01. The Meeting

“I love you!”

I immediately covered my mouth. This wasn’t my intention. And the man standing before me had jet-black hair and cold, piercing blue eyes.

He drew his sword without a moment’s hesitation.

‘He’s drawing his sword over a confession?’

I stumbled back in a panic, and he pressed the blade straight to my throat. As he closed the distance between us, a deep, cool scent of cucumber seeped into my nose.

A lovely scent, though I had no time to appreciate it. The murderous look in his eyes made it clear he would actually kill me.

“Wasn’t it enough to follow me all this time? Now you’re trying to deceive me with something like that?”

“D, deceive you? I……”

“You claimed to love me, used that to fool everyone around you, and tailed me. And you call yourself a devotee of a dark mage.”

A devotee of a dark mage. Not entirely unfamiliar, actually. Something about it rang a bell. The man in front of me, too.

“Roseline, never appear before me again. You disgust me.”

“W, wait!”

The blade right in front of my face was ice-cold. I thought fast. Undeniably handsome. Roseline. Dark mage.

If my memory served me right, this matched what I’d read in 『Even Flowers Obsess Over You』. Which meant……

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know. For the record, I even know the location of the dark mage’s hideout.”

Something shifted in his gaze, growing strangely intense. If my guess was right, this was Nicaine, the male lead of the novel. I gathered my courage and pressed on.

“I’m not a devotee of the dark mage, but I can tell you what you’re looking for……”

I was about to continue when a sudden pain stabbed through my heart.

Ugh. Nausea rose before I could stop it. I clapped my hand over my mouth, but something spilled through my fingers and ran down. My hand trembled.

Blood. Unmistakably red blood. My legs gave out beneath me and I pitched forward. I felt something catch me, but that was all. Consciousness slipped away entirely.

*

Rent I could barely afford. The thundering footsteps from the apartment above that shook the ceiling at any given moment. I’d tried to buy noise-cancelling headphones and got scammed. Part-time jobs that kept falling through.

I’d turned to novels to escape that miserable reality. And now here I was, dreaming of coughing up blood in front of the male lead.

I thought it must be a dream, but what lay before my eyes was deeply wrong.

Red roses bloomed at every corner, and the rose paintings hanging across the walls blazed with an almost manic crimson.

Just then, the person sitting beside me leapt to their feet and rushed out of the room. I caught a glimpse of a black dress and a white apron. It looked like a maid’s uniform.

A maid’s uniform? Come to think of it, even in the dream they’d called me Roseline, and the room looked like a palace. Like that room from the novel.

I slowly took in the room again. The striking red roses, the vast space. No matter how I looked at it, this felt exactly like the world inside that novel.

My heart beat faster and faster. I pinched my arm, bracing myself, and winced at the sharp, vivid sensation.

This was real.

Then there was only one person this room could belong to. Roseline Hanevar. Terminally ill, with only a few months to live, and destined to die at the hands of the male lead, framed as a devotee of the dark mage.

She couldn’t even tell her family or anyone else the name of her illness. Speaking it aloud would kill her instantly, by curse.

The door burst open. A handsome silver-haired man spotted me and strode over in long, purposeful steps.

“Roseline!”

He examined my face with an attentiveness that left me flustered. Silver hair like Roseline’s, a man far taller than me. And eyes full of worry.

‘Roseline’s brother?’

Haser Hanevar. The thought had barely formed when he pulled me into a tight embrace.

“It’s a relief that man at least brought you back here, but with your health the way it is, why on earth did you……”

“Nicaine brought me here?”

A brief silence fell. Haser slowly pulled back and looked at me. His expression stiffened with something like confusion.

‘What? Did I make a mistake?’

I thought quickly. Now that I considered it, in the novel “Roseline” never used formal speech. Not with her brother, not with her parents, not with anyone.

“Nicaine brought me here?”

I asked again, this time hoping for an answer. Haser gave a slow nod. The bewilderment still showed on his face.

I spoke quickly.

“It surprised me, that’s all. He hates me.”

How strange. He’d tried to kill me, and yet. Could it really be because of what I’d said about knowing the dark mage’s hideout? Thinking about it, that made sense.

Either way, Nicaine had wanted to eliminate the dark mage completely. His parents had been killed by devotees of the dark mage.

“Even so, Nicaine does have some humanity in him.”

A tangle of emotions moved through Haser’s eyes. He added quickly.

“Of course, it’s probably because you cared so much. Perhaps some of that feeling got through to him.”

A disbelieving laugh nearly escaped me, but I held it back. The only reason Nicaine had kept me alive was to wipe out the dark mage entirely.

He had originally intended to kill me.

Still, how had I ended up inside this novel. And that declaration of love had come out against my will entirely.

Haser took my hand.

“Roseline, is anything hurting?”

The warmth in his gaze was something else. I’d never once been looked at like that, not even by family. Something stirred in my chest.

I forced the corners of my mouth upward.

“Nothing.”

Haser studied me for a long moment with a steady gaze, then drew me gently into his arms.

“Collapsing out of nowhere like that, you must have been disoriented and frightened. As long as you’re all right, that’s what matters.”

He slowly let go and looked me over again, checking whether I was truly fine. I answered plainly.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes.”

Only then did the tension leave Haser’s face.

“Is there anything you want? Your brother will give you anything.”

Roseline already had everything I’d ever wanted. A spacious room, a warm family.

I had no desire to return to that miserable reality. More than anything, I wanted to live comfortably in a fine house like this.

A dream-like reality had already come true, but the problem was Roseline’s illness. The one saving grace was that I’d read the novel and already knew the cure.

Three ingredients. Pale violet narcissus petals regularly infused with enchanted water, salt, and the tears of a pine-leaf fairy.

The salt and the pine-leaf fairy’s tears were easy enough to obtain. Both were already in this residence. The salt in the kitchen, the pine-leaf fairy’s tears in the underground treasury.

The problem was the pale violet narcissus. It could only be cultivated through advanced techniques involving regular infusions of enchanted water, and it was not easy to come by.

Magic itself was something even the royal family couldn’t use freely. This rare and mystical pale violet narcissus grew in Nicaine’s secret garden.

‘I just need to get that flower.’

To do that……

“I’d like to get a pale violet narcissus from Nicaine’s secret garden. Is that possible?”

The direct approach first. Haser doted on his sister so completely that I thought he’d manage almost anything she asked.

Against my expectations, Haser’s face hardened immediately.

“Roseline, I’m not particularly close with Nicaine, and that secret garden is off-limits to anyone who isn’t. Even among his childhood friends, only those who gave him the most support after that incident are allowed inside.”

“That incident……”

“The one where Nicaine’s parents were killed by devotees of the dark mage.”

I nodded, recalling what I’d read.

“And even those friends of his who were close to him aren’t here anymore, not after the Rotlinho sinking.”

That was news to me. So everyone who had been close to Nicaine was now gone.

“In any case, if you want a pale violet narcissus, I’ll find you something similar.”

“But is there really no way? Even through someone else……”

Haser took my hand. The warmth of it made me stop mid-sentence. He looked at me steadily.

“Roseline, I understand you want that flower, but no one would be willing to enter the secret garden.”

“……”

“Anyone who enters without Nicaine’s permission triggers every magical trap inside, and they die on the spot. Even the royal investigation office doesn’t get involved when someone dies in there. It falls under the founding noble family’s special jurisdiction.”

Hearing that, it truly seemed hopeless. If entering meant instant death, no amount of money would convince anyone to try.

‘I have to cure this illness somehow.’