Chapter 1

The Male Lead and Female Lead Broke Up

“Lady Bellita, the carriage is ready.”

“Okay. I’ll be out now.”

At the maid Mary’s words, I rose from the sofa and left the room.

As I crossed the wide corridor and descended the stairs, all the way until I reached the carriage waiting in front of the mansion, I kept going over what I had to do today in my head.

Today was a very important day for me.

And because I absolutely could not make a mistake, I steeled my resolve once again.

It had already been six months since I came here—or, to be more precise, since I possessed the body of a noble lady named Bellita.

Who could have imagined it?

After dying in a traffic accident, I ended up inside a novel.

The confusion, bewilderment, anxiety, and worry I initially felt—things like Who am I? Where am I?—had almost completely disappeared by now.

I had adapted to this place quite well.

But if there had been a way to return, I would have gone back long ago.

However, what if the me from my previous life had really died?

What would happen to me then?

Was there really a place for me to return to?

In the end, I couldn’t find a way back. And when those frightening thoughts kept piling on top of one another, I eventually came to the conclusion that continuing to live here wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing.

There was just one condition.

As long as I could avoid dying in this world.

The first law of possessing a character in a novel.

Of course, there was no such law. I had made it up myself.

Anyway, what I considered the first law of novel possession was this:

If the possessor acted differently from the original character, the people around them would start paying attention and thinking, Huh? What’s wrong with her…?

Wasn’t that strange when you really thought about it?

Was it really possible for someone to suddenly develop feelings for a person they had never had even the slightest affection for simply because that person had completely changed overnight?

Maybe it was possible, maybe it wasn’t.

But this novel was not exactly the ideal place for me to satisfy my damned curiosity by experimenting with something like that.

Because the male protagonist of this novel, Kane Maxius, wasn’t particularly special or attractive to me—not enough to make me put in that much effort.

The Love and War of the Three Families.

The romance-fantasy novel I had possessed was a story about tangled relationships and love between members of three ducal families, each possessing a unique power.

The reason I was able to immediately remember the title of the novel after possessing Bellita was precisely because of the setting surrounding each family’s power.

Among them, the Heitz Ducal Family—the family I had possessed Bellita from—had prospered for generations by utilizing the power of fire.

The Maxius Ducal Family, Kane’s family, possessed the power of water.

And the Bayon Ducal Family, Adela’s family, possessed the power of iron.

At first glance, it appeared as though the Imperial Family stood above the three ducal families.

But in reality, that wasn’t the case.

The three dukedoms actually possessed greater power than the Imperial Family, thanks to their unique abilities.

Their powers were absolutely essential for protecting the continent and the empire from the monsters that periodically invaded them.

Among the three, the Bayon Ducal Family, the family of iron, possessed the most useful power during this era of frequent warfare.

The ability to create powerful weapons.

By using their power over iron to mass-produce weapons and armor, they had earned the absolute trust of the imperial citizens and the Imperial Family.

That was why the Heitz and Maxius families formed an alliance to keep the Bayon Ducal Family, the family of iron, in check.

And they knew very well that the best way to strengthen such an alliance was to connect their bloodlines.

Fortunately, children were born in both families around the same time.

Coincidentally, the Heitz family had a daughter, while the Maxius family had a son.

Thus, the two had been engaged since childhood, and it had been decided that they would marry after Bellita and Kane came of age.

The original novel barely mentioned anything about their childhood.

It simply stated, in passing, that Bellita had fallen in love with Kane at first sight and had followed him around since they were young.

In contrast, the novel repeatedly emphasized that Kane found Bellita bothersome and never paid her any attention.

Perhaps it was meant to justify Kane’s attraction to Adela.

A man who had never given his heart to anyone and was trapped in his own world happened to see a beautiful woman at a banquet held in the Imperial Palace—and fell in love with her at first sight.

A perfect, flawless love story.

However, Bellita was not the kind of person who would simply support their love and quietly step aside from her position as Kane’s fiancée.

After learning about Kane and Adela’s relationship, she used every method imaginable to try to harm Adela.

But whenever Adela found herself in danger, Kane would appear as though blessed by some male-lead protection and save her every single time.

