Whether you want it or not, everyone is supposed to be born into the world. I was born that way, and I didn’t live by doing what I wanted to do, but I’ve lived just as normal and happy.

However, life is often unpredictable, and some of them are absurd enough to be broadcasted on radio stories to win prizes or spread around the Internet community as a laughing stock.

I came to this world in the blink of an eye. A world where the Crown Prince still exists, where the warrior walks through this street, where there is faith and magic. To be exact, the world of common romance novels that I read at my friend’s house the day before yesterday.

I opened my eyes as the only villain there, the only daughter of the Marquis, the childhood friend and fiancée of the Crown Prince, Eris Misérian, who is jealous of the female protagonist.

Some women may have dreamt of such a world once, and some women may have decided to live earnestly here since they cannot help it.

However, I have no confidence in loving this world. So, let’s die as soon as possible, and return to my world.

***

“Lady, are you awake?”

Is it because I am an agnostic person looking for God? I earnestly hoped to get myself back at this point, but I still opened my eyes in the novel today.

Instead of hearing my mother’s voice that I wanted to hear, it was the voice of the maid that woke me up. My mouth, which has always been obstinate, is bent gently to me, but it did not impress me. The part-time job I did just to make ends meet was surprisingly useful in these places.

“Huh. Did you say that we would enter the Imperial Palace today?

A polite smile hung awkwardly around my mouth.

Because the main character and narrator of the novel was Helena, the heroine of the novel, I didn’t know Eris’s personality or surroundings.

However, when they see that Eris was not particularly strange, I seem to have managed to imitate the nobleman.

Getting dressed usually took about two hours, but today I had to go to the Imperial Palace, so I had to start preparing an hour earlier than usual. She’s probably trying to do it to look beautiful to her fiancé, the Prince.

It’s all useless. The Crown Prince loves Helena, the mistress. From the moment I first met her until now.

Her desperate devotion continues until the end of the book, finally reaching the end when Helena will be welcomed as the Empress. Eris, who loved the prince, or to be precise, was jealous of Helena, went crazy.

Actually, this novel wasn’t my cup of tea. It was a perfectly decent story to read if one was bored as it contained commonly recurring tropes and characters that reduced the story’s perfection.

There was no twist, no memorable narrative. Just a repetition of sweet excitement with three handsome and talented male lead candidates, and the vicious acts of Eris who interfered with them.

Despite being another villainess who confronted the female lead, there was no such thing as the narrative of Eris.

She was just full of inferiority, a person who unilaterally disliked the good Helena and did not reflect on herself until the end. She was more like a plot device as the heroine’s ordeal instead of a human being.

Eris eventually succeeded in poisoning Helena, but she dramatically returned from death because one of the male protagonists was the High Priest.

Such a cliché story. This is the story that Eris dies and Helena lives happily ever after, but everyone who likes Helena will be satisfied.

“What are you thinking, my lady?”

A woman who arranged Eris’s hair after dressing up asked.

This was exactly what I imagined Snow White to look like when I read it as a child, with black and rich hair, white skin, and bloody lips.

A strange and beautiful woman was reflected in the mirror. It was scary.

“Thinking that time is really slow.”

“My lady, you must be looking forward to your engagement ceremony?”

“Is that so?”

My death is so painful.

***

“A glorious afternoon, Lady Misérian.”

“… Your Majesty, what a glorious afternoon it is, as you have waited for me.”

When I came out after greeting the Emperor, the prince’s attendant and knight were waiting for me.

Since the prince hates Eris so much, he might skip teatime at least once, but he inevitably kept his promise. This is because it was neither a promise to me nor a promise to the Emperor.

“Eris! No, Lady Miserian! Oh my God!”

An innocent and cheerful voice with a lovely smile greeted me. When her silvery hair fluttered lightly as if her sugar was melted and pulled out, the prince smiled and arranged her hair.

It was a pair that matched well with, ‘a glorious afternoon’. The blonde prince warmly watched as Helena tied her hair, then turned a cold gaze to me.

“… It’s later than usual.”

“… It’s a glorious afternoon, Your Highness, Helena.”

“I’m glad the tea hasn’t cooled down yet. Come on, sit down.”

“Stop being so formal to her, Helena. You’re two are friends… right?”

Helena, whose eyes were filled with anticipation, and the Crown Prince, whose gaze looked as if he would slap my cheek if I shook my head, turned towards me at the same time. It was funny.

