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Chapter 1
“I like you.”
Sella confessed her feelings to Rody, the woodcutter.
“You’re saying something dangerous. Even though you know what kind of person I am.”
Dangerous?
Sella tilted her head at Rody’s words.
“Dangerous? Lord Rody, you’re such a kind and gentle person!”
Hmm? At that moment, Rody seemed to lower his head and chuckle.
Had she imagined it?
“Kind and gentle, you say… Miss Sella, I don’t think you know much about me after all.”
Rody spoke with the faint trace of a smile still lingering on his face.
“How could I not know? I know you very well! I know that you’re purer and more generous than anyone else.”
She had been trying to avoid the ending where she died a miserable death at the hands of the male lead who was the hidden villain. But somehow, her older sister was now the one in danger of being killed by that bastard instead.
She absolutely couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, she had to protect both her sister’s life and her own from that crazy hidden villain.
And to do that, she had to secure this man—the only hope who could help her—no matter what!
“Ah. So you’re saying that if I were greedy, ruthless, calculating, and… hmm, devious, you wouldn’t like me, Miss Sella?”
“Oh, come on! There’s no way Lord Rody could be that kind of person. Besides, honestly, I like you just as you are, no matter what kind of person you might be.”
Saying that she liked him exactly as he was, rather than for any particular reason, would probably sound more sincere. And she really did like this man, too.
“Ahhh… So you’re saying you’d like me no matter what kind of person I am, Miss Sella.”
Unlike before, Rody smiled in a way that made him look genuinely satisfied.
“Yes. So, Lord Rody, if you don’t mind, how about we start dating? And if we grow to like each other even more while dating… we could get mar… married, too. No, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Then shall we start with dating first?”
“Dating…”
For a moment, something unusual seemed to flicker in the man’s eyes. Strangely, the back of her neck felt cold.
Was she nervous because Betty’s life depended on how this man answered?
“Yes, dating! Let’s date!”
“Hmm… Actually, Miss Sella, you don’t even know my name…”
“What? Oh, come on, Lord Rody. Why are you saying that?”
“Rody isn’t my name.”
Hmm? Why was he making that kind of joke?
“Lord Rody, why are you teasing me… Ah! Do you mean your full name? I thought you only had one name, just like me. I’m sorry. Then what is your name?”
Could he not have been a commoner after all?
“Rodiak Pestrick Günter.”
“Pardon? Rodiak Pestr… what?”
“Rodiak Pestrick Günter. That’s my name.”
“Ohhh… That’s quite a long name.”
“Is it…?”
“Yes. Rodiak Pestrick Günter… Rodiak Pestr… Hmm?”
His name sounded familiar.
Pestr… Pest… The Black Death, the disease that killed everyone who caught it?
“Ah!”
Sella screamed.
“What’s wrong, Miss Sella?”
Rody rose from where he had been sitting and took a languid step toward her as he asked. Sella instinctively backed away.
Stay away!
Rodiak Pestrick Günter!
That was the name of the male lead who was the hidden villain in this novel!
The very same terrifying male lead who had slaughtered everyone around the heroine in one of the story’s routes, earning himself comments calling him the “Black Death” because everyone who crossed his path ended up dead!
No, that couldn’t be… It wasn’t possible. It had to be a coincidence. They just happened to share the same name.
Even as Sella desperately tried to deny reality, her legs were already trembling.
Of course they were. According to the original story, “Sella” was a maid of the heroine whose name had barely even been mentioned. She was one of the people swept away when the hidden villain slaughtered everyone.
As Sella continued shaking her head in denial, the man took another step toward her, closing the distance between them.
“No! Wait, just wait a moment!”
Without thinking, Sella thrust both hands forward to stop him.
Then she took another careful look at his dazzling appearance.
His dark blackish-brown hair, clear and smooth skin, red eyes and lips even redder than his eyes, a handsome face that could enchant anyone at a glance, and a body that could overwhelm anyone who stood before him…
Good heavens!
He looked exactly like the male lead.
Had she been living all this time with the eyes of a dead fish and the brain of a sea squirt?
“Miss Sella?”
Rody—or rather, that bastard of a hidden villain—took another step toward her.
“Don’t come…”
Sella barely managed to shut her mouth before she could finish saying, Don’t come any closer.
“Why? What were you going to say? That I should come closer?”
The hidden villain asked with a soft, silky smile.
Ah… Normally, that smile made her heart flutter. Right now, however, it felt as though her heart were freezing solid.
“No, that’s not…”
“What’s wrong? Why are you trembling so much all of a sudden?”
The man asked, his red eyes gleaming. The color that had once looked sexy now seemed like a terrifying, blood-red hue.
“Miss Sella, you said you didn’t mind what kind of person I was, didn’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“Now you know my name, too. Of course, knowing my name won’t change anything. Isn’t that right? You said you liked me no matter what kind of person I was, Miss Sella.”
Damn it!
She had been desperately trying to avoid being murdered by this man all this time!
“No, this isn’t right…”
Now, not only her legs but her entire body was trembling.
“Isn’t it? What is it that isn’t right…?”
