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Chapter 1
“No way.”
Erna Zaherete. Twenty-two years old.
For the past several years, I could confidently say that I had lived a fairly smooth life.
I was born as the daughter of a prestigious marquis family and grew up wanting for nothing.
There had been some unhappy times, but I had overcome all of them by now and was living each day faithfully as the head of my family.
At least, that was how things had been until just a moment ago.
“Say that again. Laura. What exactly did I… do?”
“Oh, honestly. Why are you acting like this? The Marchioness entrusted this to me last night. She told me to give it back to you first thing this morning.”
Laura, the head maid with dark brown hair, answered with an exasperated expression as she held something out to me.
It was a letter.
She was looking at me as if she couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.
Sorry, but I was the one who should have been asking that.
That can’t be. I definitely collapsed from overwork a week ago, and I only just woke up.
A week ago, I had been working in my office when I suddenly lost consciousness.
The cause was overwork.
I had always been terrible at taking things easy. Ever since I was young, I had simply thrown myself into whatever work was in front of me until I ended up like this.
My vision had suddenly spun, and then I had collapsed.
And yet, I only opened my eyes this morning.
“What? What do you mean? It’s true that you collapsed a week ago, but you regained consciousness the very next day.”
“What?”
I had regained consciousness after just one day?
And apparently, I had been walking around as if nothing had happened.
What on earth was going on?
“My Lady? Are you listening to me?”
“No. Not at all. I’m really sorry, but could you give me some time to think?”
After calling a temporary timeout, I pinched my cheek instead of thinking.
Ouch. That hurts.
So this really wasn’t a dream.
But that makes no sense. I don’t remember anything from the past week at all. It’s almost as if…
“It feels like someone else came into my body and then left…”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”
I shook my head quickly.
Maybe I have short-term memory loss. For some reason, all my memories from the past week were erased.
Yes, that made some sense.
Losing my memories certainly wasn’t something I could take lightly, but perhaps because I had at least found a possible explanation, I felt a little more at ease.
“You mentioned someone else, and now that I think about it, you really did seem a little strange last week, My Lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Normally, you spend all day working in your office, right? But when you suddenly declared that you were going on strike because you didn’t understand why you had to work, we were all so shocked…”
“Wait, what? You said I went on strike?”
Does that mean I stopped working even after waking up? For an entire week?
“That’s not all. You hardly ever leave the estate, but suddenly you started going out every other day. Everyone was so surprised.”
“…”
“And you complained about why your dressing room was filled with such dull clothes. Then you went straight to the dress shop and bought up dresses and jewelry by the armful. The whole household was turned upside down.”
“What?!”
I shot to my feet and immediately headed for the dressing room.
Since I spent most of my time sitting and working, I normally preferred comfortable, practical clothes over fancy dresses.
I also liked soft, understated colors rather than bright, attention-grabbing ones.
But now…
“W-What is all this?”
I stood frozen at the sight of the dressing room filled with a dazzling array of colorful dresses.
There was a blue dress covered in elaborate gold embroidery, the sort of thing even noble ladies would only wear on special occasions.
There was also a brilliant crimson satin dress that looked like something an opera singer would wear on stage.
There were hats covered with delicate feathers and tiny pearls that sparkled in the light, along with high-laced shoes embroidered neatly with silver thread.
It looked as though an entire dress shop had been moved into the room.
“I… really bought all of this myself?”
“I told you so. Why have you been acting so strangely? You’re practically acting as if you don’t remember anything… Ah!”
Laura spoke with a baffled expression before suddenly stopping.
Her eyes grew as wide as fists, and she began huffing angrily.
“I knew it! I knew something was wrong!”
Oh, no.
“Laura? I know you’re surprised. I am too. This whole situation is extremely confusing to me. You’re right. I think I may have lost my memory…”
“You worked so much that your brain temporarily stopped working! That’s what happened, isn’t it?!”
“Huh?”
Laura’s shout made me pause.
It was somewhat similar to my theory, but the conclusion was a little different.
Still, going a little crazy from overwork sounds better than having memory loss.
After quickly deciding that was the safer explanation, I nodded.
