Chapter 2
1. Your World and Mine
Why is it that when you read a romance novel, there are stories like this?
A happy ending where a man from another world falls in love with the female protagonist and follows her all the way into the real world.
It may sound ridiculous, but four years ago, I possessed the body of a character inside a book and experienced exactly that kind of love.
When that man appeared in the real world, the novel finally reached its happy ending.
The man from a harsh world said that he had fallen in love with a woman from a peaceful world because he loved her peaceful, kind, and sweet atmosphere.
He said that he wanted the stable way she lived her life.
That was why he wanted to stay by her side.
That was the reason for his love.
He had loved the peace and comfort of a modern person.
Now, perhaps someone like me was nothing more than a common stone lying on the road to him.
What remained between us now?
Was it loyalty?
Or was it love?
That novel had ended back then.
But perhaps our love hadn’t even begun yet.
Without realizing it, I had started thinking that way.
I had always been the kind of person who didn’t really care what happened.
In many situations, I was easily swayed by other people’s opinions.
But rather than being someone who made concessions, cared for others, or simply gave up, I was closer to someone who thought, It doesn’t matter either way, so I don’t mind being swept along.
If there was something I truly wanted, I would speak up.
I also had a rather low emotional threshold. I got angry easily and cooled down just as easily.
So perhaps that was why.
Still, the reason I always lived like a drifting plant, thinking that either way was fine, was simply because I really was the kind of person who thought, Either way is fine.
Becoming a novelist was also an extension of that.
I literally became a genre novelist by accident.
I had chosen my university major in much the same careless way, so I suppose I had also ended up choosing my career without much thought.
I had been lucky enough to get a chance to publish the little bits of writing I had written during middle and high school.
I had always liked creating stories.
Every story I wrote felt as if it were a real world existing somewhere.
Otherwise, how could such unfamiliar worlds appear before my eyes as though they were actually alive?
That was why I liked bringing their stories into my own world.
No matter how much I expressed them, I wanted to keep expressing them.
Perhaps I was happy because I could peek into stories that were somehow different from my own reality and imagine that those worlds really existed somewhere.
But one day, I actually experienced that world and returned from it.
After learning about incredible settings in my own novel that I hadn’t even imagined yet, I began to think that perhaps this world really did exist somewhere.
Maybe I had simply been given a chance to secretly peek into what happened there and turn it into a novel.
And then I woke up.
With a manuscript that hadn’t even begun sitting right in front of me.
Naturally, I thought that I had simply gotten a glimpse of that story, just as I always had.
I thought I had merely suddenly imagined the settings and characters of the world before starting the novel.
So now I only had to write it.
There wouldn’t actually be anything novel-like happening in reality.
That incredible love story was not actually my story.
It was merely an imagination I had created for the purpose of writing a novel.
Railey had told me to wait for him, and I had left a possibility open for him.
But any sane person knew that you shouldn’t mistake a brief, beautiful dream for something that truly existed.
Getting ideas from dreams wasn’t unusual for me, either.
Sometimes I would receive the basic setting or story of a world in a dream, almost like a revelation.
Then, after waking up, I would systematically create the characters and fill in the gaps.
That had always been my working method.
Still, there was one lingering attachment I couldn’t let go of.
That was why I kept my promise to him.
Railey had asked me to create a way for him to reach me, even if I dated another man.
At the very least, I decided not to break my own promise that I would make an effort to create a path for him to reach me.
Why?
There were plenty of stories like that in novels.
A male protagonist from another world who truly loved the female protagonist and followed her into the real world.
If I really had possessed a character inside a novel, maybe I was allowed to hope for an ending like that.
I just wanted to escape.
If I desperately clung to one particular thing, I would have to admit that I couldn’t live without it.
If Railey really appeared in front of me like magic, that would be wonderful.
But if I foolishly allowed myself to hope and Railey never appeared, I knew I would only end up suffering.
By the time six months had passed, I had already given up on every possibility.
I had always been quick to give up, after all.
By then, the events involving Railey that I had experienced like a dream had already become vague memories.
The memories had faded so much that I could no longer properly remember Railey’s face.
And once that happened, I became truly confused.
Had I really only dreamed about everything?
Or had I really woken up from that incredible adventure in another world?
Eventually, the truth itself stopped mattering.
I had always been strangely lucky when it came to romance.
Even when I didn’t want a relationship, two or three people would somehow become interested in me every year before eventually drifting away.
So I picked someone suitable and dated him for a while.
I thought that if I found someone I genuinely liked, perhaps the delusional “two-dimensional boyfriend” I had only seen once in a dream would quickly disappear from my memory.
A new boyfriend to forget an ex.
Even that sentence already sounded ominous.
But humans are foolish.
Sometimes we do things even when we know they’re wrong.
I was no exception.
To get straight to the point…
It was a disaster.
