Chapter 1
I - Aniella Mullier clenched her eyes shut and cried out
“Damn these glass slippers!”
The result of tumbling down what felt like at least thirty steps was utterly disastrous. Her arms and legs, already thin from poor nutrition, ached terribly, and not a single part of her body, including her back, was spared from pain. The only small mercy was that her delicate, fragile neck hadn’t snapped.
Well, at least desperately protecting my head paid off, she thought. But her moment of relief was fleeting. She checked the state of her dress and her face immediately fell.
The hem of her sky-blue party dress was torn into five petal-like shreds. Her knees and shoulders were scraped, leaving large holes, and the side seams had burst open.
This was no ordinary dress. She had scraped together every bit of money she had—even saving a month’s worth of food expenses—just to buy the expensive fabric. With no money left to pay a tailor, she had sacrificed sleep to sew every single stitch herself, all for tonight’s party!
Seeing the dress she had worked so hard on ruined brought tears to Aniella’s eyes.
“It’s all because of these damn glass slippers that don’t fit!”
She had no idea where the other one had gone. She glared resentfully at the single slipper still clinging desperately to her foot.
Deep down, she knew the truth. She couldn’t entirely blame the slippers for this miserable state. She had been aware they were too big for her feet.
All night, she had walked carefully to keep the ill-fitting slippers from falling off. It was a task that drained both her concentration and stamina. For someone who had just endured a grueling month of sewing from dawn to late night, it was simply too much to bear.
“H-hello. Yes, it’s been a while.”
She tried to force a smile onto her pale face, but the corners of her mouth refused to lift properly. Even standing still felt unsteady, let alone walking.
This won’t do, she thought. The moment she sat down in a corner of the ballroom to rest, a wave of exhaustion crashed over her. Unable to fight her heavy eyelids, she was asleep in an instant.
Ding dong.
Startled awake by the chime, Aniella instinctively turned her head toward the clock on the wall. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It felt like she had only closed them for a moment, but it was already midnight.
She burst out of the banquet hall as if being chased. A dauntingly long staircase stretched out below the building. For a moment, she felt dizzy, but she couldn’t slow down. Holding up her skirt, she dashed down the steps in a panic.
And this was the result.
“Everything is ruined.”
Overwhelmed, she buried her face in her hands as hot tears welled up. She hadn’t been the only one to sacrifice for a month, skimping on sleep and food. Her family had eaten less too, helping her however they could, even trying to add every last piece of lace.
Why had they gone to such effort?
Because they hoped Aniella would catch a wealthy bachelor at the party tonight.
But what happened tonight?
She hadn’t managed a single proper dance and had fallen asleep. Even if the dress had stayed intact, she could have borne the whispers about others wearing the same thing and tried another party. Now, even that was impossible.
The faces of her mother and stepsister Holly, waiting at home for good news, flashed in her mind. Aniella sighed deeply, filled with guilt.
“I’m always like this. I can’t do anything right.”
Aniella considered her life to be like a ship on the ocean. No matter how much she unfurled the sails to move forward, it was a ship that remained still, with not a single gust of wind.
One might say a calm sea is better than a rough one, but Aniella did not agree. This ship was infested with various kinds of rats named Misfortune. The largest rat was her father’s business failure. With its large mouth, it constantly gnawed away at the bottom, causing the ship to frequently take on water.
Every time that happened, Aniella and her family would frantically grab hammers, nails, wooden planks, and the like to plug the holes. Thanks to that, the ship hadn’t sunk yet and somehow managed to survive.
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