It made me scared of my birthday, until I lost everyone and had only my life to lose. From my 20th birthday and on, after I had lost them all, I began to be consumed by a maddening feeling of eminent death in every birthday that came next. I only felt fully safe on the 20th of April.
Some time after my sister and my aunt's death, I had moved from Stanford, where I was born and raised and was attending college, to New York, where I got a good work as an engineer as soon as I graduated at 20, with a great paycheck. I isolated myself, scared of building any relationship, of caring for anyone that could be taken away from me in my next birthday. So, I just went to work and back to my loft.
I was single and friendless, but I had a good job. I wasn't necessarily outstandingly beautiful, but I was beautiful still. I had cinnamon wavy hair, light tan skin, big doe dark green eyes, a small nose, heart-shaped lips, and I was 5'2 tall. I had nice medium tits and I wasn't a virgin, for all that mattered. In fact, I wasn't in a relationship, but I was in a situationship with my boss.
He was the CEO of Reeds A&E, the best civil engineering and architecture company in New York at the time, his name was Callum Reed, and he was absolutely hot. He was 6'8 tall, with pearl white skin, black wavy hair, silver eyes that looked lilac or ice blue depending on his mood, he was a MIT and Harvard alumni, both as Valedictorian, for civil engineering and business respectively, and he was smart. More than anything, he had the body of a God, he worked out like crazy, and he had a enormous cock.
Better than that, he knew how to use it.
As nothing was flowers in my life, Callum was a psychopath. I had gone to his place to spend the turning of my birthday in his bed, because I was too depressed to stay alone that night, and we had an amazing time together. Then he began to choke me, which was good in the beginning, until he was actually strangling me.
I tried to fight him, it was useless.
So, yes, I died. I died naked with his big cock still inside of me, he strangled me to death while he came inside me. My fight was hopeless, I was no match for that huge men at all.
Then, imagine my horror when I woke up as Eleanor Blackwood. I was in her 5-year-old body when I somehow transmigrated into this hell, and there was no mistaking my identity when I found myself surrounded by the real Sofiya, before Thalia swapped their bodies, and Maximillian, who was not her fiance yet.
I then purposely acted as if I had lost all my memories, then I cut contact with Sofiya to avoid the future misery that would befall my life if I kept contact, and I made Maximilianos fall in love with me. I needed him to be engaged to me instead, to love me instead, so he wouldn't be Sofiya's, which would mean that when Thalia took over her body, she wouldn't target me or him, she would stay with Nikolai.
At 7, they engaged me to Maximilianos, while Sofiya didn't get engaged to anyone. I made the once bubbly Eleanor become antisocial and avoided social gatherings, knowing that if the Archduke met me before he met Sofiya after Thalia take over, he would set his interest in me, as he would notice the change in my soul. I couldn't let that happen.
I didn't give a shit about going with that stupid novel's plot, everything in it was shit to me, I was not letting myself die like that, or be used by Sofiya. Which was... not good.
My changes in the story changed many points of the plot, such as the Diana Le Noir's entire role. She was supposed to be obsessed with Archduke Nikolai, instead, she became obsessed with my Maximilianos, and as soon as I began to actively be part of society at 16, after Thalia took over and became Sofiya, catching the Archduke's attention, Diana began to be a pest in my life.
In the absence of Eleanor as her best friend, Sofiya went for the most famous and vicious Lady in high society, Lady Diana, and they both became bullies in my life.
The Archduke's obsession with Sofiya? It wasn't as strong as it should have been, because every time I found myself in the same place as that mad men, alone, he came for me, he made a move on me, he grew interested on my soul. Which then sparked a conflict between him and Maximilianos, who noticed his annoying interest, as well as my obvious discomfort with it.
It made Sofiya hate me more, because then she began to imagine that I wanted her psychopath of a fiance for myself. Which was absolute madness.
To make it worse, the mysterious Crown Prince, who never appeared in front of me, or was ever described in detail in the novel because of the incompetence of @toallthelonelypeople, began to send me letters, to show his unwelcomed interest in me. He wasn't in the Empire, he was sent away by the Emperor to attend the International Mage Academy out of the territory, in the only neutral land in this damning world. Which the novel also didn't talk much about it, definitely not in detail.
Even then, every month I would get a magical letter from him, in which he proclaimed to know me, to have met me, have saw me when I wasn't paying attention. I tried ignoring, but the damn bastard was insistent.
Maximilianos became unhealthily obsessed with me, as in possessive and suffocating, here and there he would have a jealousy fit and choke me. He looks angelic and like a good boy in the novel, and to everyone else, but he was just as crazy as everyone else, but not enough to kill me. No, he wanted to own me, to have me, to show everyone that I was his and nobody else's, so, when I was 17 and he was 19, in one of those jealousy fits, because of both Nikolai and his nephew, he deflowered me.
That was when I got obsessed with him.