Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Rosetta woke up a little after daybreak.

Just before the sky turned blue.

As she blinked away her drowsiness, she took a pillow and covered her face with it after remembering what happened the night before.

‘Just what have I done…’

She cried like a child while clinging onto Alicia.

She must have been out of her mind because she was injured.

Her body felt too hot and it was like she was drunk, but without the nausea.

But instead of alcohol, she had been delirious with a fever. No, in the first place, it would have been better if she wasn’t delirious at all.

Absorbed in justifying the shame she felt for a long time, she blinked when a thought flashed across her mind.

‘Come to think of it, it’s been a long time since I cried like that in front of someone else.’

One thing’s for sure—she never cried like that in years.

No. Perhaps it was her first time.

She wasn’t sure what the exact answer was. At the very least, it wasn’t in her memories.

It occurred to her that she was adjusting well to this new life of hers.

It hadn’t been long since she transmigrated here, but she was already doing things that were out of character for her.

She didn’t know if this was a green light or a red light.

Going down from her bed, she felt less ashamed the more time passed.

“Alright… Let’s forget. Just forget it.”

As she stretched, she muttered to herself.

There was no need to dwell on shameful memories. What’s done is done.

Besides, the present was more important than drowning under waves of shame.

She had work to do.

After lightly stretching her neck, she went to her desk and sat down.

Relying on the original Rosetta’s memories, she took out a clean piece of paper and picked up a quill, which she wetted with ink.

Then, she wrote.

「 Mob-Alicia Project 」

That was the name of the grand plan she would be leading from here on out.

Yesterday, she regretted showing an embarrassing face in front of Alicia, but at least her determination not to let her suffer was sincere.

It was the determination not to let that child walk the same path as her.

She would need to interfere with the original narrative, but just thinking about it already tired her out and made her feel like there were hives all over her body. But it couldn’t be helped.

She already made up her mind to save Alicia from the fate of the female lead.

She patted the blank space under the title with her quill’s tip, then recalled the original.

Just as you’d need to go to a forest to find a tree, you’d need to find a keyword to change the narrative.

She closed her eyes, then opened them.

Several thick books came to mind. It wasn’t long before she could hear the sound of pages turning.

‘Is this the Carter family’s funeral?’

In the original, Leo and Alicia met and talked for the first time at that funeral.

It was set to take place around the summer of this year.

That was when Leo started taking an interest in Alicia.

‘If I tell her not to attend the funeral…’

No, that wouldn’t work.

She wouldn’t be able to change fate just by covering Alicia’s eyes.

There were other hunting events and coming-of-age banquets where they could meet.

Noble men and women who were about to reach adulthood were also required to participate in events hosted by the Imperial family.

Rosetta took comfort in the fact that there were still a few months left before the funeral.

She erased the first method from her mind. Then, she dove more into the novel.

Leo, who became interested in Alicia, began to gradually fall in love with her after a few serendipitous encounters.

What began as a subtle attention grew in intensity during the coming-of-age ball.

Since Leo’s father passed away and he became a Duke at a young age, the rest of the novel became an unbridled succession of ‘mad obsession’ without any brakes on it.

Alicia was overwhelmed by his callous affection and obsession, but she couldn’t push him away easily.

There were two main reasons for that…

First, Alicia’s personality.

Katie had abused her for a long period of time, and her older sister, Rosetta, who wasn’t close to her family, hated Alicia.

Her environment was wholly conducive for making her extremely passive, timid, and incapable of rejecting people.

For Alicia, it was the first time that anyone paid attention to her as much as Leo did, and unfortunately, she grew weak to him, not being able to deal with him at all.

Second, Leo’s position.

The Duchy of Valentine.

The Duchy of Freesia.

The Duchy of Carter.

These three families served as pillars to the Kham Empire, respectively wielding the sword, holy power, and magic.

These three strong pillars had a relationship with each other to keep each other in check under equal power.

Leo was the heir to the Duchy of Carter, and at an early age, became the Duke himself.

Among the families that kept each other in check, there was the young Duke and the Ducal Princess.

It would have been too much for the timid Alicia to reject him.

At least, if he had still been fighting for succession, she could have avoided him. However, when he became Duke and put pressure on her, Alicia became like a doll being dragged across the land.

Leo was a man who took full advantage of Alicia’s weak mental state.

Her trauma, her relationship with her family, and her family’s political position. All of it.

’What if your family gets hurt and your household collapses? What if a war breaks out…’

In fact, these were worries that she already had.

He was obsessed.

Those worries became reality.

No matter how much she tried to avoid him, cruel fate did not allow her to be happy.

By the end of the novel, Leo wanted to bring down the Valentines just to get his hands on Alicia completely. And so, the Valentine family ended up dying one by one. That was what happened in this wretched tragedy.

The only one left from Valentine was Alicia.

Rosetta, Damian, and Duke Valentine.

They were all just helpless sacrifices to that cruel fate.

At the end of it, Leo took in the female lead who was the only one left and kept her in his possession forever.

‘What a load of crap.’

How was she able to stand reading it?

In particular, she didn’t like the fact that ‘Leo’ hadn’t faced any repercussions only because the genre of the novel was like this.

…Because she herself had experienced it.

’Please stop, please… Don’t touch my family! Just… I’d rather that you… I…’

An empty cry echoed in her mind.

