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Chapter 03
It was a romance fantasy novel!
And even after the heroine died, the story kept going!
In the end, even the male lead died too!
Thanks to that utterly disastrous ending, the novel became a hot topic across online communities, and the final chapter was flooded with comments.
[Is this that novel? The one where the protagonist dies and everyone else dies too? The one people say you only need to read the last chapter of?]
[┗ No, you don’t even need to read the last chapter. Refund every cent I spent on this garbage, you bastards!]
[No, seriously, is the author insane? Did they just give up on the story? Is this the end of Part 1 or something? Is there a Part 2? Because honestly this makes no sense! Author! At least give us side stories! How can there not even be side stories?!]
[┗ LOL, you’d actually pay money to read side stories for this? What a sucker.]
I, too, had endured 300 chapters of frustration while rooting for the two protagonists to be happy, so I joined the atmosphere and vented my resentment in the comments.
[What kind of ending is this?! What the hell is wrong with the author?!]
‘…Is that why I got transmigrated into this novel?!’
But I wasn’t the only one who left comments like that, so why was I the only one who ended up here?!
For a moment, I stared blankly at the world that had become my reality. The handsome male protagonist standing beside me, the heat of late summer, the delicious tropical fruits giving off sweet aromas.
I turned toward the shopkeeper waiting for my order.
“Four mangoes, two bunches of grapes, four kiwis, and one bunch of bananas, please.”
The shopkeeper swiftly packed them into a bag. Then Dayvin pulled out a small glass bottle filled with silver needles from inside his coat.
He began stabbing each fruit one by one with the needles.
The fruit seller looked horrified at the sight of perfectly good fruit being pierced, and I quickly held out some silver coins.
“Keep the change…”
The shopkeeper politely accepted the money, and after that, he no longer cared whether Dayvin stabbed the fruits I’d picked or not.
Dayvin carefully tested every single fruit with the silver needles. When he tried to prick each individual grape as well, I stopped him.
“Let’s test those later when we eat them. If the juice starts dripping everywhere, carrying them will be a pain.”
Dayvin accepted my words and put the fruit back into the bag. Looking at the bulging paper sack, I felt a little regretful.
“Did I buy too much?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s not heavy.”
Then Dayvin bent his right arm and offered it to escort me. I placed my hand on it, feeling the crisp texture of his perfectly pressed uniform beneath my fingers.
It felt nice the way he treated me so carefully, but at the same time, I felt a little guilty.
He carried the fruit bag in his left hand so he could draw his sword at any moment, while using his right arm to escort me whenever enemies weren’t around—and the moment enemies appeared, he’d draw his sword instead…
‘…Sigh. No matter how I think about it, we can’t keep living like this forever.’
My chest felt heavy.
Dayvin kept enduring by turning over the assassins who attacked me to the authorities every time, but the situation wasn’t improving at all.
‘Well, that’s because the reason they want to kill me hasn’t been resolved…’
In the original story, the person responsible for Anise’s death was Duke Raftan, who wanted to place his daughter on the throne as empress. The reason he assassinated Anise was because she was the emperor’s fiancée.
‘And I’m still alive.’
Without realizing it, I let out a sigh, and Dayvin looked at me.
“Is something troubling you?”
“Ah… I was just thinking about what we should do from now on…”
My voice trailed off. Seeing me like that, Dayvin also seemed to recall the frustrating situation we were in, his expression hardening slightly.
“We can’t keep living like this forever. Couldn’t we just run away?”
Unable to hide my anxiety, I pleaded with him. I wanted to take the protagonists and flee this doomed empire as quickly as possible.
As long as I didn’t die, the protagonists would never set out to avenge Anise, and whether the empire collapsed or not wasn’t my problem.
There was no reason for me to preserve the original story’s catastrophic ending that had set the internet on fire!!
That’s why I thought escaping this empire as soon as possible was the right choice, but—
“No. It won’t be too late to decide after we contact His Majesty the Emperor. Since we successfully came into the city today, next time I’ll look for a way to safely reach the imperial palace.”
As always, Dayvin opposed the idea with a stubborn expression.
“…Wouldn’t it still be better to just run away?”
Since I didn’t trust the emperor at all, I cautiously argued back, but Dayvin shook his head.
“First, we need to determine who is targeting Lady Anise and why. Until then, no matter where we go, they’ll continue to pursue us.”
