Chapter 1

Chapter 1 : Prologue.

“Funny. It is funny. But does something like this really sell?”

“Idiot, how would I know that already? We have to put it out there first before we get any results. But I have a feeling it is going to be a total smash.”

My sister and I chatted with a chicken between us. Even as we spoke, each of our eyes was fixed on a drumstick.

Today’s menu was half-and-half.

We both liked the seasoned kind, but there was only one seasoned drumstick. We traded wary glances and engaged in a silent battle over who would get it.

Normally, I would have yielded to my sister. She was older, she was paying for the chicken, and she was even greedier about food than I was. But not today. I boldly slipped on a plastic glove and grabbed the reddish drumstick.

“Even if it is a novel, do seventeen-year-olds really act that brazen? Aren’t you embarrassed writing something like that?”

“Hey, that is how kids are these days.”

My sister, who used to say she was preparing for the civil-service exam, suddenly quit the study room one day and published a romance novel.

I did not know how much money she made from it, but it seemed to be a fair amount. She bought me clothes and shoes from time to time, and every Saturday, our chicken-and-beer day, she always paid.

In return, whenever she wrote a new work or some bizarre episode, she demanded my opinion. And if I said something vague like it was fun or boring, the menu changed from Golden Olive to a two-chicken combo, so my feedback had to be extremely specific.

Left with no choice, I read my sister’s novel carefully, syllable by syllable, and poured out my complaints.

“Are there really people who read this stuff?”

The heroine of the novel, Bishot, was the youngest young lady of a once-fallen but ancient ducal house, and naturally, being the heroine, she was supposedly breathtakingly beautiful.

She explained that in 5,500 characters from the very beginning, using twelve four-character idioms.

Every kind of jewel and every sort of metaphor came pouring down like a waterfall.

“This stuff? What do you mean, ‘this stuff’? Hey, that is the latest trend these days.”

“People really call anything a trend now.”

And once you got through that long description, the novel spent 11,000 characters explaining why Bishot was unhappy. Her parents were indifferent, her older sister was jealous, and at the Academy she was bullied by villainess.

Apparently, the readers had to be made thoroughly aware that she occupied a uniquely miserable position so that they would sympathize with the heroine and keep following the story. To me, that sounded utterly incomprehensible.

And finally, as the crowning touch, the complete scumbag my sister was always talking about made his appearance. I did not know whether I just lacked the proper romance-fantasy sensibilities, but I could not understand why a character like that was even necessary.

Raphael Isaac.

A stalker character who was obsessed with Bishot and tried to force his desires onto her.

To escape Raphael, Bishot fled to an Academy beyond the reach of her family’s power, but Raphael pursued her even there.

“How should I beat that bastard to death?”

“Not just kill him, but beat him to death?”

I snickered at my sister’s violent choice of words. She tapped the back of my hand with a fried drumstick and said,

“Hey, you have read enough of my writing. How do you not know this? That is the whole point. The real hook is how horribly Raphael gets killed. That is what satisfies the readers.”

“You could just torture him or something. There is magic too.”

“You idiot.”

Without even bothering to keep eating the drumstick she had been tearing into, my sister went on and on. What mattered, she said, was not simply that Raphael died, but who killed him. The candidates included the Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of the North, the Genius Knight, the Master of the Magic Tower, and so on.

She kept spitting out explanations about the male leads while the chicken slowly grew cold. We should eat first. I set her aside and focused on the chicken, even though she had abandoned the very thing she loved most to unleash a bundle of setting details.

---

“I should have listened more carefully back then.”

No matter how quickly regret came, it was always too late. Even knowing there was no undoing what had already happened, my stomach kept twisting.

My shaggy curls had turned silky overnight, and the unfamiliar sensation made me brush my hair back.

“So who exactly is going to kill me?”

The Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of the North, the Genius Knight, and even the Master of the Magic Tower.

There were far too many candidates.

Chapter : 1

“Please get up. It is time to wake.”

A woman’s voice I had never heard before woke me.

One thing was certain. It was not my mother.

Being told to wake up by a complete stranger jolted me fully awake. My body felt cleaner and less tired than usual, and sensing that something was wrong, I opened my eyes.

“Huh?”

She was a woman with blonde hair that looked as though it had been bleached three times and blue circle lenses over her eyes. She looked older than thirty, but probably younger than fifty.

Who was she? What did she do here?