The fallen Countess, who was a close friend of the Empress, accepted the position of the Crown Prince’s nanny, and her daughter turned out to be Helena.

Although she has the blood of a prestigious family, she is considered a commoner now.

She hadn’t even dreamed of drinking tea together in the original story, and she would use the prince’s favor for her in order to be a nobleman.

Originally, if we were following the development in the novel, Eris would attempt to catch the fault and then be expelled by the angry prince, but it was also tiring to cause such a disturbance.

Regardless of whether I give Helena a verbal rebuke now or later, the Crown Prince would hate Eris, but I didn’t have to lose my strength. So I gently turned to Helena.

“Cold tea tastes bitter. Will you fill my cup?”

“Oh, sure Eris.”

“… Has the young lady not learned how to pour tea at home? Or maybe she has discomfort in her hands?”

Seriously?

The Prince opened his sharp eyes and glared at me because I asked his woman to work, but it is unfortunate that a person who has no regrets in life is not afraid to respond.

Although the Marquis couple wasn’t my real mom and dad, I was annoyed by the man in front of me who was immediately talking about family education.

“As I said, Your Majesty, we’re friends… is it against the law to ask a friend for a cup of tea?”

“… You.”

When considering the law, he was at a disadvantage. The Crown Prince, who was about to yell at me with a wrinkled brow, shut up because of Helena’s sudden intervention.

“Yes, Alex. I went along because we are friends. If you keep grunting like that, would you like to pour the tea instead?”

The Prince’s lips were pouting with discontent when his words were lightly greeted with disdain.

Then Helena patted his lips lightly with her index finger and middle finger. This was a sign of her own anger.

It was very rude, but she was as lovely as a famous painting. Maybe that’s why everyone loves Helena.

According to the book’s description, Helena was not hated for anything because of her unique innocence and straight personality.

Even those who hated her would fall in love with Helena, reflecting on themselves and betraying Eris. At that point, it was not attractive but more like magic.

“Are you guys drinking without me?”

“Jason! Are you back already?”

“Yes, I’ll stay in the capital for a while, it’s a glorious afternoon, Your Majesty.”

With a cheerful voice, Jason appeared, hugging the Prince and Helena at the same time.

The eldest son of Duke, Jason was more famously known as a warrior. They are childhood friends, and Jason was one of the pitiful men who falls in love with Helena.

In fact, Eris should have been kicked out after acting stupid. The scene of the three quietly unraveling the story is the content of the novel, but the two male protagonists hated me anyway, so I was going to stretch out a little more.

“Oh, my God, I’ve been rude. Lady Misérian, you’re still beautiful.”

Laughing and chuckling while he treated people as if they were invisible. But then Jason raised his head and greeted me as well.

He did not forget the wink, befitting the nickname of “the Empire’s best playboy”. He is handsome, but it wasn’t funny.

“A glorious afternoon, Sir Kazar.”

“I don’t have any contribution to the Duke of Kazar, and the title is not suited me. Jason is enough.”

“As the Prince’s fiancée, how dare I?”

When she gave strength to the word fiancée, Jason’s eyebrows were raised.

He peeked at the Crown Prince’s expression. The Crown Prince was a man who could not hide his feelings. At least in front of both Eris and Helena.

One because this blunt person openly loves Helena, and he doesn’t like her.

“I see many things. Your Highness.”

“I don’t need that. The attention of others does not affect me.”

Actually, I didn’t want to deal with him. Even if I got angry at children being childish than me, I could only lose my energy.

However, it was unbearable to see the Crown Prince raising his lips as if he had won. So I smiled more calmly on purpose and said it like a fling.

“There is only one person under the sky who can do that… And he also looks for comfort in silence.” (T/N: Eris talks about the emperor).

“Eris!”

Helena called her name in surprise. The Prince held back his anger and clenched his fist.

Jason stood beside the Crown Prince and focused on me, in case of emergency.

Indeed, it could have been upsetting to say that he was not an Emperor.

If you scratched my stomach, I should have felt relieved, but somehow I felt bitter. Strange, I’m sure Eris was their childhood friend.

Eris was perfectly treated as an uninvited guest in this room, or almost a foreign object. If you were the real Eris, you might have been hurt.

I slowly got up from my seat while looking at them. With a subtle smile to Helena, who looked at me with her eyes wide open, I added-

“Thank you for the tea, Lady Antebellum, but you shouldn’t talk down to me and His Highness in crowded places. There is social status to be considered.”

