“Are you asking me to pay rent? The interest would be enormous. And the bank wouldn’t easily give me a loan either.”

“I can be your guarantor. I may be young, but the Klein baronial family is the bank’s biggest client, so they’ll treat you differently, won’t they?”

Marie spoke proudly. In reality, even if she became a guarantor, there was no practical way for her to provide money.

The Baron wouldn’t leave any inheritance to the family’s black sheep.

But the bank wouldn’t know this, and Marie had her own plans.

“But running a commercial property isn’t easy. Noble lords and gentlemen might hire lawyers, but commoners like us are lucky if lawyers don’t ignore us completely.”

“You won’t need to pay rent if you operate both spaces as your shop, Mr. Schrödinger.”

“What? My shop isn’t doing well enough to need that kind of expansion.”

“I have a brilliant business idea.”

“A business idea?”

The owner perked up with interest.

She might be a small girl, but she was still the daughter of Baron Klein, known as a divinely gifted investor.

“But there’s a condition. You have to give me 30% of the profits generated from this business.”

“What?”

“Since we’re partners, it should really be fifty-fifty, but since you’ll be handling all the operations, I’m giving you an extra 20%.”

Marie wiggled her tiny fingers and pulled out a piece of paper from her bag.

It was a memorandum containing profit distribution terms and a confidentiality clause about not revealing Marie’s identity.

“Sign this before I share the idea. Of course, if you don’t like my idea, I’ll tear it up right here.”

The owner, mesmerized by the young child’s boldness that somehow seemed experienced, stamped his seal on the memorandum.

After looking at the document, Marie beckoned him to come closer.

When the owner lowered himself to her height, Marie stood on her tiptoes to reach his ear and whispered something.

When she finished sharing, the owner stared at her with eyes wide as a startled rabbit.

It was truly an extraordinary and innovative idea.

※※※

‘That’s how this was born.’

Marie smirked as she looked at the shop sign that had been transformed three months ago.

「Schrödinger’s Cat and Escape Room, Plus Pastry Shop」

Reopened as an escape room café, his pastry shop had caused a sensation throughout the Valdek Empire within three months, generating enormous profits.

Even Marie, who came up with the idea, had barely managed to get a reservation.

“We finally get to visit this place!”

“Oh my god, I’m so nervous.”

“Me too!”

Noble children around eight or nine years old jumped up and down with excitement.

Amid the commotion, Marie exchanged a knowing glance with Schrödinger, who had come out to greet them, without the children noticing.

“Let’s go in quickly, Marie!”

“Sure.”

Marie responded primly and entered with her friends.

“What if it’s too difficult and we can’t solve it?”

“Right! What if we can’t escape?”

“I heard if you pull the rope on the ceiling, it means you give up, and they’ll open the door for you.”

“We won’t need to give up. Just trust me.”

Marie spoke confidently, having been an escape room enthusiast in her previous life.

But exactly 20 minutes later, unable to solve even the first puzzle, she clutched her luxurious black hair with both hands.

“Why is this so difficult? Did they mess up the difficulty level?”

“I’m getting scared, Marie.”

“I need to pee……”

“I’m hungry.”

Unable to concentrate due to the adorable little ones’ complaints, the girl finally stood up and started touching the props in the room.

“What are you doing?”

“There must be some clue here.”

Of course, no clues appeared. When things didn’t go her way, Marie finally decided to resort to force, as many novice escape room participants do.

Thump! Crack—

“Wow! It broke through!”

“Marie punched through the wall!”

Wait, this breaks?

Marie looked back and forth between the hole in the wall and her fist with a dumbfounded expression.

“I didn’t know I had superpowers……”

“Huh? What did you say, Marie? I didn’t hear you!”

The excited children said as they punched through the wall with their cotton-soft fists.

It wasn’t that Marie’s fist was particularly powerful.

It seemed the partition wall had been designed that way from the beginning.

The hole Marie had initially made was now enlarged by the children to about the size of a dog hole.

“Eek!”

A child who was examining the inside of the hole suddenly screamed and fell backward.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

In response to Marie’s question, the child pointed at the hole with a trembling finger.

“Inside, inside…… I think someone’s in there!”

“Move aside.”

Among her friends shivering with fear, Marie bravely crawled into the hole on her stomach.

She poked her upper body through to the other side and raised her head.

It was too dark to see clearly ahead.

Marie completely exited the hole and stood up in the space on the other side.

“Guys, hand me that lamp over there.”

