UTBTR 01

Chapter 1

Prologue

In every kind of creative work, there are certain “trendy” themes that never change, no matter how much time passes. If we limit the discussion to romance, one of those evergreen themes would be “a normal person and a lover who is somehow different.”

My boyfriend is a school delinquent, a second-generation chaebol heir, a department director, an alien, a fairy, an angel, a demon, a dragon, a vampire, a crown prince, a duke, His Majesty, a general, a prince, and so on.

At times like this, the protagonist has to live an extremely ordinary life. That is what allows consumers to dream through the story from their own perspective.

I am an ordinary twenty-seven-year-old university student who happened to become a genre novelist through the stories I had been writing since I was a student.

There is nothing special about me compared to anyone else. I am now worried about graduating and finding a job, struggling with money, and saving money on one meal by eating at a convenience store so I can barely afford a drink.

Just don’t ask why I entered university at twenty and still haven’t graduated by twenty-seven.

Let’s all live a little more leisurely.

There must be someone like that around you, too. So if you happen to see someone with a student ID from ten years ago at a university retreat, please look at them with generous eyes.

Anyway, I would like to begin my regrettable story now.

It is about my love life.

That so-called evergreen subject commonly consumed by romance media also exists in my very ordinary life.

A lover who is somehow different from an ordinary person.

Then who is my boyfriend?

Unfortunately, he is my character.

No, not a body pillow.

[Urging the Butler to Reflect on Himself]

Written by Yu Anna

To explain how my actual character, rather than a body pillow or a photo card, became my boyfriend, I first have to bluntly explain that the genre of my life had strayed somewhat into fantasy.

Possession, traveling to another world, medieval fantasy, steampunk, romantic fantasy…

Pick any of those five.

Have you ever heard those words before?

I am someone who has actually traveled to a world like that.

Yes.

This isn’t delusion.

It’s real.

Even I think it sounds like complete bullshit, but it really happened.

I thought you had to be a minor to become a chosen child, but in my case, it happened one day when I was twenty-three.

After roughly planning the setting for my next novel, I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the bedroom of a certain genius inventor count inside that very next novel.

And that was how I arrived in another world.

I went to a world that I believed I had created from A to Z myself, possessing the body of an incredibly beautiful woman who was talented enough to be considered a genius in that entire world.

So what on earth did I do there?

“Are you, by any chance, Railey?”

“‘Are you, by any chance, Railey?’ Master, that is a rather awkward way to address me.”

I had barely arrived before I took this damn stupid first step.

On the very first day after possessing the body, I was discovered by the body’s owner’s most trusted subordinate, a former assassin, who realized that I wasn’t the real owner.

And my life was threatened.

Fuck, was this really happening?

Maybe because I had messed up the very first button, my journey to another world wasn’t exactly peaceful afterward, either.

Every bastard I met was some rotten noble involved in a political world far too brutal for an ordinary citizen like me to handle.

And the only person with a decent personality was the female protagonist.

That end-of-the-world scenario continued forever.

I was forcibly fed secrets about a world I hadn’t even been curious about.

I spent my time desperately questioning my own existence while being tossed around here and there like a shrimp caught in a whale fight.

Only after all the brilliant and important people’s business was finally finished was I able to return to my own world, thanks to their generous help.

Yes.

Of course, after experiencing things that ordinary people would never experience, I did gain some valuable lessons.

I learned how to view the world and other people. I also experienced the mental growth expected of someone who had possessed another world’s body.

But honestly, I’m not sure whether any of that was really necessary for a modern person.

Why would an ordinary person living in the twenty-first century need to understand the relationship between different worlds?

Anyway, it was all in the past.

I did eventually return, so there is no need to go into all the details of my hardships back then.

What matters is that I successfully returned to my own world.

And, one way or another, I had even experienced an incredible love in someone else’s world.

The person I fell in love with just happened to be the guy who had threatened to kill me on the very first day I possessed another body because he wanted to know what I had done to his real master.