“Ah… Yes.”

Helena hugged the Prince, who was almost ready to rush at me. Then he bowed his head in a timid way and nodded. Even the sight was cute, like a dog in the rain.

She smiled as if she were satisfied with his answer and I slowly returned to the carriage and sat down.

The heavy accessories, tight corsets, and slightly thick makeup were all heavy. I looked out the window and held my breath.

Helena, who was born with such a good heart, always suffered losses. It was okay though.

There were three of the best men in the world who would devote themselves to her.

A stranger who wants to die soon, wouldn’t be a big problem.

The day has dawned.

It was a perfect day to kill myself.

In conclusion, I didn’t kill myself. There are many reasons for this, mainly, if you try to kill yourself, you can’t die.

Not only can you not kill yourself, if you try to cut your wrist, or fall from a high place, or take poison, one does not die.

A hanging beam or branch broke when I tried to hang myself. If I shot a gun, the gunpowder did not work, and if I ate poison, despite it being actually bad, I slept well instead.

In a world where supernatural phenomena is taken for granted, causality seemed to interfere.

The incidents in which I tried to kill myself does not disappear, but it was modified to be an unfortunate accident if it went far enough to affect the story.

For example, if I openly stabbed others in the stomach with a knife, a mysterious man suddenly appeared and stabbed them with a knife too, and fortunately, he was the one caught in the wrong.

When I fell from the roof, the horses stationed below picked me up. Despite the apparent suicide attempt, everyone thought I had lost my footing.

Supernatural phenomena must be dealt with by supernatural phenomena. Even when I was in Korea, I’ve never seen a tarot card before, yet in here, I can’t do anything to die.

I gave a little tip to the maid and asked her to find a fortune teller who said she was good.

After a series of “accidents” and the Crown Prince’s coldness, the maid was delighted when I said I was going to see a fortune teller.

She seemed to want me to change my mood, regardless of the fact that she believed in the point.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been out, so why don’t you dress up a little bit more?”

“I’ll be right back after I meet a fortune teller.”

“Oh, come on. It’s in the back alley of the main street anyway, so look at the clothes and accessories. You can eat sweet snacks.”

“I’ll think about it now you’re saying that. There must be some snacks you want to eat, right?”

When I asked the maid, who wanted to choose clothes, she touched her hair as her face turned red and answered back.

“Do you think I am doing this because I want to eat sweets? Ahem, there are some things I want to eat with sweets, but sweets originally make people feel better… I’m just saying I want you to feel better.”

It was a smile full of love. With a bitter feeling, she nodded her head, and the woman knelt down and helped her put on her chosen shoes.

“We still have plenty of time before sunset, so don’t rush.”

“I got it.”

“That’s my lady.”

Everyone in the mansion loves Eris. Did Eris love them, too? I thought it would be nice if I loved them.

The streets were crowded with people. When I examined it, I recognized it from the time when the invention of the gun came out, so the Empire was closer to modern times than to the Middle Ages.

All the roads in the castle were built with stone, and even in a country where there is basically a diplomatic relationship, magical engineering was developed, so there were trams in the castle and street lights that lit up in the night.

It’s ridiculous for a country that believes in gods but rejects wizards to be able to develop magical engineering, but for now, those who study magical engineering are called engineers rather than wizards. It is similar to alchemists, so to speak.

Whatever it may be, it was both strange and envious from the standpoint of a modern person who lived on Earth that it generates energy such as electricity without the risk of environmental pollution.

Of course, the story is about the highly developed civilization of an Empire that developed magical engineering, and where other small and medium-sized Kingdoms were still far behind the Empire.

No, maybe this prosperity and development of the Empire was achieved by squeezing other Kingdoms.

As expected, when you ride something, you have to think about it while looking out the window. Before I knew it, I arrived at the back alley of the busy street and the Knight opened the door.

I came out holding the knight’s hand and looked around. Even if it was a back alley, it was not a chaotic atmosphere.

Rather than colorful and expensive items like the store at the roadside, there were many cute shops opened by ordinary people. I don’t know if it’s the same for Eris, but for me, this side was more affectionate and interesting.

“Shall we wait?”

“No, go back to the mansion.”

“But my lady, wasn’t it dangerous the other day? It’s dangerous to go around alone.”

“Do I need to say it twice? I told you to go back because it was annoying.”

I couldn’t even die anyway. If there is a family knight next to me, I will not be able to ask what I really want to ask.

