Pain.

That was the first thing she felt. A deep, burning ache behind her eyes like someone had cracked her skull open and stuffed lightning inside.

Anne Darlene groaned, lifting a trembling hand to her head.

“My head… it hurts…”

She peeled her eyes open slowly. Her vision was a blur of gold and white. A chandelier? Walls trimmed in marble? Silken sheets?

Where was she?

She blinked hard. The ceiling above her wasn’t the peeling concrete she was used to in their small flat in Ihiala. This ceiling was high, ornate, luxurious. Too perfect.

This… wasn’t Nigeria.

The realization hit her like a blow to the chest.

She jolted upright and gasped, breath catching in her throat as she scanned the room. Everything screamed wealth. Too pristine. Too expensive. Machines beeped steadily beside her bed. A vase of fresh lilies sat beside her, like some kind of twisted apology.

“No… no no no,” she whispered, panic rising. “This isn’t… where am I? Where’s Papa? Where’s…”

A mirror on the wall caught her eye.

She staggered to her feet, wobbling like a newborn deer, and stumbled toward it.

And that’s when she saw her.

A girl. But not Anne.

The reflection showed a stranger. Long, glossy curls. A delicate nose. Hazel eyes. Lush skin, light-brown and glowing. She was beautiful. Unreal.

Anne stumbled back. “This isn’t me. This isn’t my face!”

Suddenly the door burst open.

And they flooded in.

First was a tall, elegant woman with red lips and expensive perfume, crying out as she rushed to Anne’s side. “Anna! My baby girl!”

Before Anne could move, the woman wrapped her in a tight embrace.

But that embrace? It was wrong.

The warmth was fake. The arms too stiff. And just as Anne opened her mouth to protest, she felt the woman’s breath on her ear.

“Don’t play dumb, Anna. We all know what you did. If you try this act again, I swear I’ll end it myself.”

The words hit like a slap. Anne froze, heart slamming in her chest.

What… what had she just said?

The woman pulled away with a smile so sweet it could rot teeth. “She’s awake!” she cried to the room.

Anne stumbled back, knocking into the IV stand. “I’m not Anna,” she said, voice shaking. “My name is Anne Darlene. I don’t know you.”

Then came the cousin.

Seo Yerin.

Young, flawless, terrifying. She leaned against the wall in her designer heels, arms folded, and smirked like a serpent.

“She’s lying again,” Yerin said coldly. “She always does this. First, the overdose. Now, she’s Nigerian? Next she’ll say she’s an alien.”

“I don’t know you!” Anne cried. “You’re not my cousin! I’m not your Anna!”

“Oh shut up, psycho,” Yerin hissed. “You think you can just pretend nothing happened? After all the hell you caused?”

Another boy stepped in. Ji Joe — tall, handsome, eyes sharp with fake concern.

“Maybe she needs another ‘accident,’” he said under his breath, just loud enough.

Anne’s stomach flipped. Her knees buckled.

“You’re insane,” she whispered, staring at them. “All of you. This isn’t real. I was sick. I had cancer. I was dying…”

“Delusional,” said Kim Sang-woo, the older man near the door in a tailored suit. “Just like her mother.”

“Attention-seeker,” added his brother, Kim Do-hwan.

“She should’ve stayed in the coma,” Yerin spat, walking up to Anne and leaning close. “You’re not the victim here. You’re the mistake.”

Anne’s hands curled into fists at her sides. She looked around, her chest tightening.

This wasn’t just a hospital.

This was a trap.

And no one was on her side.

Except—

“Ahn-na, stop,” a soft voice said.

A woman stepped forward. Eyes kind, voice trembling. Aunty Mary.

“Everyone, she just woke up. You can’t speak to her like this. Maybe she… maybe she’s not fully back yet.”

Anne turned to her like a lifeline. “Please… you believe me, don’t you?” she begged. “I’m not your Anna. I swear on everything I love. My name is Anne. Anne Darlene from Anambra. My mother died of cancer. I was diagnosed too. I collapsed in a forest… a light hit me—”

“You’ve gone mad,” Yerin whispered, her face pale now. “This… you’re dangerous.”

“She’s faking,” muttered Ji Joe. “Classic Anna move. Cry, lie, manipulate.”

