“Impossible.”
Erna Zaherette. I’m Twenty-two years old.
For the past several years, I could confidently say that I had lived a relatively peaceful life.
Born as the daughter of a prestigious marquis family, I had grown up wanting for nothing.
There had been some unfortunate times along the way, but I had overcome them all by now and was living each day diligently as the head of my family.
At least, I had been—until just now.
“Say that again. Laura. What exactly did I… do?”
“Oh, honestly, why are you acting like this? You entrusted this to me last night, my lady. You told me to return it to you first thing tomorrow morning.”
Laura, the dark-brown-haired head maid, answered me with an exasperated look as she held something out.
A letter.
She was looking at me as if she couldn’t understand why I was acting so strangely.
Sorry, but I was the one who should be saying that.
That can’t be. I clearly collapsed from overwork a week ago and only woke up just now.
A week ago, I had lost consciousness while working in my office.
The cause was overwork.
I had always been terrible at pacing myself. Ever since I was young, I had simply thrown myself at whatever work came my way, and eventually, this was the result.
My vision had suddenly spun, and I had collapsed.
And yet, I had only opened my eyes this morning.
“Pardon? What do you mean? You did collapse a week ago, but you regained consciousness the very next day.”
“What?”
I had regained consciousness after only one day?
And apparently, I had been walking around as if nothing had happened?
What in the world 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?”
I called for a brief time-out, then pinched my cheek instead of thinking.
Ouch. That hurts.
Which meant this wasn’t a dream after all.
This makes no sense. I have absolutely no memories of the past week. It’s almost as if…
“It’s as if someone else came into my body and left…”
“Pardon?”
“No, nothing. Just talking to myself.”
I muttered absently before quickly shaking my head.
Maybe I have short-term amnesia. For some reason, all my memories from the past week were erased.
Yes. That made a little more sense.
Losing my memories was hardly something I could take lightly, but perhaps it was because I had found a possible explanation that I felt somewhat relieved.
“Speaking of someone else, though, last week you really did seem a little strange, my lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You usually spend all day working in your office, don’t you? But when you suddenly declared that you were going on strike because you didn’t understand why you had to work, everyone was absolutely…”
“Wait. What did you say? Strike?”
Did that mean I stopped working after regaining consciousness?
For an entire week?!
“That’s not all. You hardly ever leave the estate, but suddenly you started going out practically every other day. You have no idea how surprised everyone was.”
“……”
“And then you complained about why your dressing room was full of such gloomy clothes. So you immediately went to a dress shop and practically bought out all the dresses and jewelry. Everyone was in an uproar.”
“What?!”
I shot to my feet and immediately headed for the dressing room.
Since I spent most of my time sitting and working, I usually preferred comfortable, practical clothes over elaborate dresses.
I also preferred soft, understated colors over anything bright or eye-catching.
Yet—
“W-What is all this?”
I froze at the sight of the dressing room overflowing with 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.
And a dazzling crimson satin dress that looked like something an opera singer might wear on stage.
There were hats glittering with delicate feathers and tiny pearls, along with high-heeled shoes with straps, neatly embroidered with silver thread.
It was as if an entire dress shop had been moved in here.
“I… really bought all of this myself?”
“I told you so. Why have you been acting like this all morning? It’s almost as if you don’t remember anything… Oh!”
Laura stopped mid-sentence, her face filled with confusion.
Then her eyes widened to the size of fists, and she began to huff and puff.
“I knew it! I knew something was strange! I knew it!”
Oh, no.
“Laura? I know you’re surprised. Believe me, I’m just as bewildered by this situation. Yes. I think I may have lost my mem—”
“You worked so much that your mind finally snapped for a moment! Right?!”
“Huh?”
I froze at Laura’s outburst.
The conclusion was somewhat similar to mine, but the details were a little different.
Still, this is probably better than amnesia. It just means I had a little breakdown.
Having quickly calculated the situation, I nodded.
“Exactly. No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired lately. I must have… lost my mind for a moment.”