The Knight hesitated for a while, then asked me to call for pick up when I finished my business, because I said I would look around for a while.

I decided to accept the compromise because it would only make me tired if I was more stubborn. Then slowly, I went into the store in front of me.

It was clearly a shop inside the building, but it was a shop that felt like a tent or a hut. My eyes were quickly drawn to the shelves full of mysterious and sparkling clutter, and I was about to unconsciously reach out to the items.

“I wouldn’t touch it, sweetheart.”

When I looked back in a horrified surprise, a woman with red hair and white skin slowly walked out. The thin black dress and the bright jewel necklace matched very well, so she was more like a rich family figure than fortune teller.

“If you’re really good at it, you know what I’m worried about.”

“Well, Lady Miseran, no, should I call you a poor stranger?”

Surprised by that, I stared at the fortune teller. The fortune teller smiled, grabbed my frozen hand, and slowly led me down the stairs to the basement.

I felt overwhelmed by the dim lighting and cold air. She sat me on one of her sofas and she sat on the opposite side, on her wooden chair.

“You know who I am, so things will be easier. I want to go back to where I was.”

“Poor stranger, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Smelling your soul, you’ve already tried a lot of things.”

“Smelling?”

“You wanted to break your soul, but the world would not allow it.”

She took some medicinal herbs out of the cupboard, put it in a large pot in the corner, and stirred it. She looked like a witch rather than a fortune teller.

Before long, the fortune teller gave me a bowl containing an unknown violet liquid, and it smelled awful that I really didn’t want to drink.

“Gulp it down.”

“Do you know what this will do?”

“If it’s poison, isn’t it good for you?”

True. She wasn’t wrong, so I had no choice but to shut my senses and drink it all at once.

It tasted terribly sour. When I finished and closed my mouth, the fortune teller smiled and put sweet jelly in my mouth.

“You seem to have noticed, but I’m not just a fortune teller.”

The fortune teller took off her lace gloves and held her hand slightly closed. At that moment, a very beautiful and strange pattern shone in her hand, as if burning.

Well, if you consider the form, it’s more like an art.

“Let me introduce myself, outlander. I’m Medea, the last witch of the land.”

Witch? This was a little interesting. It was because she was a character who did not appear in the novel. She looked at me with a shine in her eyes and then laughed out loud.

“You seem to have a lot of questions about me, so I’ll answer only two questions.”

“First of all, you said you were the last witch of the earth, so there is no witch other than yourself? Or is it somewhere else?”

“I’m the last one in the Empire. Everyone lives far away from the persecution of the Empire. But it’s not a lot.”

“You don’t have a castle. Don’t you have any offspring?”

“Yes, there are cases where children are left behind, but they are rare. We only call each other by name because each individual’s presence is important. And they’re all considered sisters.”

There were many things I wanted to ask, but I held back. Medea served her jelly one more as if she knew it was good. I asked as I rolled it in my hand, which had white powder on the surface.

“Is there any way I can go back?”

“We can only help you if you’re willing to die like you’ve tried. But it’s my first time seeing a poor stranger in my life, so I think I should ask my sisters.”

“How long does it take?”

“It takes about fifteen days. Please understand that the distant sisters live beyond the continent, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“What if I don’t want to die?”

“You shouldn’t ask me that. Poor Stranger… You don’t seem to know the difference between magic and theology yet. Theology is the study of creation, and magic is the study of anomalies. If you want to make a way that’s not there, you should go to the temple and ask for directions. Of course, I’m not sure there’s a way out there. It’s something I don’t know about…”

I nodded and gave out the money I had prepared. Medea bowed down, but I insisted.

“I’m giving it to you to be burdened. I don’t believe your secret is more fatal than mine, so you won’t try to take advantage of it.”

“If you say it’s for my life, I’ll take it. I’ll call you if I find out anything, so always keep the mirror by your side.”

While I was here, I walked a little bit to stop by the dessert shop that the maid told me about. It was a huge store worthy of the rave reviews that called it the best store in the Empire.

I was already tired by the time I saw people waiting in line. Even if the snacks were delicious, I would just go back, but I lost my balance due to the crowd.

A high-heeled foot was twisted and someone held my falling body from behind.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Dark hair, dark skin I know this man.

High Priest Hybrid, who saved Helena by dedicating all of his devotion to the subject with a better heart than anyone else, and sincerely praying for Eris to fall to hell.

You’re smiling at me now, without even knowing the future where you’re going to hate me.