But after countless incidents and accidents—enough to make me fall in love with that bastard—we somehow came to understand each other’s feelings.

That man had lived a rather harsh life in his own world.

He had never had anywhere to truly belong, and had simply lived by carrying out the responsibilities and roles given to him.

Yet he said this to a woman from another world without hesitation.

If you cannot abandon your world, then I will abandon mine.

How the hell was I supposed to reject that?

So I left that other world first and made a promise with no definite date.

I was originally from another world, so crossing between worlds was relatively easy for me—by leaving my physical body.

But I had no idea how difficult it would be for him.

The woman who once believed herself to be the original author of this world, someone who had the right to create and fix parts of its rules, said:

I’ll connect the possibility of you finding your way to my world.

The man who had been born in an abandoned city and lived as an abandoned existence, and therefore knew neither mercy nor love, answered:

I don’t know how long it will take, so you can have someone else by your side. But when I come to you, you must give that place to me.

When you put it that way, it sounds like an amazing romance.

Isn’t it traditional?

A man from another world falls in love with the protagonist and follows her all the way into the real world.

It was such an incredible love that I had no doubt that was exactly what would happen to me.

However, there was one small problem.

After leaving that other world, I wanted to connect his “possibility” to my world.

So instead of my original next novel, <Serena’s Tea Time>, I wrote , which deliberately left room for such a possibility.

And then…

Four years passed.

It took a full four years for that man, Railey Kraha, to appear right in front of my eyes.

Just when I was beginning to wonder if the whole thing had simply been some self-indulgent fantasy born from writing novels and creating settings.

I was almost ready to think,

“How embarrassing! I must have confused reality with fiction!”

And then it was suddenly proven that my trip to another world had really happened.

Railey Kraha had appeared in the real world.

It happened about six months ago.

I had turned twenty-seven, dismissed that incredible experience as some strange dream, and was finally overcoming all kinds of slumps in my writing.

Unfortunately, I had gotten myself caught.

It was because, intoxicated by the romance of the romantic fantasy world, I had stupidly revealed personal information about my real life.

Railey Kraha, whose personality had fallen into the abyss but whose useless talents were equally absurdly high, found the door leading to the real world—more precisely, my reality.

Then, across this enormous planet, he somehow found the exact place where I lived.

I thought that if he’d put this much effort into anything else, he could have accomplished something incredible.

But every day, when I see him pretending to be a modern person in his own rather questionable way, I am reminded that he really is the kind of man who can accomplish anything.

Anyway, one day, the person I had once loved in my novel suddenly appeared in front of me.

Up until that point, everything was fine.

There is such a thing as nostalgia.

Because of it, every day I had spent with Railey Kraha in the past felt dazzling.

Since I have started the story this way, you can probably guess what happened.

I had overlooked one very important fact.

Additional expenses required to support another person?

No.

An otherworlder capable of crossing worlds possessed abilities that could never be compared to those of modern people.

Even after being dropped into a completely unfamiliar world, he was living quite well.

In fact, he seemed to be living better than me.

Then perhaps the problem was modern law, which would be difficult for someone from a premodern society to adapt to?

No.

Railey Kraha had originally been an outlaw with no connection to the law whatsoever.

But apparently, his determination to cross worlds had also included the determination to follow at least the minimum social standards required by my world.

He had become a fairly law-abiding citizen.

That said, I heard that the very first thing he did after setting foot on Earth was forge his identity.

Since he was from another world, I thought there wasn’t much he could do about it, so I quietly kept my mouth shut and accepted it.

But as a modern person who had never committed even a single crime, hearing that was still enough to make me dizzy.

So I don’t know what he did while crossing national borders afterward, and I don’t particularly want to know either, so I never asked for details.

At least, after he found me and settled down beside me, I don’t think he has committed any serious crimes.

He is the kind of person who feels a little suspicious, but doesn’t actually behave antisocially.

