Chapter – 10
Inside the second envelope was a bundle of paper tied together with crude twine.
The cover was blank without a single word written on it. Though it wasn’t particularly thick, it felt oddly heavy in my hands.
‘Did they organize the senders of those letters?’
I slowly turned the blank cover of the paper bundle.
At the very top of the first page, a date was written. It was a date from about eleven months ago.
“No way, a diary…?”
However, the moment my eyes caught the scribbled handwriting beneath it, my heart sank.
I couldn’t even finish my sentence and caught my breath.
Second son is operating an illegal gambling house / Evidence secured
└ Got money out of the second son and his fiancée too, lol
Having an affair with the Grand Duchess. Secured both evidence and witnesses.
└ The Grand Duke’s head maid’s kid was sick, so I paid the medical bills and bought her off. Total win.
The Grand Duke’s youngest son is actually this bastard’s kid.. Gross;
Illegal slave trading / Evidence secured
└ Agreed to kick up 20% of future profits, thanks
My grip tightened so hard that the edges of the paper crumpled.
“This is…”
It was blackmail material.
Judging by the varying pen pressure on each line and the signs of content added bit by bit over time, this had clearly been going on for a long while.
Breathing heavily, I flipped through the pages.
One page, then another.
My fingertips trembled, and the muscles around my eyes grew stiff as if they were about to pop out.
“Are you crazy?! Is this person out of their mind?!”
On every page, the ugly secrets of the nobles were densely recorded.
Reading the records—complete with explicit evidence and progress updates—was enough to make me feel suffocated.
As I placed a hand over my rapidly heaving chest to calm my breathing, a thought crossed my mind.
‘Wait a second.’
This feels strangely familiar.
“Don’t tell me…”
I covered my mouth with a trembling hand.
The secrets written here were things I already knew.
To be precise, they were pieces of information I had passed along to that possessor.
“Hey, you said this was a romance simulation game. Are those guys capture targets, too?”
At my nagging, he finally gathered his legs and sat down, pointing at the young noblemen standing in the distance. His blunt, pointing gesture was surprisingly rude, yet at the time, I wasn’t even shocked.
I took her—no, his—hand, pulled it down, and whispered:
“They aren’t capture targets, but getting involved with them brings nothing good. The man standing on the right is Duke Stern’s second son, and he operates an illegal gambling house.” “Even now? Since when? Where?” “I don’t know the details, but it’s probably been a long time.” “Then what about the guy next to him?”
That villain with the lovely face had definitely asked me like that.
Back then, I paid no mind to the smile that bloomed on his lips.
I had only done it to help him adapt.
Considering his reckless behavior and the character setting of the Duke’s daughter, I couldn’t afford to make him an enemy. For my own safety, I had to help him adjust to this world.
‘And he was using all of it like this?’
I let out a hollow laugh as I looked down at the paper bundle.
Flipping further back, there were even facts written down that I hadn’t known about.
It seemed he had been incredibly serious about this scheme.
“He’s truly out of his mind…”
He wasn’t just a simple possessor.
Unlike me, who was content with twisting the narrative just enough to secure immediate peace, he was entirely different.
He reigned as a blackmailer, building his own version of the world in his own way.
And as for me—
I had become the female lead ruined by him.
During my bath, even when I buried my face in the bathwater, the servants didn’t scream or question me. They merely turned pale and trembled violently.
“I became a female lead ruined by someone else…”
Muttering the sentence that summarized my current situation, I threw myself onto the bed.
‘Did that lunatic blackmail Baron and my brother too?’
In the midst of the overwhelming situation, a scene I had briefly forgotten flashed through my mind:
The beautiful Duchy, the family who called me their treasure, and my sweet friend.
‘Come to think of it, I didn’t see Father at the funeral home. …No, should I call him the Duke now?’
Letting out a deep sigh, I slowly closed my eyes.
Right, what was the point of overthinking this by myself?