That was the problem.
I knew exactly who was targeting me and why, but since the protagonists believed I had amnesia, I still hadn’t figured out a convincing way to explain what I knew.
‘I’m being targeted by Duke Raftan! He’s trying to kill me because I’m the emperor’s fiancée, so if I just break off the engagement and run away, everything will be solved!!’
That’s what I wanted to say…
The moment I broke off the engagement with the emperor, the assassination attempts against me would stop immediately. But I still couldn’t think of a believable way to explain that to the protagonists, so I simply bit my lip.
“If His Majesty helps us, things will become easier.”
Dayvin spoke as though reassuring me not to worry, and seeing the confidence in his voice made me feel strange.
As a fan of the original novel, it felt like my brain was shaking every time I saw the protagonists—who had hated the emperor like an enemy in the original story—placing their trust in him now.
Well, in the original story, Lana and Dayvin hadn’t distrusted the emperor from the start either. They had trusted him first, only to be betrayed later and consumed by rage.
Just thinking about the emperor made me uneasy. After all, he was someone who had betrayed Anise in the original story.
“…What do you think happened to all the people we sent to the imperial palace?”
“I’m not sure…”
Even Dayvin couldn’t hide his troubled expression as he answered weakly.
Because I had transmigrated into the story and Anise survived instead of dying like in the original, the enemies desperately tried to kill me as quickly as possible. Thanks to that, the protagonists quickly realized I was in danger and immediately attempted to contact the emperor.
But every person sent to report the situation to the imperial palace disappeared without a trace. Later, even knights from the count’s household headed to the palace directly, but they vanished too.
It didn’t take long for the servants of the Miller estate to become terrified and quit their jobs one after another.
Honestly, from that moment on, I had begun suspecting that the emperor might actually be working together with Duke Raftan.
In the original story, there had never been any indication that the emperor was allied with Duke Raftan. Although the emperor personally destroyed the evidence Dayvin had gathered proving Anise was assassinated, it was portrayed as something done under pressure from the nobles. There was even a scene where he genuinely mourned her death at her funeral.
Much later, he expelled Empress Raniere from the imperial palace using the suspicion surrounding Anise’s murder as an excuse, and he also destroyed the Raftan ducal house. Even the protagonists, who burned with fury and swore revenge against the emperor, never believed he had directly participated in killing Anise.
But as more and more people disappeared on their way to the palace, suspicion began to grow inside me.
‘Could the emperor actually know everything about Duke Raftan trying to kill Anise… and be helping him?’
After all, he was the final villain of the original story. He was the kind of man who had even inflicted a fatal wound on Dayvin through cowardly tricks. Would it really be strange if he were capable of something like this too?
While I silently deepened my suspicions about the emperor, Dayvin’s gaze suddenly sharpened, as though he had sensed something. He possessed the ability to detect enemies approaching even from a great distance.
“…Enemies. They’re tightening the encirclement. We need to escape immediately.”
“Are we going to fight?”
I wasn’t asking because I doubted his abilities. We were standing in the middle of a busy street. Innocent people could get caught in the battle and struck by poisoned arrows or blades coated in venom.
“No, we can avoid them easily.”
But if the enemies had already surrounded us, how?
As I blinked in confusion, Dayvin made a request.
“Lady Anise, may I carry you while I run?”
“Huh?”
I was startled for a moment, but soon nodded. Dayvin handed me the bag of fruit.
“Then could you hold this for me?”
I hugged the fruit bag against my chest. The next instant, Dayvin swept me up into a princess carry with ease.
His beautiful face suddenly being so close made me flinch instinctively, but unlike me, Dayvin remained perfectly calm.
“I’m going to run. If you feel like you’re falling, hold onto my neck.”
“Huh? O-Okay.”
With me in his arms, Dayvin began to run.
As though my weight meant nothing at all, his steps were light, and his speed steadily increased. Entering an empty alleyway, he began sprinting like a short-distance track athlete.
No—within moments, his speed surpassed even that.
My eyes widened in shock.
‘…Is that really human speed?’
It felt more like the speed of a car?!
Then, after using the stack of boxes piled in the corner of the alley as a foothold, Dayvin leapt effortlessly onto the rooftop of a building.
My mouth fell open without me realizing it.
‘Whoa…’