As I searched my mind for some clue to her identity, her name slipped naturally from my mouth.

“Ko... Koromang...?”

Koromang nodded, then used a quiet but unmistakable force to yank away the blanket covering me. With a thoroughly fed-up look, she said,

“What is the occasion? You got up at once for a change. Wash up and get your head straight. You do not have any plans today either, but you still need to get up on time.”

“Uh... uh...”

“You were the one who told me to leave after waking you, because if I stood here watching, it would feel as though I were rushing you, remember? I will wait outside, so tell me when you are done.”

Koromang stared into my eyes a few times as if checking whether I was truly awake, then left the room. Only after I heard the door shut did I clutch my head. Someone else’s memories were inside it.

“Raphael Isaac.”

That was my name.

More precisely, it was the name of the original owner of the body I had taken over, and the villain character from , the novel my sister had written.

Only yesterday, I had been arguing with my sister about why a character like this even needed to exist. Now I was inside him.

Before I could even be stunned by the absurdity of it, my hair stood on end with anxiety. My sister’s words from the day before flashed through my mind.

“Hey, you have read enough of my writing. How do you not know this? That is the whole point. The real hook is how horribly Raphael gets killed. That is what satisfies the readers.”

My sister had said the owner of this body would not merely be killed, but beaten to death. The memory of her wondering how to kill Raphael in the most satisfying, exhilarating way possible for the readers sent a chill down my spine.

Questions like how this had happened or whether any of this made sense could wait until after I had secured my life. Was survival not the first priority? Just as I was digging through the original story, searching for some sharp solution, Koromang flung the door open and came in.

With her hands on her hips, Koromang looked down at me and said,

“I knew this would happen. You dozed off again, did you not? The sun is already fully up, so get moving. At the very least, go wash.”

“Uh...”

THUD!

Koromang shut the door harder than before. Aside from the blood relatives of the lord, she had the greatest influence in the manor, so perhaps that much was only natural. Besides, in the original story she had served Raphael’s birth mother, which was why even Raphael had treated Koromang with caution.

I got out of bed and stepped into the corridor. Right afterward, my eyes met those of a servant. He suddenly bent at the waist with quick, practiced speed.

“Good morning.”

“Uh, good morning...?”

“Yes... good morning.”

I waved awkwardly as I returned the servant’s greeting. He tilted his head, scratched the back of it, and moved on.

The original Raphael had no manners whatsoever, so whenever a servant greeted him, he ignored them. At the same time, if a servant failed to greet him, he would spit out abuse.

Seeing that had made me think, Could he not at least return a greeting? It was hardly a big deal.

As I lowered the hand I had waved, I hesitated for a moment. If a person changed overnight, would everyone not find that strange?

No, probably not.

People were usually more indifferent to others than one tended to think. It was common advice not to worry too much about how others saw you for exactly that reason. The servants here would probably just think Raphael happened to be in a good mood today and leave it at that.

How could they possibly imagine that someone else had taken over his body?

The servants of this estate were deeply afraid of Raphael. They feared him the way one feared a five-year-old child on the verge of a tantrum.

They worried he would start whining and making ridiculous demands again. They fretted endlessly over what kind of foolish stunt he might pull and what sort of trouble he might cause.

Even so, Raphael was their lord, yet there was not a single person here who wanted him to govern properly.

I found that comforting. The prevailing mood was simply that as long as he did not create problems or stir up needless trouble, that was enough. If I had possessed a diligent and capable lord instead, I would have been in real trouble.

I might have run an entire territory into the ground. The fact that this territory functioned just fine without my involvement meant I had gotten lucky.

Still, I had to be careful.

But it was not something I could feel entirely at ease about either. Just because Raphael had been incompetent until now did not mean he could remain incompetent forever. At this rate, I would have no grounds to complain even if my younger siblings stripped the territory from me.

“Hm.”

I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower booth. According to the setting, it had been made with magic, and I was relieved by how convenient it was. I could live without a phone or a television, but there had better be a shower. I turned the water on and looked into the mirror.

An unfamiliar face stared back at me.

At a glance, he looked foul-tempered to the core. He had the sort of face that made you feel you ought to lower your gaze for no reason at all if your eyes met his on the street. I timidly raised my middle finger at him.

Raphael Isaac.

The scumbag who appeared in my sister’s romance-fantasy novel, .

