The Orphan Princess (1)

It was around the fortieth night after I had fallen asleep in the Queen's embrace, utterly exhausted, that I finally began to understand what people around me were saying.

Forty nights might sound like a fairly long stretch of time, but to me back then, each day was nothing more than an identical loop of mundane routine. Eat, sleep, soil myself, cry. And then eat and sleep all over again.

On the outside, I was unmistakably an infant, but inside resided a college-educated Korean man in his twenties. More precisely, the mind of a man who had lived through his late twenties. The real issue was that this mind couldn't accomplish a single damn thing. I couldn't walk, much less talk. What little I heard wasn't even my mother tongue, Korean. Moving my limbs of my own volition was a battle in itself. All I could manage was to stare at whatever entered my field of vision, listen to the sounds drifting into my ears, and churn thoughts around in my head.

My saving grace, if anything, was the legacy of South Korea's Ministry of Education. American English though it was, twelve years of compulsory public education had drilled standard English into me, so I wasn't entirely illiterate when it came to the alphabet. I could pick out a handful of vocabulary words, and if the sentence was simple enough, I could make an educated guess at what was being said. Besides, trapped in an immobile baby's body, eavesdropping on the maids' endless chatter was literally the only thing I could do all day.

At first, I genuinely couldn't comprehend a thing. It was just white noise—a rapid barrage of British accents, a blur of familiar and unfamiliar words tumbling into one another. But at some point, a familiar word snagged in my ear. Then another. Slowly, I began to piece together the context bridging those words.

Call it a blessing in disguise, perhaps. Even if I couldn't grasp full sentences, observing their tone, subtle nuances, and gestures let me infer the gist of their meaning. Fitting those clues together piece by piece, I could roughly follow the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠subject of conversation even if the exact syntax eluded me. Whenever a word I recognized popped up, it felt like stumbling upon an oasis in the desert. It was slightly pathetic that a single vocabulary word could bring me such joy, of course, but whenever an English term or idiom I actually knew cropped up, I was profoundly grateful. Each time, a little piece of the puzzle snapped into place in my head: Ah, so this person is saying that, or That word is being used in this context.

Spending my days like that, bit by bit, their conversations began filtering into my comprehension.

And judging by everything... this was definitely Britain. There were plenty of clues that led me to that conclusion, but the most undeniable, firsthand evidence had to be the tea. They drank an absurd, terrifying amount of tea. The maids tending to me took tea breaks with clockwork precision. Morning or afternoon, without fail, out came the tea. The elderly gentlemen and middle-aged men who drifted by—presumably butlers or private secretaries—did the exact same thing. Even my biological parents, whose rare appearances were few and far between, never failed to have a teacup in hand.

You might wonder if it makes sense to identify an entire nation based solely on tea consumption, but that was practically the extent of my knowledge. I wasn't a historian, after all. Nor had I ever lived in the UK in my previous life. If you're going to fling someone into a romance-fantasy or alternate-history novel set in Britain, at least pick someone who actually knows something about it...! I don't even know the country's proper full name!

Was it the British Empire? Great Britain? The United Kingdom? I couldn't even keep the official nomenclature straight. Since it's the United Kingdom, "United Kingdom" was probably right, but... all I really knew was the Premier League and that it consisted of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. At least I knew that much, thanks to the endless YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels that regurgitated the fact.

The real problem came after that. If anyone asked me about major historical events, political systems, or the royal lineage, I had virtually nothing to offer. Maybe that was why the last news stories etched in my memories before death had all been related to Britain. ...Not that I was an expert on any other era's history, mind you, but I at least knew that the Britain of this era was nothing like the modern one.

According to the rudimentary knowledge of Korean and world history tucked away in my brain, Victorian Britain was the empire at the peak of its golden age. A time of explosive growth spurred by the Industrial Revolution, commanding colonies across the globe, boasting undisputed naval supremacy over the high seas. At least, that was the Britain taught in middle school world history textbooks. And standing at the center of it all was Queen Victoria. There was a reason they called it the "Victorian Era."

The problem... was that I had been dropped right smack into that Victorian Era. It wasn't like I had browsed a history book and chosen the time period, nor had I entered a novel whose setting I intimately knew. I had simply opened my eyes and found myself royalty. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't even know who I was. ...It was pathetic enough that I still didn't know my own full name, but I had no clue why I'd been born here in the first place. And above all else, I had no idea how history was supposed to unfold.

