ICSF 08

CHAPTER 08

“Gasp!”

When had I fainted?

I opened my eyes in bed. The last thing I remembered was several prophecy panels suddenly popping up in front of me.

“What happened? …Huh?”

I ran a hand through my bangs, damp with sweat as if I had just had a nightmare, and looked around, sensing something strange.

It was a familiar yet unfamiliar feeling.

“…What is this?”

I couldn’t understand it. This was definitely my room.

Last year, I had redecorated the walls with a trendy new color and rearranged the furniture at the same time.

But what I was looking at was my room exactly as it had been before the redecoration.

“Which lunatic put my room back the way it was?”

And had my family simply stood by and let them do it?

It was far too much effort for a mere prank.

Still bewildered, I got out of bed and noticed something else strange.

My field of vision was lower than usual.

Come to think of it, my whole body seemed shorter and softer. Not that I was overweight—it was more like I still had some of my baby fat…

I hurried over to the mirror standing in the corner of the room.

The moment I saw my reflection, my mouth fell open.

I had been an adult for years.

So why had I suddenly been transformed into my teenage self?

“Ena! Enaaa!”

I urgently called for my maid, Ena.

Footsteps sounded outside, and soon Ena came rushing in.

“Miss? What’s wrong—”

“What year is it?”

Huh?

She gave me a questioning look, as if wondering why I had called her so urgently just to ask the year.

But I had no time to laugh it off.

“Quickly!”

“Well, um… It’s the year 218, Miss.”

Ena’s gaze was filled with concern.

I had been acting strangely, and she seemed worried that something was wrong with me.

But my last memory had definitely been from the summer of 227.

I had somehow traveled almost ten years back in time.

It was a situation that no sane person could possibly understand, and my head spun with dizziness. I could barely remain standing.

“Ah…”

“Miss!”

Ena practically caught me as I collapsed and helped me back onto the bed.

When she asked worriedly whether I was feeling ill, I made an excuse that I wanted to rest and sent her away.

I closed my eyes and lay quietly in bed, but my mind was spinning furiously.

She said it was the ending.

I remembered the gods’ final words.

After secretly watching their conversations for so long, I had gradually realized that the gods seemed to view this world as something like a play or a work of literature.

The female lead and male lead probably weren’t names…

They were probably shortened ways of saying “female protagonist” and “male protagonist.”

Judging by the kind of stories the gods seemed to be reading, they were probably romance novels or something similar.

An ending meant the end.

And the phrase “the end of the world” had an ominous ring to it from the very beginning.

If there was an end to the world, what else could it mean but destruction?

“Haah… What on earth is going on?”

Not only had I experienced the sudden destruction of the world after secretly watching the gods discuss the future, but now I had even regressed to my childhood.

Wouldn’t it be easier to simply believe that everything I had experienced was just a nightmare rather than accept this as reality?

Just as I was trying to make peace with reality—

Something familiar appeared before my eyes.

[Golden Family’s Golden-Surname Siblings Obsessed Fan]

I’m part of the advance party. I binge-read all 130 episodes that have been released in one day.

The male lead is completely obsessed, and the female lead is absolutely tragic.

No-regrets obsessive confinement trash-can yum-yum (⋆ˆ ³ ˆ)♥

You won’t regret taking off. Oh, but there’s something kind of unusual about it…

The conversation window I had seen long ago—the gods’ conversation window—had appeared again.

Even the number 78 at the bottom was exactly the same.

I wanted to dismiss it since I already knew what it contained, but just like before, the window wouldn’t disappear until I had checked all of its contents.

So, in the end, I had no choice but to touch the number as I had done before.

└ [Golden Family’s Golden-Surname Siblings Obsessed Fan]

(Spoiler warning) There’s a really interesting character.

Honestly, they have absolutely nothing to do with the female or male lead’s storyline, but somehow they keep delivering one satisfying moment after another, you know?

Sometimes the female lead is so kind that it’s frustrating—so kind that you wonder if she even has a brain.

But whenever I watch this character, I feel a little better.

That said, like I mentioned, they don’t actually meet either the female lead or the male lead…

I think they might eventually become a supporting character who helps the female lead.

A crazy dog that bites every single bad guy in sight.

Total girl-crush material.

Whew.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if this character were the protagonist, but then the genre would change completely, so that’s a shame, lol.

└ [Please Watch Evil White Swan ㅠㅠ]

Whoa, Obsessed Fan, I see you here too.

How many serialized novels are you following at this point?

But the contents were different from what I remembered.

The god called Golden Family had definitely called me a “goguma villain,” hadn’t they?

Could they possibly have been referring to someone other than me?

Then I saw the name “Lovely” appear in the following conversation.

That was when I realized they were talking about me.

The contents have changed? Why?

