My mother tried to kill me once. I was only around 11 years old. I have a blurred recollection of my childhood but that specific memory is as clear as glass. It’s like watching a videotape.

I’m not sure when it started but when I was young, my mother lived as if there was no single thought in her head. She didn’t talk to me or even look at me. She shared one or two words with our neighbors and didn’t talk much even when needed. She often stood still and stared at an empty space. She was like an old preprogrammed device, everything she did was autonomous and when she wasn’t doing anything she was on standby. Quiet. Reserved. Listless. Aimless. Like a ghost.

I wondered how she was at work. Did she also ignore her colleagues? What about the customers at the diner she worked at from 5 pm to 9 pm? Had she ever shared her grievances with friends over a couple of glasses of beer?

My mother was pretty much a mystery to me as far as I can remember. But I’m sure about this much—she didn’t care about me, whether I was alive or dead. She worked several jobs and would only come home after dark. She would leave food in the small and noisy refrigerator that came with the small room we were renting and by the time it was mealtime, the food would have gone hard and cold like a brick. She didn’t enroll me in school until I was old enough to still be at home during the day and the neighbors started to notice. Whenever I needed something for hygiene or school, I had to tell the uncle next door who owned a small shop, and then my mother would pay him the next time he saw her (most of the time the uncle didn’t sell what I needed for school so I had to go to class without it and the teacher would find out and call my mother in). My mother was, kindly speaking, not attentive to me and my needs. And so I learned to take care of myself.

I learned to cook rice and instant noodles. I took a bath using detergent soap. I even asked the old woman next door what a scholarship was and how I could get one. I started helping the elderly people in our apartment complex by throwing out their trash for a few coins.

But there was something that I, as a small child, could not handle on my own. It was being sick. And the painful memory of my own mother trying to kill me happened when I was terribly ill. My memories of that time were woven with the pitter-patter of the rain on the windows and the drumming thunder outside. I remember being cold and frightened.

I had been stuck in bed for days due to the flu and it wasn’t getting any better despite the medications I bought for myself. Something must have been special during those days because my normally apathetic mother became anxious. She stayed home later in the morning and looked after me before leaving for work. I remember thinking how nice it was despite the shortness of breath and aching in my small body.

My mother fed me hot soup each morning, made sure I took my medicine and checked my temperature often. She would then leave hot soup on the stove—which would turn cold eventually—and leave for the rest of the day. Then she would come home and check up on me again. It was strange but not as strange as what she started to do when it was evident I wasn’t getting better.

She would hunch on her small table and start writing frantically. She wrote and wrote and wrote, forgetting me entirely. She would then snap out of it and remember me. With wild eyes, she would watch me closely. I would fall asleep with those eyes on me.

Finally, one night, I was awoken by a sudden noise. Lightning was flashing and casting scary shadows on the walls. It was thundering. There was rain pelting the windows. It took me time to realize among the shadows was my mother. She was hovering over me. A beat later I was suffocating. She had been pressing a pillow on my face. I was dying.

Having that near-death experience once, and then again during the bus accident, I didn’t think dying again would scare me. But it did.

For a brief moment, I was back in my own world. I knew judging by the modern noise surrounding me. Very mellow music was playing in the background—“Let's run away. It'll be fine even if you don't go far...”—there was also a rhythmic beeping coming from somewhere, followed by an announcement through an intercom. It wasn’t hard to figure out I was in a hospital.

I woke up five days after I jumped into the lake. To my utter dismay (and relief for being alive, really), I was back in the Crown Princess' body.

The palace was in an uproar as soon as I woke up. Everyone was worried. Everyone asked why I did what I did—why I lied about the letter, sneaked out, and went back to the lake. Since I didn’t think of the possibility that my plans would fail (I was sure I would either drown or return back home) or in the current situation, that I would return here, in the end, I didn’t have a preplanned answer.

It shouldn’t matter, really. While the ladies-in-waiting fussed about it, I only needed to tell them I wanted to get some air and that it was a complete accident that I fell once again into the lake. Even Krista, who was with me moments before I jumped into the lake, was easily convinced. The problem is the Duke, who insisted to stay despite my desperate attempts to hide from him.

The Duke is no ordinary man. He is praised to be comparable to the King in terms of intellect, which to be honest is one of the many reasons why—despite being in-laws with the monarch and sharing a long history with King Hadrianus I—he is treated with great wariness. The King never shows an obvious fondness for him. The advisors think it is best to keep him at an arm's distance.

A man like him cannot be fooled. I told him strange words before I fell into the water, he saw me step backward and fall willingly—he sees through my lies. I'm fortunate enough that he isn't blatantly questioning me but I'm sure any moment now he will drop the bomb. Why? Why did you throw yourself into the ice-cold lake?