Thank you both so much for the warning, I might just keep this one on my watchlist until I know what the final ending is! Until then, I shall keep my box of tissues close just in case.
I am low key bitter that the story feels like it just "started". You know what I mean? The latest chapter is only the start (or at least I think) of Ilya's happiness to happen. But, we get this chapter after YEARS of waiting and to me it feels like the story has just "started" or unfolded. At this point, I feel like my grandchildren would see this story end and not me. And the author doesn't update us often, so I'm very upset about that . BUT, I'm a huge masochist so I shall wait even if it kills me :').
It's not that I want to deny your feelings, but in terms of waiting YEARS for something to happens, I think the shoujo manga Skip Beat far surpass Ilya's story. How far? With the release pace of 1 chapter a month, it took us 23 years to reach chapters 279 and 280 where something romance related finally, at long last, happens. Well, I didn't start reading it 23 years ago, just... 10 years ago. Some of the readers already have children old enough to read it with them... so sad....... But well, I relate to you too. I want the author to update more often !
Lol. In that case Berserk and GOT could also be used as a comparison. Honestly though. There are so many good stories. It's insane to stay waiting when you can leave and come back. My personal opinion, in the case of Skip Beat in particular, no shoujo should take that long. It's not even a novel. Berserker and GOT authors are the same type of people however. They just work in different formats. As a person who also writes and procrastinates, I think there's a ultimately a level of responsibility to finish. If not, just say so and don't hold your readers hostage... ...oh my, that almost sounded like a rant. You triggered me. But yes, this author is not that bad. These fast novel translations just spoil people. Good writing takes time. That's why we can't stop reading an abusive story like this. It wouldn't be as addictive otherwise.
Ok so I just read through all the novel so I'm gonna give a basic timeline the best I can. Spoiler: First Life So essentially our story starts off recounting the original timeline and how our MC, Ilya came to die. In the original timeline she has spent most of her childhood working hard to become a proper Marquis’s Fiancé and later bride. From the start it is emphasized how much she's sacrificed for this position. At first she wasn't the Marquis’s son’s fiancé, originally it was another girl who got ill and died and Ilya’s family is an Earl and a lot lower than a Marquis so normally they wouldn't be engaged but their fathers were friends and the Marquis Family was desperate so Ilya became The son’s fiance, whose name is Soleil. In the original timeline, our Mc is very cautious and aggressively pushes all who are after her fiance away because she is in love with him.So when her younger half-sister Silvia meets Soleil and starts making love eyes at him, Ilya rebukes Silvia and makes a big scene and leads to her being scorned by all around her but fast forward a few years, she's getting her dream come true, she's marrying her beloved (who is only tolerant of her) but the entire time her husband is looking at her sister. So she's pissed but she's married to him so she hardly feels it matters. Then after about a year of marriage to her husband who she rarely sees, her sister Silvia is ambushed by bandits while in her carriage and killed. And immediately Ilya is accused of killing her sister and her husband almost stabs in his rage. She when she heard the news had a “look of relief” so he thought she killed her sister. She was imprisoned in a commoners jail and left to rot while Soliel hunted for evidence. There was no evidence ofc b/c she didn't do it obviously but because she wasn't well liked by the nobility because of how straight forward she jealously pushed people who got close to her husband away, evidence was fabricated her mother and father did not come to her aid and her escort was accused of starting the plan because they didn't believe a “fragile woman could come up with such a plan on her own” or someshit. She died alone in prison waiting for her husband who she trusted to bring her back. Spoiler: Life 2 Life number two restarts at Her husband and sister’s first meeting. (forgot to mention earlier Silvia has a chronic illness and has always had a weak constitution so she gets pampered by her parents) Ilya doesn't make a scene and all is well but her future husband and her sister still grow close. She marries him and this time to prevent being thrown in prison with false evidence she amasses a strong following of political power so something like that doesn't happen again. She manages to stop the bandits from murdering her sister but a few years down the line her sister’s illness worsens and her husband rushes to go see Silvia and won't let Ilya go to see her. While he spends weeks with a dying Silvia, Ilya finds out that she's pregnant. Soliel returns she says she's pregnant, he's glad that they'll have an heir and wants Ilya to finally go see Silvia. She goes and Silvia goes on this whole spiel about how envious she is that Ilya is healthy while she's dying and Ilya is like super annoyed at this cuz this girl keeps taking her husband and then Silvia asks her something and Ilya leaves and doesn't say anything, apparently making Silvia cry, which Soleil yells at her for. Then Silvia dies. And Ilya is told that if she has her kid she's at great risk to her health and might die. She's like no I'm gonna have this kid. Because there were a bunch of rumors about her hooking up with her escort. So she wants to prove that the baby is Soleil’s. She gives birth, the baby is def Soleil's then she dies before she's even able to hold her baby. Spoiler: Life 3 Then 3rd life begins she starts back at that tea