“I’m leaving the Empire.”
At my bombshell declaration, Scarlet’s eyes widened so much they looked ready to fall out of her head.
Good. The reaction was perfect. She was already halfway convinced. I just needed to push her a little further. I steadied my breath and deliberately relaxed my hands, making them tremble faintly.
“Scarlet, look. At this scar.”
I spread open my left palm. An old wound torn by shards of broken glass while attending to Cassian. It was true. But the tragic significance of that scar would be created by my tongue from this moment on.
“I can’t stay by His Highness’s side any longer. Soon… he is to have an engagement.”
Scarlet’s pupils shook violently, as if struck by an earthquake. I lowered my voice to a whisper, channeling a tragic heroine on the verge of shattering, and delivered the final blow.
“My body is covered in scars I offered up for His Highness, yet rather than watch another woman stand by his side… I would rather die. This place is a prison to me. I can’t breathe; I can’t bear it.”
I strained my eyes, forcing the corners to redden. The pain of a broken heart, the feeling of betrayal, the wretched love-hate for the man she loved. I scraped together sentences from countless melodramatic tragedies I had read in my past life and poured them out with bleeding passion. Inside, I was screaming *This is so cringeworthy I could die*, but the act was perfect.
“Sister, and I didn’t even know…”
Plip, plop. Thick tears fell from Scarlet’s large eyes. I set my expression into something even more desolate and hammered in the final nail.
“That’s why I’m going to escape. To a place where no one knows me.”
A brief silence fell. But the atmosphere around Scarlet, who had been hanging her head deeply, felt somehow strange.
The pitiful air of someone weeping just moments ago had vanished without a trace. Her slowly lifting eyes glinted, taking on a strange, eerie light. She grabbed both of my hands, squeezing so hard that her own knuckles turned white, as if she might crush them.
“Don’t worry, Sister.”
Scarlet’s voice dropped to a terrifyingly low register.
“I’ll get you out of here, no matter what. I’ll never leave you by the side of a bastard like His Highness.”
At the words she added, gritting her teeth with a grinding sound, I stopped breathing for a moment.
“I’ll kill anyone who hurts you. Whether it’s the Emperor or anyone else, it doesn’t matter. Because Sister… you’re mine to protect.”
Words failed me. I felt as though I had flipped a switch on something far more dangerous and uncontrollable than I had anticipated. The gaze with which Scarlet obsessively bound me was no longer that of an ordinary, innocent maid.
“…Scarlet.”
Ignoring the cold sweat running down my spine, I carefully pulled her into an embrace. I could feel Scarlet’s small body in my arms trembling faintly with a bizarre, ecstatic thrill.
“Thank you. To me… you’re all I have.”
The unexpected reaction left me somewhat bewildered. A forced smile tugged at my lips. Well, anyway. Whatever her true feelings, the plan was a resounding success.
#
Scarlet held her sister’s trembling hand tightly, recalling memories of the distant past.
Becoming a maid of the Imperial court was both an honor to the family and, simultaneously, the prelude to a cutthroat competition. On her first day entering the palace, crushed by the bleak tension among over a hundred candidates, Scarlet was assigned a roommate in her quarters: none other than Illiana Levni.
An impression cold as frost. Eerily gleaming silver hair and red eyes. Because of that ominous appearance, reminiscent of the ‘Butcher of Elleb’ etched into the Empire’s collective memory as a symbol of terror, Scarlet had spent her first night shivering and weeping beneath her blanket, pulled up over her head.
But the Illiana she actually met was nothing like her imagination. Before others, she was a block of ice devoid of blood or tears, yet whenever Scarlet made a mistake, she would always wordlessly block the way forward.
Like a sturdy shield.
Scarlet had been the first to recognize the crude, rough-hewn consideration hidden within that bluntness.
That was why. Why her sister had become Scarlet’s ‘everything.’
Her time in the confined palace was hell itself. Even amid the Fourth Prince’s atrocities, Illiana always took the lead into mortal peril. She gave Scarlet tasks that were easy on the body, while she alone took on the duty of attending Prince Cassian, who rampaged like a maddened beast, with her own flesh and blood.
The price of that devotion was horrendous. Nights when her forehead was split open, her palms shredded like rags by glass fragments, her back slashed long and deep by an assassin’s dagger, and she was carried in drenched in blood.
Truthfully, every time, Scarlet felt her insides corroding, on the verge of madness.