And with each incident, the love between the two only grew stronger.

Eventually, at the very end, the villain Bellita was executed by Aiden Bayon, Adela’s younger brother, and the novel came to an end…

It’s so unfair. It’s unbelievably unfair!

It was already unfair that the life I had found lonely but still bearable, a monotonous existence like a squirrel running endlessly on a wheel, had ended in a single traffic accident.

But after absurdly possessing a character in a novel, I was now once again facing a situation where I could die.

Still, as I said before, I had absolutely no reason to pretend that I had completely changed for the better just to win Kane’s heart.

And above all, I didn’t want to alter the flow of the novel and have a major impact on this world.

The story I knew from the book was only useful as long as everything proceeded according to the original plot.

I already knew the ending of the book as if I had prophetic knowledge.

Wouldn’t I be the only one to suffer if the future became twisted because of my actions?

Fortunately, Bellita’s memories remained completely intact, so all of her words, actions, and thoughts were transmitted to me exactly as they had been.

I used that fact to maintain Bellita’s original behavior so that I could be dumped by Kane according to the original story.

If I could simply be peacefully broken up with, I wouldn’t have to interfere with the lives of those two ever again.

There was just one problem.

I couldn’t die.

So I absolutely decided not to do anything that involved tormenting Adela.

Of course, Bellita peacefully breaking off her engagement with the male lead and not harassing the female lead was practically the same thing as destroying the original plot.

But I couldn’t just sit still when I knew perfectly well that I was going to die.

Therefore, in order to avoid dying yet again, I began rationally thinking about what I needed to do from this point onward.

And that was how I had arrived at my current situation.

As soon as I got into the carriage, it quickly set off to the loud cry of the coachman.

“My lady, what’s that bottle you’re holding?”

Mary, who was sitting across from me, cautiously asked the question.

“This?”

I held up the tiny bottle, barely the size of two finger joints, and smiled contentedly.

“What do you think it is?”

“The red liquid… It looks just like blood.”

Even as Mary said it, she wore an expression that seemed to suggest she couldn’t believe what she was saying.

“That’s right.”

“What?”

“It is blood.”

The color immediately drained from Mary’s face.

“Th-then why… Whose, whose blood is it?”

She seemed so flustered that she even began stammering.

“Obviously, it’s my blood.”

“What? M-My lady…”

“If you put your blood in a bottle like this and secretly leave it under someone’s bed, apparently that person will fall in love with the owner of the blood.”

In truth, it wasn’t even my blood, and of course, the whole thing was ridiculous.

But this really was the method Bellita had used in the original novel to make the male lead fall in love with her.

Well, in the end, the male lead fell in love with someone else, so it had been a completely useless and pointless endeavor.

“B-but… If the Duke finds out…”

“That’s why I have to leave it secretly.”

I even hummed a little tune, pretending to be delighted as though I genuinely believed this spell would work.

And Mary continued to glance at me with a mixture of pity and fear in her eyes until the carriage arrived at our destination, the Maxius Ducal Residence.

As soon as we arrived at the Maxius Ducal Family’s residence, I looked for Kane.

Fortunately, the butler told me that Kane had a guest and that I would have to wait for quite some time.

I inwardly cheered and immediately headed toward Kane’s bedroom.

“My lady, the Duke is extremely uncomfortable with other people entering his bedroom.”

But the butler hurriedly stopped me.

“This time is an exception. His Grace specifically gave me permission to enter. If you don’t believe me, go and ask him yourself.”

I answered with a confident expression, and the butler looked completely at a loss for what to do in response to my attitude.

“I said, go and ask him.”

“Then… I’ll be back shortly.”

The butler quickly disappeared in the direction of the study where Kane was.

The moment his back disappeared from view, I didn’t even bother waiting for him.

I swiftly opened the door and entered the bedroom.

After all, I had never intended to wait for him in the first place, so I felt absolutely no guilt about it.

Once inside, the bedroom was just as neat and boring as one would expect from a neat and boring man.

I hurriedly pulled out the small bottle I had hidden inside my clothes, determined to finish the job before the butler returned.