party where her husband and sister meet. She starts panicking because she just had a child and now things are back again so she's understandably freaking out. But she's gets seen as a nut case and is locked inside her room and has iron bars put on her window. This is when she meets Crow for the first time. Crow is a shapeshifter and as you may have guessed is usually a bird, a child or an adult. He makes her less lonely and she makes him promise to watch over her sister and make sure she isn't killed by bandits. He complies and then Ilya goes off to marry her husband. Ilya works extra hard to be the perfect wife and often went in her husband's place at social gatherings, which gave him lots of extra time to woo Silvia so low and behold Silvia gets fucking pregnant and sets Ilya off into a sobbing mess, and she starts sobbing on to crow about this and spills that the past keeps repeating for her and no matter what she does she can't do anything to get a happy ending. Crow then says that it's kind of like she's trapped in hell and if she's trapped in hell what sin might she had done to deserve it. Which was super insensitive and not the thing to hear. So after he leaves she hangs herself with her bedsheets Spoiler: Life 4 Life number 4. She wants to run away so she asks her dedicated escort to help her escape. He does and gets fucking murdered by spies sent by the Marquis family to ensure that she marries because they really don't have a replacement. She also learns that her escort had a fiance and it's really sad that she took that away from them. Then she dies again Spoiler: Life 5 She plots her escape again. This time she starts to isolate herself from the few people that actually give a shit about her. (her parents are both very in love with Silvia but ignore her and the maids do the same, like literally I think Alfred (her escort) is the only one who really gives a shit about her. This is also why she still is repeatedly in love with Soleil because despite the fact that he mainly ignores her he still cares about her more than her parents) she starts teaching Silvia all the stuff that she learned to be the Marquis wife so she has a replacement. She then dips but loses the stuff she brought with her and has to become a prostitute and towards the end of her life she gets really sick and is dying but Crow finds her and starts giving her drugs that help her sleep because there isn't a cure. Then eventually gets Alfred the escort (who never stopped looking for her after she left) to bring her back to Soleil and Silvia who are married and have kids now. Originally Soleil was hurt and felt betrayed that she left him before the wedding but he's like but I'm happy with my wife now so thank you. Then like a month later she dies again. Spoiler: Current timeline Then now to the current timeline. So the meeting happens again. This time Ilya’s really nice and gets Silvia to go to the Academy with her because before she wasn't allowed to because of her sickness. So Silvia goes and starts hanging with soleil and Ilya has a friend named Marriane who in previous lives had been rivals with her. Then Ilya meets a man named Saion Topias a noble from another country who's friends with Soleil and keeps trying to force her to end her engagement with Soliel so that he can be “truly happy”. Later she ends almost accidentally drowning in her bathtub at home and remembers another previous life. In that life she frantically was searching for Crow and would wander through the streets going to any man with black hair, he's one of her only friends that's she's ever been able, to be honest with so I get why she's looking for him. But eventually she gives into despair and succumbs to poverty and sickness and at the end of her life in rain as she's dying she meets crow, who was also looking for her for some reason. Then she dies in his arms and then in present, she almost drowns herself accidentally in her tub. She recovers but her mother comes to visit her and basically tells her that she shouldn't be worrying others because it makes it harder to care for Silvia. Before her momcame in she starts chatting with alfred and reveals that she has a romance novel that she stole from her father and in the book at the very end is a picture of what looks to be Silvia but the date is off so they think that that's Silvias mother. Later Ilya thinks that there is something off about Silvia’s symptoms and they reminded her of the symptoms that she got from the drugs that helped suppress her illness (because the drug was experimental so there’d be some crazy terrible side effects.) so she gets the keys from a servant and breaks into Silvia’s room and finds that she is correct and that her mother is poisoning Silvia to be sick through special tea. She confronts her mother who states that she had to because of how lively Silvia is becoming and how her going to the academy is drawing attention, she then offs herself and with her final breaths tells Ilya that she's sorry for not being able to live her and Ilya, of course, is blamed for the mother's death and stuff but she's backed up by people and at the funeral she gets a letter from her mother that explains wtf the deal was. So remember that romance novel I mentioned. It was about a princess fleeing from civil war and in love with her knight. After the war ends she has to go back and the book ends. It's revealed that that book is the story of Silvia’s mom and dad. Silvia’s mom didn't want to abandon her lover to find other love so she gives her lover a proxy, her maid. This maid is Ilya’s mother. They marry and have Ilya then a couple months later The princess comes back to sleep with the dad and then 9 months later Silvia is born and then the princess either dies or returns back again it isn't clear. So then at the funeral Silvia goes and is like sister why did you steal my tea you aren't a bad person blah blah and Ilya gets really angry and this is kind of