”
“Hmph, I’m just regretful. I could have enjoyed more.”
There’s no reasoning with her.
My tears dried up, and I let her bony hand slip from my grasp.
Before the illness struck her down, she’d seduced every handsome man within reach—what more could she possibly want?
“Stop chasing after good-looking men!”
“I wasn’t chasing them—they were drawn to me!”
“And yet you gained nothing of substance from any of them.”
“Bebe, all men are insubstantial by nature. So you might as well choose the one with the finest face.”
There was logic in that.
Before I could help myself, I found myself nodding, and Mother gestured to my siblings lying on the bed.
“And thanks to them, each of you turned out well—how is it you all inherited the best features from Mother and Father?”
What good is a pretty face when you’re poor?
I’d only inherit Mother’s cursed fate.
At ten years old, street-born and worldly, I could only snort in dismissal, but Mother seemed delighted as she launched into old stories.
“Sean was so tender. Hui looks stern on the surface, but his heart is soft—I’m sure that came from him. If only there hadn’t been that sudden accident, he would have been a wonderful father to you all… My time with Charles was brief but joyful. Mickey too. And Liam, who gave our dear Dido those lovely curls—I wonder how he’s getting on…”
“Last I heard, he’s still gambling.”
“That wastrel. I should have cut his hands off entirely.”
Instead you broke a few fingers and drove him away.
Even that wasn’t enough to satisfy her—she ground her teeth thinking of Dido’s father.
He was remarkably handsome, in a dissolute sort of way. Gambling, infidelity, drunkenness—a complete ruin.
He’d destroyed the household and even pilfered the emergency funds Mother had set aside for us.
‘At least I managed to keep this much.’
I fingered the old string I always wore around my neck.
Truth be told, it probably wouldn’t fetch much even if I tried to fence it.
As I shook my head, Mother, who’d been sighing heavily, suddenly spoke.
“And your father… I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead anymore.”
“I hope he’s dead.”
I answered coldly, releasing the cord from my fingers.
Better that my own father should have died in some gutter than to have abandoned a pregnant woman and built a good life elsewhere.
Mother gazed at my furrowed brow with warm eyes.
Though her limbs were paralyzed and could no longer move, those golden irises still gleamed with vitality.
“Bebe, your father was different from other men. He was like…”
“A prince?”
I’d heard that line so many times my ears had calluses.
Some prince. What fairy tale prince toys with a girl and then vanishes without a trace?
Unlike my indifference, Mother laughed brightly.
“Yes, truly! He shone so brightly!”
She sounded like a girl caught in her first love.
Even I, exhausted from sighing, couldn’t help but let out a stifled laugh.
Foolish Mother.
I understood that she couldn’t forget that prince-like first love, so she kept trying to attach herself to this man and that.
And in the end, every single one had failed.
The window rattled from a sudden gust of snow.
I peered out at the window, then up at the ceiling, then scratched my cheeks before speaking.
“…Thank you.”
“Hmm?”
“For giving birth to Hui and Dido.”
In that moment, I understood that Mother was sorry for leaving me with such a heavy burden.
But truthfully, I felt only gratitude.
For having younger siblings to feed and care for.
For not being left completely alone.
“Thank you, truly.”
For loving me.
Mother managed a weak smile.
It was the expression of someone who couldn’t cry, so she laughed instead.
“…What am I to do? Our Bebe is still so young.”
“I’m grown now. At ten, I can work as a maid—I can earn money. Morgan says my hands are capable and my words are well-spoken, so I’ll be well-received wherever I go. Besides, Hui and Dido are good children. They’ll help me tremendously.”
As I rattled on with deliberate boasting, Mother’s eyes slowly closed, a faint smile on her lips.
I kept speaking clearly to the end.
“So don’t worry.”
“…”
“I’ll live well.”
It was a vow.
Something I had to keep, no matter what—Bebe Flang.
