The Kaiel Ceder that Delia knew was extremely strict about relationships with women. Not only was he uninterested, but he would also get upset at one-sided affection.

Such a person had just had his first kiss stolen by her.

‘Did I just steal Kaiel’s first kiss?’

While it was shocking even for Delia, his reaction was even more incomprehensible.

‘Surely he hasn’t gone crazy from shock.’

Or,

‘Does he not even know what just happened to him……?’

As various doubts mixed and filled her head, his low voice was heard once again.

“Delia.”

She brushed aside her hair that was blocking her view, regaining her senses at his voice.

“Kaiel?”

“Yes.”

“After having that…… that done to you…… aren’t you angry?”

He, who had been silently lying still and following her movements with sharp eyes, finally sat up with his broad frame.

The pressure, which had been somewhat lessened while he was lying down, instantly multiplied several times.

Seeing his build, Delia felt even more frustrated.

‘If he had just pushed me a little, I could have rolled off the bed as painfully as possible and made a fuss about being hurt!’

She hadn’t wanted to take her favorite character’s virginity like this in the first place.

Though actually, it was just a passionate kiss, hardly enough to take his virginity.

‘I said I’d remove his virgin title, but this definitely wasn’t what I meant!’

It was truly something she had done solely looking at the plausibility score.

Yet to fail so miserably like this…

She cried out in frustration.

“You should push me away like before or strangle me like last time!”

Then came a completely unexpected response.

“I tore it.”

“What?”

“Your clothes.”

What is he talking about.

“What……?”

“……”

After those words, he said nothing more.

Delia felt somehow vaguely uneasy.

If only he would get angry and throw a fit instead.

The eye contact hanging in the air suddenly became uncomfortable.

When she lowered her gaze from meeting his eyes, his lips caught her attention instead.

Once again, a tremendous heartbeat came along with a wave of guilt.

What excuse could she possibly make now?

Delia, her face alternating between red and pale all by herself, buried her face in both hands.

“I was wrong.”

Muffled by her hands, her voice was barely audible.

For some reason, Kaiel was surprisingly calm.

If he had gotten angry or scolded her, she probably wouldn’t have felt this sorry or embarrassed.

After a moment, Delia climbed down from the bed with a dazed expression. What else could she do by staying here longer?

“I’ll, um, be going now.”

With that, she bowed deeply in greeting before opening the door and disappearing outside.

“……”

When the red hair that had been flickering before his eyes disappeared, a deathly silence fell as if a storm had passed through.

Left alone, Kaiel slowly leaned back against the headboard.

A long breath escaped through his lips.

The sensation from just moments ago was still vivid.

When something hot entered his mouth and tickled his palate, his body had tensed up completely, and his hand had almost shot out unconsciously.

He consciously relaxed his body, barely managing to calm his state. It felt like he had to do at least that much.

Quietly raising his hand to his ear, he roughly traced from his earlobe to the curve of his ear with his finger.

He muttered softly between his teeth.

“Hot……”

After a moment, he got up from the bed and headed to the bathroom. He felt like dousing himself with water.

It seemed he was done sleeping for tonight.

* * *

The next day, Delia was extremely busy from early morning.

She couldn’t just remain dumbfounded about the failure of her plan.

She had to find a way to raise the plausibility score somehow.

Since she was scheduled to depart for the imperial palace at lunch, she needed to finish everything before then.

It was dawn, when no one was awake except for the servants working in the kitchen and a few servants with early assigned duties.

As the blue dawn began to break, Delia closed her eyes tightly in thought. Unlike her seemingly peaceful exterior, her heart was anxious as she kept pressing her hands.

This was all because Kaiel had deviated from her expectations.

‘I’m the author! I’m the creator who knows everything about Kaiel, yet I failed at something like this.’

She regretted not writing the setting ‘throws the other person away when kissed’ in the novel if she had known this would happen.

No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t think of a proper way to raise the plausibility score, and she began to consider just giving up and leaving it to luck.

