Chapter 3

Part 1. Hell

Chapter 1. Return (2)

Disappear. Give me back my body.

In a world where only my consciousness remained, there was no one who could hear my voice. Even as my voice grew hoarse and my tears dried up, the reality that I could do nothing remained unchanged. It felt as though someone had tied me up tightly and locked me away in the darkness. Only time continued to pass, slowly.

Is this how I disappear? Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong? Where am I? I’m scared. Anyone, please, someone save me. Rescue me.

I’m not dead. I’m still here….

‘Florence, you don’t remember anything at all?’

‘You are my daughter.’

‘You…’

No, that woman isn’t me….

Images of the world as that woman saw it surfaced and vanished again and again. They were scenes I had never witnessed before.

Was this a dream?

My father, older brother, and older sister smiling at me.

My fiancé approaching me first.

Even the people who used to insult me behind my back came forward, smiling warmly as they held out their hands.

That woman had obtained the wish I had longed for my entire life with such absurd ease that it felt almost hollow.

Everything proceeded smoothly, like interlocking gears turning in perfect harmony.

As though I were the only piece that didn’t fit.

Why were the things that had been so difficult for me so easy for that woman? Why couldn’t I have them? What was so different about us? This is my body. That’s me. So why only now…?

‘They say the character you possess is usually unfortunate, but this girl has it especially bad. Her family treats her coldly, the man she has a one-sided love for abandons her, and she has no abilities. She’s even destined to be cast out and die alone….’

The woman muttered to herself.

‘Still, the conditions are pretty good. She’s beautiful, and… I can use both magic and spirit arts. What on earth was Florence dissatisfied with that she had to be so nasty to such a loving family?’

A loving family? My family?

‘You have to smile at people first if you want them to open their hearts to you. Isn’t everything going wrong because she does nothing but lose her temper? How could she not understand something so simple?’

I smiled. I loved them so blindly that if they had told me to kneel down and cut open my own stomach, I would have done so without hesitation. I loved them with everything I had. Every day, I agonized over what I had to do to make them look at me.

‘Florence seems to have had a crush on her fiancé… Should I grant her wish and make her love come true in exchange for letting me have this body? Originally, he was supposed to end up with the heroine, but so what? Now that I’ve possessed this character, the original story is already ruined.’

I don’t want that. Don’t do it. Stop. Give it back….

I grew more and more exhausted.

Even though someone else had taken possession of my body, no one recognized that the person living in it was not me. Even my consciousness, flickering faintly in and out, began to feel meaningless.

What good was there in still being alive here?

At this point, I wished someone would simply kill me. If I had really died, at least I wouldn’t have had to witness this.

A world that had become more perfect without me—or rather, because I was gone.

I didn’t want to see it.

It was around the time I began sobbing and begging to be killed instead that I opened my eyes in another world, inside someone else’s body.

I understood instinctively.

This body belonged to the woman who had stolen mine.

It was a small room.

The body lying on the narrow bed was thin and frail. There was the smell of disinfectant, a thin tube attached to my wrist, and several books.

A worn, dirty book lay beside my pillow. I remembered what that woman had said.

‘To think I’d possess a supporting character from a romance fantasy novel I’d been reading… I’m sorry to this girl, but if someone else was able to possess her, that means she was destined to die anyway. Just like in all those common settings.’

I opened the book. The letters were unfamiliar, but somehow, I could read them without difficulty.

Inside the book was my world.

My world. My country, Yulia. The beautiful Mariv River. The vast Kelligria Plains…

A civilization built upon the dazzling advancement of spirit arts and magic. Warriors who wielded swords and bows. Kings and knights…

The protagonist of the story was a commoner girl.

A girl named Lila Green blossomed into a brilliant talent despite her unfortunate circumstances. She traveled the world with charming male leads and found love along the way. She was a pretty, kind girl who was easily loved by everyone. No matter who tried to obstruct her, no matter what hardships she faced, she ultimately claimed her happiness.

Everyone loved Lila Green.

My fiancé, Linus. The Second Prince of Yulia. Even my older brother, Blake.

The fiancé and older brother who appeared in the novel were nothing like the people I knew. As I read through the sentences, a hollow laugh escaped me.