Though I suppose that’s an obvious conclusion.
Honestly, aside from his personality, Railey had everything a gentle and considerate man could possibly have.
The problem was that his personality was a rather important part.
Still, with a face and body like his, along with that level of ability and housework skills, it was enough to brainwash me into thinking,
Maybe it’s okay if his personality gets a failing grade.
Because of that, it was difficult to find a man I liked more than Railey.
Instead, I simply realized once again, after several years, that romance wasn’t suited to me.
In the first place, I didn’t need other people in my life.
I had never believed in something as pointless as love, either.
As I mentioned earlier, I was usually the kind of person who thought either way was fine.
But if someone told me, “Do this,” or “Don’t do that,” I became a rebellious person who wanted to do the exact opposite.
So there was no way I could enjoy having someone place all kinds of restrictions on me through a romantic relationship.
I had simply forgotten that because of that bastard, Railey Kraha.
No matter how many times I thought about it, something very important had been missing.
But somehow, I had been brainwashed anyway.
That day, which might have been possession or might have been a dream, came when I was twenty-three.
Before then, my entire dating experience consisted of a few boyfriends I had had in middle and high school.
To be honest, it wasn’t even because I liked them.
It was more like, Everyone else is dating, so I should date too.
Those relationships were so insignificant that I barely remembered them.
Before dating, while dating, and even after breaking up, we simply became good friends.
Since our relationships had never started from romantic feelings in the first place, it was a strange kind of dating where both sides almost avoided doing anything that might become embarrassing later.
So imagine how stimulating a relationship with a shameless and fearless romance-novel character must have been for twenty-three-year-old me, who had only experienced relationships like that.
At that time, Railey Kraha was basically a wild beast with a violent personality who cared about nothing but himself.
He was the kind of crazy bastard with a terrible personality and an even more terrible past who should have existed only in a novel.
Honestly, I have no way to explain how I became involved with someone like him.
No matter how I think about it, it was something I should have reflected on.
But anyway, no matter how much time passed after that day when I was twenty-three, I couldn’t forget that incredibly stimulating relationship.
That was probably why I came up with the ridiculous thought that perhaps an even more stimulating romance could finally make me forget Railey Kraha.
To be completely honest, from that point onward, I became somewhat reckless with dating.
I was an independent adult.
What was wrong with having a little excitement in my romantic life?
I ended up meeting all kinds of complete punks.
Whether the problem was the personalities of the men I met or my own attitude, I didn’t particularly like any of those relationships.
Eventually, I kept repeating the same cycle.
Date.
Break up.
Date.
Break up.
After turning twenty-five, I gave up on dating altogether.
Fortunately, around that time, my sense of reality had mostly returned, so the timing worked out fairly well.
It was also around then that I decided I needed to properly attend university.
I had repeatedly taken leaves of absence for things like language exams, practically treating school breaks like a habit.
So at twenty-five, I ended up attending my fifth semester.
It was an amazing university life where the number in the tens place of my age went hand in hand with my semester number.
Because I had lived so recklessly throughout university, even after finally getting my act together, I still had to postpone graduation and take additional semesters.
But at least my wandering had finally been resolved without going beyond what could be fixed with a leave of absence.
After nearly two more years of trying, I was finally able to write again.
In other words, after traveling to another world, it took me four years to regain my sense of reality.
Unfortunately, it was only after I finally came to my senses that Railey Kraha actually appeared right in front of me.
Thanks to that, I began to wonder if that experience really had been some kind of “possession” rather than a dream or a strange revelation of novel settings.
Anyway, by then, whether Railey Kraha had really appeared in front of me or not no longer mattered.
He had simply appeared.
And I simply accepted him.
Because that was what I had decided to do.
And because, to some extent, I still liked him.
Honestly, I didn’t even know why I had been so anxious and obsessed over something that could be explained so simply.
Railey Kraha had originally fallen in love with the peaceful, relaxed, safe atmosphere that only someone who had spent their entire life in a secure world could possess.
That was why he had followed me into my world.
But he no longer had a specific reason to love me.
I wanted to be able to tell myself that I wouldn’t care if he left me soon.
I knew that if I allowed myself to be affected by him, I would only be the one who suffered.
And so…
We ended up in this ambiguous relationship.
I was sprawled out on a huge bed.
I slowly raised my messy head and stared at the back of Railey Kraha’s head as he worked with four computers at the same time.
I lived alone in a small studio apartment.
Railey Kraha had bought himself a spacious and comfortable penthouse.
That crazy bastard was an otherworlder, yet he had already managed to buy a home right in central Yongsan.
I had no idea how he had forged his identity or obtained his initial funds after arriving in this world.
But he had once been a villain from the end of the world who had held the fate of an entire continent in his hands.