“See? What did I tell you? I told you how important it is to get plenty of rest, didn’t I? There’s a reason they say people can go crazy from working too much!”
“Yes, Laura. Everything you said was true. From now on, I’ll make sure to get plenty of rest whenever I have the chance.”
Only after I even promised her did Laura finally nod in satisfaction.
I secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
All right, then.
“In that case, I’m sorry, Laura, but I think I need to rest a little longer.”
When I told her that she could leave for now, Laura still gave me a worried look until the very end.
“If you start feeling unwell, you must call me immediately, all right?”
And with that, she left, leaving me alone in the room.
I took a deep breath and unfolded the paper in my hand.
It was a letter that the version of me I couldn’t remember had apparently asked Laura to give to me tomorrow.
[To Erna Zaherette.]
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 this.”
It felt suspicious, but I swallowed my doubts for the moment and continued reading.
[If you’re reading this letter, that means you’ve come back, right?
I’m sure everything feels sudden and ridiculous. It was the same for me.
It may be hard to believe, but… I came from another world.
A place called ‘Korea’ on Earth. My name is Park Sumin, and I’m twenty-two years old. I’m a college student.]
Earth? Korea? Where was that supposed to be?
[One day, I was taking a short nap while preparing a report, and when I opened my eyes, I was inside your body.
Erna Zaherette. Inside your body, specifically.
And it didn’t take me long to realize it.]
What? She entered my body?
No, more importantly, what did she realize…?
[That this world is exactly like the novel I read back in my world.]
“Is it the same as a novel? What is that supposed to mean?”
The barrage of incomprehensible statements made my head spin.
[To give you a rough summary of the novel, the female protagonist possesses the body of a saintess in a romance-fantasy world and proceeds to conquer the characters one by one in an R-rated harem story… but I’ll leave out the details.
Thanks to that, I had the time of my life for an entire week. I stayed in a beautiful old-fashioned mansion, went to cafés in town, and enjoyed elegant afternoon tea. I even went shopping to my heart’s content.
Oh, and I’m sorry for spending your money without permission. I’d always wanted to experience the life of a noble lady at least once♥]
I let out a small sigh at the hopelessly cheerful tone of her letter.
I was already overwhelmed enough as it was, and this woman, who seemed to have nothing but flowers growing in her head, was making me feel even more insane.
Perhaps she sensed how I was feeling.
[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 at least report everything to you, so I wrote down a brief record of what I did over the past week.
― Tea time at Tea House
― Admired famous paintings at Gallery
― Watched three plays at the theater,
.
.
.
Sorry. That’s about all I can remember.
I should’ve written things down as I went. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very good memory.]
“Yeah. I can tell.”
At this point, I wondered if it would have been better if she hadn’t written anything at all.
Was she trying to mess with me?
[Oh, I just remembered! There’s one more thing.
This is really… something I… feel sorry about too…]
What else could there be?
The hesitation in the sentence was painfully obvious, as were the excessive number of dots.
A sense of dread slowly crept over me.
Following the trail of dots with my eyes, I slowly read the next line—
And froze.
[…You slept with Leon Obsidian.]
“Holy shit.”
What kind of bullshit was this?
What? I slept with whom?
Leon Obsidian?
“Don’t tell me… ‘that’ Leon Obsidian?!”
Stunned, I remained frozen for quite some time.
Leon Obsidian.
Who was he?
For starters, he was the illegitimate son of the former emperor and the current head of the Grand Duke of Bernstein’s house.
On top of that, he was renowned as the most beautiful man in the entire Orden Empire and was also the richest man in the Empire.
If you only heard that much, you might think he was the definition of perfection.
But there was one enormous problem.
He was the commander of the Holy Knights, an order whose members had sworn a vow of chastity.
And because of that, the social circles of the Orden Empire had given him a rather infamous title.
“The Greatest Marriage False Advertisement of the Century!!!”
“But what the hell did I supposedly do with a Grand Duke like that?!”
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