Each time crimson blood seeped from her sister’s pale body, fantasies of slitting the Emperor’s throat swept through her mind like a storm, thousands of times over. She wanted to pour lethal poison into Cassian’s teacup that very instant, or plunge a long needle into the bastard’s heart as he slept.
But she couldn’t. Because she knew all too well that if she killed the Emperor, the backlash of that destruction would rain down entirely on her sister. While her sister silently endured that hell to protect her, she couldn’t act rashly and drive her sister to her doom.
The very existence of ‘Illiana’ was the only safety device barely suppressing Scarlet’s terrible bloodlust.
But to think her sister harbored romantic feelings for a bastard not even fit to be called a beast.
“…Ah.”
Scarlet’s lips trembled faintly. Beyond the ringing in her head, from deep within her chest, she heard something grotesquely twisting.
She had been a fool. Why had she only realized now? The sorrowful heart hidden behind that blind devotion. How slowly, how devastatingly her sister must have crumbled at the side of that devil-like Emperor.
But the compassion filling Scarlet’s heart was soon corrupted into a grotesque, sticky possessiveness and rage, swallowing her eyes in blackness.
“You’re going to leave. Truly, what a relief, Sister.”
Scarlet roughly wiped away the tears pooled at her eyes with the back of her hand. Only a vivid, frigid madness remained where the tears had been. Beyond simply holding Illiana’s hand, she seized it with a grinding of bones, as though she would never let go.
“Don’t worry, Sister. No matter what happens, I’ll get you out safely.”
Her voice no longer trembled pitifully. Heavy, sticky obsession dripped from every word.
“I’ll drag you out of that mad Emperor bastard’s grip and hide you away, locked tight in a place where no one knows.”
So that Sister never gets hurt again. So that no one—no bastard—ever dares look at her again.
I’ll become your only, perfect world.
“Sister, you just need to stay quietly by my side. Just do exactly as I tell you. Understood?”
Blind worship for her sister and a nauseating murderous rage toward Cassian intertwined, and Scarlet’s frail heart pounded violently, as though it would burst. There was no longer any reason to hesitate and endure. Because her sister had declared that she would leave the bastard’s side first. Scarlet had now secured both the perfect justification and the preparation to gladly sever that arrogant ‘beast’s’ leash.
“…Scarlet.”
Illiana cautiously approached and held Scarlet tightly. Scarlet felt her own body shiver with a sharp, electric ecstasy from her spine outward.
“Thank you. To me… you’re all I have.”
Scarlet’s fingernails, wrapped behind Illiana’s back, dug deep into her own palms, drawing beads of blood.
*I’ll cut down anything that hurts you, whether it’s the Emperor or whoever. I’ll crush them a hundred times more miserably and painfully than the scars on your body.*
The silver moonlight seeping through the window illuminated Scarlet’s grotesquely twisted smile.
#
I sat leaning heavily against the headboard, looking up at the ceiling. A subtle smile still lingered at my lips. Things had gone far more smoothly than expected.
What would happen to Scarlet, left behind in this room after I escaped? Perhaps Cassian, his eyes rolled back in rage, would cut her down with a single blow. For a fleeting moment, a twinge of guilt pricked a corner of my heart.
“Well, what can you do.”
I muttered under my breath, as if shaking off my lingering sentiments.
“I need to save my own skin first.”
This was hell wearing the mask of a romance fantasy, gleaming only on the surface. I could barely take care of myself; I had no leisure to look after anyone else’s life.
I casually turned my head and scanned the room. The bed, the large wardrobe, and the bookshelf. It was a boring sight I’d looked at for a whole month, yet the bookshelf alone strangely grated on my nerves.
Restless, as if ants were crawling under my skin, I got up. I approached the bookshelf and ran my fingers over the spines of the books lodged there.
One volume, two volumes. The act of absently flicking past them suddenly came to an abrupt halt.
“…What is this?”
An unfamiliar title I had never seen before was seared vividly into my eyes. Had a book like this been here? I couldn’t remember at all. The very fact that a book with such an ominous title had been sitting in this room sent chills down my spine.
I slowly pulled out the book and tapped the dust off. And the moment I checked the embossed letters on the cover, a chill froze my spine.
*[Why You Must Save the Fourth Prince]*
…What the fuck kind of situation is this?
Why was the title of this damned original novel I had possessed sitting here? My heart began to pound madly, beating with an ominous pulse. It was so blatant that it felt like a trap, but I wasn’t one to turn back after coming this far.
