I Tamed the Slave Male Lead Chapter 2

This was how I ended up transmigrating into this world.

I was a fourth-year office worker in South Korea who had spent all my school years being crushed under relentless competition, only to be thrown into the jungle that was society the moment I graduated. One day, exhausted after another long stretch of overtime, I was walking home with my nose buried in my phone when the sound of a honking horn made me look up.

A car with its windows tinted pitch-black was barreling onto the sidewalk where I was walking.

The moment I tried to get out of the way, I saw an elderly man frozen blankly beside me. Perhaps it was because his face, which looked more overwhelmed by helplessness than fear, caught my attention for some reason. Instead of getting out of the way myself, I pushed him aside and ended up being hit by the car.

Why had I done that?

It wasn’t as though I had a particularly righteous personality.

The impact was so strong that I dropped the phone in my hand, and apparently died on the spot. When I opened my eyes again, I was in a completely unfamiliar world.

If I had been reincarnated as a new person in a new world and allowed to walk down a flower-strewn path as though I were being rewarded for all the hardships of my previous life, how wonderful would that have been?

But the moment I realized that this was the world of the bleak romance-fantasy novel I had been reading on the phone I dropped, I fell into deep despair.

“Young lady? Are you all right? It looks like you still haven’t come to your senses. Oh, dear.”

Even as I stared at the girl in a maid’s uniform who was looking at me with a worried expression, I could hardly make myself believe this was real.

My entire body was still drenched in cold sweat. Even though I had spat out whatever had been blocking my throat, breathing was still difficult. My swollen throat and the mucous membranes inside my mouth were also stinging and aching terribly.

And it wasn’t necessarily because of that, either. My entire body felt heavy and limp, like a waterlogged lump of cotton, with every joint aching and not an ounce of strength in me. In Korean, there was a common expression for this kind of state: I felt completely drained of all strength.

As much as I wanted to simply lie down, I couldn’t, because unfamiliar memories were gradually flowing into my mind.

A young noblewoman named Arabella Maiona, who had only just come of age. The sorrowful life of a girl who had lived as the ugly duckling of her family from the moment she was born overwhelmed me without giving me a moment to breathe.

Sweating profusely, I let myself be examined by the doctor while keeping my eyes and ears wide open. Little by little, I began to make out the conversations around me. It was strange how I could understand them immediately despite the language being unfamiliar.

“What a disaster during the Crown Princess selection process…. Just how much and how quickly did she eat for it to get stuck in her throat?”

“Her Majesty the Empress has decided to suspend the selection process for now and postpone the announcement of the Crown Princess until later….”

“I wonder if the misfortune of House Maiona is going to spread to the Imperial Family as well.”

“His Highness Crown Prince Sota also seems to be in a very foul mood, doesn’t he?”

Crown Prince Sota.

The moment I heard that unusual name, a chill ran down my spine. Only then did I realize what was happening.

I had transmigrated into the romance-fantasy novel Blue Roses at the End of the World, which I had been reading before I was hit by the car.

Blue Roses at the End of the World was a story set in a world stained by all kinds of indulgence, corruption, and injustice, narrated in the first person by a saintess named Dorothea, who was called the Pure Rose.

The central narrative revolved around Dorothea saving the slave male lead, Yusiliph, who was little more than a beast, and turning him into the hero who would save the world on the brink of its destruction.

However, because Yusiliph was in such a broken state at the beginning of the story, it took a considerable amount of time before the two could develop anything resembling a normal emotional relationship. On top of that, the conflict intensified when Crown Prince Sota, the second male lead who was obsessed with Dorothea, became entangled with them, forming a love triangle that eventually led to Dorothea being forced into an unwanted relationship with Sota.

After countless twists and turns, Yusiliph came to love Dorothea and awakened his powers, standing against Sota. But at the same time, a sealed labyrinth—essentially a ticking time bomb—erupted, unleashing monsters upon the world, and the world began hurtling rapidly toward its end.

I hadn’t been able to read the ending before the accident, but judging by the atmosphere of the story up until that point, the apocalypse was practically a foregone conclusion.