Anne gasped for air. Her lungs felt like they were filling with fire. Her body was trembling.

Another woman stepped forward — tall, graceful, with deep brown eyes. Mrs. Jung Hye-Ri, her father’s twin.

“She’s scared,” Hye-Ri murmured, brushing Anne’s hair back. “Look at her. She’s terrified.”

But then—

He entered.

Kim Seokjin.

Tall. Silver-haired. Untouchable. The air in the room shifted the moment he walked in. All mocking ceased. Even Yerin stepped back.

“Anna,” he said, voice as deep as thunder and soft as snowfall. “My granddaughter… welcome back.”

Anne stared. Her heart pounded in terror.

“Grand… what?” she breathed. “No. No, no. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m not—”

He reached forward to touch her hand.

She recoiled. “Don’t touch me! I’m not Kim Anna! I don’t know you! I don’t know ANY of you!”

Silence.

Every eye in the room turned to her like she’d just grown horns.

“She’s unwell,” Seokjin said at last, turning to Dr. Min Jae-hyun, the doctor standing in the corner.

The man’s face looked like glass cracking — a kind face, filled with worry. The only one who hadn’t spoken.

“She’s lying,” Yerin said again. “Lock her up before she does what she did last time.”

“Last time?” Anne whispered.

“What did I do…?”

“Go back to your act, Anna,” Ji Joe said, voice low, venomous. “But just know… if you think you can run away again, next time, you won’t wake up.”

Anne gasped.

And then everything went still.

Dr. Jae-hyun stepped forward, quietly. He handed her a mirror.

Anne looked.

And saw the girl again.

Not Anne. Not the poor Nigerian girl who watched K-dramas with stars in her eyes and coughs in her throat.

This was a doll.

Expensive. Empty. Beautiful. Fake.

Her knees hit the floor.

She didn’t scream this time.

She just whispered.

“… I’m trapped “

The silence in the hospital room was thicker than smoke. The air itself felt heavier, poisoned with secrets and stares that could strip skin off bones.

Anne sat stiffly on the bed, her hands clenched around the hem of the silk hospital robe. Her throat was dry, her heart thundering. She was surrounded by strangers—monsters in designer clothing—yet they all called her by one name:

Anna.

No matter how many times she denied it, screamed it, cried it—they refused to hear her.

“You really don’t remember?” Aunt Mary asked, voice low, eyes scanning her like she was a ticking bomb.

Anne shook her head. “I told you. I’m not her.”

Yerin scoffed from the side, her arms crossed. “Right. And I’m Beyoncé.”

“I remember Nigeria,” Anne said, staring at her trembling hands. “I remember my mother dying. I remember vomiting blood. I remember the forest… the light… and then…”

The memories swirled.

Flash.

A girl ,Anne. Skinny. Sick. Coughing violently into a stained handkerchief in her father’s old room. A cracked mirror, her favorite K-drama playing softly on her brother’s old phone.

Flash.

Screams. The diagnosis. Stage 4 stomach cancer. Her father breaking. Her neighbors whispering. Her friends pulling away. A cruel world growing colder.

Flash.

The forest. So green it glowed. Birds singing. Flowers that smelled like something not of this Earth. And the light.

So warm. So bright. She stepped in.

And then blackness.

Tears streamed down Anne’s cheeks. She snapped back to the room, her breath ragged.

“You tried to jump,” Seo Yerin sneered suddenly, folding her arms. “You overdosed on pills, locked yourself in the bathroom, and almost ruined everything. But then again, that’s what you do best, Anna. Ruin things.”

Anne looked up, terrified. “I didn’t—! That wasn’t me! I’m not—!”

“Enough!” snapped Kim Do-hwan.

Her cries went ignored.

Aunt Mary stood quietly, but her silence now felt different. There was… guilt in it. Maybe even doubt.

“She could’ve died,” Dr Min jae-hyun muttered. “And you people are still acting like she’s the victim.”

“I did die…” Anne whispered, almost to herself. “I died in that forest.”

A beat of silence.

Then

A hand touched her shoulder.

Dr. Min Jae-hyun.

Her uncle. Her quiet savior.

He knelt before her, cupping her face gently. His eyes were glassy. Full of storms.

