Rag in hand, Elena rolled up the tattered sleeves of her clerical robes and muttered.
“Books are not something to be read carelessly. Books…”
Her youthful radiance at the age of twenty was all but gone, lost in the daily grind of laundry and cleaning, leaving only dark shadows under her eyes.
The wet mop made a dull thudding sound as it weakly hit the floor. Elena’s ramblings continued along with that sound.
“I wasn’t reading that book back then. No, maybe the problem is the book itself? Well, where else can you find a better transmigration novel than Candy and her Cinderella story after meeting the Emperor on a white horse?”
It was a valid statement. The book that tells the story of a beautiful protagonist from a poor family who received the love of three men, is none other than 『Empress Rosaline』.
The handsome Emperor Vakran I, who was called the God of War and the Conqueror of Battlefields, ‘A. de Ifern’, his cousin, Marquis Renier von Werner, and the youngest and strongest knight of the empire, Sir Meinard von Ernest.
A novel that starts with receiving the love of all three top-tier suitors and ends with marriage to the Emperor, happily living a long life.
Reading romance novels that were simple and easy to read became Elena’s habit when she wanted to take a break from her hectic routine.
“So even though I died and came back to life, I’m not the protagonist, huh? Is that it? Hey, is that it?!”
Thump, thump. Bits of dust flew in all directions as the mop struck her shoes, but Elena paid no attention. The shoes were worn out and would fade with time. A little bit of dust from cleaning wouldn’t make a difference.
Looking down at the cheap clothes and shoes distributed to lower-ranking clerics, Elena clenched her teeth. Then, she took a deep breath and swung the heavy, water-drenched mop vigorously, shouting.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to slip into Rosaline? Is it too much to ask for! But! Why! Why am I just a mere extra Priest 1?”
Grumbling to herself, Elena finally sighed and shook her head. She had already sighed over a hundred times. What more could she do? Nothing will change, no matter what.
When I lived over there, life wasn’t considered lucky, but it seems that luck has carried over here. In this novel where the female protagonist Rosaline gains everything, Elena appeared briefly at the beginning of the novel as a new priest for just one day and then disappeared.
* * *
On a winter night when the wind was unusually strong, Kang Dan-ah died. She then entered the romance novel, 『Empress Rosaline』, which she had been reading over and over again.
It took her several days to realize that this place, this bizarre new world, was inside the pages of a book. She had never even considered the possibility that she would enter a book and become a character within it. She had thought she was simply taken to a hospital and was hallucinating, seeing something unreal under the influence of drugs.
But the rough texture of the sheets on the bed and the chilling cold of the wind coming through the thin glass window felt too real to dismiss as mere hallucinations.
As soon as she regained her senses and wondered what had happened to the owner of this body, her entire body throbbed with pain, adding to her confusion. Even if she thought she was only seeing something unreal due to the painkillers, shouldn’t it at least not hurt?
Anyway, even if she was in pain, there was no family around to take care of her, and Dan-ah was used to handling things on her own. But she never thought there would be a hospital that would put her in a room and not even have a nurse come and check on her.
Dan-ah swore that once she could get out of bed, she would turn this hospital upside down. That was her resolution before her first visitor arrived.
“To make such a mistake and lie down like this, pretending to be sick. You, as a child, must have some sense of shame.”
It was a remark made by a certain woman whose face finally became visible on the second night. Still feverish and blurry-eyed, Dan-ah looked up at the source of the voice and was startled.
‘Oh, she’s a foreigner!’
Even in her pain-induced haze, the foreigner frightened her. However, her words sounded like Korean and were easy on the ears. Her next words only confused her more.
“Because of you, I had to change into wet clothes, and naturally, the event was a disaster. It became a laughingstock for the nobles and aristocrats who were present. Did it make you feel better that this is how you repay the temple that raised you after being abandoned by your parents?”
The woman said, glancing at her lying on the bed.
“Uh, um. I think you must have the wrong hospital room…….”
The woman’s eyes rolled even more upon hearing Dan-ah’s voice crack, and she bit her tongue.
“Clearly, it seems you’re not in your right mind. As a sinner who ruined the ‘purification ritual,’ you won’t be granted a holiday for an indefinite period of time. From tomorrow onwards, you will have to repent to the gods with that wretched body of yours.”
“No, I mean, I am not that person…”
Bang.
Dan-ah’s feeble protest was silenced by the sound of the door closing sharply. Left alone, Dan-ah cried uncontrollably. She lay in the hospital bed, in pain and on the brink of death, and this strange foreign woman had come into the wrong room and treated her like a lunatic.
“Sniff, it’s unfair. Nurse, is there a nurse here? Uwaaah.”
After crying for a while, she seemed to have fallen asleep from exhaustion. When she woke up, her body felt much lighter, but her throat was dry, and she was hungry.
Beside the bed, she saw a piece of hard bread and a cup of water, which she had no idea had been there since when. Normally, she would have tossed this brick-like bread straight into the trash, but in this room with nothing else to eat, it was all she had.
Forcing her stiff jaw to move, she managed to swallow the bread and blinked her swollen eyes. Suddenly, the door made a thud and swung open.
“Ah, you startled me.”
Do people in this hospital have no manners? Dan-ah, annoyed by the unwelcome intruder, was about to speak up, but her mouth shut again.
It was another foreigner, this time a plain-looking girl with brown hair and brown eyes.
“Elena! Wake up! Sister Seira is calling you!”
Strangely enough, Dan-ah understood what the foreign girl was saying.
‘Elena? More importantly, she speaks Korean well?’
Yesterday, that girl, just like this one, kept calling her Elena.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no one named Elena here. I think you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Dan-ah replied to the girl, who appeared to be in her early twenties at most. The girl licked her lips and said, struggling with her words,
“Sister Seira said you seem like you’ve lost your mind… but is it true? Don’t you remember me?”
There was no memory to recall when she just met her for the first time today. Dan-ah tilted her head in confusion.
“Then do you remember who you are?”
“I’m Kang Dan-ah. Who are you…”
“It’s me, me. Marie. Elena, you’re in big trouble now, aren’t you? Getting so messed up in the head like this. You might get kicked out of the temple at this rate.”
Elena? Temple? Dan-ah’s mind was tangled up. Marie, the girl who was holding Dan-ah’s hand tightly as she sat on the bed in a daze, led her to a small mirror hanging near the door.
“See? Elena. That faintly weird-looking figure you see inside the mirror is you.”
“Eh, uhh…?!”
It was an undignified scream, but it reflected Dan-ah’s genuine reaction.
In the palm-sized mirror, a woman with silver hair and light brown eyes stared at Dan-ah with widened eyes, looking increasingly pale as the last traces of color drained from her once-flushed complexion.
“W-what is this now…”
It wasn’t a welcome sight. On the mirror. Dan-ah felt the cold and rigid sensation of the mirror that she grabbed tightly because she couldn’t believe it.
Dan-ah used one hand to slap her own cheek. One cheek in the reflection turned red, along with a stinging pain. This time, she slapped the opposite cheek even harder with her other hand. Again, with greater pain, the opposite cheek reddened.
“Elena, are you really crazy…”
“What the hell!”
