DATE

CHAPTER 1

Hedy Lamarr, an immortal name.

She was the daughter of a Jewish banker and a stunning Austrian movie starlet. Before the war, she escaped to the United States, where she independently caught the attention of MGM's boss, eventually becoming a Hollywood legend and securing her place in history.

The world praised her perfect, goddess-like beauty, yet few knew that she was also a pioneer of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology, with her frequency-hopping communication patent eventually recognized by the U.S. military.

Doctors injected her with excessive amounts of methamphetamine under the guise of vitamin B injections, causing her to lose control of her mental state.

In her later years, overwhelmed by public pressure and shame, she underwent numerous plastic surgeries and lived in seclusion.

She left this world in January 2000. Four years later, the National Inventors Hall of Fame finally acknowledged her name.

What thoughts cross one's mind at the moment of death? The malicious speculations endured in the world of fame and fortune, years of obscurity in the scientific community, or those six hasty and brief marriages?

As consciousness drifted away, the entire world seemed to transform into a white light.

It was peaceful, silent, yet strangely warm.

She was like a baby sinking into a deep sleep, gradually losing awareness.

Suddenly, a cacophony of noises pierced the stillness.

Street vendors shouting, the sound of hooves, and wheels rolling over gravel.

Hedy woke from her dreamlike state, her eyes struggling to adjust to the long-forgotten light.

She instinctively moved and realized she was lying on a pile of hay, almost as if resting on a wide, plush bed.

Am I... alive again?

Am I still alive?

The slightly fermented hay had a peculiar scent, and the sounds outside seemed to come from a bustling marketplace, but the accents of the people speaking were unfamiliar.

It should be the year 2000 now. I should be in my apartment in Florida, USA.

She shifted uneasily, and with a sharp sense of awareness, she realized something was wrong.

All the signs of aging had disappeared.

The sluggish, slow thinking that once resembled the gears of an old clock now worked at lightning speed.

Her joints no longer creaked, and her body had become light and flexible.

And her skin, which once required surgery to smooth out wrinkles... was now perfectly smooth.

Hedy froze for a moment, then scrambled out of the haystack, exposing herself to the sunlight.

When she saw the world around her, her mind went blank.

This was definitely not America, nor even the modern world.

People were dressed in Renaissance-era Italian robes—she had once worn such costumes herself.

There were no streetlights, no roads. The houses, with ochre-colored rooftops, were arranged like square blocks of a child's toy.

In the distance stood a grand cathedral with a beautifully designed dome, and the entire town stretched on endlessly.

Hedy looked around, feeling a bit lost, seeing the blacksmith loudly chatting with the butcher.

She looked down at the maid's outfit she was wearing and suddenly remembered something.

This was—

Her slender, long fingers instinctively tugged at the coat and collar, and sure enough, she felt something hard beneath it.

This was the same outfit she had worn when she escaped at the age of nineteen.

That year, she became famous for her scandalous film, so much so that even Hitler himself had ordered the banning of certain scenes.

Then she married the biggest arms dealer in Austria, only to be confined in his mansion, with her every move watched by the maids—who were actually spies.

Hedy gripped the edge of her maid's dress and felt the diamond jewelry sewn into it.

On the night of that grand banquet, she had slipped sleeping pills into the maid's tea, changed into her clothes, and sewed all the valuable jewelry into the seams before escaping from Austria to England.

A cool breeze swept by as passersby occasionally glanced at her, even pointing and whispering among themselves.

The young girl clutched the hem of her skirt, her heart trembling so much that she could hardly find the words.

I died at eighty-five, then returned to when I was nineteen.

A strange city, a strange era, everything starts anew.

Hedy took a deep breath and once again examined her hands and elbows.

There were no traces of surgery, no signs of aging or spots.

She even reached up to touch the back of her ear and her cheek, the soft, smooth texture making her want to cry.

Her latter years had been so hard; now, everything had returned to when she was nineteen. It was like a dream.

Her hair was smooth and black, her cheeks as tender as the softest skin, and even the excess skin that once hung from her neck had disappeared.

She had truly returned to her most beautiful self.

The first priority was to figure out where she was.

Hedy snapped back to reality, hiding her presence behind the haystack, and began observing the city more closely.