Now he earned unimaginable amounts of money by watching world affairs and manipulating the financial markets.
Once again, I could only think that even human garbage had a special way of making money.
After retiring from his career as the villain known as Mreau’s Crow, he had lived as a butler.
These days, he even ran a luxury dessert shop as a hobby.
To explain it in more detail…
He was basically using his hobby to mess with me.
He did operate the shop in his own way, but he had brought his awful personality into that business, too.
He opened the shop whenever he felt like it.
When he didn’t feel like it, he didn’t even bother opening.
Whenever he came up with a new dessert he wanted me to eat, he would immediately go downstairs, make test versions, and post about them on social media.
The shop had a handsome, well-built pâtissier, and his skills were far beyond those of an ordinary modern person.
Naturally, word spread quickly.
As a result, his test products would sell out that very day.
Then he would force the best-looking result into my mouth.
More than once, I had received his suspicious gifts in front of my classmates through express delivery that I hadn’t even asked for.
To be completely honest…
I was being raised by being bribed with food.
Then what exactly was ambiguous about our relationship?
This was the moment when everyone listening to my story would probably be wondering about that question.
Actually, it was quite simple.
First question.
Did I still love Railey Kraha?
Honestly, I didn’t know.
Second question.
Then did Railey Kraha still love me?
At the very least, I should have been able to answer this question with certainty if there was any chance of maintaining our relationship.
But I couldn’t.
I didn’t know about anything else, but after meeting me again at twenty-seven, Railey Kraha had never once touched me in a romantic way.
For the record, before we even started dating back then, he had done all kinds of things with me and moved our relationship forward quite quickly.
So, as a human being, I couldn’t help feeling a little strange about it.
I had first met him with my real face on the day we reunited six months ago.
Seeing me in person must have been very different from what he remembered.
The body I had possessed, Yuri Yelechenika, had been one of the most beautiful women on the entire continent.
There was no way my real appearance could even be compared to Yuri Yelechenika’s beauty.
Perhaps he had also realized anew that the messy life I had lived—which he had once considered one of my “special qualities”—wasn’t actually impressive from a modern perspective.
It was simply pathetic.
Either way, the real me probably had far more shortcomings than the version of me who had lived in that world.
As for his obsession…
That beast had always been obsessed with anything he considered his.
So that hadn’t really changed.
From his perspective, perhaps I was already something within his grasp, which meant that I shouldn’t even be allowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with another man.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized what a bastard he was.
Anyway, that was how things were.
A lot had changed compared to before.
Did Railey Kraha still love me?
Was what remained between us actually love?
I lightly pulled up the T-shirt that had slipped down below my shoulder because I had worn it one size too big.
As I stared at Railey Kraha’s back, I thought about it once again.
This was, so to speak…
“A couple’s seven-year itch after being married for ten years?”
“You woke up and stared blankly into space, and the moment you opened your mouth, you started talking nonsense. What would you like for breakfast?”
“Strawberries.”
“What would you like for your grains?”
“Anything is fine.”
“Would you like me to mix strawberries into your rice?”
“Let’s at least have toast and strawberries, Butler. No, realistically, did you really think I was asking you to mix strawberries into rice?”
Railey lightly pushed his chair away from the computer he had been checking and turned toward me.
He narrowed his eyes and tapped his left cheek.
I was facing him, so without thinking, I touched my right cheek.
“The other side.”
“Oh.”
Only after Railey pointed it out did I touch my left cheek properly.
There was a clear mark from the pillow pressed into my skin.
If it had been before, Railey would have noticed the mark on my cheek long ago.
But now he simply stared at me rubbing my cheek before getting up.
He seemed to be preparing breakfast.
I sat on the bed, still somewhat dazed.
Then I flopped back down again.
Even now, whenever I was with him, he acted as though taking care of my daily life was his responsibility.
But strictly speaking, I could no longer call him my butler.
Did love really have to exist?
Railey had never had much to do with love in the first place.
Neither had I.
So perhaps living like this wasn’t so bad.
But after burying my face in the pillow and rubbing against it a little, I thought back over the four years I had spent wandering around, unable to control my overwhelming affection for Railey Kraha.
I seriously thought about it once again.
Hmm.
I still didn’t know.
If Railey Kraha no longer loved me, then what was the point of me continuing to cherish him?
And what exactly was I supposed to believe in to maintain this relationship that felt like a married couple standing on the verge of divorce, with no idea when it would end?
Wouldn’t it be better to simply bring things to an end at an appropriate point?
Honestly, perhaps I was still clinging to him.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to hold onto him through marriage.
I myself had absolutely no interest in marriage.
In fact, I hated the idea.
So, although I had thought about this for a long time, I couldn’t actually do anything about it.
Nor did I intend to.
It was ultimately a meaningless worry.
And that was how we ended up in this strange, ambiguous relationship.