Holding my breath, I opened the book. A quill pen fell out with a clack from between the hollow, blank pages. A hollow laugh escaped me. But at that moment, letters rose up across the pure white paper that had been empty, as if black ink were spreading in a slithering motion.
*[Hi!]*
“Huh?”
Strength fled my hands, and I dropped the book straight onto the floor.
“Fuck, you startled me… what the hell is this…”
My breath caught in my throat. Onto the book lying on the floor, letters were etched again at rapid speed, as if someone were typing.
*[Sorry, did I scare you too much?]*
It wasn’t the common tongue of this world. It was Korean. My mind couldn’t keep up with the situation and short-circuited. I gritted my teeth and snatched up the pen that had fallen on the floor. Then, crudely drawing an arrow at the bottom of the page, I scrawled:
*— Who are you.*
A brief silence. Then a brazen answer arrived, as if flaunting itself.
*[Nice to meet you. I’m the Author.]*
My heart plummeted with a thud to a bottomless depth. It was an indescribably shitty feeling. I glared at the paper as if to burn a hole through it, then clenched the pen again.
*— Did you bring me to this world?*
I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t know why I had come here, or why my memories from before coming here were hazy. And yet, the answer came back all too easily.
*[Yeah, I put you here.]*
*— What’s the reason?*
*[The reason? It’s simple.]*
The sentence that appeared after a very brief pause was beyond astounding.
*[Because it’s fun?]*
My fingertips trembled, and I heard the snap of my last thread of reason breaking.
“…The fuck?”
Just… for fun?
*— Who gave you the right?*
*[Because I’m the Author. I do what I want.]*
*— Did you put that fucking maid uniform in the wardrobe too, you bastard?*
*[That’s right. Maid uniforms are love!]*
“Ha… fuck, this is bullshit.”
I tried to tear the book to shreds on the spot, but strangely, my hands wouldn’t obey. The mastermind gripping the strings of my life and fate was right in front of me. I hissed through my teeth and pressed the pen to the paper again.
*— Are you fucking kidding me, you piece of shit?*
*[No? I’m being serious.]*
*— Then what the fuck is playing with someone’s life if not a joke?*
*[Well, everyone has their own joys and sorrows, don’t they?]*
Blood rushed backward, and I felt as though a blood vessel in my brain would burst. I dragged the pen across the paper as though the nib would snap.
*— Let me out of here.*
*[Nope. You still have work to do.]*
*— What work.*
*[The Emperor. You have to save him.]*
Cassian. I ground my teeth at that name.
*— And if I don’t?*
*[Then it won’t be fun.]*
That fucking *fun* again. I let out a hollow laugh and lowered my head. Veins bulged on the back of my pen-wielding hand, threatening to burst.
*— I’m going to tear you apart and kill you.*
For a moment, the letters gliding across the paper stopped. I held my breath and glared at the first brief silence. A moment later.
*[Wow. I can feel the killing intent through the text. Scary. That’s exactly why I’m even more excited to see how things unfold from here.]*
*— You fucking bastard.*
*[I’ll be watching to see just how far you can go this time.]*
…*This time?*
*[Oops, you don’t remember the previous cycle yet.]*
It felt as if someone had smashed the back of my head with a sledgehammer.
*[It’s okay. If you fail, we’ll just start over.]*
My mind went blank. Again? Start? Was it saying this was some kind of infinite loop? Panic-stricken, I scribbled back urgently.
—What kind of bullshit is this. Hey. Explain yourself properly right now.
But with a dry tap, as if the fountain pen had run out of ink, no more words appeared.
“Hey! Fuck, tell me everything! Answer me!”
Only echoes dissipated into the air, leaving behind a suffocating silence. In that perfect stillness, a single sentence remained vivid on the page like a brand, mocking me.
[It’s okay. Even if you fail, we’ll start over.]
I stared at that sentence for a long time. Strangely, those words felt so familiar. As if I’d already heard them once before. I closed the book with a hand slick with cold sweat.
“Ha… you crazy bastard.”
I muttered, but there was no answer.
My head throbbed like it would split. I sucked in trembling breaths and collapsed onto the bed.
#
That night, I couldn’t close my eyes for a single minute.
[It’s okay. Even if you fail, we’ll start over.]
