TOML CH 01

It had already been more than two weeks since the day Theo’s lie to me had been discovered, and I hadn’t seen him since.

It’s not like we actually had a fight, but… I guess I needed to prepare myself before facing him in person.

I kept postponing all our date plans, making excuses about being busy. The only contact we had was a brief greeting through a video orb that lasted barely a minute or two each day.

After about a week, even that became something we occasionally skipped.

The days really had been unbearably busy.

While I focused on work, driven by the responsibility of not leaving the employees of the Felice Trading Company unemployed, the matter with Theo remained like a dark stain in the back of my mind, constantly tormenting me.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

The longer I ran away, the harder it would become to go back.

Even while I was buried under work, time steadily passed. Before I knew it, the lukewarm breeze of early summer seemed to be urging my heart to make a decision.

After returning from a short business trip, I headed toward the small bedroom attached to my office, my exhausted body dragging itself along.

I had to visit another supplier tomorrow morning.

Then I should make some time in the afternoon, even if it’s only for a little while, and see Theo.

I trudged up the stairs, already thinking about how I could squeeze even a little free time out of my packed schedule.

But then I saw someone standing near my room.

Who could it be at this hour? There shouldn’t be any major problems with the work currently underway.

Thinking it might be an employee waiting for me because of some urgent business, I approached.

It was Theo.

His visit was completely unexpected.

There had been a few times when Theo had accompanied me this far after our dates, but this was the first time he had actually entered the trading company.

“Why are you here?”

The words came out harsher than I intended.

I was about to apologize for snapping at him when our eyes met.

At that very moment, tears began to spill from Theo’s sea-blue eyes.

They fell one after another, soaking into the wooden floor.

“Because you keep avoiding me.”

Theo answered in a low voice, clearly struggling to hold back his tears. Then he roughly wiped his cheeks, which were already soaked with tears.

And then he began begging me.

“I was wrong about everything. I’m sorry I lied to you. I was scared.”

“Why are you crying?”

I must really be out of my mind today.

Sharp words that I didn’t even mean kept slipping out of my mouth.

The tears that had barely begun to subside flowed even harder.

“I won’t cry anymore. I’ll tell you everything. Please don’t abandon me, Rebecca.”

But the tears still showed no sign of stopping.

“Liar.”

I meant that one.

I felt like I was going to traumatize the poor kid if this continued, so I took Theo into my room first.

Relying on the dim lights in the hallway, I guided Theo to my bed and sat him down before turning on the light.

Under the bright light, I finally got a proper look at his condition.

He looked even worse than I had expected.

“Phew…”

Theo heard my sigh and bit down on his lip.

“Don’t bite your lips.”

I sat beside Theo on the bed and gently tapped his lips.

After barely managing to rescue his lower lip from his teeth, I noticed that there were more than a few things bothering me.

His eyes were bright red from how much he had cried in such a short time.

His lips had already become wounded, and despite everything, he had even come wearing a ring. The cheek he had rubbed so roughly earlier was now scratched.

This is upsetting.

I decided to admit it honestly.

All that talk about needing to prepare myself before facing Theo?

It was complete bullshit.

I was already prepared to love Theo no matter what kind of person he turned out to be.

It was my pride that had been hurt because it seemed like he wasn’t.

I had simply needed time until I could hide my wounded pride.

But seeing how upset I was now, perhaps Theo had been more important to me than my pride after all.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t eloquent enough to describe all these complicated feelings in some convincing way.

In the end, there was only one thing I could say in this situation.

“I love you.”

The end of the year was the busiest time for any trading company.

Once the outside air began to turn chilly, we had to organize the financial reports sent in from every branch of the trading company and formulate our business strategies for the following year.

On top of that, the Felice Trading Company had recently been attempting an aggressive expansion of its business.

This year in particular, we had been so busy focusing on the tea business we had ambitiously started the previous year that even having ten bodies wouldn’t have been enough.

Strike while the iron is hot.

These days, I even stayed and slept in the room attached to the trading company’s office because I felt it was a waste of time to go home.

I barely ate anything beyond sandwiches and could only spare a few moments to use the bathroom.

Rebecca’s personal life had come to a complete standstill while I devoted myself entirely to the trading company.

Naturally, it had been almost two weeks since I’d seen my cute, pretty, sexy little kitty, either.

It was the longest we had gone without seeing each other since we started dating.

“I miss Theo.”

I rested my head on my arms on the desk, absentmindedly running my fingers over his name on the calendar as I indulged in my longing.

On the schedule placed deliberately in the most visible spot, I could see today’s date marked in bold.

[Date with Theo]

Do not forget this.

I had circled it several times with a red pen and even added three or four stars around it.

Normally, just looking at it would have been enough to reignite my motivation, but today, it was somewhat less effective.

The motivation-restoring effect was only about ninety percent of normal.

I guess it’s been too long since I last saw Theo in person.

It was like carefully sticking to a diet, only to ruin it because of a single bite of chocolate.

The moment Theo’s name caught my eye, the face of my lover—whom I had been dating for just over six months—began floating vividly before me.