But what is this?
“Sigh.”
Exactly twenty years old.
I was dying.
From the same disease as Mother.
Even the reason for dying was identical.
“It’s a shame. If only you’d kept taking Black Sorghum…”
Money.
I, lying corpse-like on the bed, laughed hollowly at the physician.
“A single root costs more meat than I could buy in weeks.”
“Even so…”
“And it doesn’t even cure you.”
This illness had no cure—it was incurable.
Black Sorghum only kept things from getting worse.
Which meant I’d have to spend more money than the price of meat every single day just to stay sick until I died.
‘…Unbearable.’
The rent was already in arrears.
I stared at the half-rotted ceiling with dull eyes and spoke.
“Morgan, I have a favor to ask.”
“Tell me.”
“Sell this for me.”
I gestured with my eyes toward where my neck was now rigid.
More precisely, the ring hanging from the old string around it.
Mother had bound it carefully to this cord and placed it around my neck since birth—a modest keepsake.
“It won’t fetch much, but take that money for the rent… and use what’s left to buy new shoes for your daughter Genie. Hers are quite worn.”
At this, the tender-hearted widowed physician looked as though he might burst into tears.
“But that ring is something your father left behind…”
“Which is exactly why I don’t need it anymore.”
Perhaps I never truly needed it at all.
Why I’d clung to it so foolishly even when I was scraping by, I couldn’t say.
I let out a bitter laugh.
Like mother, like daughter—it seems I inherited the foolishness too.
“…There’s no reason to keep wearing it as an heirloom when it could keep the living alive. Sell it. The living must live.”
A roof for my siblings to return to, and new shoes for Genie—that was all the value this ring needed to have.
Just a few words of conversation left me gasping for breath.
The end was drawing near, moment by moment.
My siblings, wandering the provinces with no knowledge of any of this, seemed to shimmer before my eyes.
My beloved Hui and Dido.
Do you blame your older sister for driving you away so coldly?
When I told you to go out and earn money because you were old enough—that wasn’t the truth.
I couldn’t bear to show you your older sister dying from the same illness as Mother.
I didn’t want to see you sacrifice yourselves trying to save me.
Please, forgive this foolish sister.
And…
‘I’m sorry, Mother.’
I’m not going to live well—I won’t even live at all.
I urged Morgan on with a bitter mouth.
“Morgan, hurry.”
After remaining gloomy for a long while, Morgan finally took my ring.
The absence of that shabby weight I’d worn my whole life felt less empty than liberating.
“Go on, sell it quickly…”
“That’s right!”
Then Morgan suddenly sprang to his feet as if seized by determination.
“I’ll use that money to send word to Hui and Dido! Wait just a little!”
And he dashed out of the house in a flurry.
Probably intending to sell the ring and use a Magic Communication Device.
I could only move my lips silently as he disappeared from sight.
No—don’t do that.
‘What a waste of money…!’
How much does a communication fee cost! Please just buy Genie new shoes with that money, you scatterbrained fool!
I’m going to die right now anyway!
The moment the anger flared up inside me, the world spun.
Ah.
Wretched.
That cursed word—money, money, money.
To die with a shabby fate dictated by finances to the very end.
‘I never got to truly enjoy life, and now I’m dying.’
Oh, Mother.
Those were supposed to be my words.
As I drifted into darkness alone, the world outside the house suddenly grew chaotic.
“Bebe would never commit theft…!”
“Which is precisely why we need to confirm it!”
Morgan, trying to explain something, and a group of excited people barged through the door, arguing.
And the last words that reached my ears.
“This is the ring of the missing Prince Ambrose!”
The ring.
The Ambrose Duchy.
That family—the wealthiest in the empire?
Which meant I was…
As the long-hidden truth of my birth suddenly became clear, a single hot tear rolled down my cheek.
Oh, Mother…
‘You should have told me to sell the ring sooner!’
And so I died.

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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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