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Chapter 01
Though it was said to be a celebration of having escaped death, hadn’t I drunk too much?
The sunlight pouring in was blinding, and my head ached as if it would split open.
“Still, I don’t think I exceeded my limit.”
As I pressed my temples and sat up on the sofa, an unfamiliar scene came into view.
One wall was filled with a dressing table and mirror for grooming, with sofas and chairs arranged here and there.
‘Is this the lounge of that mansion from yesterday?’
As I wondered why I was here, a gentle voice reached me.
“Last night at the banquet, there was someone who slipped drugs into the alcohol.”
It was the man I had encountered in the corridor before my memory cut off.
“He confessed he was trying to commit vile acts against the unmarried young ladies.”
The moment I realized the owner of that voice was a beautiful blond man, my entire body stiffened.
Come to think of it, the outer garment I was currently covering myself with looked like the one that man had been wearing yesterday.
Damn. Just thinking that far made my mind go blank.
“Did you carry me here?”
I thought there was no way, but if not that, I couldn’t guess why the man was here.
“Just in case, about last night.”
The man tilted his head with a puzzled expression.
“You don’t remember?”
The man’s gaze as he looked at me was persistent.
But unfortunately, my memory was cut off as if someone had snipped it away.
‘In the original work, this man and I had absolutely no connection.’
Calmly, I retraced the information I knew about him.
‘Duke Louis Arban.’
He was a sub-male lead in the novel, a man of utterly ruthless character who treated everyone other than the female lead like insects.
‘The setting was that he was only lenient toward his first love, the female lead.’
Even ‘lenient’ was relative. It meant he wouldn’t kill you as long as you didn’t seriously get on his nerves, at best?
“You really don’t remember?”
A chilling aura flickered across Louis’s smiling face.
Afraid that he might harm me, I hurriedly answered.
“…To be honest, I don’t remember anything at all after encountering Your Grace in the corridor.”
“Is that so?”
He seemed to ponder something for a moment, then tilted his head.
“What about you saying you’d always been looking for someone like me?”
“…I said that?”
“Yes.”
Louis affirmed briefly and added with a smile.
“You also said I was your first love.”
That can’t be. Did I spout nonsense under the influence of the drug? Surely he won’t kill me for mocking him?
Just then, Louis let out a clear, refreshing laugh.
“That’s right. It was a lie.”
The smoothly curved corners of his mouth, as if mocking me, were irritating.
“I was the one who found you.”
“…”
“And I was the one who said I was your first love.”
Having drawn closer without my noticing, Louis straightened my disheveled outer garment and said,
“You are my first love.”
‘…What?’
I blinked, my mind in confusion.
What kind of nonsensical prank is this now?
“You’re taking the joke too far.”
Naturally, I thought he was teasing me just like before.
Otherwise, there’s no way he’d change his attitude so completely.
“Do I look like someone who has time for jokes?”
Then what was that just now? The words rose in my throat, but I kept my mouth shut.
Louis’s face was eerily expressionless.
“You visited the mansion a few times when we were young.”
That can’t be. I could count on one hand the times I left the Count’s estate during my childhood.
“Lian Arban—my brother—came to see you. After that, he’d occasionally talk about you.”
In other words, that wasn’t about me, but my sister.
My sister was the female lead of this novel, and she had visited the ducal mansion as a child.
‘He seems to have mistaken my sister for me.’
I had no idea how this misunderstanding came about, but I was about to correct him—that it was my sister, not me—when,
“You said you knew my brother well too, even that he hated roses.”
My words died in my throat.
…I said that?
“It was nice to talk about my brother after so long. After he died, everyone was so eager to avoid the subject.”
“…We talked about that much, I suppose.”
I answered, trying to keep my composure, but this was clearly my own blunder.
‘At this rate, there’s no way to fix it.’
If I said he seemed to have mistaken me for my sister, I’d have to explain how I knew the information I’d let slip last night.
‘I know it because I read the original novel, of course.’
But if I said that, I’d either be sent to a mental hospital or immediately killed by Louis for mocking him.
‘…Why did that bastard have to drug the alcohol of all things?’
I didn’t even know what we’d talked about yesterday, yet now I had to explain how I knew it.
At this point, there was only one way for me to survive.