“You remember something?” he asked softly.

Anne nodded through her tears. “Everything but her life.”

Dr. Jae-hyun’s face twisted. He pulled her into his arms.

And Anne broke.

The sobs that escaped her were feral—noisy, shaking, ripped from the deepest parts of her soul. Her body crumbled into his chest as she cried for the mother she lost, the life that was stolen, and the nightmare she woke into.

Her pain was a sound of its own.

So heavy, so real… that even Kim Seokjin, the ice-hearted king himself, turned his face away and blinked back silent tears.

She felt doomed. But in that single moment—in her uncle’s arms, for just a flicker of time,she felt seen.

The silence that followed was thick and uneasy.

“She’s acting,” Yerin hissed, trying to regain control. “She’s just playing victim again. She knows what she did.”

But Jae-hyun stood, gently laying Anne back on her pillows.

His voice was calm. Controlled. But each word was a bullet.

“Enough. If anyone here says another word, I will make sure every skeleton in this family’s closet is dragged into the sun.”

Everyone froze.

Jae-hyun didn’t shout.

He didn’t accuse.

But his eyes—the way they burned into each of them,said everything.

He knew.

Maybe he couldn’t prove it. Maybe he didn’t have the tapes, or the drugs, or the camera footage. But he knew. And now, so did they.

Yerin took a shaky step back. Ji Joe looked away. The uncles said nothing.

Kim Seokjin cleared his throat. “Everyone… out.”

They didn’t argue.

He turned to one of the guards near the door.

“Call Hyunseo,” he said. “Now.”

A few minutes later, the door opened again.

And he walked in.

Hyunseo.

Black suit. Cold eyes. Quiet rage in every step.

Her bodyguard.

Tall. Sharp-jawed. A scar beneath his left eye. He stood by the door like a statue. Until Kim Seokjin nodded.

“Protect her. No one else gets in.”

“Yes, Chairman,” Hyunseo said.

Anne stared at him, eyes red and wide.

Seokjin approached her bed, this time with less ice, more fragility. “We don’t understand what’s happened to you… but you’re my granddaughter. And no matter what you remember, you’re home.”

She didn’t reply.

He touched her hand, then left.

Dr. Jae-hyun gave her a light sedative. “Rest, my little firefly. I’m here.”

She drifted into sleep, chest still hiccupping with silent sobs.

As the room cleared, only Hyunseo remained.

He walked to her bedside. He looked down at the sleeping girl—so delicate, so broken.

And his fists clenched.

He remembered it all.

That night.

The screaming.

The drinks spiked.

The cousins laughing.

Anna running barefoot through the hall.

His own hands bloody from punching a guard to get to her.

And finally—her body, limp in the rain-soaked garden.

Someone had tried to take her.

And he hadn’t gotten there in time.

He never forgave himself.

Now, she was back. But changed. Different. Haunted.

He didn’t know it yet.

But his heart had already chosen her.

And he would burn the world before letting it happen again.

The mansion loomed before her like a forgotten cathedral — tall, breathless, and cold.

It had taken them three days after the hospital incident to bring her home.

Home.

A lie dressed in marble.

She stepped out of the car wrapped in silence. Her bodyguard still unnamed to her, still unreadable ,opened the door for her with the quiet grace of someone who carried secrets in his soul. His eyes met hers, and for the first time, she felt steadied. Not safe, but steadied.

The gates shut behind her like the closing of a cage.

The house smelled of wealth, lavender, and something she couldn’t name — like grief hiding in expensive perfume.

Anne walked through the glassy corridors on eggshells. The floors gleamed, her footsteps echoed, and every wall watched her. She didn’t belong here. Even the chandeliers felt like strangers.

Everything was too bright, too sharp. Her room — Kim Anna’s room — was twice the size of her mother’s entire house in Nigeria. Silk sheets, velvet curtains, gold-lined mirrors, and yet… all she could see were shadows.

She cried silently the first night. The second. The third. Not out of fear anymore — but because she knew this was not a place she could ever call home.

She was a guest in her own skin.

Aunt Mary only came twice.