It wasn’t Alicia, and it wasn’t Rosetta.

It hadn’t been a month yet, but… she didn’t know why her throat was closed up.

“Rita.”

She said her name under her breath, blinking as though she was surprised by her own voice.

And when she checked the name ‘Rita’ was written on it.

It was the result of her subconscious.

While staring at the name ‘Rita’, she repeatedly drew a black circle over the syllable ‘ta’.

She repeatedly marked it until the letters were invisible.

Then, she wrote ‘A’ in front of the ‘li’* and ‘cia’ next to the black mark.

{ tl/n: R and L have the same character in hangul, so this syllable could be read as both ‘Ri’ and ‘Li’. }

Alicia.

After outlining the heavily written letters, she continued to think about what she had contemplated before.

‘First of all, Katie’s abuse and the resulting trauma… It’ll be hard to remedy.’

It had already been too long.

Katie was gone, but the memories that she had already accumulated wouldn’t go away so easily.

It was a great improvement that Alicia ran to my rescue, but it might be difficult for her to muster up the same courage all the time.

‘Actually, the most obvious thing is…’

It was to get rid of the male lead.

Without the romantic interest, a romance novel would lead to nowhere.

‘I’ll just kill you.’

In fact, there was no better plan.

If the male lead just ceased to exist, then the story wouldn’t proceed according to the narrative.

However, it wouldn’t be easy.

And she knew this, too.

This line of logic was like this: If one didn’t want to go walk down the stairs, one just needed to jump out the window.

It wouldn’t be easy at all to just approach Leo and kill him now. And even if she succeeded in killing him, the aftermath would be disastrous.

Alicia and the rest of the Valentines could be harmed.

Rosetta could take care of herself. She could just die and move on to the next world…

But how could a case like a Ducal Princess killing another Duchy’s Young Master be solved as a simple person-to-person conflict?

The outcome could either be a huge monetary compensation or a civil war.

Amid an outpour of swords and magic, she automatically pictured a bloody and wounded Alicia.

‘This won’t work.’

She came to a quick conclusion then moved on to the next option.

However, she still couldn’t get rid of the idea in her head that getting rid of Leo would be the best way.

‘If I can’t kill you, then I’ll at least take away your power.

Tap, tap, tap.

The tip of the quill left countless dots on the paper, then stopped sharply.

Something crossed her mind just then.

‘Come to think of it, it’s not as if… there’s no method to do it, right?’

Leo would become the Duke a few months after the coming-of-age ceremony.

It was around that time that the current Duke due to a sudden deterioration of his heath between winter and spring.

It meant that Rosetta still had months to prepare before Leo had more power.

‘What if someone else other than Leo takes up the title of Duke?’

Oh, that family was quite the family as well.

There was one person who could take away Leo’s most formidable card, which was power.

How would a tiger chew its food if it was toothless?

Conveniently, Leo had a disgrace of a brother.

And he was the main character during the Carter family’s funeral.

Cassion Carter.

His role in the novel was a short-lived villain—just like Rosetta.

‘Ah, the main characters here both have half-siblings that are villains.’

But in fact, Cassion was quite the villain.

He was a pitiful man who ran away and dreamed of revenge after almost being killed by Leo, but in the end, he died by Leo’s hand.

Even at the time of the funeral, which was the first scene of the novel, Cassion was actually alive.

After Leo almost killed him, the funeral was held without his body.

After his real death, he faced a miserable end without even the luxury of having a grave.

‘Pitiful, lonely villain…’

Rosetta picked up a calendar and looked up the day of Cassion’s accident.

That was the day that Leo orchestrated a carriage incident where Cassion almost died, but he survived and hid himself.

To get Cassion on her side, she would have to approach him before the accident.

After the accident, Cassion would be in dire straits if he hid the same way he did in the novel.

‘Let’s see… Cassion’s accident. It’ll be a week before the academy’s graduation ceremony.’

It was three days later.

Only three days from today.

Rattle.

She opened her eyes to the sensation of her head being jostled slightly.

After riding a carriage for a long time, she fell asleep without realizing it.

Her head continued to bob along with the carriage, and this was because they were going over an unpaved road.

The sky, which had been bright when she first went out, was now turning yellow.

Under the yellow sky, the vastness of nature unfolded.

Branches swayed in the wind, grass flowed like waves, flowers everywhere.

The landscape in this world was similar to the third round, but certainly not the same.

It had been a long time since she saw this kind of scenery.

‘Ah, this thought again.’

After entering the fourth round, she often thought about it.

Places where feet could walk over, places where eyes could see, scents of perfume, textures, sounds.

Everything was followed with admiration and the thought of ‘how long has it been?’

It occurred to her that she had been locked up for a long time in the third round.

However, just as she became accustomed to that dark place and those bars, she would also grow accustomed to all these things again.

Rattle. The carriage ran over something bumpy again.

“Are you quite alright, Milady?”

“I’m okay.”

While looking out the window, she came to her senses at the prompting of the carriage horseman’s voice.

“How long do we have left?”

“We’ll be there soon!”

She turned her back on the window she was looking out of, then went to the opposite window and opened the curtains.

Beyond the small window, she could see a mountain that was neither too high nor too low.

It was seven days before the academy’s summer graduation ceremony.

Today, Cassion’s carriage would fall down a cliff.

——

tl/n: ml is that u?? finally?? after 84 years????