🔊 TTS Settings
Prologue
On days when the sky was clear without a single cloud, her luck was especially terrible.
On picnic days, a bolt from a clear sky would strike, and a sudden downpour would pour down. When she was in school, classmates would dump trash on her head, saying just looking at her ruined their mood.
How many times had she fallen alone on the road? She couldn’t even count the times she had been suddenly splashed with water.
And yet, it wasn’t as if she was completely without luck.
When her mother found her drenched after a picnic, she would be shocked and buy her new clothes. And the children who had dumped trash on her were disciplined—and eventually dropped out.
(Back then, she had thought, “Serves them right.”)
When she fell on the street and hurt herself, coins would sometimes glimmer in front of her eyes. And after being splashed with water, she would end up with money for laundry.
Life was full of ups and downs. Fortune and misfortune alternated like waves.
She had lived by believing that hardship was always followed by good fortune.
Yes, that was how it had always been… or so she thought.
Harriet stood with her mouth slightly open, staring at the books being cleared off the bookstore display stand.
There were many other onlookers watching dozens of books being removed, so her vacant expression did not attract much attention.
Only one title was disappearing from the display in real time.
The latest work by author Elliot Dark: Ladies’ Night.
A placard outside the bookstore praised it as a realistic depiction of noble young ladies’ psychological warfare, schemes, and hidden conflicts beneath the surface. But—hm.
Harriet tried not to look at the praise that had been shoved into a trash bin nearby.
Pseudonym: Elliot Dark. Real name: Harriet Brown.
Watching her “child”—her book—being thrown onto the ground made her chest burn with rage.
The newspaper in her hand crumpled loudly.
Penelope, who was anxiously holding Harriet’s shoulder in case she lost control and stormed into the bookstore, tightened her grip.
“Be good, Harriet, okay? Let go of the paper. One copy costs two bel. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Calm down, shh, shh.”
“Am I a dog?”
Penelope wisely swallowed the remark that she looked like a rabid dog on the verge of biting someone.
Harriet, once she fixated on something, would charge forward without looking back. If she were told she looked like a dog now, she would likely declare she would gladly become one and storm the bookstore.
Fortunately, Harriet slowly relaxed her grip.
Even if she made a scene demanding they not remove her books, she would only end up being dragged away by the police for disturbing the peace.
The front page of the crumpled but barely intact newspaper gleamed with a headline.
“[Breaking] Is This Even a Novel?! Emperor of the Swan Empire Enraged!”
Below it were illustrations of an unidentified figure and the emperor.
Unlike the poorly drawn silhouette of Elliot Dark, the emperor was depicted as so strikingly beautiful that anyone who saw him might fall in love at first sight.
Delicate brushwork showed fine strands of hair and sorrowful eyes.
If he had not been the emperor who angered Elliot Dark, Harriet might have seriously considered using that face as inspiration for the male lead of her next novel.
But to Harriet now, the illustration was unbearable.
Penelope quickly snatched the newspaper away, sensing danger in the way Harriet glared at the emperor as though she wanted to tear him apart.
“There are too many people watching. If you rip it up, you’ll just get glared at, okay?”
“Give it back. I’m going to burn it!”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Harriet felt like screaming that she had. She was boiling with rage.
After all her struggles, her long-awaited success had been halted—not even in her own country, but because of the displeasure of a foreign emperor.
It wasn’t as if she had splashed water on him or slapped him. She had never even met him.
Of course not. She didn’t have the status or position for that.
All she had done was write quietly—and get struck by lightning.
Three years after graduating from the academy.
Even while working as a maid, she had stolen sleep at night to write. Her life flashed before her eyes.
Her parents had subtly urged her to just marry a decent man, while relatives sneered that she could never make a living as a writer. So she had shut herself away and written.
She was rejected dozens of times, submitted hundreds of manuscripts with gritted teeth.
She wrote countless novels that never gained attention.
But her latest work had finally begun to gain recognition. She had thought she could finally walk a flower-filled path, proudly declaring to her relatives that she made a living by writing.
Just six hours ago, that dream had been completely shattered.
The morning of unemployment after quitting her job at a count’s household.
As Harriet was enjoying a rare, sweet sleep, Penelope burst into her small room and searched it thoroughly.
“Was anyone else here besides me?”
“No one comes here except you in the morning. What is this… what are you doing?”
Half-asleep and irritated, Harriet’s protests were ignored as Penelope checked under the bed, inside the wardrobe, behind the bathroom door.
She even opened the kitchen cabinet, leaned out the window, and scanned the street below. Finally, exhausted, she slumped into a chair.
Harriet, now fully alert, sensed something ominous.
Penelope spoke gravely.
“Harriet Brown. Don’t panic, and listen carefully.”
“I’m already panicking enough. What is it?”
“You’re screwed.”
It was hard to tell her not to say such nonsense—Penelope’s face was too serious.
Harriet nodded unconsciously.
So that’s how it is. I’m screwed.