I can handle that suspicious feeling myself.

So, anyway, modern law isn’t actually causing him any problems right now.

Then what is the problem?

I mentioned it briefly earlier.

Have you figured it out?

Unfortunately, my boyfriend is human garbage.

He used to be a butler who stayed by the side of the suspicious count whose body I possessed.

But before that, he was an assassin.

And before that, he was a notorious criminal and a public enemy of humanity who had been wanted across the entire continent.

Is that the kind of personality that can fit into modern society?

I almost marked him with a giant X.

But thanks to the power of love, I barely managed to add one line underneath and turn it into a triangle.

Give me an award for effort.

I’m trying my best to rewrite him, so he’ll gradually get better.

However, even rose-colored glasses have their limits.

I do like him.

I really do.

But even if my mouth were crooked, I couldn’t say that Railey Kraha had a good personality.

Concepts like common sense, morality, and ethics were completely nonexistent in him.

Common sense?

Would an otherworlder even have such a thing?

Sometimes, whenever he opens his mouth, he says things that make me instinctively look around for the nearest police officer.

Even more often, he makes comments that sound like something a person from a premodern society would say.

And on top of that, he has a tendency to control people over every little thing, along with an even greater level of obsession.

In other words, the kind of otherworlder who should only exist in another world has now become my (fake) modern boyfriend in the twenty-first century.

The happy ending as an otherworld story was great.

But as for whether life in modern society after that happy ending is actually happy…

I have a lot of thoughts about that.

As a result, I spent the past six months fighting with him without a single peaceful day.

And the day before yesterday, we had a huge fight because he tried to crash our department’s university retreat.

No, well…

If he simply wanted to see his girlfriend’s university retreat, I could understand that.

Everything was new to Railey, after all.

I could have been generous and let it slide.

But the reason he wanted to crash the retreat was the problem.

“Why are you drinking shoulder to shoulder with another man?”

Then, what the fuck was I supposed to do? Drink shoulder to shoulder diagonally?

We had a huge fight.

I didn’t even tell him where the retreat was, hung up the phone, and yesterday morning, while riding home in the car, I completely blocked Railey Kraha’s number.

For a moment, I felt as refreshed as if I’d finally gotten rid of years of constipation.

But then I remembered something.

I had overlooked the warped ethics of an otherworlder…

And the terrifyingly wrong kind of competence that came along with his terrible personality.

An hour ago, I received a call from the number of an electronics service center.

After that, I received a call from the hospital where I had gotten a health checkup.

And now, I was getting a call from my professor’s number.

What the hell is this bastard doing?

Three times in a row, I had been tricked into answering numbers that I thought I had no choice but to pick up.

To be honest, I could guess that this wasn’t really my professor calling.

But could I just ignore it?

I had no choice.

I pressed the call button.

And then a sweet, low voice gently flowed through the phone.

—Ah-jin.

Hang up.

But just as I thought that, a cold voice continued from the other end.

—You’d better think carefully. If you hang up now, you’ll be starting tomorrow with a bouquet of flowers waiting for you at the department office.

“This guy is fucking insane!”

—If you want, I can send a box containing a wedding dress along with it.

Fuck!

A possessive, controlling man who cuts off every relationship you have with anyone except himself and gets jealous over everything should only exist in novels!

And yet I was the one who had brought this bastard out of a novel!

I finally lost my temper and shouted into the phone.

“Why the hell are you suddenly talking about a wedding dress?! Do you think I’m going to marry you?!”

—I don’t particularly want something like marriage either, but wouldn’t that make things more troublesome for you, Ah-jin?

Railey Kraha answered gently from the other end.

—I am even considering baking a five-tier cake and sending it along if necessary. So why don’t you try hanging up?

My finger had almost reached the end-call button.

I curled it back and spat out angrily,

“Hey, Kim Railey Kraha, do you want to die?”

