Hello, Readers! I am celebrating my birthday with extra chapter updates, so please enjoy this special chapter release of 4 bonus chapters! 🥳

(Lurelia’s Birthday Bonus – Update 2/4 🎉)

♡ To all readers who purchased these chapters before my Birthday: I can’t express this enough – Thank you for your support. (*ˊᗜˋ*)/ᵗᑋᵃᐢᵏ ᵞᵒᵘ*

Because his words were right.

When I returned home, I was holed up in my room again for a while.

* * *

“You keep getting depressed and gloomy because you’re always cooped up in your room. Let’s go out!”

Clenching my fists, I ventured out.

I decided to take a walk, thinking that as I walked, I could naturally clear my mind.

Wondering if anyone would recognize me if I wandered around the neighborhood, I deliberately went to the busy downtown area.

“You…!”

Then, before long, I ran into a classmate. I tried to avoid them since we weren’t close at all, but I was caught quickly.

This is why people shouldn’t do things they’re not used to.

“You suddenly disappeared during class, I wondered what happened!”

“Well, about that.”

“You got your face redone, right?”

“That’s right!”

Huh?

“So that’s why you took a leave of absence?”

The classmate clapped as if they understood.

“You were pretty before, but you’re even prettier after the changes.”

Excuse me? I didn’t do anything!

“Where did you get it done?”

I denied it, saying I didn’t do anything, but the classmate kept begging me to tell just them.

“I’ll keep it a secret from the others, so tell me. Okay?”

“I didn’t do anything! I just lost weight, that’s why I look like this!”

“Let’s share the good stuff. Okay?”

I barely managed to peel off the leech-like classmate and escape back home.

“Well, what can I do?”

If I had been in my right mind, my mom would have danced with joy. She might have even offered financial support.

If that were the case, I would have been excited to do it too, but right now, I’m just barely breathing.

“Have I changed that much?”

I hadn’t properly looked in a mirror since coming home. At most, I had glanced at myself with bleary eyes a few days ago when I went out to meet the senior.

Standing in front of the mirror now, I didn’t look any different from what I saw in the shop window.

I had lost weight from skipping meals, but my ambiguous features and skin tone remained the same.

“What’s supposed to have changed…?”

I picked up my phone, which I’ve been holding more often lately, and went into the photo gallery.

“What’s this?”

Looking at my past photos, I could understand why my classmate had made such a fuss. My features and aura back then were much more ordinary, similar yet different from how I look now.

“This…”

Something clicked.

The senior.

I thought the reason I didn’t feel nervous seeing the senior’s face was because of the disconnect of him being a character who jumped out of a book.

But that wasn’t it. He was truly becoming localized. To the point where he couldn’t return to where he originally belonged.

The senior was shedding the unrealistic elements that only existed in novels and changing to fit the situation here.

The excessive handsomeness, the sparkle, had disappeared.

Conversely, I was transforming into an unrealistic appearance that seemed to belong only in books.

“What? Was I also being assimilated?”

Surprisingly, I didn’t find this situation terrifying or scary.

What’s consuming me is a strange heat.

“Let’s go again.”

I should have immediately snapped back, asking what nonsense he was spouting, but I couldn’t. I was unable to.

Because that’s exactly what I had been thinking since I came home.

When I was there, I desperately wanted to return home, but now that I’m back, I’m not happy.

“Meeting the senior actually helps me distinguish reality better.”

The boundary between where I was and home had been blurry, but I realized there was a line drawn between the two worlds.

Although I worried about suddenly running into someone, I started going out and even cleaned my room.

My parents were delighted by these changes in me.

“Sweetie, what should we have for dinner? Let’s have your favorite.”

“Anything Mom makes is good.”

Our family was quite harmonious, and I seemed to melt into it.

“Hey, piggy. If you’re going for a walk, I’ll go with you.”

My younger brother, noticing how I flinched every time I went out, still unfamiliar with facing people, tried to be considerate in his own way.

Pulling my hat down low, I went out and observed how people behaved.

The once-normal everyday life now feels alien.

As I realized something was off, I instinctively knew that I could no longer return to my former self.

And I tried hard to ignore this fact.

* * *

The walks to clear my head didn’t stop.

As usual, I came back from outside and put my phone down on the desk, when I saw the book. The stack of papers that started it all.

As if entranced, I sat down and opened the book. I read it from start to finish without stopping.

After closing the stack of papers, I had to face my emotions.

“I miss them.”

A phrase that escaped my lips without me realizing.

The names in this book were no longer mere letters to me.

I had denied this fact when facing them as living beings, but only now, seeing them in print, did I realize it.

Even when I met the senior, a part of me still regarded him as a character from the book, the Crown Prince.

But after confirming his other actions like this in writing, I realized there was a big gap between the Crown Prince I knew and the senior.

Additionally, I was able to acknowledge that the characters I only knew through words also had different aspects to them.

Now, at last.

Moreover, I realized that my efforts to get accustomed to daily life were, in fact, attempts to forget that place.

“I miss them.”

That place, which had felt so tiresome, I now wanted to go back to. No, I had always wanted to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I believed there was no place for me there.

Now that I know the male protagonists remember me, I need to go and confirm it.

To see if they are happy.

It might be a kind of obsession. Even if my going there might not solve anything, I wanted to confirm it.

If I hadn’t known, it might have been different, but now that I knew, I couldn’t give up.

I picked up my phone. There was only one place to contact.

“Senior.”

[Yes, junior.]

The senior’s voice was as cheerful as always.

[Where shall we meet?]

He asked without a moment’s hesitation, instead of me who was hesitating.

As if he knew I would contact him.

“Where… should I go?”

After writing down the answer, I hung up the phone.

I took out a clean sheet of paper and calmly wrote a note to leave for my parents.