her kit-kat snap point and she goes off of her saying that Silvia stole everything from her and is literally the reason she isn't loved which is true. And then Soleil is like protecting Silvia cuz Ilya’s kinda had a mental break. Then Ilya sees two of crow’s feathers fall from the sky and she shouts for him and then the sky turns black covered feathers and she hears a mysterious voice say “To straighten a thread that had entangled complicatedly and seems impossible to untie, you can only cut it with a scissor and fix it with a knot.” and then time is rewritten. She ends up going back just before her mother kills herself and talking with her mother. Her mother says that she loves Silvia and that she is her one and only precious daughter and that she doesn't love Ilya then the Calvary arrives Ilya is hurt and her dad hit her because she told him that her mother tried to kill herself and revealed the letter that her mother had. Then Silvia came in and literally was the only one to help her. I'm gonna continue this in another post. That'll expand on the current end of the timeline and the deal with Crow
Spoiler: Crow’s Background So Crow or better known by Kaliarya Ignis is an immortal. His father was a famous wizard who experimented an immortality spell on him as a child. The spell worked to some extent, but his body was technically dead and eventually he just turned to sand (like he straight up got Thanos snapped) while all that remained of him was his mana and consciousness. So for ages he's just a floating consciousness exploring stuff. Then he follows a black cat with amber eyes into a shop and sees a mana doll that looks like him when he had a body and was made by his old lover who saw him get dusted and never got over it. He notices that the body has his name on it but some of it is faded so on the body is word Ka...rya (which in Japanese means Crow) so our boy enters the puppet and now has a new body. So for a while he does his thing but with a body. He is drawn to Ilya and her lullaby because it sounds similar to his old lover's lullaby. He becomes close with Ilya and gets really pissed that she doesn't love herself or see her self worth and that she works herself to death and that her family allows it and gets pissed when she doesn't work like crazy. When she married Soleil the third time he was watching from above in bird form and got really angry that her husband wasn't looking at her but her sister. He was with Ilya when she was sad at her sister's pregnancy. He realized that he said something messed up so he got her favorite white flowers and previously she gave him a letter to enter as a guest. He enters and meets her sister who he dislikes. He follows the sister and is appalled that her room is deadbolted just like at her family home. He’d never seen as he’d always entered through the window. He gave Silvia a look and this girl dared to say something along the lines of “Well big sister was mad at me yesterday so we locked her in to be safe” like the woman you literally slept with her husband she's allowed to be pissed. Our boy enters sees her dead body gets real sad, takes the corpse, and goes and buries her. Literally, no one stopped him from taking her body at all. He thinks he's lost Ilya forever. This doctor friend he knows sneaks up on him and goes hey hey time travel isn't real but other worlds are. So in actuality, Ilya wasn't going back in time on loop but she was traveling to different worlds. That's why somethings we're just slightly different because those people weren't the same people. And why everything kept ending in tragedy because she kept getting all these behaviors of her family and friends on lock but she’d keep dying because those behaviors we're now slightly different each time. Also, that's why when Soleil had his dream he's constantly going wtf stop doing that to Ilya because he's an actual different person. Now that crow knows this he finds away to get himself to another world to find Ilya thinking that she won't be the same person that remembers him but at least she’ll be alive, with that in mind he introduces himself again thinking that she doesn't know him and she introduces herself again because she thinks times reversed and he doesn't know her. So shenanigans ensue and every time she dies he goes and tracks another down because he desperately wants her to live this time, just once he wants her to make it all the way through. Which is really sad then at the end after she gets stabbed and dies he meets her again and by some miracle she wakes up after being dead and they vow to stay together. But that's up to the current stuffs so.
You know if Silvya mother actually died giving birth to her. It might be my perverted mind but .. how good the Karma will be if we learn that Soleil and Silvya are actually sister and brother. Who knows? I have incest vibe. Ps : I only read spoiler and not the novel. But this taught, this little hope brings me so much happiness.
Thanks for the timeline. My heart literally cries for her. Such a shitty family she has and honestly the sister is so inconsiderate. Being "naive" has its limits. Like she has to know that what she is doing is bad. And for the mom, she can suck my big toe, if she knew she wasn't going to love Ilya then why have sex with the dude. Honestly I'm in agony when I read this novel but I'm always here wanting more. Once again thanks for the timeline, very much appreciated.
The author updated her new story yesterday. No sign of new updates on ilya's story nor the third installment for the novel. It's been nearly 2 years since the author released the 2nd volume of the novel. Im still waiting for the third one since there were always be additional chapter that is not released in the web version I hope the author doesn't drop this series...
The author reminds me that of the mangaka Yukiru Sugisaki, she has the tendency to drop works just like D. N. Angel and Candidate for Goddess.