‘I was just about to drop the novel because everything kept getting more and more frustrating… I should’ve put it down sooner.’

But regretting it now was pointless.

One thing was certain: I had already transmigrated into this world, and if this world met its end, I, as a transmigrator, would inevitably die as well.

‘No. I can’t die again.’

Perhaps because I had already died once, the moment I was able to assess the situation, my survival instinct flared up and instantly snapped me back to reality.

Just then, the maid who had been anxiously pacing around me cautiously spoke.

“Lady Arabella. Are you all right? Shall I bring you some water?”

The moment I heard her words, something came to mind.

‘Wait a minute. Arabella Maiona… She’s that woman, isn’t she?’

Arabella never appeared even once in the novel, but her poisoning and death were mentioned several times through other people’s conversations.

‘Arabella Maiona, you mean that woman is already dead? Poisoning, you say? She died far too peacefully compared to the sins she committed. If she’d fallen into my hands, I wouldn’t have let her off so easily.’

Those were the words the male protagonist, Yusiliph, uttered after learning of her death through Dorothea.

As far as I remembered, the reason Yusiliph entered the Imperial Family as a slave and suffered all kinds of hardships was because of Arabella. She was the one who had purchased Yusiliph at the slave market and presented him to Princess Regita as a bribe.

‘Damn it…. Of all characters, I had to transmigrate into the one who was destined to have a terrible history with the male protagonist.’

Cold sweat ran down my back.

But that wasn’t the only problem.

It was certainly a major incident for a candidate to die and come back to life in the middle of the Crown Princess selection process, yet the atmosphere around me was disturbingly ominous.

A doctor had been examining me, but no one else seemed interested in finding out what had actually happened.

It felt as though hostile gazes were clinging to my skin, as if something that deserved to die had somehow survived. The sensation was disgusting.

‘And what’s with this doctor? What is there to examine for this long? It’s obviously poisonous.’

Just the swollen throat and mucous membranes in my mouth, which made it difficult to breathe, along with the unbearable itch that made me want to scratch my entire body raw, were enough to tell me that this wasn’t a simple choking accident.

Yet the doctor hadn’t even bothered to examine the cookie I had forcibly pulled out by sticking my fingers down my throat.

‘Wait. There’s no guarantee that this man hasn’t been bribed by whoever is trying to poison Arabella, is there?’

The thought snapped me fully awake.

Could I really trust a doctor working in the Imperial Palace to treat me? What if he tried to make me swallow some unidentified substance under the guise of medicine?

As I watched him with that thought in mind, even the trembling of his fingertips somehow seemed ominous.

‘I’ve already spat out that damn cookie, so I’ll get out of here first and either find the family’s physician or something. I can’t trust anyone here!’

Besides, judging from Arabella’s memories, I had a pretty good idea what the cookie that had done this to my body was.

Tap.

Having made up my mind, I pushed the doctor’s hand away and stood up.

“…Lady Maiona?”

“I think… cough. I must have had something stuck in my throat.”

“Pardon? But—”

“Considering what day it is, I must have been overly nervous. To think I would make such a mistake. I’ve spat out whatever was stuck in my throat, so I should be fine now.”

Just as I firmly dismissed him, a sharp, spiteful voice came from behind me.

“What? Was it all an act?”

Even though it was a voice I had never heard before, a shiver ran through me. With a sense of foreboding, I turned around to see an extravagantly dressed woman who was clearly of no ordinary status openly sneering at me.

“Hey, Arabella. I know you want to draw attention to yourself, but don’t you think this is taking things a little too far?”

Her beautiful face, with flawless skin smooth as a peeled egg and perfectly applied makeup, was instantly recognizable to me.

Or rather, it was the true Arabella’s subconscious lingering within this body that recognized her.

She was someone who regarded Arabella as nothing more than an easy pushover she could exploit whenever she pleased, as well as the current master of Yusiliph, the male protagonist of the original novel, who was still a slave.

The Imperial Family’s precious darling and, by unanimous reputation, an absolute brat—

Princess Regita Monahin Groheim.