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Chapter 1 –
I’m Done Loving You
“I’m done.”
At my words, the man who was as beautiful as a painting turned to look at me.
One slightly raised eyebrow silently questioned what I meant.
Even in a moment like this, he was breathtakingly beautiful.
Beautiful enough that anyone could fall in love with him at first sight.
His hair looked as though it had been woven from strands of moonlight.
His clear emerald-blue eyes shimmered like the sea.
His sharp nose could have cut glass, and beneath it, his lips were as red as a perfectly ripened fruit.
Compared to him, the reflection of my messy wheat-colored hair in those clear eyes looked pitiful.
My dull brown eyes were painfully ordinary.
Yes.
I loved him.
It was an unremarkable, one-sided love.
A love that had lasted three years.
Long, depending on how you looked at it.
Short, if you didn’t.
But now, none of it mattered anymore.
“I mean loving you.”
“I’m going to stop.”
The man’s emotionless eyes blinked once.
I had seen that indifferent reaction so many times that I was sick of it.
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel miserable.
‘Of course.’
That was my first thought.
If he had reacted any differently now, that would have been stranger.
At last, the man sitting across from me showed some sort of response.
He tilted his head slightly.
“This isn’t some new trick to get my attention, is it?”
Ha.
An incredulous laugh escaped my lips.
I was so dumbfounded that I couldn’t even answer immediately.
Then again, this was the same man who had refused to believe for over a year that I was in love with him.
His words from long ago overlapped with the present.
“Someone like you is in love with me?”
I remembered my answer.
“Of course not.”
Yes.
Of course not.
As if I would still be in love with you.
I had decided I wouldn’t be.
“I’m returning to my family’s territory.”
“I’ll stay there for the rest of my life.”
“I’m never coming back.”
At the word forever, the man studied me as if testing my resolve.
“Until you die?”
“Yes.”
“Until I die.”
“I’ll never come to the capital to see you again.”
I wouldn’t set foot anywhere you happened to be.
There wasn’t any grand reason for ending my unrequited love.
I was simply tired of it.
And I felt a little sorry for the person who had endured my hopeless feelings for so long.
Then, once again, his reaction left me speechless.
He smiled faintly and lifted his teacup to his lips.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
……
‘How irritating.’
I was reincarnated.
There hadn’t been any dramatic event that made me realize it.
As I grew up, I had simply known it as naturally as I knew my own name.
Earth.
Korea.
A young office worker.
Biology.
My previous life had apparently been rather ordinary and somewhat miserable.
But the emotions tied to those memories had faded away.
Only the memories remained.
I had been reincarnated as the adoptive mother of the villainess in a romance fantasy novel.
Fidelia Jonas.
The eccentric scholar of House Jonas.
And someone who belonged to the generation before the story’s protagonists.
In the original novel, Fidelia and her husband were unable to have children.
So they adopted the future villainess, Kiara.
‘And because they neglected her so badly, she grew up twisted.’
Like so many villainesses in novels, Kiara’s ending was tragic.
Her adoptive parents, however, never committed evil acts themselves.
They were the rare exception.
Which meant that, as things stood now, there was no doomed future waiting for me.
I was still young.
In fact, I was barely an adult.
The beginning of the original story was still far away.
After putting everything together, I reached one conclusion.
‘The original novel has nothing to do with me.’
Whether I became involved or not didn’t matter.
So…
‘I’ll just live my own life.’
Until I turned twenty-one, I completely ignored the original story and lived however I pleased.
According to the novel, I was supposed to marry Kiara’s future adoptive father as soon as I became an adult.
I flatly refused.
With the full support of the Marquis and Marchioness Jonas, I devoted myself entirely to my studies.
I didn’t even bother with the skincare routines expected of noblewomen.
Once I began preparing for my master’s degree at Romen University, my hair was perpetually messy.
That absent-minded life as a bookworm changed during a hotel banquet I attended with my parents.
“Lady, who is that gentleman?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
Inside the enormous Rococo-style ballroom, one man stood out immediately.
He was several inches taller than everyone else.
At first, I simply thought he was handsome.
Though calling him merely handsome hardly did justice to someone who perfectly embodied beauty itself.
“Goodness, Lady Fidelia!”
“You really don’t know who he is?”