I don't think the author will drop this story. She could have ended it at chapter 54, it would have been an open ending, with a kind of HE since Ilya was reunited with Crow. But she decided to start a new arc, and with its name "owari no owari" she has clearly chosen to write a closure for this story. Well, she might be having a hard time wrapping up everything nicely. Or maybe she is busy IRL, or with the manga, or the 3rd LN. Who knows?
I hope so, but then again even if she didn't drop this, the story only progress around 2-3 chapters a year, so I have a feeling that the author doesn't feel like continuing the story (maybe because it also depresses her? Or she's having writer's block)
Perfect in every point! . In particular, I can't bear to see people ignoring Silvia's hateful attitudes, just because she acts like a stupid person with no social skills. As if getting involved lovingly and sexually with your sister's fiancé was the behavior of someone really good... It hurts me deeply all the suffering that Ilya is forced to go through, just so that this fake white lotus is overprotected and loved by everyone. Honestly, I wouldn't waste 5 minutes of my life with this hateful sister.
You guys I just found out they made a manga of this torturous novel. Good luck to first time readers. Reading this novel and spoilers alone is enough pain. Can’t have this novel illustrated too. And boy am I ever glad that I’m not the only one who recognize the half sister for what she is. Pure? Don’t make me laugh. Nothing like a good sibling who fell in love and sleeps with her own brother in law despite knowing the difficult position her sister is in. It would be a wonder if Ilya didn’t resent this kind of good sister. Not mentioning how Ilya is treated in her own home, not even a saint can forgive what she went through. I never found myself hating on a character more than I did with this one. Ignorant or no. She was part of the problem. I just want Ilya to be happy and the rest of them, including the half sister and fiancé, can rot in hell. I don’t want them to have a happy end because I’d feel like it’d be a great thorn in my heart to see that the very people who made MC miserable and helpless on all her loop lives happy.
Agreed even living in regret is too much of a good ending for all of them, I hope they end up destitute AND in regret
Congratulations to the people who's been reading this right from the start. I was already feeling impatient while reading every page of this thread, how mich more you guys who literally waited years for the updates! That open ending was a great way to end the cliffhanger though, esp now that the author is not keen on updating this regularly
First of all, sorry for my bad english. I read this novel 5 days ago, and I needed all this time to organize my emotions and come here to manifest myself. This novel moved me deeply. It was hard, heavy and distressing reading. At certain times, the anguish was so great that it gave me the feeling of suffocation. To this fact, I must congratulate the writer. Cuz her skill and talent made me feel Ilya's pain (even though I have the impression that the intention of the text was more inclined to sanctify the younger sister than to make us empathize with Ilya). However, it did teach me that I shouldn't read anything again without first checking the NovelUpdates forum pages. If I had done this before reading this novel, I would not have lost a night's sleep crying and distressing myself with the expectation that some time Ilya will would happy (which never happened). Anyway, if you are a sensitive person, influenced by what you read or watch, this may not be the best novel / manga for you. To be honest, I regret the hours I spent on this. I decided not to read the last volume and I was happy with the spoilers here (including, thank you very much to each one of you who provided us with great information). Perhaps, in the future, just read the chapter launched a few months ago, to see the reunion between Corvo and Ilya. About the other characters: with the exception of Marianne, knight Al and Crow, they are all horrendous creatures. They deserved to go through the triple of suffering they inflicted on Ilya. Unfortunately, I know this will not happen. Because everything suggested that with Ilya's sacrifice, everyone found a life of love and peace. Disgusting... I truly cannot understand who has the audacity to say that Silvia is good and innocent. Are you blind or what? Someone who insinuates himself for his sister's fiance / husband is not innocent. Someone who says "sister, I don't have an infectious disease" in front of a father who already treats another daughter badly is not good at all. Someone who becomes pregnant with her sister's husband and finds it super natural that the legitimate wife is locked up while she walks freely, does not have a drop of innocence. I always see people arguing that she was just dense, that she didn't understand etiquette because she lived trapped in the mansion. But don't forget that the age difference between that viper and Ilya was months. If Ilya was able to take responsibility, that white lotus would also be able to understand what is and is not appropriate between her and a married man. The ambiguous intentions of this unprincipled girl are clear in this last "life". Or does anyone have the courage to say that her behavior in the cafeteria was that of a pure and good girl? Ilya's parents, in turn, are abhorrent. But my contempt is greater for your mother. She chose to mistreat her own daughter. As much as they treated their illegitimate daughter well, nothing justifies the contempt that was given to their biological daughter. As for Soleil, I'm not going to waste my time talking badly about a junk man like this one. He is despicable, period. It won't be because he acted like anybody with decency that I will forget all pain that he caused Ilya. Anyway, I already said too much. Forgive me for such a long comment, but I needed to say all this, to be able to do a catharsis with everything I felt with this reading. The only thing I could consider a happy ending would be the certainty that Ilya's parents, Silvia and Soleil were extremely and deeply unhappy at all times of the day, until the end of their putrefying and dismal existence.