Chapter 1

Grace Ashworth slowly opened her blue eyes. She looked at a high, gently arched ceiling, made of sturdy, perhaps slightly irregular stone or plastered with visible dark wooden beams, and understood that she was somehow in an unknown place again. She closed her eyes once more and took a deep breath, feeling she had a healthy body and no pain or discomfort when she moved.

She sat up and looked around her bed, then at the velvet curtain with a familiar-looking symbol. She unconsciously glanced at her wrist to check the time, but there was nothing there. She tried to look for a phone, but found none. She paused, then slowly opened the curtain. She saw a bedside table with books on it and some kind of old-fashioned lamp. Then she noticed that there were more beds, each with the same curtain as hers. She stood up and looked out the window and froze.

Her eyes widened, and she involuntarily took a step forward to see more closely. Outside the window was a vast space with a large forest and field, and there was also a lake. She could tell that she was truly in a high tower. She took another deep breath, then turned around to look at the books on the bedside table. She opened one and turned the page, freezing again for only a moment. She looked at the other book, and after confirming that “Grace Ashworth” was indeed written on it, her tears fell.

” I’m back.. I’m finally back,” she murmured with trembling voice

Grace quickly wiped her tears and went back to her bed, closing the curtain. She needed to retrieve her memories to understand her situation quickly, this is her second time just like when she was 9 years old.

After a high fever, she had woken up in a different place with people she didn’t know. She had cried incessantly until she was taken to the hospital because she didn’t recognize any of them. The doctor declared she had amnesia, caused by the high fever that could also have been fatal. He said that thanks to her will to live, she managed to overcome it, but the price was her memory as a side effects that can be permanent or temporary.

She only listened to the adults around her. Although she didn’t understand everything, she still grasped the word “amnesia.” So, when the adults around her introduced themselves and realized she didn’t understand their words, they became more patient. She grew up introverted, not because she didn’t trust them, but because waking up in another place, in another timeline, among unfamiliar people, scared her; she had no idea what was going on. Until she grew up and learned their language, Tagalog, she slowly accepted the family that took care of her.

She tried to live a normal life and dedicated herself to studying, quickly realizing that the majority of people in this country understood English. At the age of 11, her parents gifted her a phone and laptop as a reward for her achievements in school. She then skipped two years in junior high school, and at the age of 20, she finished her studies.

In this new world, she was a biological daughter, her new family was wealthy, but they didn’t spoil their children. Instead, they personally taught them to work hard and be thankful for all their blessings.

In that warm family environment, the introverted Grace slowly learned to open up, to care for others, and to be strong as a person. While in college, she met a friend who loved novels, anime, movies, and K-dramas, which weren’t really her interests, but as a friend, she would occasionally go out with her to watch movies.

After graduating college with a dual major in Business Administration and Computer Science, she was sent directly to their family company as a junior manager, her starting point. She kept herself busy, as usual, much like when she was a child who buried herself in studying. After a few years, her position kept moving higher. Then, something inside her was shaken when she went abroad to the U.K. for overseas cooperation.

Looking at the country and hearing the language, she knew deep in her heart that she still missed her first home, the one that gave birth to her. She felt emotional, and that night she dreamed of her birth mother and father. Although they weren’t from a wealthy family like the one she had in the Philippines, she could feel their love and genuine happiness. They loved her, and she loved them, those abundant feelings she cherished.

How could she forget the family that taught her how to walk, how to talk, and how to love? After growing up in a new place, she finally understood that she had transmigrated into another world or timeline. When she actually learned those terms from her friend, she accepted it quickly and tried to use her talent in computer science to search for her birth parents in the U.K., but met only disappointment. She didn’t give up, thinking that perhaps she wasn’t good enough, so she studied harder, learned how to hack firewalls, but still found no results.

She calculated the time of both timelines, and knowing there was a 45-year gap from when she was 9 to the current timeline, she saw hope again. But she was quickly met with disappointment once more. Because when she visited the U.K. where her original family lived, she found that there was no “Ashworth” family there, or, to be precise, the place where her family used to live was now occupied by a church that had been standing there since the 1700s. This meant there was no overlapping timeline.

She lost hope and motivation at that moment. She hadn’t expected those twists and turns, and why did it have to happen to her? She cried every night, then worked even harder, neglecting her health, skipping meals and sleep. Her family had no idea, but when she was sent to the hospital one time, her parents cried. She realized she still had a family. She was thankful to them. Her family didn’t let her work too much again and took good care of her. She could only smile at them, then finally, under their care, she recovered.

She cooked for her family more often every time she had days off and sometimes spent two or three days with them. She smiled more often now. She thanked them and treated them even better than before until she died in a plane crash at age of 25.