And why were they pretending this was their first time seeing this when they had already watched the horrible ending all the way to the end alongside me?

I couldn’t understand it.

Even though I couldn’t understand what was happening, once I realized that everything I had experienced hadn’t simply been a nightmare, I decided to start by getting rid of the useless trash in my life.

“Oppa.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“I want you to go somewhere with me. I think it would be good if some of your friends came too… I mean, your fellow knights.”

I gave a bright smile to the second fool of our family—the person I could always count on whenever I needed something like this done.

Perhaps he thought I was asking him to go somewhere just the two of us, because he smiled happily at first.

But when I told him to bring his friends, his expression fell.

“They’re coming too? Why? Can’t I just go with you?”

“Yes. It’s the kind of place where it’s better to have as many people as possible. Would that be difficult?”

“Well, I can ask them, but… I don’t really want to. What if they see our adorable little sister and fall for her and start bothering you?”

Hngh.

The second fool was acting all cute despite his enormous build.

But when I asked him again, he eventually raised his hands in surrender.

“Fine… If our adorable little sister wants it, I have to do it. But where are you planning to go?”

“Hmm, the Imperial Capital.”

“The Imperial Capital? Are you going to see that Pedro bastard?”

“Hmm. Something like that.”

He seemed curious about why I wanted to bring the knights along to meet Pedro, but when I told him I was going to show them something fun, his face brightened with anticipation.

We set a date, and when the day came, I went up to the Imperial Capital.

My brother, who had finished work that day, was waiting for me with his colleagues.

“Lovey! You must be tired from coming all this way.”

“What do you mean, tired? I was just playing around in the territory and teleported here through the transfer gate.”

“But you must have suffered walking all this way on those tiny little feet!”

“Ugh. What a crazy bastard…”

One of his colleagues snickered and cursed him after hearing my brother’s ridiculous fawning.

It wasn’t an insult filled with malice.

It was the kind of profanity exchanged between close friends.

Just as I had requested, my brother had gathered as many people as possible.

There were nearly thirty of them, which made it seem as though he had brought practically the entire knight order he belonged to.

Some were faces I had never seen before, while others were familiar because I had seen them in the past.

“Hello, Lovey. So what are you planning to do today that you gathered so many people?”

“Just… show you something interesting.”

Everyone tilted their heads, apparently wondering whether I was going to take them to watch a play.

Some seemed reluctant, perhaps because they weren’t interested in theater, but when I told them they wouldn’t regret coming, they followed me despite their doubts.

Right.

What could possibly be more stimulating and entertaining than an affair?

I intended to turn these people into witnesses to Pedro’s infidelity.

We headed to the house of Yoanna, Pedro’s mistress, who had given birth to his illegitimate child.

According to the servant I had stationed at the townhouse, Pedro was supposedly staying at the knights’ quarters tonight.

No way.

Pedro was obsessed with luxury despite his station. Rather than sleep in shared quarters, he would crawl all the way back to the townhouse if he had to.

If he was using the knights as an excuse, there could only be one reason.

It had already been quite some time since he finished work.

Was he already in the middle of the deed?

I estimated the time for a moment, then turned toward my brother with a smile.

“Oppa.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Can you break down this door for me?”

“Huh?”

My sudden request left my brother thoroughly bewildered.

Understandably so—the building in front of us looked like an ordinary family home.

As a knight, he couldn’t exactly go around bullying ordinary civilians who weren’t criminals, so he looked troubled.

I gave him a sorrowful expression.

“Can’t you? I guess you can’t…”

“Ah, no… Lovey…”

“If you can’t, then I suppose it can’t be helped. I’ll just have to do it myself.”

“…What?”

I pulled out a small hand axe.

I had been carrying it in my arms all the way from the estate.

My brother looked flustered, while his friends stared at the two of us with fascinated expressions.

Whatever was going on, it already looked entertaining.

“I-I’ll do it. Just… You could hurt yourself if you swing something like that around.”

Worried that I might injure myself trying to handle an axe despite never having done anything like this before, my brother took the tool from my hands with a distressed expression.

He didn’t seem to intend to use the axe to break the door, though.

Instead, he lifted one leg and kicked the door as hard as he could with the sole of his foot.

Under the kick of a well-trained knight, the wooden door splintered apart as easily as a sheet of paper.

“Eek!”

“W-What the hell?!”

“…That voice?”

My brother had broken down the door with an expression full of guilt.

But the moment he heard the familiar voice coming from inside, his face froze.

The colleagues who had followed him also looked at one another, their eyes darting around in surprise.

He kicked away the remaining pieces of the door, completely smashing them apart.

The scene inside was now fully visible.

Startled by the sudden intrusion, the woman covered herself with a sheet, while the man hurriedly pulled up his trousers.