“Okay… yeah. But why?”
Instead of answering, Penelope shoved a newspaper into her hands.
Like an unavoidable natural disaster, it was forced into her grip.
“What is th—”
“[Breaking] Is This Even a Novel?! Emperor of the Swan Empire Enraged”
The headline she skimmed contained talk of imperial fury.
“On a novel released in mid-January, Ladies’ Night, by Elliot Dark, His Majesty the Emperor of the Swan Empire—the great sovereign of the continent—has expressed his fury.
He reportedly repeatedly questioned whether this could truly be called a novel, saying his eyes closed the moment he opened it, that even his insomnia was cured, and that he fell asleep as soon as he saw the cover.
(…truncated)
As a result, authorities have ordered the suspension of publication and sales.”
Below that were absurd statements.
“A critic named Jerard declared such a novel should never exist.
Lady of House Welton also expressed that she had found it strangely unsettling.”
Harriet flipped through page after page in disbelief. The pages were filled with criticism.
Her hands trembled violently.
“What the hell…?”
Elliot Dark? That’s my pen name.
Ladies’ Night? That’s my book.
Just yesterday, this same newspaper praised it as a jewel of delicate emotional storytelling. Now it was nothing but condemnation.
“….”
She was screwed.
And not just by anyone—but by a foreign emperor, who had destroyed her reputation overnight.
After a long silence, Harriet finally spoke.
“…Ha. Haha.”
When something is too absurd, laughter comes out instead.
She couldn’t stop laughing.
“Ha! Ahahaha! Kya—!”
“Harriet?!”
“Kyahaha!”
Laughing like she had lost her mind, she clutched her stomach—and then collapsed, grabbing the back of her neck.
Penelope panicked.
“Hey!”
Lying spread-eagle on the bed, Harriet swallowed the curses she couldn’t say out loud behind her laughter.
Only now did she understand the phrase: humor wrapped around sorrow and rage.
Life really was unpredictable.
After the chaos, they suggested going out for fresh air.
As they wandered aimlessly, they passed in front of a bookstore. There, Harriet saw her books being thrown out.
Her eyes burned.
Her book was banned, her pen name stained, and her path ahead had become a thorny darkness.
After three years of working as a maid and unknown writer, she had thought her time had finally come.
So why was the road a steep uphill climb instead of a flower path?!
The handsome emperor in the newspaper illustration infuriated her beyond measure.
“If he had nothing better to do, he should just sleep! Why interfere in someone else’s life and ruin it?!”
“That damned emperor—!”
Before she could finish, Penelope clamped her mouth shut.
“You want to get arrested?!”
“Then arrest me! Go ahead!”
“What is wrong with you?!”
Harriet shoved Penelope’s hand away, grabbed paper and pen from her bag, and scribbled furiously against a wall.
Penelope peeked at the contents and was horrified.
Harriet sealed the letter in an envelope and strode off.
“Where are you going?!”
“The newspaper office!”
Let’s see how they like this.
The next day, a new headline appeared:
“[Breaking] Elliot Dark: Next Novel’s Villain Model Is the Emperor of the Swan Empire—Highly Anticipated!”
A silver-haired man glanced at the newspaper and slowly lifted the corner of his lips.
Sunlight filtered through the window, sliding across his hair and resting briefly at the corner of his eyes.
When the light touched his icy blue eyes, he squinted slightly.
As if brushing away an annoying insect, he waved his hand, and the sunlight retreated.
His neatly manicured fingers tapped the newspaper lightly.
A figure of almost unreal beauty—if one followed the line of his ivory-colored fingers upward.
“Such unyielding spirit. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Your Majesty.”
“If you call me ‘Your Majesty,’ don’t speak at all.”
“Ministers are furious, demanding punishment for using Your Majesty as material for gossip and insulting the Empire.”
“So noisy.”
His elegant brow furrowed slightly. He let out a faint sigh.
“So much anger. If only they used that energy for governance.”
“Your Majesty, if I may…”
“If you must, then don’t speak.”
“The one most angered by the article… was Your Majesty, was it not?”
Silence.
The emperor had been the one who, upon reading that Elliot Dark’s novel cured his insomnia because it was so dull, nearly exploded in outrage.
“To think that a small kingdom would use my name as cheap publicity… I was about to march in myself.”
His attendant had suffered greatly to stop him.
“Also, the novel in question has now been banned.”
“Banned, huh.”
He scoffed, then leaned back.
“Call Baron Bellan. I have something to say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And one more thing.”
After a brief pause, he continued.
“If one is challenged, is it not proper to respond?”
“Your Majesty…”
The attendant, long accustomed to him, hesitated.
“How many times must I silence you?”
The attendant smiled helplessly.
“As you command.”
A few days later, another headline appeared:
“[Breaking] Swan Empire Emperor Responds to Elliot Dark’s Challenge: ‘I Look Forward to It.’”
Thus began a grand chase—Harriet desperately trying to avoid him, and the emperor relentlessly pursuing her.
