1.

“Miss!”

Rose, who had briefly fallen asleep, opened her eyes.

Unlike the peaceful morning, the Count’s residence was filled with acrid smoke and scorching heat.

Before she could enjoy the lingering comfort of deep sleep, her nanny Emily grabbed her small hand.

“Get up quickly. Hurry!”

Rose, suddenly awakened, staggered. Her head ached from already inhaling quite a bit of smoke.

“Emily…… my head hurts. Can’t you carry me?”

Rose whined. Instead of carrying Rose on her back as usual, Emily answered firmly.

“Miss, please go out through the back door immediately.”

“Why there?”

“Well, this is…… Yes, it’s hide-and-seek. Until I find you, you must get in the carriage.”

“The carriage?”

Rose looked up at Emily with an anxious face. No matter how young she was, Rose wasn’t innocent enough to play hide-and-seek in this inferno.

“T-then I want to play with Mother. Where is Mother? And Father?”

Emily looked down at the child standing before her with a sorrowful expression. Instead of replying further, she pushed Rose’s back.

“Go!”

“Emil……”

“Run away quickly, hurry!”

In an instant, the ceiling collapsed between them. With flames between them, Emily shouted.

“You must hide your identity, Miss. You absolutely must!”

Rose turned around with a hollow expression. Her feet lacked strength as she ran down the corridor.

As soon as she escaped through the back door, the sound of the roof collapsing followed as if it had been waiting.

The flames soon terrifyingly devoured young Rose’s world.

※※※

“Gasp!”

Rose inhaled sharply as she woke from sleep. Judging by how little the candle had burned down, she hadn’t slept long.

“Ughh……”

Her entire body felt stiff, perhaps from dreaming of the past. Rose groaned as she peeled a piece of paper stuck to her cheek.

Her face reflected in the small mirror on the desk. Dark circles under her eyes, hunched back, a dull-looking face.

She was certainly far from looking aristocratic.

‘Well, I’m really just a commoner maid now.’

Though she missed her parents, Rose didn’t find this life bad. The past already felt too dreamlike to her.

Rose’s gaze, blankly staring into space, shifted beyond her desk. She could see Maria, her roommate and friend.

“Fallen asleep uncomfortably again.”

Rose got up to cover Maria with a blanket before sitting back down. She still had quite a bit of transcription work left to do.

[‘I love you, Aneta.’

‘I love you too, Clinton.’]

In the Laitan Empire, which emphasized asceticism, novels about love between men and women were strictly prohibited.

The nobility valued duty, devotion, and loyalty to the country over love, and considered it shameful to forget one’s responsibilities due to infatuation with the opposite s*x.

However, at some point, pulp novels began to spread, primarily among women, and the number of people secretly visiting bookstores at night increased.

Rose’s part-time job involved transcribing these pulp novels.

“Oh, Rose. I must have dozed off.”

Maria rubbed her eyes as she got up. Her face was full of drowsiness.

“I’m almost done. Clinton just confessed his love.”

“What? And that’s the ending?”

“Yeah. Well, they’re all like that. Meeting fatefully at a party, making love in the bushes, then confessing—that’s all there is to it. So predictable.”

Though pulp novels had sparked a new trend, the imagination of people trapped in an era of asceticism was rather poor.

Rose, who had initially read them with a hand over her mouth in shock, now predicted the plots with a bored expression when looking at manuscripts.

“I need to get some fresh air.”

Rose yawned and stood up.

“Be careful. Don’t get caught by the head maid.”

“How would someone who passes out at nine o’clock sharp ever discover me?”

Rose stretched as she walked out the door.

The pond within the grand ducal residence was Rose’s favorite place.

It was particularly deserted in the evening, so she often took walks there when she grew tired of her transcription work.

Standing by the pond, Rose took a deep breath.

The moisture-laden trees swayed gently, rustling their leaves. Just as she was calming her mind while carefully examining the pond of unfathomable depth, strange sounds began to come from nearby.

“Huff……”

Rose’s eyebrows raised slightly.

“……Breathing?”

It was clearly a man’s breathing. Soon she also heard the sound of something being struck swiftly.

Rose walked toward the sound as if entranced.

Hiding her body discreetly behind a column of the small pavilion next to the pond, Rose began to look around.

“Gasp.”

Rose’s eyes widened as if they might pop out when she spotted something.

“Your Grace……?”

The owner of the breathing was the mansion’s master, Grand Duke Cassel Ridenhaven, who had recently returned from a long war.