Each visit was short, cautious, held like a breath. The second time, Anne heard the whispers: “She’s just like her mother, we need to be in control , she’s our puppet and none from her mother’s side is allowed to break it. Besides she’s black and she might say too much. “

They didn’t let her in again.

Only three souls in the mansion offered her peace.

Her bodyguard, always lingering in the background — firm, quiet, and strangely gentle.

Her uncle, Dr. kim Jae-hyun — whose presence felt like calm water in a storm.

And her father’s twin, Mrs. Jung Hye-Ri — graceful, kind, and too good to be true.

Anne watched her closely. She smiled often but spoke little. Her eyes flickered with something Anne couldn’t read. Not yet. But she knew better than to trust a smile just because it was warm.

The servants didn’t speak to her, but their eyes did.

Pity.

Soft, bitter pity.

They bowed. They obeyed. But their silence said it all.

They had seen things.

They knew things.

But none of them dared utter a word.

Weeks passed like slow-moving ghosts.

Then came the day she was enrolled in school.

A new beginning she didn’t ask for.

But something inside her stirred — not hope, not yet — just the whisper of movement. Of control.

The uniform felt foreign on her skin. The halls of the school were wide, shining, crowded with perfect faces. Rich children with perfect lives, or so it seemed.

Her cousins ,Seo Yerin and Ji Joe , were there too. And as expected, they made sure her life continued to feel like poison.

Whispers.

Laughter.

Lies.

But Anne had changed. The girl they mocked before would have cried. Now, she simply observed.

She stopped trying to defend herself and instead began to watch. Listen. Learn.

Because her heart still belonged to the girl in Nigeria. And if there was any way to return to her body, her life _no matter how broken it wasshe would find it.

She chose solitude. She chose silence.

Not because she was weak.

But because peace was her armor now.

Then she met Face ,a boy with quiet eyes and a scar on his lip, someone who seemed to carry storms in his chest too. His name was John and her best friend even tho she doesn’t remember

He didn’t ask questions.

He didn’t believe rumors.

He simply sat next to her in the library one day and said, “You look like someone who remembers too much.”

She didn’t reply.

But something in her softened.

One evening, while watching the winter sun fall behind the frosted windows, her doctor uncle entered her room.

He brought no pills, no reports. Just truth.

He sat beside her and said gently,

“Your name… is Kim Anna Darlene. Your father was our eldest,He was the best of us. And the only one brave enough to love a Black woman in this house.”

Her breath caught.

“He married her — your mother , despite our father’s fury. And for that, he was disowned. You were born in Africa, country unknown but you were Loved. Safe. Until they begged him to return… after much pleading from our late mother. He came back. He forgave. He trusted. Then he and your mother died in a car crash. I might not know much but I know it wasn’t just an accident it was plotted on but no evidence was found even the trunk driver was no where to be seen until now.”

Anne stared at him, hollow.

“Why didn’t anyone bother looking deeper into it since it wasn’t just an accident?” she whispered.

His eyes flickered. “ everything was plotted Anna , I tried but I couldn’t find a single evidence and I gave up but deep down I wish if only I can find the footage of that night it happened. That’s what the world believes, it was an accident .”

That night, she stood in front of her mirror and saw not a stranger… but fragments. Of two worlds. Of two girls.

One dying. One already dead.

Grandfather Kim Seokjin never spoke much to her. But gifts came daily.

Jewelry. Dresses. Books. Things she never asked for.

She realized, quietly, that he was grieving. That she reminded him of the son he lost.

But guilt wasn’t love.

Still, in those moments when their eyes met across the long, silent dining table — she saw regret, not cruelty.

Weeks turned into a strange kind of rhythm.

Her bodyguard watched her with unreadable loyalty.

Her doctor uncle told her pieces of the truth, never all of it.

Her aunt kept smiling like she knew the ending of the story.

Anne began to feel… stronger.

Not healed.

Not safe.

But no longer drowning.

She was still Anne.

Even in this stolen body.

Even in this bitter paradise.

And slowly, something else bloomed in her:

Purpose.

If this world wouldn’t give her a way out, she would carve one with her own hands.

She would uncover every secret, every lie.

She would reclaim her name.

And if she couldn’t return… she would make this life hers. On her terms.

Because even thorns, when pressed hard enough, become weapons.