The shadow cast to make the main male lead shine.

A device to move the story forward.

A man fated to be beaten senseless by the main male lead at the end.

That was me.

I had read up to volume four of the original.

Raphael, a wastrel through and through, had lost his place as head of the house in a hollow, unexpected duel with his younger brother. His brother had trained steadily in swordsmanship from childhood to seize the territory, but Raphael, fool that he was, never realized it and was crushed.

Raphael was so stupid that he had not even noticed his family had turned their backs on him. If he had even one subordinate he got along with, someone might have tipped him off, but no. The useless fool had none.

After losing his position as head of the house, perhaps his mind had finally snapped, because he tried to kidnap the heroine and was discovered by one of the male leads. My sister had cut the scene at the perfect moment, so it was never revealed who that person was.

What would happen after that? What was Raphael’s fate?

The possibilities changed depending on which character had discovered Raphael trying to abduct the heroine.

Maybe I would be beaten to death by the Crown Prince, blown apart by the Master of the Magic Tower’s barrage of spells, seized by the Grand Duke of the North and torn apart by demonic power, or have my throat cut by Jefrin’s sword.

It went without saying, but I wanted to live.

Preferably in comfort.

If possible, I wanted to avoid dangerous, hardship-filled places altogether. I had no desire to so much as glance toward the monster-infested North or the Academy, the novel’s main stage.

If I went there and got hurt, how much would it hurt?

I wanted to hide away in my safe, comfortable territory and live in luxury.

The possession itself was not so bad. I could loaf around in a prosperous environment and order servants about. I did not even have to get a job.

So if there was any way at all, I wanted to keep living this life.

But what if, after some time passed, the heroine entered the Academy, ended up with one of the male leads, and then revealed what had happened between me and her?

A terrible ending awaited me.

Raphael had not truly loved the heroine.

He had approached her while pretending to love her, but what he really wanted was the power and background behind her. Since his own abilities were lacking, he meant to swallow up her family and use it to expand his own influence. He had emotionally toyed with her.

Speaking as a long-time reader of my sister’s novels, that was a capital offense.

If, after ending up with a male lead, the heroine asked him to kill me, I would be as good as dead. All I could do then would be to bare my neck and beg for a clean death.

To avoid that ending, I had to go to the Academy.

If I stayed here, I might wind up starving to death before any male lead ever came to kill me. Once my younger brother took the lord’s seat, what would he do with me?

In the original, Raphael had been cast out of the family. Considering that when someone seized a lordship, they usually cut off loose ends by cutting off heads, it was a merciful decision. But I wanted to live well. I wanted to escape the grind of labor. To do that, I had to keep my position as lord.

For that reason too, I had to go to the Academy. Leaving my territory when my position was already unstable seemed foolish, but there was nothing I could accomplish by staying here.

That was also true of the knowledge I had from the original story. Most of it could only be used inside the Academy.

I only had to reach the Academy, the setting of the original work. There, I had several cards I could actually play. I could rake in money, build up the strength to protect my own body, and above all, carve out a road to survival.

The greatest danger was the male leads from the original story.

More than anything, I wanted to avoid a future in which one of them ended up with the heroine and then came to kill me. To prevent that, I had to stop the heroine from ending up with any of the other male leads. Was that possible? Was there even the slightest chance?

What were the chances that the heroine would not end up with any of the male leads?

I thought of the male leads, each tailor-made for the heroine in the original story, and shook my head. It seemed more plausible for a monogamous world to suddenly turn into a polyandrous one.

Those settings had been created so that the heroine and the male leads were bound to end up together. That was far too powerful a weapon. Realistically, it seemed almost impossible for the heroine not to become entangled with them. No matter what I did, it felt as though she would somehow end up with a male lead in the end.

“Even so, I cannot give up.”

There was one more method besides that.

It was difficult enough to be almost as impossible, but still. I could meet the heroine, reconcile with her, and beg her to forgive the wrongs Raphael had committed in the past. If I managed that, then even if she ended up with a male lead, I might still survive.

Was that possible?

Even if I were the heroine, I did not think I would ever become friends with someone like Raphael. How could anyone, after what he had done to her in the past?

The conclusion was simple. No matter which way it went, surviving was going to be difficult.

But I could not just sit and wait to die, so I might as well try.

Either the heroine does not end up with the male leads.

Or I become friends with the heroine.