“How detached from society have you been?”
“I’ve been busy lately.”
“I haven’t even had time to read the weekly papers.”
A young noblewoman looked at me with pity before giving me the answer.
“That’s Duke Hernan Cleor.”
Hernan Cleor.
The moment I learned his name, every thought about how handsome he was disappeared.
He had been mentioned in the original novel as the heroine’s benefactor.
Only mentioned.
He never actually appeared.
By the time the story began, he was already dead.
He had died from a rare illness.
‘Someone who died young in the novel is standing right in front of me… alive.’
From that day onward, my eyes kept drifting toward him.
And once your gaze lingers once…
Then twice…
It’s hardly surprising when simple affection grows into love.
After that, I frequently ran into Hernan.
Not because fate favored me.
I practically followed him everywhere.
I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until one day I noticed it myself.
Eventually, it became common knowledge throughout high society that I was in love with Hernan.
One day, he quietly called me aside.
“You’ve been following me lately.”
“If you have some ulterior motive, I suggest you reveal it now.”
“Um…”
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Then why?”
“Because I like you.”
Of course, the suspicious Hernan didn’t believe me.
With those crystal-clear eyes, he could freeze people where they stood.
His healthy red lips were more than capable of drawing blood from someone’s heart.
“Someone like you loves me?”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
Remembering that day, I frowned and slapped a coin down onto the ticket counter.
‘What exactly is someone like me supposed to mean?’
The employee inside the booth flinched.
Only then did I realize what I’d done.
I apologized and bought my train ticket.
[I’m leaving now.]
Before heading to the platform, I contacted my aide, who had departed ahead of me.
I intended to keep my promise to Hernan and return to my family’s territory.
After he had made that comment about “someone like you,” I had only become more persistent.
Even after countless cold rejections, my feelings refused to die.
I sent letters.
I gave gifts.
I poured endless sincerity into everything I did.
Once he already knew how I felt, there was nothing left to hide.
Even so, I had tried my hardest not to burden him.
“I’ll believe you.”
“…Well, that’s generous of you.”
It took an entire year before Hernan finally accepted that my feelings were genuine.
A year and a half later, he even began speaking to me informally.
“Your Grace.”
“When did you start dropping formal speech with me?”
“About a year and a half ago.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Yes.”
“There is.”
“You’re getting awfully bold.”
“Then abolish the class system.”
Eventually, we even traded casual jokes.
But none of it gave me hope.
Three years passed.
Hernan simply wasn’t interested in me.
Even if he cared about me, it wasn’t as a woman.
He would probably never know that he was the reason Fidelia Jonas had started looking like an actual human being instead of a disheveled scholar.
‘Well, it’s for the best.’
‘No more carefully written letters.’
‘No more cutting into my research budget just to buy him gifts.’
Over those three years, I completed both my master’s and doctoral degrees at Romen University, the Empire’s only university.
Thanks to early admission, early graduation, and relentless studying, I achieved it all at a young age.
The Jonas territory, where my parents lived, was located in the Empire’s fertile southern region.
The weather was mild all year round.
The peaceful atmosphere made it the perfect place for research.
‘It was nice being with you…’
‘No, that’s not right.’
We were never together.
And it wasn’t particularly enjoyable.
Still…
‘Let’s never meet again.’
A white puff of breath escaped with my sigh.
The weather was bitterly cold.
Homeless children wandered the streets searching for somewhere warm enough to survive.
Naturally, I thought of another orphan from the novel.
‘Come to think of it…’
‘There’s that child.’
Kiara.
The future villainess.
She should be around ten years old by now.
‘Is she wandering through the freezing slums right now too?’
‘Since I never got married, I never became her adoptive mother.’
Kiara had effectively lost the family that was supposed to adopt her.
What would become of her now?
Even while hopelessly in love, I had quietly searched for Kiara, who had not yet become a villainess.
I couldn’t help it.
I felt guilty.
I wasn’t legally responsible for her.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had taken away the warm home she was meant to have.
But I had never found her.
Perhaps the original story itself prevented us from meeting before the proper time.
Sighing once more, I turned toward the station.
Then I saw her.
A little girl.
Crouching beneath a bench.
Bright red hair.
No older than ten.
Golden eyes.
‘Kiara?’
