HKRH | CH 01

Chapter 1 

The Girl Who Brings Luck

It all started with something very small.

Natalie stared at the hat she was about to pick up.

“Something feels off.”

The light-yellow hat looked elegant and beautiful.

It was a limited edition hat, decorated with the finest satin ribbons and lace imported from Valentin. Natalie had waited three whole years for her turn on the waiting list just to buy this one hat.

Finally, after years of waiting, she received the message—her turn had come! She rushed to the boutique, heart pounding with excitement.

“Lady Ailsden?”

The young Baron’s daughter who came with her nudged Natalie, urging her to hurry.

Natalie had even helped this girl keep her own name on the waiting list by paying the enormous deposit for her. That was how the baron’s daughter managed to “get lucky.”

Of course, they weren’t actually friends. Natalie didn’t have friends.

“Oh, right.”

Natalie came to her senses and reached out for the yellow hat.

But… something about it didn’t feel right.

This was the hat she had dreamed about for three years, and yet now, when it was finally in front of her, she didn’t want it. In fact, she felt strangely repelled by it.

Her eyes, instead, were drawn to something else—another hat sitting quietly on a nearby shelf.

“For some reason… I want that one instead.”

It was a small black silk hat.

Not fancy like the yellow one, not pretty even—it was the kind of hat people might wear at a funeral. And unlike the large, wide-brimmed hats that were currently fashionable and considered elegant, this one was small and modest, almost like a corsage.

“Lady Ailsden, shall I wrap up this one for you?”

The shop clerk politely pointed to the yellow hat.

The Baron’s daughter, already holding her own identical yellow hat in her arms, looked on expectantly.

Natalie stood there for a moment, staring between the two hats.

She wanted to buy the yellow one. She should buy it. But her eyes kept drifting back to the black one.

Finally, she frowned and muttered,

“…No. I’ll take that one instead.”

“Pardon? But that’s just a sample! Madam Dupre made that as a test piece!”

“I don’t care. Wrap that one.”

“W-What? Lady Ailsden, are you sure?”

At Madam Dupre’s boutique, one of the most exclusive hat shops in the empire, each customer could only purchase one hat—no exceptions.

Both the clerk and the Baron’s daughter tried to stop her in shock, but Natalie insisted and bought the black sample hat anyway.

And she even paid the same high price as the limited-edition yellow one.

“Why did you do that? You waited three years for this pretty one, and instead you bought… that strange thing…”

The Baron’s daughter, riding home with Natalie in the Ailsden family’s carriage, trailed off awkwardly.

Natalie herself couldn’t explain it either.

“It was like that hat was calling to me. Like it was telling me, ‘Don’t buy the yellow one—buy me instead!’”

But saying that out loud would sound insane.

Now her name was gone from the waiting list forever, and there was no chance to buy the yellow hat again.

“It’s just what I wanted,” Natalie said sharply, ending the conversation.

The Baron’s daughter, not daring to argue with someone of higher status—especially after she’d already benefited from Natalie’s generosity—pouted and fell silent.

But two days later…

“Lady Ailsden! Lady Ailsden!”

“What is it now?”

The Baron’s daughter came running toward her, out of breath and full of excitement.

“You won’t believe it! Early this morning, Madam Dupre’s hat shop caught fire!” she shouted.

“Madam Dupre had gone to the Nayuta Kingdom because her father passed away, and when she returned this morning—she found the shop burned down!”

Natalie, who had been sipping her tea elegantly, spat it out in shock.

“The clerk made a mistake!” the Baron’s daughter continued breathlessly.

“The hat you bought the other day—that black one—it was actually the real limited edition!”