IBFLS 02

The rain began to let up.

The faint sound of raindrops drifted past my ears, carried on the rustling breeze.

But now, my body was trembling for an entirely different reason—not because of the chill brought on by the rainwater soaking through my clothes.

‘Wait, can I even call this my body anymore?’

I looked down at my two small hands, which were trembling uncontrollably.

‘This makes no sense.’

Why?

Why on earth?

I had definitely fallen asleep in my own room at the ducal residence last night.

‘And another thing… what happened yesterday?’

I had spent the entire day at the ducal residence.

I still hadn’t finished checking all the gifts I had received at my birthday party a month ago.

So yesterday morning, I had spent the entire time sorting through them.

In the afternoon, Baron had stopped by the ducal residence for tea. As usual, most of our conversation had consisted of frivolous jokes.

After dinner, I had taken a walk through the garden with Father and my older brother. Nothing unusual had happened then, either.

Apart from going to bed later than usual, it had been an ordinary day.

‘Then why am I Roselina Mush right now?’

I slowly turned my head and looked at the version of myself lying inside the coffin.

Even if I had transmigrated into another body, five years had passed.

The body I had lived in for five years was now a cold corpse lying inside a coffin.

Just looking at it was enough to make the blood in my entire body turn cold.

‘And why… did I die?’

I couldn’t understand it.

I couldn’t understand anything about the situation I was in right now.

I was even more bewildered than I had been on the day I transmigrated into Bianca Barddensia, the villainous young duchess from the game I used to love playing.

For the past five years, I had struggled desperately to escape the villainess’s predetermined fate.

Perhaps it was because I had transmigrated before the young duchess began acting truly wickedly. Whatever the reason, driven by nothing but my determination to survive, I had ultimately succeeded in turning her reputation around.

‘But now I’ve gone and died.’

Without even realizing it, all five years of my backbreaking efforts had become completely pointless.

All that suffering I had endured to escape the villainess’s story—a story that inevitably led to an execution ending the moment someone came to hate her—had simply vanished into thin air.

There had been an unexpected variable, yes, but I had managed to get rid of that safely just last week…

Wait. Surely not.

‘Did that person arrange all of this?’

But how?

Did they put my soul inside Roselina’s body? Could they even do something like that? Had such a method existed in the first place?

‘Then what happened to that person? And why did the young duchess die?’

My gaze wandered aimlessly amid the endless confusion.

Even as I kept glancing back and forth between the body in the coffin and my trembling hands, the priest continued speaking to me.

But his words of consolation, which sounded more like meaningless noise, failed to reach even the slightest corner of my consciousness.

“Hey!”

The heavy shout that rang out a moment later made me jerk my head up.

“You damn…!”

The owner of that voice was Leonardo Barddensia, the young duke of the Barddensia family.

When our eyes met and he saw me standing there in a daze, he strode toward me with aggressive steps.

The mud, saturated with rainwater, splashed noisily beneath his feet.

His eyes blazed as though he wanted to swallow me whole and burn me to ashes.

‘Brother.’

He quickly approached me and spoke through clenched teeth, his words coming out in a mangled growl.

“What the hell are you, you little wretch?”

“Lord Leonardo…”

At his threatening tone, the priest tried to intervene from the side.

Or rather, he attempted to.

Leonardo paid him no attention. With his chin raised, he moved even closer to me.

The emotion filling his eyes as he glared down at me was pure hatred.

“Do you have any idea what kind of occasion this is?”

“…”

“I tolerated you acting above your station and daring to challenge your betters all this time because of Bibi. But now you actually dare to—Ha!”

Leonardo stopped speaking.

He drew in a deep breath, as though he were struggling to get enough air.

‘This is the first time.’

In the five years I had known him, I had never seen Leonardo this angry.

Even before I had managed to improve our relationship, when he considered me an embarrassing younger sister he could hardly bear to show in public, he had never been this furious.

He had been grinding his lips between his teeth in anger, but suddenly, he burst into laughter.

