Part 1

Sunlight crept through the window and poked at her face.

The warmth roused her, and she rubbed her eyes. Then the last memory she had before waking hit her like a slap.

“Waaah, no way!”

She’d been saving every coin she had to visit a pop-up store for her favorite genre novel. Months of scrimping, and she’d been walking there with the money tucked against her chest, humming to herself.

Then a truck had come barreling straight at her, and she’d hit the ground. The pain had been vivid and real. Now it was completely gone.

“Why doesn’t it hurt? And where am I?”

She looked around.

Unfamiliar furniture. Writing she didn’t recognize on papers pinned to the wall. Ornaments on the walls and vanity that she’d never seen in the world she came from. Most unbelievable of all was her own hand, pale as snow.

‘My hands were rough from work.’

She’d spent most of her early twenties doing kitchen part-time jobs. All that washing dishes and chopping had left her hands anything but soft.

But these hands were white and clean.

She was still puzzling over it when the door opened.

“Miss, you’re awake?”

A woman who looked to be in her early thirties stepped in.

‘Green hair?’

That color wasn’t something you’d see every day in the world she came from. The clothes were strange too.

“Excuse me, where am I?”

The woman smiled.

“What do you mean, where! You’re the one who wanted to come to Kaisas, Miss. Are you still half asleep?”

‘Kaisas? I’ve never heard that name before.’

Then the memories came flooding in all at once.

They were completely different from anything she’d ever known.

〈You’re mine, so sacrifice is only natural, isn’t it?〉

〈Shut up. Just obey me like a wax doll.〉

Lines she’d never heard before, yet somehow familiar, rang through her head.

‘What is this? These lines are so cringe-worthy and awful.’

It took her a while to sort through the memories and piece things together. She sat in silence for a long stretch before she finally remembered who she was.

‘Raelia Lateran? And she’s supposed to be timid and fragile? She doesn’t sound like anyone I know.’

The woman beside her began watching her with worried eyes.

“Miss, are you alright?”

“Of course I’m…… not.”

She’d almost slipped into formal speech without thinking.

By all appearances, she’d been hit by that truck and died, then transmigrated into this world. She’d been on her way out to have fun, to fangirl, and she’d died. How utterly unfair.

Wait. Transmigrated?

‘I can’t see my boys!’

Raelia was swallowed by despair.

Teddy, Samdy, Longdy!

She called out the nicknames she’d given her favorites and sank deeper into misery. They were all northern grand dukes from a romance fantasy novel she loved, the kind who were warm only to their woman and cold to everyone else, beautiful and aloof.

It was absurd enough to die on the way to buy character merchandise. Waking up transmigrated into another world entirely made it even more outrageous.

* * *

She’d landed in a strange world, but she couldn’t afford to just wallow in despair.

‘First things first. I need to know what this body looks like.’

The brief flood of memories had shown her a Raelia who thought of herself as plain and unremarkable. She rarely looked in mirrors and had almost no memory of her own face.

‘Looking at my hands, things seem promising.’

Raelia got up, still in her nightgown, and stood in front of the mirror.

‘What!’

The woman looking back at her was, against all expectation, stunning.

Golden hair caught the light. Blue eyes like a still lake. Flawless white skin, lips red and full of life. Her features were fine and distinct and lovely. And the clothes she wore were clearly made from expensive fabric.

‘How could someone with a face like this hate looking in mirrors? If I’d been her, I’d have stared at myself every single day. This is exactly the kind of face that belongs beside a northern grand duke!’

More memories trickled in as she thought that.

Looking at how she’d grown up, it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.

Her mother had died when she was young. Her father had no interest in her. She’d never gotten along with her stepmother either. Raelia had always been lonely. On top of that, her timid nature made it hard for her to reach out to anyone.

She’d always been starved for affection and crushed by loneliness.

‘Honestly, I can’t understand this body’s original owner at all.’