‘Well, it’s not like I’ll die just because the plausibility score drops severely, right?’

Delia, concluding that whether she stressed over it or took the penalty would be the same either way, flopped down.

‘Right, right. Does giving up feel better? I should just divide up the antidote before leaving.’

But who would have known? Delia would soon face a small penalty. While the penalty was trivial enough not to be a problem due to the high plausibility score, the resulting outcome was devastating.

By the time the blue light covering the world disappeared as day broke, a red-haired Miss was precariously hanging from a tree standing tall and straight guarding the Tranade ducal mansion.

* * *

“Since when did that tree bear fruit?”

An elderly servant squinted his eyes as he pointed to a tree.

Indeed, something enticingly red was hanging from that tree.

“What fruit in this weather……”

The young servant, who had been grumbling about strange talk from the morning, casually glanced at the tree he was pointing at and almost screamed.

No matter how you looked at it, that red thing wasn’t fruit.

Only after rubbing his eyes several times and checking again, unable to process what he was seeing, could he be certain.

Isn’t that the researcher at the mansion!

The servant stumbled backward, stammering.

“Mi-Mi-Miss, isn’t that Miss? Oh my, Miss is hanging there! Miss……”

“Huuh? What are you talking about?”

“It’s not fruit, it’s Miss! Damn!”

The young servant, aghast, abandoned his work and immediately left to seek help.

From early morning, loud voices echoed throughout the mansion.

“Miss is hanging from the tree!”

Meanwhile, Delia was hanging from the tree, spewing all sorts of profanity at the system.

‘This damn system! Go to hell! Go to hell! Just go to hell!’

She didn’t want to hang from a tree at such a dizzying height first thing in the morning.

She had merely been trying to take out empty bottles from the laboratory to divide up the antidote to take to Sheriton.

Despairingly, she was now hanging from a tree that exceeded the height of a modern building’s fourth floor.

How did it come to this?

The empty bottles for dividing were placed in the uppermost corner of the organizing shelf. Due to the building’s high ceiling, the shelf that filled the wall was difficult to reach at the very top without a stepladder. In this mansion, only Kaiel could reach the top of the organizing shelf without a ladder.

‘Of course even the mansion is all tall and big, just like its owner.’

With neither ladder nor Kaiel around, Delia began carefully scanning her surroundings. That’s when the wide-open window entered her view, which became the source of trouble.

Delia immediately gauged the height of the window. Fortunately, if she stood on the windowsill right next to the organizing shelf, even with her modest height she could reach the top shelf.

‘This much should be fine.’

After estimating, Delia stepped onto the windowsill and half-extended her hand. Everything was going smoothly until then, but the problem occurred afterward.

The antidote bottle tucked into her clothing happened to slip out.

In her life in this world, the word ‘happened’ was mostly attached to things that came about due to penalties.

So the antidote bottle that ‘happened’ to slip out ‘happened’ to fall through the window that was ‘happening’ to be open and got caught in the tree, and Delia, trying to retrieve that bottle, stepped onto the window frame and ‘happened’ to misplace her foot and got caught in the tree.

The birds guarding the house collectively fluttered up and scattered into the sky.

Thoroughly startled small eyes from the bird’s nest stared at her. Taking her as a red giant intruder, the baby birds began chirping loudly.

Delia apologized in her heart.

‘Sorry! I didn’t want to come here either!’

She should have looked for a ladder despite the hassle. Even if she had called Kaiel, he would have easily gotten it for her.

‘How could I have known the penalty would turn out like this!’

Delia gripped the tree tightly with her hand and tried to look down but gave up and jerked her head up.

Delia thought to herself that it was fortunate she didn’t have acrophobia. If she had, she would have completely lost her mind the moment she got caught in the tree like a plastic bag blown by the wind.

As the situation had come to this, she quickly thought it through.

‘Should I just wait like this?’

It seemed the only way to survive here was to have someone reach out as far as possible from the window she fell from and pull her up. But she didn’t want to.