—Your classes end at five today, don’t they? I’ll come pick you up.

“Pick me up, my ass! Go away! Just go away!”

“Unni, are you on the phone?”

“Ah! Uh, y-yeah.”

Of all times, class had apparently ended right when I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The younger students came pouring out of the classroom and stared at me with awkward expressions.

I gave them an embarrassed smile and slowly stepped backward.

A couple of girls noticed me and carefully exchanged glances with each other before approaching me in a friendly manner.

Perhaps they were concerned about a senior five years above them who always attended school alone.

“Unni, are you going to lunch?”

“No, I have class starting now…”

“Oh, I see. Have a good class!”

“Yeah. Enjoy your lunch, you guys.”

I still had some shame.

There was no way I could sit down and eat with students five years below me.

So I politely waved at my juniors.

And then, from the phone, the source of all my anger and the axis of evil clicked his tongue.

—Shouting at the top of your lungs in a hallway full of other students… I suppose I failed to educate you properly.

“What gives you the right to educate me?”

—Since you continue to engage in such regrettable behavior, shouldn’t it be my duty as your butler to teach Master proper manners and refined speech once again?

Railey Kraha added in his unnecessarily handsome voice, as though he were whispering sweet words into my ear.

—I baked a cake for the first time in a while. I’ll bring it with me.

“No need—”

—I’m sure you haven’t cleaned since the last time I tidied your home. Tonight, we’ll clean your room first, then go somewhere with a nice view and have dinner.

“I-I need—”

—How about French cuisine for dinner? I’ll buy groceries on the way. If there’s anything you want to eat, unblock me and send me a text.

After hearing that much, I shut my mouth.

That’s right.

Unfortunately, this bastard had once been a personal special butler.

The master he served had been the greatest inventor and alchemist on the continent, a great mage.

Because it was difficult for that master to trust other people, Railey Kraha had been the only person allowed to remain by his side.

Naturally, Railey handled everything in the mansion.

Accounting.

Housework.

Combat.

Social affairs.

Medicine.

Every single field.

And, damn it, he was absurdly competent at all of them.

While I remained silent, Railey asked again in an incredibly gentle tone.

It was an irritating tone that seemed to say, Go ahead. Tell me you don’t need me one more time.

—Do you not need me?

“I need you…”

In the end, I lowered my head and almost cried as I banged it against the wall.

“Damn it. Butlers are the best.”

And that’s how it happened.

To summarize everything in the trendy way I mentioned at the beginning:

My boyfriend is my own character, and his profession is former butler.

Sometimes I still call him my butler, but technically, he is no longer someone I can call a butler.

Unfortunately, his face is incredibly handsome, but his personality is completely inversely proportional to his appearance.

He speaks politely to me, but there is absolutely no respect behind it.

How did I end up dating someone like this?

Eventually, as soon as my class ended at five, I was picked up by Railey Kraha.

I ended up sitting on the sofa in his house, eating cake.

And suddenly, I found myself questioning my entire life.

In the first place, I had simply spent so much time with a friendly man who happened to be nearby that we naturally started flirting.

And I had fallen for Railey Kraha because he possessed the relaxed and peaceful attitude that a modern person would normally have.

In short…

The reason for our love was gone.

And that was when the truly insane story began.

Maybe it was because of some damn fictional rule that said people who couldn’t easily become certain of their feelings needed to suffer through hardships before they could become certain of their love for each other.

Either way, I could hear the faint, creaking sound of fiction colliding with reality.

A sound that seemed to say that no matter what world I was in, the story would never let its author go.

After the happy ending in which a man from another world crossed worlds to follow the woman he loved.

I was once again faced with an unrealistic, extraordinary summer at twenty-seven.

A summer in which I had to worry about the kind of existential questions about the nature of worlds that an ordinary modern person never needed to think about, while also dealing with a love that could put my life at risk.

All while trying to figure out a happy ever after between two worlds that simply refused to fit together.