Regaining her senses at the chamberlain’s shout, Anna rushed to the main building’s kitchen, received the tray with lunch, and headed toward the annex.

‘Ugh……! I feel like I’m going to throw up.’

Suddenly, she stopped walking as nausea rose to her throat. Anna barely suppressed the urge to vomit by gently stroking her churning chest with her palm.

‘……This is truly maddening.’

She still couldn’t understand how she had managed to endure in that hall. The only thing that kept flashing in her mind was the image of Daisy dying before her eyes.

Every time the pale, cold face of the maid appeared in her thoughts, nausea rose from her empty stomach, forcing her to keep stroking her chest.

When Daisy’s body, her heart pierced through, slowly collapsed to the side, her face had turned exactly toward Anna.

The moment Anna’s crouched gaze met those eyes losing their vitality, her heart beat so rapidly that she worried it might stop functioning altogether.

At the time, everything felt so unreal, so distant.

Only the chilling sensation of cold bl＊＊d soaking the marble floor touching her body remained vivid.

It was only after being severely scolded by the chief chamberlain that reality came crashing down on her.

‘The dead maid’s name was Daisy, right?’

Everyone knew it deep down. That it wasn’t Daisy who had put poison in the teacup.

‘She probably just got caught up in the attempted poisoning incident and took all the blame. Poor thing.’

Yet the Duke killed the maid with a single stroke without a moment’s hesitation. Without even listening to any explanation.

At this point, the question of ‘why’ naturally arises. Why couldn’t the esteemed Duke figure out what even a mere servant knew?

‘Because the Duke is a raving lunatic.’

To be precise, it’s because this is a world inside a high-level tragic novel.

⟨No Flowers For You⟩. A novel so extreme in its tragedy that rumors circulated questioning the author’s mental state.

This world was the foundation of that novel’s setting, and the ducal family where she now worked as a maid was both the background and stage of that story.

Honestly, she didn’t know the specific details.

All she had read was a summary containing spoilers that a friend had sent her from some blog.

‘If I summarize roughly, the story went like this?’

Duke Edmund takes Cecilia, a princess from a defeated nation, as his wife as a reward for his victory.

But since it was a marriage forced by the Emperor, he initially considers her just a useless trophy. Then, through various incidents, he gradually becomes attached to her, but……

‘The label “trash male lead” wasn’t given without reason.’

The male lead, not recognizing his feelings as love, becomes obsessed with the female lead, restrains her, and commits all sorts of despicable acts.

Naturally, the female lead withers under such treatment from the male lead and eventually tries to escape.

Somehow succeeding in her escape, the female lead enjoys her freedom briefly. But as is typical in tragic novel clichés, she’s soon recaptured by the male lead.

Afterward, she lives a life that can hardly be called living.

‘What exactly was written on that blog?’

Anna’s face fell as she tried to piece together fragments of her past memories.

‘……Was the ending so shocking that I’ve forgotten it?’

To prevent the female lead from ever escaping again, he severed the tendons in her legs and killed all the servants who had been loyal to her right before her eyes.

The shock caused the female lead to develop aphasia accompanied by amnesia. The male lead sees this as an opportunity to reset their strained relationship, and the novel ends without any side stories.

‘Thinking about it again, it truly is the worst ending. I understand why my friend was spitting with rage while cursing it.’

Anna had transmigrated into the body of a maid in this insane novel’s ducal residence.

“Haah……”

If only she had been a maid who never appeared in the story, or at best just Maid #1 who briefly passed by the protagonist, it might have been less unfair.

The problem was that this body’s original role in the novel was that of a maid who helped the female lead escape and was killed by the Duke. A maid who blindly followed and helped the female lead no matter what.

When she realized her role in the novel, her only thought was that she needed to escape from this mansion quickly.

But she soon had to abandon that idea.

Because of the damned contract conditions.

According to the contract, she could never leave the mansion alone except on errands. And even for errands, she had to be accompanied by a knight.

They claimed it was for security within the mansion, but in reality, it was to prevent servants from using errands as an excuse to escape.

‘They know it too. Watching servants die every other day is perfect for developing mental illness.’