Her tongue felt as though it had frozen solid…
But even so, wrong was wrong. She had to say something, somehow.
“W-We’re not… dating…”
“If it isn’t dating… Ahhh, is that what you meant?”
“W-What do you mean?”
“You wanted to get married right away, didn’t you, Miss Sella?”
Staring intently at the horrified Sella, Rodiak curled the corners of his mouth into a smile.
“Wh-what? N-No…”
What are you talking about? Marriage?
But Sella couldn’t finish her sentence. The male lead who was the hidden villain cut her off.
“Sounds good to me. I like marriage.”
A languid voice slipped between his lips, which had spread into a radiant, satisfied smile.
“…”
Sella’s tongue had frozen completely.
About three years ago.
At the age of twenty-one, Sera had been in a car accident. After thinking she had died, she opened her eyes again and found herself in the body of seventeen-year-old Sella.
Sella was an orphan who had grown up in an orphanage since infancy.
She had suspected that she had somehow entered a romance-fantasy novel, but she had no idea which one. There wasn’t a single novel in her memories that featured a woman named “Sella.”
She discovered which novel it was just a few days after turning twenty as Sella, when a butler from the Count Seidan household visited the orphanage looking for a live-in maid.
The orphanage system in this world was rather strange. People who wanted to adopt orphans paid money to take them away.
Whether they intended to raise the children as their own or had some other purpose was none of the orphanage director’s concern. As long as the price was paid, the child’s “ownership” was transferred to the buyer.
It was practically a shop where orphans were kept on display rather than an orphanage.
The real problem, however, was the children who remained unadopted until the end. Since these children provided no financial benefit to the orphanage, they had to repay the cost of their own upkeep once they reached adulthood.
In other words, all the money spent raising them remained as debt. Adult orphans could only gain their freedom from the orphanage after paying it all back.
As a result, people looking for cheap labor would sometimes visit the orphanage and hire orphans who had reached adulthood.
For Sella, who had come from Korea, this system was unimaginable. But what choice did she have? Sera, who had lived in Korea, was dead, and she was now Sella, someone who had to live in this world. Whether she liked it or not, she had no choice but to adapt.
“Unnie, should I apply for that position?”
When the orphanage director asked who wanted to apply, Sella whispered to Betty, who was standing beside her.
“Yes! Then I’ll start working as a clerk at the butcher shop.”
Betty immediately nodded and replied.
They had already planned that if Sella got a job as a maid, Betty would start working at the butcher shop that had been asking her to come work there for some time.
Betty and Sella were biological sisters, which was unusual among the children at the orphanage. They had relied on each other while growing up there and were naturally closer than anyone else in the world.
Because of that, when they were younger, both of them had stubbornly insisted that they could never be separated. As a result, neither of them had ever been adopted.
After all, there was no one willing to pay for two children at once.
In fact, people had often offered to adopt Sella alone because of her pretty appearance.
But Betty was devoted to Sella, and Sella didn’t want to be separated from Betty. The orphanage director had used Sella as an excuse to make Betty work even harder.
However, just a few days earlier, on the day Sella turned twenty, the two sisters had agreed that they would apply for jobs whenever an opportunity arose.
They would each start earning money as quickly as possible, with the hope that one day they could live together.
So, technically, they were following the plan they had made…
But as Sella raised her hand, something suddenly bothered her.
Seidan, Seidan…
The name seemed strangely familiar.
Where had she heard it before?
“The young lady, Kesselaya, is about to make her debut in society, and the maid will be assigned exclusively to her. Her previous maid suddenly quit, so we need someone who can start working as early as today.”
The moment Sella heard the Count’s butler provide this additional explanation, she lowered her hand.
The name “Kesselaya” had made her realize exactly which novel she had entered.
Imprisoned Kesselaya—an R-rated, dark romance-fantasy novel!
The hidden-villain male lead falls in love with Kesselaya. However, Kesselaya falls in love with the Crown Prince, and the male lead completely loses his mind. He kills everyone around Kesselaya, including her maids, and then kills the Crown Prince as well. In the end, after seizing control of the empire, the hidden villain imprisons Kesselaya in a secret room in the imperial palace and proceeds to engage in explicit sexual acts with her.
That was more or less the plot.
What made it worse was that most of the story took place inside that secret room, where Kesselaya was imprisoned with the male lead, and consisted of their explicit scenes. Even if someone had read the original novel, there wasn’t much information to be gained about the world itself.
And she hadn’t even finished reading it…
Why of all novels had she ended up inside this one?!
On top of that, the first people the hidden-villain male lead killed were the heroine’s maids. In other words, if she raised her hand now, it would be no different from buying herself a one-way ticket straight to death.
“Sella, what’s wrong? You were going to apply for that maid position, weren’t you?” Betty whispered beside her.
“No, Unnie! Not that household! We can try another one next time…”
Just as she whispered this to her older sister, who tilted her head in confusion—
“Sella says she’ll go. Please send her wages directly to the orphanage until the full amount of her debt has been repaid, and provide her with room and board!”
The orphanage director declared in a booming voice, finalizing the arrangement with the butler of the Count Seidan household.
