After being saved by her distant relative, Grand Duke Kairos Ludwig, Chloe Garnache has no idea her days of torture have only just begun. Kairos only took her in her in order to groom and mold her into an alluring trap for the Emperor, whom he plans to overthrow. Having fallen for his charms, Chloe obeys him, even as her feelings for the Emperor become more muddled. However, after her task has been fulfilled, all Chloe knows is pain and loss, and she dies by her own hand.
But that is not her end. Chloe awakens in the past, a few days after her first night with the Emperor. She vows to never listen to Kairos again and to atone for her past life, but now, Kairos refuses to let her go. But she will not be swayed; she will escape him, and forge her own life.
It can be read here
. It is adapted from the Light Novel of the same name.
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Provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Kairos becomes one to Chloe in the second timeline, as she now absolutely loathes him for all he did to her, Raymond, and Esthel. But he is now completely obsessed with her, after having lost her in the previous timeline.
- Ambiguously Bi: Dahila makes the very firm claim to Raymond when they discuss Chloe that she likes men (as long as they aren't Raymond specifically since he and she are more Like Brother and Sister ) but the way she playfully flirts with Chloe and casually suggests that she ditch Raymond and be DAHILA'S lover does raise the question if she may be interested in women as well, or at least Chloe specfically.
- The Atoner: Chloe in the second timeline. She wants to atone for her betrayal of Raymond as best she can.
- Bastard Bastard: Kairos is the older half brother of Raymond, as they both share the Emperor as their father, though Kairos is the result of an affair with a noblewoman while Raymond is the rightful heir due to his mother being the Empress. But unlike Raymond who is a kind man who wants the best for those he cares for, Kairos is incredibly manipulative, orchestrated the deaths of his father and the Empress, is willing to groom a young distant relative to be the perfect woman for his brother, and eventually overthrow him to become the Emperor since he believed it to be his birthright as the older sibling. However, this later gets revealed in a flashback explaining Kairos' motives for what he did to not even be completely true, as while Kairos is a bastard child, his mother reveals that the random homeless stranger who approached young Kairos one day is his ACTUAL birth father, whom she had been looking for so she can kill (and by the way, she does). She reveals that the Emperor and Empress are ALSO in on this information and had arranged a deal with her to cover this up, though why and whatever for is not revealed. By the time the story has begun, only Kairos is aware of his true lineage, with everyone else in on this secret being long dead by this point.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Kairos grows insanely jealous of Raymond for having genuinely gained Chloe’s affections. This becomes dangerous for Chloe later on when he begins taking desperate steps to "show his love" for Chloe after they both regress.
- Creepy Uncle: Kairos may be a distant relative of Chloe’s, but they look an awful lot alike, she calls him “Uncle”, he grooms her and uses her feelings for him to his advantage, and he becomes creepily obsessive with her in the second timeline.
- Curtains Match the Window: Raymond has red hair and red eyes.
- Driven to Suicide: After Raymond was killed and Elizabeth told Chloe that Esthel was dead, she gives her poison so she can be with her baby. Chloe takes the poison.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: After coming back in time, Kairos cannot simply fathom why Chloe refuses to give him her attention again, even after the two realize they have both been brought back. In his mind, Chloe's change in attitude toward him, after what he forced her to do and the death of both Raymond and their daughter Esthel, is something that just shouldn't be possible. He truly believes that whispering the same sweet nothings he gave in the previous timeline and promising grand gestures of atonement will bring her back to his side, completely missing that Chloe wants nothing to do with him BECAUSE of those very actions, actions she now sees rightfully with the benefit of hindsight, as the manipulative moves and grooming tactics they always were. The most insulting ones revolve around how he treats Esthel's existence as something that Chloe shouldn't spend a single thought on, as he and her can "make a new Esthel", which enrages and disgusts Chloe further and completely solidifies in her mind the absolute piece of shit that Kairos truly is, since she truly loved her daughter and considered her irreplaceable.
- Human Sacrifice: It’s shown that Kairos, in the previous timeline, tried to bring Chloe back to life this way.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Raymond in the second timeline. He still loves Chloe even after knowing she betrayed him, but he also is aware that she was groomed into this position by the emotionally abusive Kairos and holds no ill will toward her as a result. He genuinely respects her enough to know she is not ready to have a relationship with him again and doesn’t feel like she should in the first place, instead being willing to both patiently wait and be a friend first while she recovers from her trauma. This directly contrasts Kairos, who, if he truly loved Chloe, would let her go since that would make her happiest. Instead, he keeps plotting and scheming to get her back.
- Light Is Not Good: Chloe and Kairos have silver hair, and in the first timeline, Chloe betrays Raymond and directly helps Kairos overthrow him as Emperor.
- Like Brother and Sister: Raymond and Dahlia are more like a pair of siblings than husband and wife; they clearly like and care about each other but also playfully tease each other. Occasionally Dahila will even joke how Chloe should be her lover and not Raymond's but it's all in well-meaning fun.