Having experienced the immediate aftermath of my possession—where I couldn’t get a grip and did nothing but deny reality to no avail—I knew it wouldn’t help at all.
‘Let’s sleep first and think after I wake up. A good idea might come to mind.’
Just as I curled my body up, comforting myself—
Rustle.
‘What was that?’
Thud.
It was a sound coming from the direction of the large glass doors leading to the balcony.
When I turned my head, the curtains attached to the window were swaying gently in the wind.
‘Was the window open?’
I clearly saw the servant who prepared my bed do a final check.
At that moment, a dark shadow moved behind the curtain, blending seamlessly into the darkness.
“…Huh?”
My heart sank.
As the curtain fluttered in the chilly night breeze, the shadow’s silhouette became distinct.
An intruder draped in a black cloak had silently entered the room through the window.
The moment I saw the glinting blade held in his hand, my mind went completely blank.
“Roselina Mersh?”
The intruder with the unfamiliar voice, oozing a sinister aura, did not hesitate.
It happened in an instant.
Whoosh—!
A sharp dagger sliced through the air with a flash.
There was no time for my brain to process it. My body moved first. Reflexively, I rolled sideways and fell off the bed.
Thanks to that, the dagger missed me and plunged into the pillow.
Along the path the dagger had carved, the torn pillow spewed out goose feathers.
‘I almost actually died!’
With trembling hands, I pushed against the cold marble floor and slid my hips back, retreating.
Then, my fingertips touched something hard and cold.
Whether it was due to the impact of my fall from the bed, the metal candlestick that had been resting on the nightstand was now rolling on the floor.
“I made a mess in the garden beforehand, so no one will be coming to help you.”
There was no time to hesitate.
With hands soaked in cold sweat, I grabbed the candlestick and pulled myself up.
“If you stay quiet, I’ll send you off in one blow.”
He took a step closer as if to narrow the distance.
Staring intently at him, I brandished the candlestick in my hand wildly.
“Stay back! What are you?!”
Despite that, he took step after step, coming closer to me.
There was no hesitation in his stride, as if he were mocking me.
“Do I really need to tell you that? You’re going to die by my hand right here today anyway.”
As I unwittingly took a step back—
Thump.
My back hit the cold wall. There was nowhere left to retreat.
‘Is this a joke? I’m going to die like this? I just possessed this body today!’
To be murdered by an unknown assailant before I could even organize my chaotic thoughts…
My grip on the metal candlestick tightened until my hands turned pale.
‘Even if I die, I’m taking a piece out of him first.’
Dying quietly and meekly didn’t suit my nature.
“Ho, quite interesting.”
Sneering at my stance, the intruder raised the dagger in his hand high.
“Goodbye.”
The blade of the dagger glinted under the moonlight, and the intruder smiled so wide his mouth seemed to tear.
Watching that slow-motion movement, I swung the metal candlestick.
However, reflexively squeezing my eyes shut was something I couldn’t help.
I was terrified.
‘What happens if I die this time?’
I recalled the moment before I possessed the Duke’s daughter, when I was hit by a car.
It didn’t hurt back then.
‘Will it hurt this time? Will it be painful?’
The five years of suffering I went through flashed before my eyes like a kaleidoscope.
‘Next time, I’d rather be reincarnated as a roadside stone!’
And then, total darkness before my eyes.
Yet—
It was quiet.
Neither the expected chill of the blade, nor the boiling heat of blood, nor even the sharp sound slicing through the air—none of it reached me.
“…?”
I cautiously opened my eyes.
The intruder was still standing in front of me. However, his arm holding the dagger was frozen in midair.
No, it was being held back.
It was a night where the moonlight poured into the room past the window.
And at the edge of that light stood a man—holding the intruder’s raised arm from behind.
“I’m asking because I don’t really know.”
Eyes sparkling like glass, as if a deep blue lake had been pressed tightly into them, were fixed on me.
“Is it an Imperial tradition for an unmarried young lady to spar with an assassin at night?”