With this face, this family name. What could possibly have made her so withdrawn? She was so different from herself that it took time to accept.

The maid pushed the door open and called out cheerfully.

“Miss, now that you’re up, let’s get you ready. You’ve come all the way to Kaisas, so you should go out and see the sights!”

This villa had been where Raelia’s late mother had spent her final days, so traces of her mother remained here. It was one of the few places where Raelia had ever felt at ease.

The original Raelia would have wanted to look through her mother’s things before going out, but the current Raelia needed time to adjust to her situation.

‘I haven’t gone through all the memories yet, so I should wait a little longer before heading out.’

She was a noble lady either way. Buying herself time was as simple as saying she didn’t want to go.

“I’m not in the mood, and going out in the blazing sun doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather go out in the cool of the evening.”

“But yesterday you said you loved how sunny the afternoons were, Miss!”

‘That was the previous owner talking.’

The body had a new occupant now.

“I changed my mind. I want to spend a little time in my room and collect myself.”

The woman’s expression turned troubled at the reversal.

“You’d said you wanted to go out, so Juan has been getting ready for the outing……”

Juan was the male servant assigned to attend Raelia. His name came to her naturally, and with it came the green-haired maid’s name: Seria.

“Seria, tell him we’ll go later.”

Seria accepted her wishes and pulled the door shut. Once she was gone, Raelia breathed slowly and gathered what she knew about the body’s original owner.

Her birth mother was dead, and her father was indifferent to her. Growing up starved of affection had made her introverted. She’d even thought of herself as worthless.

‘Why would she think that?’

The original owner’s fragility left Raelia mildly exasperated. She understood it, of course, but still.

Thinking poorly of yourself was something you really shouldn’t do.

A knock came, and the door opened a crack. Seria poked her head in.

“Juan says he’d like to see you for a moment. What shall I tell him, Miss?”

Deeply inconvenient.

‘I’m trying to have some time to myself. Why does everyone keep interrupting?’

But during this trip, she was supposed to follow Juan’s guidance. Raelia’s father had ordered her to do so. Reluctantly, she allowed him in.

“Send him in.”

Her plan was to call Juan in and tell him she didn’t need to go out after all. With that resolve, she pulled on a top, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited.

‘Juan. That name sounds so familiar.’

It definitely wasn’t the name of any northern grand duke she’d fangirled over.

Then why doesn’t it feel unfamiliar? If he’s not a northern grand duke, I usually don’t pay much attention. Was he in the inner circle of one of the characters I liked?

She was still turning this over in her mind when the door opened and a man walked in.

Juan had silver hair and red eyes, and he was genuinely, strikingly handsome. His looks were so striking that she stared for a moment.

‘Wait. Silver hair and red eyes? A beautiful man with the presence of a main character?’

Something was trying to surface in her memory.

“W-wait a moment! Juan, step outside for a second.”

The man looked thoroughly taken aback.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. But come back in a little while.”

He hesitated, then caught the firm look on her face and stepped out.

The moment she was alone, a bad feeling swept through her.

“Don’t tell me he’s that trash…… I mean, the northern grand duke from the neighboring country.”

Silver hair and red eyes were common enough traits. The name Juan appeared in plenty of novels too. But a northern grand duke named Juan wasn’t common at all, and the story that went with him was unlike any other.

She could never forget that northern grand duke. He was the worst, the most despicable character she’d ever read.

‘No, I’m overthinking it. It’s probably nothing.’

Surely she hadn’t transmigrated into that novel.

Surely……not, right?

Raelia looked at the mirror again. The heroine’s appearance as described in that novel matched her own far too closely.

And decisively, the heroine of that novel was also named ‘Raelia.’

‘Nooooo, why did I have to transmigrate into the novel with the trash northern grand duke of all things!’

Raelia screamed inwardly.

Northern Grand Duke Juan Elasen.

He was currently living as Raelia’s servant, but he was a grand duke from a neighboring country, hiding his true identity.