- Loving a Shadow: Chloe realizes she was in love with the idea of Kairos, a sweet, gentle man who loved and took care of her, but when he essentially throws her to the side after she helps him overthrow Raymond in the first timeline, she realizes that that man never really existed. Meanwhile, Kairos loved the idea of being loved by Chloe, and believes his feelings to be true, even when after coming back in time himself, Chloe outright spells to his face that she LOATHES him now.
- Manipulative Bastard: Kairos finds and grooms a twelve year old Chloe into becoming Raymond’s ideal woman, and once she wins Raymond’s heart, uses her to overthrow him and become Emperor himself.
- Peggy Sue: Chloe is taken back in time to before she seduced Raymond and had Esthel. Kairos is taken back in time as well after having endured years of grieving Chloe’s death, and even Raymond is revealed to have come back in time.
- Red Is Heroic: Three examples come to mind:
- Raymond has both red hair and red eyes and is unambiguously on the side of good. While he isn't adverse to using underhanded methods to get what he wants, he mostly forgoes that for more diplomatic methods when it comes to running his Empire and using his own innate kindness toward others to genuinely reach out to Chloe as a friend.
- Chloe is more subtle as her red colors are only in her eyes, and she starts the story off as Kairos' willing helper, but not only is it made very clear that she was groomed into this mindset, but her time with Raymond shows off her better attributes and how she is at heart a kind person who happened to fall in love with the wrong man. Her death/subsequent regression in time and the loss of her daughter Esthel finally makes her see the error of her ways and turn against Kairos, eventually joining with Raymond to escape.
- Dahila doesn't have either red hair or red eyes, but she does have a penchant for wearing red on the regular and is firmly on the side of both Chloe and Raymond.
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Chloe in the first timeline grew to love Raymond after having their daughter Esthel, seeing the genuine love he showed the two of them. She still went through with betraying him, and only fully realized her feelings after he was killed. This is part of the reason she doesn’t pursue a relationship with him in the second timeline; she feels she doesn’t deserve it, even if it means she may not be able to see their daughter again.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Chloe’s goals are to atone for her betrayal of Raymond and to escape Kairos.
- Shipper on Deck: Of all people, Dahila is this for Raymond and Chloe. It is well established that Raymond and Dahila aren't romantically interested in each other and are instead Platonic Life-Partners. She actually makes the suggestion to Chloe to seduce Raymond because the protection he could offer her is not just better than hers, but he is clearly infatuated with Chloe and he is a far better partner to have in the long run. She does stop suggesting it to Chloe when she sees the girl is clearly uncomfortable with the idea, and instead moves onto playfully trolling Raymond by claiming Chloe and her are now an item, which Raymond and Chloe don't take too seriously.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Chloe and Raymond in the first timeline. He’s the Emperor and she’s his mistress, and he doesn’t know she was literally molded to be his ideal woman.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Raymond is this, as he and Dahlia never actually loved each other romantically, even though they are great friends. Interestingly enough, Dahila actually knows of Raymond's feelings for Chloe and approves of her being Raymond's mistress, willingly allowing her to stay in the palace and even taking her into her direct protection as a lady-in-waiting to help protect her from Kairos.
- Tsundere: Vestie, Dahila's cousin and one of her ladies-in-waiting, starts off as quite rude to both Chloe and especially her cousin, who remember is the EMPRESS, revealing the rather hurtful info that Dahila had a miscarriage (one orchestrated by Kairos) and has been supposedly rendered infertile (Dahila does reveal to Chloe that this isn't actually true but is left unchallenged as it means no one will have to push her to have Raymond's child for real, since the baby she lost was from a different man), though after being quickly humbled for that unwarranted insult, Chloe comforts the girl and asks her to try and consider the hurtfulness of her words from Dahila's point of view. Vestie does take this to mind and very quickly becomes as affectionate to Chloe as Dahila does, willingly standing up for her every time someone tries to use Chloe's background as a reason to insult her.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Kairos may have the face of an angel with his silver locks and blue eyes, but he is no angel and is in fact one of the most vile people around, with the list of sins he's committed against Chloe and Raymond being massive, as well as the sins he adds on throughout the story after his regression being worse.
- Yandere: KAIROS. In the second timeline he does anything to try to keep Chloe close to him and by his side, having lived years after her death in the first timeline, even carrying her rotting corpse in his arms the entire time. He even kills his fiancé because she killed Chloe in the first timeline and because she was “getting in their way”.
- Younger Than They Look: Kairos is apparently 25, only 5 years older than Chloe, but over the course of their subsquent meetings after she leaves his house, he begins to age considerably and could pass for his mid to late thirties. This gets exaggerated to show how deranged he’s gotten since Chloe rejected and escaped him.