‘Pretending to be his first love in place of my sister.’
It meant taking the risk of deceiving Louis, but I had no other choice.
“After my brother died in the accident, you stopped coming around, so I thought you were dead too.”
“…I suffered from aftereffects for a while after that accident. My memories still aren’t fully intact.”
In fact, my sister had lost her memory after being caught up in that very accident.
‘Originally, she was supposed to regain her lost memories by witnessing me being murdered.’
But since I’d twisted the original story and survived, my sister would never recover her memories.
“Ah.”
As I carelessly stepped down from the sofa, I grew dizzy and nearly stumbled.
Thanks to Louis catching me, I avoided an embarrassing fall, but I was forcibly seated back on the sofa.
“…You mentioned a drug earlier. Are there any side effects?”
Now I was starting to worry. Surely, having twisted the original story, I wouldn’t die from some strange drug?
“You might lose parts of your memory or experience confusion, but aside from that, I heard there aren’t other side effects as long as you take the antidote.”
That didn’t sound like no side effects to me, and sure enough, Louis smiled gently.
“Though you never know.”
He handed me water and a pill from the table.
“Is this the antidote?”
“He confessed he’d prepared it in case things got out of hand.”
To commit such a crime with only that much nerve—he really was a complete lunatic.
Suppressing my rising irritation, I swallowed the antidote, and sure enough, the dizziness subsided.
‘I should probably head back soon.’
I considered standing up again but stopped myself.
If I staggered and ended up leaning on Louis again?
‘…Just thinking about it is horrifying.’
Louis had a pathological aversion to touching others.
That was why he always wore gloves—and it was still the same now.
I might have been lucky just now, but if the same situation repeated, only heaven and Louis knew whether my neck would still be attached.
“You really don’t remember?”
Louis studied me suspiciously.
“You seem too calm for someone who doesn’t.”
Faced with words that were clearly a test, I acted composed.
It was true that I didn’t actually remember anything, after all.
“I’m not the type to show much expression.”
“Is that so?”
Louis brushed my hair behind my ear.
It was a tender touch, but his hand was cold as a corpse.
“Since you said you don’t remember, I’ll tell you. Yesterday, I proposed to you. I asked you to marry me.”
‘…What?’
Louis continued his calm bombshell.
“Think carefully about why I proposed to you.”
“…”
“And if you can, a reply to that proposal as well.”
After finishing, Louis declared that I needn’t bother returning his outer garment and turned away.
—
Leonía Bellasi.
My second name, obtained upon reincarnating into a book.
Leonía, the younger sister of the female lead, spent an unhappy childhood constantly compared to her perfect older sister.
For a brief while, her treatment improved when she became engaged to a man of high status.
But in the end, in the very first scene of the novel—right before her sister’s eyes—she is murdered.
Given that the novel’s title was *My Sister Died*, it was an unavoidable fate.
Anyway, that incident served as the catalyst for the female lead to vow revenge against her sister’s killer, build the foundation to eliminate the culprit, and occasionally dabble in romance—that was the main plot.
And the killer who would murder Leonía—me—was…
My own fiancé.
Until half a year ago, when I had an accident and regained my past life memories, I had been exactly the Leonía from the original story.
‘Back then, he really was all I had.’
After regaining my past life memories, I realized I truly had no eye for people.
‘So I twisted the original story and broke off the engagement.’
The problem now was facing a new crisis.
“Ah, my head hurts…”
A headache washed over me, whether from the hangover or the drug.
I felt like I’d dozed off for a moment, but when I opened my eyes, I saw the familiar interior of a carriage.
‘Louis must have called it for me.’
The name that came to mind as soon as I regained my senses only brought confusion.
‘Why on earth did that man propose to me?’
Was it really because I was his first love?
Louis believed I was his first love.
‘But in the original story, while Louis was lenient with his first love, he never pined after her enough to propose.’
It was obvious from how he’d mistaken me for my sister.
Although I was the female lead’s younger sister, my sister and I didn’t look much alike except for both having pink hair.
‘Louis probably never even properly saw my sister’s face.’
That made it even more puzzling.
There was no reason for Louis to propose to a first love whose face he didn’t even know.
Creak!
Just then, the carriage stopped abruptly, and my body lurched forward.
…What now?
