RETL 01

Chapter 1

“If I can have that person by getting down on my knees, then I can kneel a hundred times, a thousand times. Pride? I can throw all of that away. So give him to me. Otherwise…”

Lumiere continued while pointing a sharp fruit knife at her own neck.

“I’ll kill myself.”

·

·

“…Wow. I wrote it myself, but this is really something.”

Kang Yerin muttered as she stared at the monitor.

Who was that woman threatening to kill herself while holding a fruit knife?

She was none other than the heroine of Yerin’s own novel.

Lumiere von Wiser.

The daughter of a dancer from a distant foreign land, and a princess in name only, with neither the Emperor’s favor nor the support of her maternal family.

And yet, despite being the heroine, the only thing she could do to her romantic rival was threaten her to break up with him.

In her own way, it was a desperate struggle to take the man she loved and avoid a political marriage with a barbarian.

But…

‘The problem is that none of it works.’

“Sob, all right. I’ll break up with him, so please, stop…”

The romantic rival, who cried and promised to break up with him, would send a letter a while later announcing her engagement.

[I’m sorry, Your Highness. I am getting engaged to him. I tried to break up with him, but he wouldn’t let me go.]

After receiving this letter, the heroine, driven into despair, chose suicide as her ending.

Even that attempt would fail, and she would eventually be sold off to a barbarian land in a political marriage, where she was ‘scheduled’ to finally die successfully.

But Yerin had been unable to write even a single word for several months after the scene where the heroine received that letter.

‘Is it because both the heroine and the ending are hopeless?’

If she didn’t like the ending, she could simply change it. But no matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t imagine another ending.

As if there were no path other than tragedy.

‘At this rate, will I even be able to finish it?’

Even though she had started writing the novel as a hobby, she still wanted to give it a proper ending.

“Well, I guess it’ll come to me someday.”

She rubbed her dry eyes and turned off the computer.

It was already 11 p.m.

If she wanted to get to work early in the morning, she needed to go to bed soon.

So she cleaned up her desk and lay down on her bed.

‘What?’

When she woke up, she saw a ceiling she had never seen before in her life.

The only thing that was the same as before she fell asleep was that she was lying in a bed.

“Ugh…”

She slowly sat up, and a stiff pain spread through her body while her stomach churned with nausea.

‘Where am I?’

Yerin looked around in confusion.

Wallpaper covered in mold here and there.

A medieval European-style bedroom containing nothing but a bed and a bedside table.

While she stood there frozen in a daze at the unfamiliar sight, she felt someone’s gaze from somewhere and turned her head.

Blue hair and blue eyes.

A man she had never seen before was letting out a disbelieving laugh.

“It would have at least been pitiful if you had died, but I am truly disappointed that you are still alive.”

“Ah…”

She had opened her eyes in an unfamiliar place, and on top of that, she could naturally understand a language she had never heard before?

‘It’s a dream.’

But wasn’t it far too vivid for a dream…?

The throbbing pain and nausea.

Even the damp, musty smell of the blanket somehow felt real.

“Did you really think that if Your Highness took that pathetic life of yours, I would cancel the engagement?”

The princess?

Take her own life…?

The man clicked his tongue and threw a gold-embossed envelope at her.

[I wish for the two of us to pledge our unchanging hearts to each other, and I ask that you bear witness to our sacred vow.

Logan del Trovitan · Clora Edburd.]

“This is…”

It was an invitation to an engagement ceremony.

Logan del Trovitan.

Clora Edburd.

It was an invitation to the engagement ceremony of the man the heroine of her novel had a one-sided love for and her romantic rival.

Could this be the exact moment when the heroine, driven to despair by the news of their engagement, attempted suicide?

“You will be getting married soon anyway, Your Highness, so don’t waste your strength on useless things. Stay quiet until then, and simply leave.”

She absentmindedly stared into the man’s contemptuous eyes as she touched the invitation.

But something was strange.

‘That can’t be…’

Why did she feel as though she had experienced this situation ‘herself’ before?

The man soon clicked his tongue briefly and turned away.

…Thump, thump, thump.

Her heart began to ache ominously.

The man was leaving coldly now that he had finished what he came for.

Yerin had ‘seen’ that man’s back somewhere before.

It made no sense, but she clearly remembered seeing it.

‘When did I see this scene before…?’

Just as an uneasy feeling began creeping over her, making her think that this might not simply be a dream…

She unconsciously turned her head toward the mirror hanging on the wall.

White hair flowing down to her waist and violet eyes.

A painfully thin body that looked as if it would break if someone merely touched it, and deeply sunken eye sockets.

The moment her eyes met her own reflection in the mirror.

A pain that felt as if her brain were being torn apart struck her, and unfamiliar memories began pouring into her mind.

“Wipe your tears. People are watching.”

The day when her half-brother, who had just ascended the imperial throne, dragged her to a banquet hall, a man had handed her a handkerchief while she cried like a flower decorating the wall.

“…Why are you giving this to me?”

“Your Highness, how could a subject turn away when the princess is crying?”

The first kindness she had ever received from a man.

The excitement and warmth she had felt at that moment.

“Please, don’t…”

“…”

“Duke, please… accept me. You know too, don’t you? That you are the only one I have.”

Three years of clinging to him.

The memory of holding a knife to her own neck in front of his lover.

And finally, even the last moment when she was sold to a foreign land and died at the end of despair.

The memories flooded in like a river, but after a long period of pain, they gradually subsided.

“……”

She finally realized who she ‘had been.’

Lumiere von Wiser.

The foolish and pitiful princess who had been looked down upon by the Imperial Family her entire life and ultimately ended her own life.

That woman had been her past life.