The ochre-colored rooftops alone were a dead giveaway, and in the distance, some buildings displayed a red-and-white city crest with painted irises. Everything pointed to one answer.

Having spent nearly a lifetime in a film studio, she could distinguish between sets and reality.

This was Italy, and more specifically, Florence during the Renaissance.

She had visited this city in her middle age while shooting The Love of the Three Queens, where she portrayed a passionate tale with Napoleon.

Hedy steadied herself, clutching the necklace sewn into her dress, too afraid to speak.

Before she could figure out her next move, a young man’s voice suddenly came from behind her.

The Italian accent made the words sound a bit odd, and she couldn't understand Italian.

Instinctively, she turned around and saw a young man with brown hair and eyes.

He seemed to be wearing a wide-brimmed beret, the style favored by artists, looking tall and gentle.

Seeing that the young girl seemed to not understand his words, the man paused and reconsidered before asking again in Latin.

"Are you a guest from France?"

Hedy stepped back a little, finally managing to understand what he was asking.

"I... escaped here," she thought carefully for an appropriate excuse. "Excuse me, is anyone here looking for a maid?"

Although she had grown accustomed to a life of retirement, suddenly finding herself in this strange place, she needed to find work to survive.

"A maid?" The man was taken aback for a moment, then his expression brightened. "I happen to need a maid. Would you be willing to come?"

He was currently in a bit of trouble and needed a woman around.

The young man, fearing she might refuse, quickly added, "I have no one else in the house. Occasionally, I have guests—I'm not interested in women, I won't harm you."

Because the young man spoke so quickly, Hedy barely understood half of what he said.

As she hesitated, the young man offered a price.

"Two soldi a day, is that acceptable?"

Before Hedy could respond, her stomach let out a growl.

"Come on," he smiled. "My house is not far from here."

This situation was eerily similar to her escape years ago.

In her past life, when Hedy was nineteen, she had fled from the arms dealer's estate all the way to England. While staying with a friend of her father’s, she saw the opening of a movie with the MGM lion, and on a whim, she went to America alone, found an agent, and self-recommended to get into the industry.

She had always been a woman of strong will.

And she had never been afraid of men.

Even at the very beginning, she had walked alone into Austria’s largest film studio, and within just three days, she had convinced them to accept her, rising from an extra to the leading lady.

The young man seemed to be an artist, as even the living room had an easel and paint, with a half-completed painting of the Madonna and Child resting against the wall. It appeared he had only roughly sketched it and left it unfinished.

It was now midday, and the man swiftly prepared a pot of pasta, casually sprinkling some mushroom sauce and basil leaves on top, serving her a bowl as well.

He pointed to the black bread on the table, signaling that she could help herself later.

Both of them were not particularly fluent in Latin, so their conversation was a bit awkward and slow.

"What is your name?"

Hedy instinctively wanted to answer "Hedy Lamarr," but the words almost stopped in her throat.

That surname had been given to her by the wife of MGM's boss, who had helped her adopt it on the deck.

Lamarr meant "sea," and it had become her new identity.

Her real name had once been Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler.

Suddenly, she remembered her father's surname, her old name, and many forgotten memories.

Now, living again, everything about her was no longer tied to MGM.

There were things she had to keep, and things she had to forget.

"Hedy Kiesler," she replied. "And you, sir?"

"My name?" The young man smiled.

His brown eyes were clear, and there was still paint on his fingers that he had not yet washed off.

"Leonardo di Piero... da Vinci."

——

The pronunciation of "da Vinci" was quite clear, and Hedy froze for a moment, clearly surprised.

Renaissance, Italy, da Vinci.

Everything connected, and no coincidence could make it just a shared name.

"You are... Mr. da Vinci?"

She instinctively looked at the young man again, wanting to ask something, but the tangled Latin words swirled in her mind, making it hard to form coherent sentences.

Hedy knew many things about him.

The genius painter, best known for Mona Lisa, and also an inventor, just like herself.

But many memories mixed with the man in front of her seemed to not quite match up.

The young man looked somewhat disheveled and casual, and the room was messy, with no apparent help to keep it tidy.

"You may have heard of my name," da Vinci said with a slightly helpless smile. "Believe me, it’s not what you think."