These were people who had never once spared me a glance. The same people who ignored me when I fell right in front of them, when I cried out in anguish, and when I lost my temper behaved as though they would gladly give Lila Green everything they had.

As though she might blow away if the wind so much as touched her, or shatter if anyone held her too tightly…

Whenever tears welled up in Lila Green’s eyes, it was as though the entire world would come to an end.

I don’t know this world.

It was the world I had known, yet the world inside the book was nothing more than fiction.

A futile world, painted with someone’s wishes and dreams.

Florence Love Seymour appeared only briefly in the story. She was the former fiancée of Linus, the male lead who would end up with Lila Green. Backed by her family’s influence, she had become engaged to him, but she was a woman with a nasty personality and no abilities, hated by everyone around her.

According to the book, she frequently lost her temper with her subordinates, threw things around and smashed them at the slightest provocation, and screamed and threw tantrums at her kind family out of sheer inferiority.

Her mother, a gifted spirit mage, had died giving birth to her. Yet Florence herself possessed neither magical talent nor any affinity for spirits.

She was a worthless human being with nothing but her bloodline, so naturally, her fiancé treated her coldly and her family abandoned her.

I couldn’t even qualify as a villainess.

I let out a bitter laugh. Even in sentences written in unfamiliar letters, I was miserable and pathetic.

I was merely an embarrassing character who, consumed by rage over losing her fiancé, picked a fight with the heroine, only to be condemned by the fiancé and older brother who loved her and ultimately brought down by them, left to fall alone.

It was certainly plausible. There was no way I would have stood by and done nothing while a sly little vixen tried to steal my fiancé.

I knew he didn’t love me. But I was his fiancée. Regardless of love, we had promised to marry each other. I had every right to condemn the person who broke that promise.

Wasn’t a girl who went after a man with a fiancée a shameless thief? If someone stole your fiancé right out from under your nose, were you supposed to let him go without getting angry or feeling wronged? I was the one who had been robbed. I was the one who had been wronged. So why was I the one who had to become the villain?

The Florence Love Seymour in the story did the very things I might have done.

She got angry at unfair treatment and struggled desperately because she couldn’t bear the injustice. Her temper was so quick that she failed to see the danger right in front of her. Because no one would acknowledge that she had been wronged, all she could do was stamp her feet and scream.

She was too foolish and stupid to understand that, even when you were wronged and angry, you had to keep your mouth shut and endure it if you wanted even a shred of sympathy.

I was foolish and stupid.

But I’d rather die than receive anyone’s pity.

I’d rather die than let someone take what was mine.

Rather than keep losing everything unjustly, I would choose an ending in which I lost it all.

Why did I have to be the only one who was unhappy? Why was I the only one everyone hated? Why was I the only one who couldn’t have anything?

Why me?

The answer to the question I had carried in my heart all my life was written in just a few short lines.

Because I was a supporting character.

Because I wasn’t the protagonist.

Because that world had been prepared for the protagonist.

But Lila Green wasn’t the protagonist of my world, either.

Everything had been stolen from her by the woman who had taken my body, a woman named Jang Hyunji.

Throughout the five years of memories I now possessed, Lila Green had been denied everything that should have been hers. The people who were supposed to love her, the glorious achievements she was supposed to earn—all of it had been taken away.

Jang Hyunji had been a twenty-three-year-old woman living in a country called South Korea.

She spent most of her days confined to this small room. Sometimes she went for walks nearby or exchanged a few brief words with the occasional visitor, but most of the time, she was alone. In fact, over the past several months, only two people had come to see her: an employee from an insurance company and an elderly woman who was supposedly a distant relative.

After living such a lonely life, it was hardly surprising that she would treasure the good fortune that had come her way. To find herself inside a novel she had read so many times that its pages were worn from handling—she must have been thrilled and happy.

At least she could forget about reality.

Jang Hyunji knew everything about that world.

She knew what would happen in the future, what the characters liked and disliked, and exactly what she had to do to win their hearts.

How easy it must have been.

How convenient.

How sweet it must have felt to live in a world where everyone loved her.

While I’m dying in your place…