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen people who had been lured in by the higher wages than elsewhere crying in the corner of the stable, saying they’d been scammed.

Perhaps the original owner of this body, Anna, had also been attracted by the high wages before meeting her tragic end.

‘When I first transmigrated, my body was burning with fever. I must have transmigrated into a body that had died from a fever caused by severe stress.’

After transmigrating, Anna had lived like a shadow within the mansion, as if dead. For exactly half a year.

She thought that if she kept quiet, she wouldn’t get directly entangled with the original story.

But this was a foolish thought. The force of the original story couldn’t be ignored.

The Duke must have chosen her as Cecilia’s personal maid without any particular thought.

‘The Duke didn’t even know who Cecilia’s personal maid was. To him, servants are just replaceable disposables.’

It was just by chance, pure coincidence, that she happened to be next to the corpse. In common terms, Anna was simply ‘cursed with terrible luck.’

In the end, the fate of the original story was unavoidable.

All her efforts to avoid the original plot had been in vain. A deflated feeling escaped between her teeth like a breeze.

However, such emotions lasted only briefly; Anna soon composed her expression.

“You’re a maid I haven’t seen before.”

“I’m Anna, newly assigned as the personal maid.”

While lost in deep thought, Anna’s body had already arrived at the door to Cecilia’s room. Anna gave a brief answer to the formal question from the knight guarding Cecilia’s room.

“Newly assigned? Ah, I see.”

The knight’s eyes narrowed momentarily before returning to normal.

He seemed to have caught on despite her brief introduction.

‘How many times must this have happened?’

Her desperate situation felt all the more real seeing his reaction.

“I’ll check the lady’s meal first.”

The knight took out a silver rod about the length of chopsticks from inside his uniform. He then ordered Anna to remove all the covers from the food.

Anna immediately opened the covers one by one.

A medium-rare beef steak, cucumber salad, and various other side dishes revealed themselves.

Despite the appetizing aroma and the temptingly arranged food before him, the knight’s expression remained utterly dry.

He was busy checking each dish by poking the rod into them one by one. His movements were very familiar and quick.

‘So that rod was why the attempted poisoning earlier failed.’

Perhaps because of this, Anna also couldn’t focus on the food. Rather, the smell of food felt nauseating. It was due to her needless tension.

No one would be crazy enough to poison food again in the midst of a bloody purge. Nevertheless, she swallowed dryly and focused on the rod, just in case.

“……No issues.”

Phew, Anna inwardly sighed with relief. Fortunately, there was no change in the rod. The knight, putting it away, opened the firmly closed door and said:

“Enter.”

Anna entered Cecilia’s room, pulling the tray laden with food.

‘Wow……’

As soon as she entered the room, a sigh of admiration escaped her.

Unlike the corridor where sunlight streamed in well, the room was dark. It felt like a completely different world.

‘It’s like… I’ve entered a ghost mansion.’

Though it was too dark to see clearly, a faint silhouette was visible on the bed. It was Cecilia.

If not for the faint sound of breathing, she might have mistaken her for a corpse.

Anna was a bit startled but didn’t show it outwardly.

Whatever happened, her role now was Cecilia’s personal maid, and she needed to focus on her duties. It was better than facing the future of dying like a dog at the Duke’s hands for messing up.

‘Right, I just need to keep living as if dead, like before. What difference does being a personal maid make?’

Whatever role the original Anna had in the original story had nothing to do with her current self. She just needed to avoid helping the female lead escape at the cost of her life.

She would go along moderately, live long and quietly, staying as far away from the original plot as possible.

With that conclusion, her complicated feelings eased considerably.

‘Alright, let’s start by opening the curtains.’

Swoosh!

As bright sunlight entered through the window, the dark room immediately brightened. At the same time, the previously motionless blanket stirred significantly. Anna caught this and opened her mouth. Or rather, she opened her mouth but couldn’t say anything.

The moment she saw Cecilia in the sunlight, she was too shocked to speak.

Deeply sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Empty eyes, a bony neckline, and silver hair turned brittle from lack of nutrition.

It was an unsightly appearance that made it hard to believe she was the female protagonist of the novel.