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Chapter – 03
Part – 01 Hell
Chapter – 01 Return (2)
“Disappear. Give me back my body.”
In a world where only my consciousness remained, there was no one to listen to my voice. Even as my voice cracked and my tears dried up, the reality that I could do absolutely nothing remained unchanged. It felt as though someone had tied me up tightly and locked me away in the darkness. Time alone flowed sluggishly.
Am I just going to disappear like this? Why did this happen to me? What did I do so wrong? Where am I? I’m scared. Anyone, please, just save me. Save me.
I am not dead. I am right here….
‘Florence, don’t you remember anything?’ ‘You are my daughter.’ ‘You are…….’
No, that woman isn’t me…….
A few times, the world seen through that woman’s eyes flared up and vanished. It was a sight I had never witnessed before. Was this a dream?
My father, my brother, and my sister were all smiling at me. My fiancé was the first to approach me. Even the people who used to curse behind my back came up to me with bright smiles, holding out their hands.
The lifelong yearning I had desperately prayed for—that woman obtained it so effortlessly it was almost hollow.
Everything flowed as smoothly as perfectly interlocking gears.
As if I had been the only mismatched piece all along.
Why were the things that were so agonizingly difficult for me so easy for that woman? Why couldn’t it be me? What was the difference? It’s my body, that’s me, so why only now…….
“They say it’s standard for a possession target to be miserable, but this girl is too much,” the woman muttered. “Neglected by her family, abandoned by the man she unrequitedly loved, and completely talentless. She was even destined to be kicked out and die all alone….”
That woman murmured to herself.
“Still, the conditions are good. She’s pretty…… and I can use both magic and spirit arts. Why on earth was Florence so dissatisfied that she did nothing but throw tantrums at such a sweet family?”
Sweet? My family?
“You have to smile first for the other person to open up their heart. Everything got twisted because she did nothing but throw fits. To think she didn’t even know something that simple.”
I did smile. If they had told me to kneel down and slit my own stomach open, I would have done it without a moment’s hesitation. I loved them blindly. Every single day, I agonized and pondered over what I had to do just to get them to look at me.
“It looks like Florence was one-sidedly in love with her fiancé……. Since she yielded this body to me, should I fulfill that love for her as payment? Originally, he’s supposed to end up with the female lead, but whatever. The moment I possessed this body, the original story was already ruined anyway.”
I don’t want it. Don’t do it. Stop it, give it back….
Gradually, I grew exhausted. Even though someone else had taken over my body, no one noticed that the person standing there wasn’t me. Even my faintly flickering consciousness began to feel meaningless. What was the point of still being alive in here? If this was how it was going to be, I’d rather you just kill me. If I had truly died instead, I wouldn’t have had to witness this wretched sight.
A world that was more perfect without me—no, a world that became perfect precisely because I disappeared. I didn’t want to see it.
It was around the time I was weeping and begging to just be killed.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a strange world, inside someone else’s body.
Instinctively, I knew. This body belonged to the woman who had stolen mine.
It was a small room.
The body lying on the narrow bed was emaciated and frail. There was the smell of antiseptic, a thin tube connected to my wrist, and a few books.
A book, soiled with fingerprints from frequent handling, lay by the pillow. The woman’s words flashed through my mind.
‘To think I’ve possessed a supporting character in a romance fantasy novel I was reading……. I feel bad for this girl, but if it was to the point that someone else possessed her, she was fated to die anyway. Just like the cliché settings.’
I opened the book. The characters were completely foreign, yet I could read them without any difficulty.
Within that book, my world was written.
My world. My country, Yulia; the beautiful Marib River; the vast Kelligria Plains……. A civilization built upon the dazzling advancement of spirit arts and magic, warriors wielding swords and bows, kings and knights….
The protagonist of the story was a commoner girl.
A girl named ‘Layla Green’ blossomed with dazzling talent despite her impoverished environment. She traveled the world with charming male protagonists, fulfilling her love along the way. She was a beautiful, kind-hearted girl, and she was effortlessly loved by everyone. Even when people tried to obstruct her, or when hardships came her way, she ultimately seized her happiness.
Everyone loved Layla Green.
My fiancé, Linus; the Second Prince of Yulia; and my older brother, Blake.
