Aisi knew for certain—she was already dead.
In her final moments of consciousness, she had been sitting on a medium-sized bus headed for a 5A-rated tourist spot, part of a company-organized trip.
As the top-selling designer in the clothing department, Aisi had been invited early to join the excursion. She was chatting with the marketing director, enjoying the perks of her success as they traded witty remarks.
Then, in a flash, the bus overturned and plunged into a lake.
In the last second before she lost consciousness, she was submerged in the icy water, reaching for the emergency hammer to smash a window and escape.
Clearly, she had failed.
Now, Aisi found herself in a dark, freezing room with not a trace of light.
She could feel her body lying on the lower bunk of a narrow iron bed. The room was cold enough to pierce her bones, and all she had for warmth was a thin cotton blanket. Around her, the slow, steady breathing of strangers sleeping nearby filled the air.
The space reeked faintly of sourness—a mix of unwashed hair, flour, and the ashes of burnt coal. She recognized these scents only because her former self had experimented with perfumes that had similarly unusual notes.
Aisi suspected that, like in the movies, her soul had transmigrated into the body of some stranger after her death.
Just moments ago, she'd touched her temples and felt an inch of curled hair. In reality, her original hair had been short and straight.
At this moment, Aisi dared not move. She allowed the memories of this unfamiliar person to flood her mind.
Eloise Zanilong.
That was her name. She had been born in Ireland in the 1870s and, as a child, had immigrated to New York with her parents.
Her parents, the poorest of dock laborers, made a meager living harvesting oysters. She also had a younger brother, Thomas, who was now thirteen years old.
This body was sixteen years old.
Two years ago, Eloise's parents had perished in a storm at sea, leaving her and her brother destitute. They had been taken in by their widowed aunt in New York.
From what Aisi could tell from Eloise's memories, she had been frail but not sickly.
So, how had a drowned ghost like her ended up possessing this body?
Aisi couldn't figure it out. Scratching her head, she lay back in despair, praying this was all just a dream.
She pondered for a long time, combing through her memories of the name Eloise until a faint sense of familiarity arose.
It seemed like, in her past life, she had once skimmed a romance novel set in the late 19th century, written by a foreign author.
In that book, there was indeed a supporting character named Eloise. She, too, lived with her younger brother in her aunt's home. The similarities were uncanny.
Had she transmigrated into the book?
Aisi racked her brain to recall the story, but it had been so long ago that she could only vaguely remember its contents.
In the book, poor Eloise worked with her aunt and cousin at the renowned Ritz Hotel on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.
However, Eloise, blessed with good looks, became enamored with the wealthy gentlemen frequenting the hotel. Driven by vanity, she sought to improve her dire circumstances by becoming the mistress of a rich man.
Unfortunately, she fell for a conman, which led to her downfall. To maintain her outward appearance of wealth, she eventually resorted to performing scandalous roles in the theater.
Eloise was just a background character in the novel—a poor, vain, and tragic figure whose story barely merited a passing mention.
Aisi was baffled. Why had she been made to inhabit Eloise's body? Was it so she could rewrite her fate?
Lying there, she struggled to accept her new reality.
In her past life, Aisi had also been born into poverty. Her parents had divorced and started new families, leaving her with little support. Even her college education had been funded by loans she had taken out herself.
Aisi had clawed her way from a rural mountain town to a top-tier city, studied design abroad, and entered the fashion industry, where she became a clothing designer with an annual salary in the millions.
Just before the accident, she had taken out a loan to buy an 8-million-yuan apartment in the city center. She hadn't even had the chance to enjoy her new mattress before her untimely death.
Thinking of this, Aisi felt her heart grow cold.
Eloise. Aisi.
The names even sounded similar. Could this be fate? Was she destined to become Eloise?
Fine, then. She was Eloise now.
Her frail body, unable to bear the weight of this realization, succumbed to exhaustion, and she drifted into a deep sleep.
At around 6:15 a.m., the morning light of 33rd Street refracted through the frost on the ground and into the window of a single-room apartment on the third floor of Building 43.
Mrs. Terry, the widow, usually woke up at this time. She climbed down from the iron-framed bunk bed, donning a patched and ill-fitting wool coat she had bought secondhand. It made her already gaunt frame look even thinner.
Slipping into her shoes, she shoveled the remaining coal dust into the stove. Striking a match, she lit the fire. The meager coal supply from the previous night hadn't lasted two hours, and the room had been freezing ever since.
The flour was running low, the coal needed replenishing, and Mrs. Terry rubbed her temple with worry. At least today was payday, and her boss, Mr. Pengoller, had promised to raise her pay by fifty cents last week.
The smell of boiling potatoes on the stove roused Eloise from her sleep. She rubbed her bleary eyes and saw her cousin Louise climbing down from the upper bunk.
Louise, with her shapely figure and flaxen hair, wore a slightly worn cotton blouse and skirt. Her refined features made her look clean and elegant, despite her modest attire.
"Eloise, time to get up," Louise yawned, softly reminding her.
