RTWE CH 01

If I can have that person by getting down on my knees, then I can kneel a hundred times, a thousand times. Pride? I can throw that worthless thing away without hesitation. So give him to me. Otherwise…”

Lumiere continued, pressing a sharp fruit knife against her own neck.

“I’ll die.”

·

·

“Wow… I wrote this myself, but this is truly something else.”

Kang Yerin muttered as she stared at her monitor.

Who was this woman waving a fruit knife around and threatening to die?

She was none other than the protagonist of her own novel.

Lumiere von Wizer.

The daughter of a dancer from a distant foreign land, and a princess in name only, with neither the Emperor’s favor nor the support of her maternal family.

For a heroine, the best thing she could come up with against her romantic rival was a threat to make her break up with the man she loved.

In her own way, it was a desperate struggle to take away the man she loved and avoid a political marriage to a barbarian.

But…

The problem was that none of it would work.

“Sob… I understand. I’ll break up with him, so please… stop…”

The romantic rival who had tearfully promised to break up with him would send her a letter not long afterward announcing her engagement.

[I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’m engaged to him. I tried to break up with him, but he wouldn’t let me go.]

The heroine, devastated by this letter, chose suicide as her ending.

Even that attempt would fail, and only after she was sold off into a political marriage with a barbarian would she finally ‘successfully’ die.

But she had been unable to write even a single word for several months after the exact scene where the heroine received that letter.

Is it because both the protagonist and the ending are hopeless?

If she didn’t like the ending, she could simply change it. Yet no matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t imagine a different conclusion.

As though there were no path except the one leading to tragedy.

At this rate, will I ever be able to finish it?

Even though she had started writing the novel as a hobby, she still wanted to give it a proper ending.

“Well, whatever. I’ll be able to write it someday.”

She rubbed her dry, tired eyes and shut down the computer.

It was already eleven at night.

She had to get up early and go to work in the morning, so it was about time she went to sleep.

She tidied up her desk and lay down in bed.

But…

What is this?

When she woke up, she was staring at a ceiling she had never seen before in her life.

The only thing that was the same as before she went to sleep was the fact that she was still lying in a bed.

“Ugh…”

She slowly sat up, but a stiff pain spread throughout her body, accompanied by nausea that made her stomach churn.

Where am I?

Yerin looked around in confusion.

Wallpaper with patches of mold here and there.

A medieval European-style bedroom containing nothing but a bed and a bedside table.

As she sat frozen, dazed by the unfamiliar surroundings, she suddenly felt someone watching her and turned her head.

Blue hair and blue eyes.

A man she had never seen before was letting out a hollow laugh as though he found the whole situation ridiculous.

“It would have been pitiful if you had actually died, but unfortunately, you’re still alive.”

“Ah…”

She had opened her eyes in an unfamiliar place, and somehow she could naturally understand a language she had never heard before?

It’s a dream.

But… wasn’t it far too vivid for a dream?

The throbbing pain.

The nausea.

Even the damp, musty smell of the blanket somehow felt real.

“Did Your Highness really think that if you took that pathetic life of yours, I would cancel my engagement?”

Your Highness?

Take my life…?

The man clicked his tongue and tossed an envelope decorated with gold lettering toward her.

[We wish to pledge our unchanging feelings to one another and therefore request that you honor us by becoming a witness to our sacred vows.

Logan del Trovitan · Clora Edbard.]

“This…”

It was an invitation to an engagement ceremony.

Logan del Trovitan.

Clora Edbard.

It was the engagement invitation of the very man the heroine of her novel had secretly loved and her romantic rival.

Could this be the exact moment when the heroine, devastated by the news of their engagement, attempted suicide?

“You’ll be getting married soon enough yourself, so don’t waste your strength on pointless things. Just stay quiet and leave when the time comes.”

Yerin stared blankly into the man’s contemptuous eyes as she ran her fingers over the invitation.

But something was strange.

That can’t be…

Why did she feel as though she had experienced this situation herself before?

The man soon clicked his tongue again and turned away.

…Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her heart began pounding ominously.

The man was leaving coldly now that his business was finished.

Yerin had seen that retreating figure somewhere before.

She knew it made no sense, but she was certain she had seen that back before.

When have I seen this scene before…?

Just as an uneasy feeling began creeping over her, making her think that this might not be an ordinary dream after all…

Her gaze instinctively shifted toward the mirror hanging on the wall.

White hair flowing all the way down to her waist.

Violet eyes.

A painfully thin body that looked as though it might break if touched, and deeply sunken eye sockets.

The moment her eyes met her reflection in the mirror—

A splitting pain tore through her mind, and unfamiliar memories began flooding into her consciousness.

“Wipe your tears. People are watching.”

The man who had handed her a handkerchief on the day her half-brother, who had just ascended the imperial throne, dragged her into a banquet hall.

She had been standing there crying like a mere decoration against the wall.

“…Why are you giving this to me?”

“Her Highness is crying. How could a subject turn away and ignore her?”

The first kindness she had ever received from a man.

The excitement and warmth she had felt at that moment.

“Please, don’t…”

“……”

“Duke, please… accept me. You know it too, don’t you? That you’re the only one I have.”

Three years of clinging to him.

The memory of holding a knife to her own neck in front of the woman he loved.

And finally, the last moment of her life, when she was sold to a distant land and died in despair.

The memories flooded through her like a raging river.

After a long period of agony, they gradually began to subside.

“……”

And finally, she realized who she had been.

Lumiere von Wizer.

A foolish and pitiful princess who had been looked down upon by the Imperial Family throughout her entire life, only to ultimately end her own life.

She was her past life.