Perhaps he was practicing privately, as a solid wooden sword was gripped in his hand.

‘This is bad.’

According to rumors, he would cut down anyone who caught his eye without hesitation.

She had heard he became addicted to k＊lling and turned into a war maniac.

To avoid becoming the corpse of a maid who died mysteriously in front of the pond, Rose quietly turned around.

That was when it happened.

As if shining a spotlight, moonlight descended upon his body.

“……I must be crazy.”

Only after seeing the Grand Duke illuminated by the light did Rose realize that his upper body was n*ked.

In that moment, she recalled the content of the dull pulp novel she had just read.

[Each time the Marquis exhaled a labored breath, his chest rose and fell. Aneta……]

And right before Rose’s eyes was a chest rising and falling with labored breaths. Rose wiped around her nose just in case.

I shouldn’t be looking at this……

Peeping at her master’s n*ked body. It was absolutely forbidden.

For a moment, Rose’s head turned away as she regained her senses, but then returned to its original position as if possessed.

Don’t look, Rose……

Don’t……

Do……

Rose’s gaze fixed back on the Grand Duke’s body. Not just his chest muscles, but also his abdominal muscles, arranged as intricately as if painted with a brush, were fantastic.

It was while Rose was admiring the Grand Duke’s pelvic bone, smoothly extending from his side, that it happened.

The Grand Duke, who had been swinging his wooden sword toward a tree, stopped training. Rose unconsciously swallowed with a “gulp” sound.

“Who’s there?”

The rigid voice pierced Rose’s ears. The Grand Duke, who had keenly sensed her presence, approached where Rose was hiding.

Rose, who had been in a daze, startled and flattened herself on the ground. Then she crawled behind a bench and hid in the forest extending behind the pond.

Fortunately, the Grand Duke didn’t pursue her further, and Rose was able to safely return to her quarters.

“You’re back already? Did you see a ghost or something?”

Maria greeted her with a worried expression. Rose waved her hands in denial.

“N-nothing happened.”

“Nothing, you say? Your face is red and you’re drenched in sweat.”

“No. Really, it’s nothing. I was just scared on the way back.”

Her pounding heart gradually calmed down. Rose sat at her desk in a daze and picked up her pen.

Though the letters barely registered in her mind, Rose began to write automatically.

[‘I love you, Aneta.’

‘I love you too, Cassel.’]

Belatedly noticing the typo, Rose crumpled the paper in alarm. It was a mistake caused by the Grand Duke’s strong impression.

‘Wait.’

Holding the crumpled paper, Rose became lost in thought.

The male protagonists in pulp novels were usually ascetic and dignified nobles. Even when making love to the women in the novels, they remained beautiful and elegant like swans.

‘But when I saw the Grand Duke’s body, I……’

As if possessed by something, Rose took out a new piece of paper.

[The man was a beast in bed wearing the mask of a lofty nobleman.]

Rose smiled after writing the first sentence as if possessed by a ghost.

“Yes, he was like a beast.”

“Oh my, Rose, are you trying to write something yourself?”

Maria approached Rose with interest.

“Just as a hobby or something.”

“You should submit it somewhere. How do you know it won’t do well?”

“Oh, come on. I just wrote it because it suddenly came to mind.”

Rose waved her hands dismissively. Then she scratched her head with the pen handle, looking embarrassed.

‘Publication? Could I really do something like that?’

Though she felt uneasy about writing with a real person in mind, the Grand Duke would never know about the existence of pulp novels until his death anyway.

If that was the case, perhaps it wouldn’t matter if she spread her wings of imagination a little more.

And not long after, her writing began to sell like wildfire beyond imagination.

To the extent that it reached the ears of the novel’s protagonist, Cassel Ridenhaven.

※※※

Rose, wearing a navy blue cloak pulled down over her head, moved her feet hurriedly through the darkness.

After crossing the darkened shopping district where most businesses had closed, she entered an alley, revealing a small bookstore that still had its lights on.

Rose flung open the door of the bookstore.

“Robin!”

The man who had been reading through papers piled on one side of the desk rose when he saw Rose.

“The author has arrived!”

Rose, her cheeks flushed red from the cold, rubbed the bridge of her nose once. She still felt awkward with the title of “author.”

“Congratulations on the tenth printing of ‘The Rose and the Black Leopard’!”

Robin approached Rose, stepping as if dancing.

“Visitors ask for this book almost every day. There are women all over the streets desperate to become the fiancée of that ferocious Grand Duke just because of this book!”

Rose’s lips twitched, unable to hide her joy.