Aristocrat: A Transmigration Story

Chapter 2 - Miss Han Lia

"Miss Lia, Miss Lia! Finally the gods have listened!" the frantic girl beside her exclaimed.

Where am I and why do I look younger? Why does she call me Lia? Elana thought. She looked around again, and saw that she was in a small red room. "Where are we?"

"We're at the closest inn near the lake Miss. After you got crushed from the stampede, we rushed you back here. You did not breathe for a while there!"

"I see, I see." Elana mused but clearly not getting the full story yet. While she did not know what happened to her, she already assumed that she has traveled back in time given the strangeness of her surroundings. It should have been a cause for concern, but Elana has read too many romance novels of the same trope. At the back of her mind, she somehow had a user manual of sorts to guide her from such a predicament. And the first step on that manual is to get her bearings and ask the right questions.

She looked at the girl again and thought fast. She needed to choose how she asks her questions or the girl would know that she is not the real Han Lia. So instead, she went for the usual scenario of amnesia. She asked, "I'm sorry, can you remind me again why we're here? I think I lost a bit of my memories."

The girl stopped for a moment with tears forming in her eyes. "Miss! Miss! I'm really sorry, please don't punish me!" She kowtowed so many times on the floor. Elana jumped out of her bed, she most certainly did not expect this!

"Hey, hey stop that. I'm not going to punish you." She helped up the girl on the floor and let her sit beside her. "I just want to know what happened."

The teary-eyed girl summoned all her courage and explained to her mistress, "Currently, we are near the Red Lake of the Seo Empire. The Crown Prince has finally returned from his 7-year Kingly Trial and he paraded here! There was such a huge crowd and everyone was so excited, it ended in a stampede."

Seo Empire...was there something like that in Ancient China? Or probably this is Korea? Elana thought hard, but alas, she wasn't a history whiz in her younger years.

"The Kingly Trial?"

"Yes! Before he will be crowned as the next Emperor, he must complete 7 years of trial outside the empire. The specifics of it, nobody knows except for the current Emperor. But I'm sure he completed it, he's not our Crown Prince for nothing." The girl finally calmed down and then stared at her. "I guess you don't remember the Crown Prince then. Miss, you were his number one fan." She giggled. Like actually giggled.

Elana massaged her forehead. The girl straight up fan-girled in front of her, describing the Crown Prince as "dashing", "intelligent", "courageous", and most importantly "the most handsome man in the Seo Empire" in one breath.

"If not for you mistress, I wouldn't have known how wonderful the Crown Prince is! Thank you for being such a loyal woman to our Crown Prince." She smiled happily.

Elana forcefully massaged her forehead. So Han Lia was also such a woman, and she felt a little bit of secondhand shame.

"Good thing he bought that samera stone ring in your family's store Miss! At least you've seen the prince up close!"

And of course Elana cannot remember that. She does not even know what a samera stone is. But somehow, she was finally getting the story—the girl named Han Lia adored the Crown Prince after he bought a ring from her family's store, she became his follower unbeknownst to him, dragged her servant into that madness, went to Red Lake to witness the parade, and got crushed from the stampede.

Elana sighed.

She stood up and told her servant, "Come on, let's go home."

*