In the pitch-black darkness, that sentence circled my ears like a hallucination. If you fail, you start over. It wasn’t simple consolation—it was a horrifying warning gripping my life by the throat and shaking it.
What, and how, were we starting over? If the author’s words were true, my life and fate were nothing more than a plaything for some psychopath beyond the printed text. The unknown fear that no matter how much I struggled and ran, I might be forced to dance forever inside the fucked-up script he’d written strangled me all night long.
The next morning, soaked in cold sweat, I snatched up the washbasin in the corner of the room and vomited bitter gastric fluid.
I spent the next several days like someone half out of their mind. But the human survival instinct is a tenacious, vicious thing. At some point, the fear of my situation began to transform into pure malice toward this fucked-up world and the author bastard toying with me.
‘Yeah, fuck. Let’s find out who wins, you or me.’
The second week of solitary confinement. I dragged myself up off the cold marble floor where I’d been sprawled. Whether I moved according to the script or not, I had to fight back and at least grab that bastard by the throat, or how could I live with the injustice?
From that day on, I began my own fierce survival training inside this suffocating cell.
At first, it was pure desperation. Holding my breath, I dropped to the floor and did push-ups, trained my lower body with squats. Ilyana’s fragile-looking wrists trembled violently at first, but after a few days, something unbelievable happened.
‘…Huh?’
It was the moment I lightly punched the empty air. *Boom!* A sonic boom that split the wind echoed through the room.
The original owner of this body, the Ghost of the Battlefield, ‘Rodri Cotton.’ His instincts and muscle memory as a warrior were awakening from deep within my brain cells.
Baseline stamina and muscle density that put ordinary heroines to shame. Efficient movements that defied weight-class limits. Every night, pouring sweat like rain, I synchronized the killing techniques Rodri had left behind and made them entirely my own.
The conviction that I could break bones and silently render one or two adult men unconscious. As that conviction took root, my mentality, which had been driven to the edge of a cliff, grew noticeably harder as well.
While my physical training proceeded smoothly, secret contact with an external accomplice for the escape was also established.
“Sister, please eat.”
It was during mealtime, when Scarlet came in with a tray and handed me bread. Her fingers brushed my palm and pressed a crumpled scrap of paper into my hand.
Turning my body so the knights outside wouldn’t see, I unfolded the note.
[Guard shifts every 6 hours. After dinner, a 5-minute gap during handover. Emergency bell on the banquet hall side.]
It was the guard pattern Scarlet had mapped out after silently observing the knights’ movements for days. I shoved the note into my mouth, chewing it thoroughly to dissolve it with saliva, and smiled a grim smile. Scarlet was a bolder and more capable accomplice than I’d imagined.
From that day on, during each brief moment when she collected the dishes, we meticulously coordinated the operation with whispers like dying breaths.
“Sister, I’ll tamper with the emergency bell near the banquet hall entrance on the opposite end of the corridor. If I rig it to look like a malfunction, the knights will have no choice but to run and check that side first according to protocol.”
“Good. How much time does that give me?”
“Exactly 5 minutes. That’s the most we can buy.”
Scarlet’s red eyes burned with grim determination as she recited the plan. Those 5 minutes were the only emergency exit available to me.
The world is dangerous.
Especially this blood-drenched medieval world wearing the mask of a romance fantasy. The settings I’d once read about as a novel when I was a man now approached as a terrible horror threatening my survival now that I was a woman.
Make one wrong move and end up in the slums, or get caught by a slave merchant, and there was danger everywhere of being used as a plaything or a whore. Even worse, I could end up as a breeding tool for monsters.
“I have to protect my own body. No one’s going to do it for me.”
An odd gleam settled in my cool red eyes. If you have strength and a plan, the story changes. Once I got outside the castle, the first thing I’d do was find the information broker who had helped Cassian in the original story. Whether I had to threaten or sweet-talk him, I’d start by laundering my identity, dye my conspicuous silver hair black, and switch my name from Ilyana to ‘Yujin.’
And so the blood-curdling hours of preparation passed relentlessly. My body grew hard as a honed blade, and the escape map in my head was perfected through hundreds of simulations.
And finally.
The long-awaited D-Day dawned.
There was still a week left until the official notice lifting my confinement, but my patience and my preparations were already in a state of perfect completion.
I rose from my seat and lightly loosened my body. All that remained now was to use the emergency bell that would tear through the silence at the end of the corridor as my signal, and kick my way out of this place.