“Come to think of it, I have no reason to tolerate you anymore. I don’t know which bastard let you in here, but I’ll have him dragged out right now, and then I’ll deal with both of you—”

“Calm down.”

It happened then.

The rain had stopped completely, and a voice rang out just as an icy, razor-sharp wind swept past us.

The steady footsteps of its owner approached the two of us.

Even so, Leonardo continued glaring at me and venting his fury.

“Your Highness! This is a matter concerning my family as well!”

“How could I not understand how you feel, Young Duke?”

“Bibi is gone now anyway, so why don’t we just—!”

Leonardo flailed his arms as though he were about to throw a punch.

But at that very moment, tears began welling up in his bloodshot eyes.

He staggered, and his face suddenly twisted into a terrible expression.

Then his legs gave way, and he collapsed onto the damp, muddy ground with a wet splat.

“Bibi… Our Bibi… I’ll never be able to see her again. Never again…”

Baron Karzen, who had approached and stopped beside him, turned his gaze toward me.

His hair, usually kept impeccably neat, was now a complete mess from the rain. In fact, he looked as though he might not have bothered to style it at all.

Still wearing his wet gloves, he slowly ran a hand through his rain-soaked hair.

“I hope you can understand why the Young Duke is so distraught, my lady.”

His gaze was as steady and unwavering as ever.

Yet there was something chilling about it. Even a fleeting glance from those eyes made it difficult to breathe.

“I shall apologize on the Young Duke’s behalf.”

Baron spoke in a voice utterly devoid of the warmth he had shown me only yesterday.

And I couldn’t say a single word.

It wasn’t because I didn’t understand why Leonardo was angry with Roselina, nor was it because Baron’s apology had soothed my feelings.

‘For crying out loud, what on earth is going on?’

I still couldn’t understand the situation I was in.

A single chrysanthemum lay at Leonardo’s feet as he sat on the ground, wailing in grief. It had been trampled and buried in the mud, leaving it utterly ruined.

At that moment, even that crushed flower seemed to be in a better situation than I was.

I had been so stunned that I had even forgotten how to swallow.

Just then, Baron’s voice came from above me once more.

“Thank you for coming to the funeral of a friend who was as dear to me as my own life, my lady.”

His voice was even colder than before.

As he spoke, he took another step toward me.

“Bianca must be happy, too. She cared for you very much.”

Before I knew it, Baron had come right up to me and gently placed a hand on my shoulder.

“You should go home now, my lady. You’ve been caught in the rain for so long. Have you caught a cold? You’re trembling so pitifully.”

Go home? Where?

In an instant, an indescribable sense of dread struck the back of my throat.

It felt as though something were pressing down hard on my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

‘Even if I tell them I’m Bianca now, no one will believe me.’

Of course they wouldn’t.

But perhaps because I still hadn’t properly grasped the situation, my mind, overwhelmed by anxiety, began searching for another possibility.

‘If it’s Baron…’

If it were Baron, things might be different.

Our relationship had begun with me simply thinking of him as my lifeline. But eventually, we had grown closer than I had ever expected.

‘If I bring up something only the two of us know, maybe…’

Perhaps he could help me find a way out of this situation.

“Ugh!”

That was what I thought—until a heavy pressure suddenly bore down on my shoulder.

Baron’s face was utterly devoid of emotion.

“You look exhausted enough to need someone to support you, my lady.”

With that same expression, he slowly pressed his palm down on my shoulder, applying deliberate, unrelenting pressure.

‘Why are you doing this?’

He tilted his head slightly and slowly examined my face with his cold, red eyes.

Then he whispered so quietly that no one else could hear him.

“Leave this place. I’ll come find you once things have settled down.”

The force of his grip grew stronger and stronger.

It wasn’t merely physical pressure. It was a warning.

“After all, it wouldn’t do for me to tear you apart and kill you right here.”

And somehow, his words sounded like a declaration that my new body wasn’t the only thing that had gone terribly wrong.