All I knew was the name "Victorian Era," the fact that the British loved their tea, and a few scraps of trivia picked up during school. If someone asked me for the exact years World War I or World War II started, I probably couldn't give a confident answer. Calling this "knowledge from a previous life" was downright embarrassing.

Once again, I took stock of my predicament. The mind of a twenty-nine-year-old trapped inside an infant's body. Britain, presumably in the late nineteenth century, and Queen Victoria, presumably my great-grandmother. Piecing together the clues, I could finally be certain that this was, at the very least, nineteenth-century Britain. Well, considering her great-granddaughter had just been born, the Queen's reign probably didn't have much time left either—

Except what didn't have much time left was me.

At some point, the coughing grew loud enough to reach my ears. In fact, it became a frequent, jarring irritation. Among my eight maids, coughing began to spread—striking five of them in total. Fortunately, Rose and Florence remained untouched. The others disappeared from my sight the moment their coughing began. ...Including Agnes.

When the atmosphere took such a grim turn, my instincts told me an epidemic was running rampant. And clearly, I had grossly overestimated the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nineteenth century. I thought that even if they didn't have masks, they'd at least cover their mouths and noses with cloth or handkerchiefs... Not a chance. Even in medieval romance-fantasy ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠novels, people wrapped cloth around their faces when a plague broke out! Confronted with the era's appalling ignorance of public health and basic hygiene, I couldn't help but feel a chilling threat to my very survival.

In the fragile body of a newborn, in an age without incubators or twenty-first-century medicine, if I caught whatever illness had grown adults hacking their lungs out... Through Rose's hushed whispers, I learned the contagion came accompanied by a raging fever.

...It was influenza.

Yet, somewhat rendering my terror moot, I miraculously survived for a full week.

After that week—which could genuinely be called a miracle—passed, the day arrived when Rose pointed to the calendar, telling me today was January 14. That was the day the entire mansion wept. Aside from myself, who could only cry out of infant instinct, every surviving soul in the estate broke down in tears. For a second, I wondered if the Queen had died...

Soon after, guardsmen clad in scarlet tunics and towering black bearskin caps—the kind that modern Chinese tourists mercilessly hunted for photographs outside Buckingham Palace—marched in and bellowed an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠announcement.

In the bellowing guard's ear-splitting tirade, the only words I managed to comprehend were "Queen Victoria" and "Windsor Castle." Even though I couldn't properly decipher what on earth he had just proclaimed, when I was bundled into a gilded carriage alongside the surviving Rose and Florence, I simply thought it was the warm benevolence of a great-grandmother moving her great-granddaughter to a safer haven.

Nestled in Rose's arms, the carriage set off. I recalled hearing somewhere that horse-drawn carriages offered terrible ride comfort, but this felt so remarkably smooth it rivaled a twenty-first-century automobile. I guess you really get what you pay for... Thanks to that luxury, I comfortably dozed off in Rose's warm embrace.

Scratch that. Warm benevolence of a great-grandmother, my foot. The original place, Sandringham House or whatever it was called, was infinitely better.

"How on earth did you look after the boy?! What in heaven's name were the physicians doing—?!"

"Mother! It was merely influenza! Why must you drag the death of your eldest grandson into the realm of conspiracies?!"

"Prime Minister! Speak! How is it that the heir presumptive to the British Empire and his French consort departed this world on the very same day—?!"

"Y-Your Majesty..."

No wonder Rose had been crying, and Florence had been crying, and everyone had swapped out their regular maid attire for dreary, funeral-black dresses. Right before my eyes, Queen Victoria—clad in her perpetual black mourning garb—was unleashing a furious tempest, while the man who had to be my grandfather, the future Edward VII, shouted back at the Queen in his black morning coat. Having grown up in Confucian South Korea, shouting at one's mother like that felt almost criminally unfilial.

Seemingly trying to mediate, an elderly, morbidly obese gentleman—caught in the crossfire of this mother-and-son brawl—stood flustered and helpless, while the rest of the figures who looked like royals were all draped in deep mourning black.

And then, as I was carried into the room in Rose's arms, the crowd turned to gaze at me in unison. In their eyes lay grief, sympathy, and pity. And mingled with those was a swirl of complex emotions that defied easy explanation.

Only then did it dawn on me: my biological parents were dead.

I had not even reached my first birthday, and I had become an orphan. An instinctual, sorrowful wail tore from my tiny chest. Across the room, a distant calendar silently reminded me of the date: January 14, in the year of our Lord 1892.