"Okay," Eloise stammered, her unfamiliar accent betraying her nervousness.
Eloise quickly threw off the covers, grabbed a thin shirt from the bedside, and pulled it on. She then slipped into a narrow-sleeved tweed jacket that belonged to her, and layered a cotton dress over her petticoat.
Well, even with three layers, she still felt cold.
The narrow room housed two bunk beds. Near the window, her younger brother Thomas slept on the top bunk, and her aunt on the bottom. Eloise's bed was by the wall, and last night, her aunt's eight-year-old daughter, Bella, had slept next to her, which explained the sound of breathing she heard upon waking.
The room was less than 20 square meters and crowded with five people. It felt like a dormitory. Apart from the stove and the dining table, there was no other furniture—not even chairs.
Eloise glanced around. By the door, she spotted several pairs of shoes: leather ones, cloth shoes, and her own pair of flat leather shoes. She noticed the warped wooden floorboards, the yellowed wallpaper, the leaky window corners, the peeling paint on the window frames, and the narrow, rickety iron beds.
Everyone was already up, silently dressing themselves. Eloise refrained from acting out of place. She withdrew her gaze and saw Louise by the coal stove, lifting a heavily worn tin kettle and pouring half its contents into a basin. Louise opened a box of fragrant soap, dropped a piece into the basin, and stirred it until the water foamed up, releasing a strong citrus scent.
Turning to Eloise, Louise said, "Ellie, come wash your face. This soap was given to me by a female guest when I was cleaning a suite. It would cost several dimes in the store."
Louise was two years older than Eloise, making her eighteen. At the prime of her youth, she wore her long, flaxen hair braided and pinned behind her head. Her petite nose and delicate features gave her a graceful and refined look.
Their similar ages and personalities meant that the original Eloise had a close relationship with her cousin. Eloise managed a smile and nodded.
"I'll come right over."
If her cousin looked this pretty, Eloise had high hopes for her own appearance.
Thomas, still groggy, was squatting by the door putting on his shoes. At thirteen, he already had a job delivering newspapers. He had to leave the house earliest and recently started bringing Bella along to help.
Thomas was skinny, with the typical look of a young English lad—thin lips, pale skin, a face full of freckles, and hair sticking up in a messy tangle. He had just wolfed down a few boiled potatoes and was ready to head out.
"Eat a bit more, Thomas. You're covering two districts today, aren't you?" Aunt Tillie said as she braided Bella's hair into pigtails, turning her head toward Thomas.
Thomas nodded, speaking in an Irish accent Eloise found hard to distinguish.
"Don't worry, Aunt. I'll manage."
He was still just a child, once mischievous, but the loss of his parents and a period of near-starvation had forced him to grow up quickly.
When Bella finished her braids, ate her potato, and slung her newspaper bag over her shoulder, Thomas begrudgingly led her out the door, muttering instructions as they walked away.
Eloise kept a low profile, quietly nibbling on a slightly salted potato by the stove. The twisting hunger in her stomach compelled her to swallow it down.
A quarter of an hour later, Aunt Tillie and Louise locked up the apartment, and Eloise followed them, trudging through ankle-deep snow toward Fifth Avenue.
In the original Eloise's memory, her aunt, cousin, and herself all worked at the renowned Ritz Hotel on Fifth Avenue.
Aunt Tillie worked as a laundress, earning five dollars a week.
Louise was a cleaner, making four and a half.
As for Eloise, being young, she worked three half-days a week sweeping chimneys. The hotel didn't provide lunch, so she earned one dollar a day—three dollars a week.
Thomas and Bella delivered newspapers, earning seventy cents a day between them—a sum squeezed down by their exploitative employer.
For this family surviving on meager wages, two people's weekly earnings were needed just to cover rent and coal. Another two people's wages went toward buying enough food for everyone.
Eloise handed over two and a half dollars of her weekly pay to Aunt Tillie, keeping only fifty cents for her own essentials.
The family trudged through a stretch of 33rd Street, flanked mostly by apartment buildings. As they neared Fifth Avenue, the scenery became more varied, and the streets began to crowd with people.
Eloise glanced up at the surrounding New York storefronts already open for business and found herself unable to look away, slowing her pace.
Fabric shops, butcheries, and candy stores, all with beautifully ornate, vintage-style decor. Inside, customers picked out goods while dressed in extravagantly layered bustle gowns, women wearing small hats, and men in tailored broadcloth suits with brass-handled cigar holders.
The streets were alive with slow-moving trams and the clatter of black lacquered iron carriages.
The buildings, though not dramatically different from what she had known, exuded a rich sense of history. Against the snowy cityscape, it was as picturesque as an illustration from a magazine.
This was truly the Gilded Age.
For the first time, Eloise felt a rush of exhilaration, as if she had survived a calamity. Yet, when she reached into the pocket of her petticoat, all she pulled out were a few icy coins—all cents. Enough, perhaps, to buy a palm sugar block, a box of matches, or a small tin of sea salt.
Her excitement quickly wilted. She bowed her head and quietly followed her cousin and aunt, falling back into step.