The fiancé and brother who appeared in the novel were not the people I knew. A hollow laugh escaped me as I read down the sentences. They were people who had never spared me a single glance. They were men who had ignored me even when I tripped right in front of them, when I wailed, and when I threw fits of rage. Yet, they acted as if they would tear out their own livers and kidneys just to give them to Layla Green.
As if she might fly away if the wind blew, as if she might break if they held her too tight…….
On days when tears so much as welled up in Layla Green’s eyes, they acted as if the world were coming to an end.
I don’t know a world like this.
Though it was the world I knew, the world inside the book was nothing more than fiction.
It was a hollow world painted with someone’s wishes and dreams.
In the story, ‘Florence Love Seymour’ made only brief appearances. She was the former fiancée of the male lead, Linus, who ends up with Layla Green. She was a woman who used her family’s influence to force the engagement, but she possessed a foul personality and zero talent, earning nothing but hatred from those around her.
It was written that she easily threw tantrums at her subordinates, routinely threw and smashed objects, and yelled and threw fits of inferiority at her gentle family members. It stated that her mother, who was a magnificent spiritist, passed away while giving birth to her, yet Florence herself possessed absolutely no magical talent or spiritual affinity.
Because she was a piece of human trash who had nothing going for her but her bloodline, it was treated as only natural that she was coldly neglected by her fiancé and abandoned by her family.
I couldn’t even become a proper villainess. I chuckled dryly. Even within the sentences written in these foreign characters, I was pathetic and miserable.
Filled with resentment over having her fiancé snatched away, she picked fights with the female lead, only to be denounced by her fiancé and her own brother, collapsing all alone in an unsightly defeat—that was her pathetic role.
It was exactly the kind of thing I would do. Because there was no way I would have just sat back and watched a fox-like wench try to steal my fiancé away.
I already knew that man did not love me. But I was his fiancée. Aside from love, we were promised to be married, so it was my rightful privilege to denounce the party that broke that promise.
Isn’t a wench who messes with a man who already has a fiancée just a shameless thief? My eyes were wide open when my fiancé was stolen from me, so should I have just let him go without getting angry, without feeling wronged? I was the one who was robbed, I was the one who was wronged, so why did I have to be the sinner?
The ‘Florence Love Seymour’ in the story did exactly what I would have done.
She grew furious at the unjust treatment and struggled, unable to bear the unfairness. Because of her hot temper, she couldn’t even see the impending doom right before her eyes. She simply stamped her feet and screamed because no one would recognize how wronged she was.
She was so foolish and stupid that she didn’t even know that one had to shut their mouth and endure the unfairness just to receive a shred of sympathy.
I was foolish and stupid.
But I’d rather die than receive sympathy. I’d rather die than have what is mine stolen from me. Rather than just being unfairly stripped of everything, I would choose a conclusion where I lose absolutely everything.
Why do I have to be the only one who is miserable? Why do I have to be the only one who is hated? Why am I the only one who can’t have anything?
Why only me?
The answer to the question I had harbored my entire life lay within those few short lines of text.
Because you are a supporting character. Because you are not the protagonist.
Because that world was a world prepared solely for the protagonist.
But Layla Green wasn’t the protagonist of my world either.
Everything had been stolen from her by the woman named Jang Hyun-ji, who had snatched my body away.
Within the memories of the past five years, Layla Green had obtained none of the things she was supposed to have. The people who were supposed to love her, the brilliant achievements—all of it had been stolen by her.
Jang Hyun-ji was a twenty-three-year-old woman who used to live in a country called Korea.
She had spent most of her days locked inside this narrow room. She would take occasional walks nearby or have brief conversations with the rare visitors who came by, but she was mostly alone. The only people who had visited her over the course of several months were just two people: an insurance company employee and an elderly woman who was a distant relative.
There was no way she wouldn’t have been delighted by the stroke of luck she found after living such a lonely life. Slipping into a novel she had read so often that the pages were stained with her fingerprints—she must have been thrilled and happy. Because it allowed her to forget her reality.
Jang Hyun-ji knew everything about that world.
She knew what would happen in the future, what the ‘characters’ liked and disliked, and she knew exactly how to win their hearts.
How easy it must have been. How convenient it must have been.
How sweet must a world be where everyone loved her?
While I was dying in your place.