“That’s right. I was wondering why I’d been feeling so tired lately. I guess I must have temporarily lost my mind.”
“See? I told you! That’s why I always said getting enough rest was important. There are plenty of people who’ve worked themselves crazy!”
“Yes, Laura. Everything you said is true. From now on, I’ll make sure to get plenty of rest whenever I can.”
Only after I promised did Laura finally nod in satisfaction.
I secretly let out a sigh of relief.
Now then.
“On that note, I’m sorry, Laura, but I think I need to get some more rest.”
When I told her that I wanted her to leave for now, Laura continued looking at me with concern until the very end.
“If you start feeling unwell, please call me immediately, okay?”
After she left, I was alone in the room.
I took a deep breath and unfolded the piece of paper in my hand.
It was a letter that the person who had apparently been me yesterday had told Laura to give to me today.
[To Erna Zaherete.]
All right. Something suspicious right from the start.
Who puts their full name on a letter addressed to themselves?
“It’s not like you’re trying to advertise that a third party wrote it.”
The whole thing felt suspicious, but I suppressed my doubts and continued reading.
[If you’re reading this letter, then that means you’ve come back, right?
It’s probably sudden and confusing. I felt the same way.
You might find this hard to believe, but… I came from another world.
It’s a place called Earth, specifically Korea, and my name there is Park Sumin. I’m twenty-two years old, and I’m a university student.]
Earth? Korea? Where was that?
[One day, I was working on a report and fell asleep for a moment. When I opened my eyes, I was inside your body.
Erna Zaherete. I mean, I was literally inside your body.
And it didn’t take long for me to realize something.]
What? Inside my body?
No, more importantly, what did she realize…?
[I realized that this world was the same as the setting of a novel I had read back home.]
“A novel? What is that supposed to mean?”
My head was spinning from all these things that made absolutely no sense.
[To give you a rough summary of the novel, it’s an adult reverse-harem story where the female protagonist possesses the body of a saintess in a romance-fantasy world and proceeds to win over the various male characters one by one… I’ll skip the details.
Thanks to that, I had the time of my life for an entire week. I got to stay in a beautiful old-fashioned mansion, go to cafes in the city, and enjoy elegant tea. I even got to shop as much as I wanted.
Oh, I’m sorry for spending your money without permission. I just wanted to experience the life of a noble lady at least once♥]
I let out a small sigh at the carefree cheerfulness practically radiating from her words.
My head was already a mess, and this woman, who seemed to have a flower garden growing inside her head, was driving me even crazier.
Perhaps she could sense how I felt.
[Don’t worry too much. I tried my best not to cause any trouble. There probably won’t be any major problems.
Still, I thought I should report everything to you, so I wrote down a brief summary of what I did over the past week.
― Tea time at Tea House
― Admiring paintings at Gallery
― Watching three plays at Theater
.
.
.
Sorry. That’s about all I can remember.
I wish I’d kept better records. Unfortunately, my memory isn’t very good.]
“Yeah. I can tell.”
At this point, I almost thought it would have been better if she hadn’t written anything at all.
Was she trying to make fun of me?
[Oh, I just remembered! There’s one more thing.
This is something that… I’m really… sorry about… ]
What else could there be?
The hesitant tone, along with all those unusually frequent dots, made my anxiety grow.
Slowly following the trail of dots with my eyes, I froze.
[…You slept with Leon Obsidian.]
“Are you insane?”
What the hell was this supposed to mean? What? I slept with whom?
Leon Obsidian?
“Don’t tell me you mean that Leon Obsidian?!”
I was so shocked that I remained frozen for quite some time.
Leon Obsidian. Who was he?
He was the illegitimate son of the former emperor and the current head of the Grand Duchy of Bernstein.
On top of that, he was known as the most handsome man in the entire Orden Empire and was the richest man in the empire.
Up to this point, one might think he was absolutely perfect.
But there was one huge problem.
He had sworn a vow of chastity as the commander of the Holy Knights.
Because of that, there was a certain nickname for him throughout Orden’s high society.
“The Greatest Marriage Scam of the Century!!!”