At Marie’s request, the children pushed an escape room prop lamp through the hole.

Just as she turned on the lamp:

“Ugh……”

Something that had been lying curled up groaned and stirred.

A blond boy who appeared to be around Marie’s age opened his eyes, tied up with rope.

“……Who are you?”

“Who are you to be here? Were you kidnapped?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember? Not even your name?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember……”

Tears flowed again over cheeks where tears had already dried.

‘This isn’t a K-drama. Amnesia?’

Even without going as far as dramas, this situation felt oddly familiar. In 「Dear Prince」, only one person experienced amnesia.

‘Right, that’s it! It was Hans, the male lead.’

Hans, the male protagonist of the original work, was the Emperor’s late-born younger brother who fled the imperial palace in secret at the age of eight, fearing for his life.

Then he was hit by a carriage in a plaza alley, and the perpetrators, who were engaged in illegal activities, didn’t report the accident and took Hans to their hideout.

They were a human trafficking organization that sent children from the Empire to distant countries.

The human traffickers, guessing he was a noble child from his clothes, thought he had rarity value, so they treated his injuries and locked him in a warehouse.

The traffickers had created a secret space unknown to the building owner in an empty commercial property and used it as a slave warehouse.

‘So the building owner didn’t know and sold this property to Schrödinger.’

The slave warehouse with double walls was partially dismantled when Schrödinger converted it into an escape room café, which is why the temporary inner wall easily crumbled under the children’s hands.

Marie quickly recalled the next part of the plot.

The person who rescues Hans from the slave warehouse is an agent of Duke Schultz, the Emperor’s father-in-law and the secret villain of the original work.

He was the one who had driven a wedge between the brothers, causing Hans to misunderstand his older brother and run away—all part of his scheme to keep the amnesiac Hans bound as a commoner.

Hans, who lived as a servant in a noble household, would regain his memories twelve years later after a horse-riding accident and enter the imperial palace to take revenge on his brother.

The Emperor, unaware that Duke Schultz was the true culprit, would greatly commend the noble who had rescued his brother.

‘We’re both extras anyway, right?’

That noble was such a minor appearance that she couldn’t even remember his name, aside from the mention of receiving a reward.

That person was on the villain’s side, while at least she was a law-abiding citizen.

‘So it should be fine if I take that credit instead, right?’

The exact amount of the reward wasn’t specified in the novel, but since the Emperor would be reunited with his long-missed brother, it would surely be at least enough for a house.

It was a plan worth having as insurance, if nothing else.

Having thought that far, Marie began untying the rope binding Hans’s hands.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get you out of here!”

I’m your savior from now on. Despite her somewhat impure intentions, she tried to soothe her pricking conscience by telling herself she would have rescued him even if he wasn’t the male lead.

“Just trust me and follow me.”

After untying all the ropes, Marie gestured to him and passed through the hole first.

“What’s going on, Marie?”

The children gathered around their brave friend.

Without time to explain, she peered into the hole and said:

“Come through quickly!”

After hesitating, Hans gathered his courage and entered the hole.

Just as the blond boy’s upper body emerged:

There was a commotion on the other side, and Hans, whose legs were grabbed by the human traffickers, was pulled back to the other side.

Marie reacted quickly and grabbed both of the boy’s hands.

“Everyone, pull!”

The children began pulling, holding Marie’s waist like in a train game. But they were no match for adult men.

“Call Schrödinger, hurry!”

At Marie’s cry, one child broke away from the group and pulled the rope hanging from the ceiling.

“Help us!”

“My goodness, what’s happening here?”

The situation was quickly resolved by Schrödinger and the adults waiting in the shop.

They were able to rescue other kidnapped children besides Hans, and the human traffickers were taken away for punishment.

When the Emperor in the capital heard this news, he was desperately searching for his brother who had disappeared around that time.

Due to Duke Schultz’s interference, he received reports that his missing brother wasn’t among the rescued children, which broke his heart.

Nevertheless, the Emperor rewarded Schrödinger and the brave children for helping to eliminate the criminal organization.

Of course, like New Year’s money given to children, the Emperor’s reward didn’t belong to the children.

More precisely, it was given to the children’s families.

‘How unfair.’

But Marie did have her own gain.

“We’ll take this child home with us, Father!”

When the nobles were about to send Hans, the only victim whose parents couldn’t be found, to an orphanage, Marie cried out.

It was the first request she had ever made to her father since birth.