Theo had always smiled and said that he wouldn’t disturb me while I was busy and that video calls were enough.

But after ten days without seeing my face even once, he couldn’t hide his gloomy expression anymore.

It had become painfully obvious how disappointed he was whenever I tried to end our video calls.

But I was already cutting my sleep from four hours to three just to find enough time to see his face, so pretending not to notice and ending the video call still made my heart ache.

“Maybe I should make you tiny enough to carry around in my pocket.”

Then I could take you out and look at you whenever I missed you.

Exhausted from work and overwhelmed by caffeine-induced hallucinations, I sometimes imagined a tiny Theo toddling around.

He’d be fucking adorable. I want to put a flower crown and little wings on him.

It was the kind of cuteness that made the heart of a lifelong fangirl swell with joy.

I closed my eyes and seriously began imagining Mini Theo.

In my imagination, Mini Theo smiled mischievously, his eyes curving into crescents as he toddled across my desk.

Perhaps he wanted me to stop working and play with him, because he snatched away the quill—nearly as big as his own body—and hugged it to himself.

Then he blinked, fluttering his long eyelashes as he waited.

It was the expression Theo often used whenever he wanted to beg me for something.

Like the hopeless fool in love that I was, I groaned helplessly at the imagined Theo’s cuteness.

The real one must be even cuter.

At this point, shouldn’t lovesickness qualify as a workplace injury?

Ah, right.

I’m the boss.

I couldn’t concentrate on my work.

I just wanted to run out right then, hug Theo, and roll around with him on the bed.

But being an adult meant doing things you didn’t want to do.

For the sake of tomorrow’s—or rather, since midnight had already passed, today’s—date, I forced my sluggish body upright and picked up my quill again.

You can do this, Rebecca. Finish everything, then go on your date.

It was the first free time I’d had in two weeks.

It was also time I had only managed to secure thanks to the increased paperwork-processing buff created by the power of love.

If I wanted to spend even one extra minute with my adorable lover, I needed to finish as much work as possible now.

Thinking about our afternoon date, I got back to work.

I brewed myself a strong cup of tea to replenish my caffeine supply.

As usual, before picking up my pen, I took a long sip of the strongly brewed tea.

“This isn’t it.”

Something was missing.

“I want an iced Americano with an extra shot, not black tea.”

I looked around in surprise at the Korean words that had slipped out of my mouth after so long.

Thank goodness I’m alone.

Only after confirming that no one was around did I manage to calm my startled heart.

That’s right.

Quite simply, I was a transmigrator.

I didn’t know how I had ended up possessing this body either.

I hadn’t been hit by a reincarnation truck, nor had I ever encountered some otherworldly person who suddenly appeared before me saying, “At last, I’ve found you!”

I had simply worked overtime as usual and returned to my apartment.

That day, too, I had postponed all the laundry and dishes that had piled up until the weekend, took a quick shower, and collapsed onto my bed.

Then I read a novel on my phone for a while before falling asleep.

Before drifting off, I had muttered my usual complaint.

“I don’t want to go to work. I’d do anything if it meant I didn’t have to go to work.”

“Then quit.”

“No, not that.”

I even had that little one-person skit with myself.

But wasn’t that how all office workers lived?

I opened my eyes in the morning, intending to go to work, only to find myself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.

I couldn’t even begin to describe how shocked I had been when that became reality.

“I can still remember every little detail of the ceiling pattern I saw the moment I opened my eyes that day.”

Fortunately, perhaps thanks to the transmigrator buff, the information belonging to the original owner of this body, Rebecca Felice, flashed through my mind like a panorama, accompanied by a slight headache.

The person I had transmigrated into was Viscountess Rebecca Felice.

A character from a 19+ romance fantasy novel titled Your Majesty, Marry Me Instead of My Sister.

Before marriage, her name had been Rebecca Vanessa. She was the fourth child and youngest daughter of the Vanessa Baron family, born to the baron’s second wife.

Rebecca’s father, Baron Vanessa, who was old enough to be her grandfather, died of heart disease when Rebecca was three years old.

Her mother had hated the life of a maid, where her hands never had a chance to stay dry from morning until night. So she had chosen to marry Baron Vanessa, a man older than her own father.

But shortly afterward, she remarried and left young Rebecca alone in the Vanessa estate.

Fortunately, her eldest brother, who inherited the title, was a fairly responsible person.

Though it was hardly a loving family relationship when he remarried a commoner maid younger than his daughter just three months after the baroness died, and Rebecca was born only five months after that remarriage.

Still, since they were blood relatives, he took Rebecca in and allowed her to remain in a corner of the estate until she became an adult.

And so Rebecca Vanessa grew up eating meals laced with the fear of offending others instead of baby food, eventually becoming an adult.

Her childhood was so miserable that at first I thought I had somehow ended up in a completely different novel. Something like a doting heroine story where the female lead enters into a contract marriage with the heir to the cursed Grand Duchy of the North.

But then…

Rebecca’s life wasn’t actually a romance fantasy at all.