“Hey, Patrol Officer!? Are you doing another water ghost operation? The rescue team will be here soon, so don’t do anything reckless!”

Despite the sergeant’s warning, my body was moving. I firmly tied the rope to the thickest nearby tree and my body, then jumped straight into the rapids.

“Be careful! You’ll get swept away by the current!”

“Lee Su-jeong! You can’t go any further, grab my hand!”

“I, I’m almost there……!”

While everyone around was trying to stop me, I was gradually getting closer to the woman clinging to the tree.

“Your, your hand……!”

I approached the woman with all my might. The current grew stronger and stronger. Seeing the woman’s eyes that only hoped for me to save her gave me unknown strength. I literally squeezed out every ounce of strength I had and walked step by step.

“I got her!”

“Patrol Officer Lee! Are you okay? Are you okay?”

“Yes! Please pull when I give you the signal!”

Finally, I was able to grab the woman who was barely clinging to the tree. Now I just had to safely hold her and walk out. The sergeant and vacationers prepared to pull us out.

“Aaaaah……!”

“Lee Su-jeong!! Patrol Officer! No……”

That’s when it happened. A huge plank floating down the current got caught on the taut rope. At that moment, I was sucked into the water by the tremendous force pulling me.

⁕⁕⁕

“No……”!”

I screamed and opened my eyes with a start. I was still flailing my hands and feet instinctively as if trying to escape from underwater, but something was different. There was no heavy, cold water that had been choking my breath. And I heard a strange sound.

— Creak

— Clatter

Light appeared faintly to my barely opened eyes. Along with the loud clattering sound that followed my movements, white dust rose into the air.

‘Am, am I dead?’

After falling into the water, I naturally thought I had died. The water had filled my breath completely, making it painful. But now the water that had been pressing down on my body terrifyingly had disappeared without a trace. And both my arms and legs, all my senses were intact. I hadn’t died.

‘Phew…… Thank goodness. I thought I was going to become a water ghost.’

If I was alive, I was probably transferred to an ambulance and hospitalized.

‘But are hospitals this dark and quiet?’

Just as I was feeling puzzled.

— Flutter

“Ah, what? What!”

Something fell on her head. Startled by the object that blocked her vision, she flailed her hands. Something caught at her fingertips.

‘White cloth? Where did this fall from?’

She looked around to see where the cloth had fallen from.

‘Ah, so bright…… Ah, the curtain fell.’

In her hand was a torn piece of cloth. It seemed to be a curtain. Sunlight came streaming in from where the cloth had fallen. As the surroundings suddenly brightened, she rubbed her eyes and had a fundamental question. Do hospitals these days use torn cloth as curtains? Even old neighborhood hospitals wouldn’t do that.

‘Then where exactly is this place?’

Just as she was sensing something was wrong with the unsettling surrounding scenery.

— Creak

“Marina!!”

“See, I told you! I definitely heard a sound from Marina’s room.”

With the dull sound of the door opening, the room quickly became noisy. An elderly man and woman who looked like a married couple entered and began making a fuss toward her.

“Marina!! You’re awake, my daughter!!!”

“What?? Me?”

Perhaps they had no energy to answer her question, as the couple each grabbed one of her arms and embraced her. They made crying sounds while hugging her violently.

‘They seem to be mistaken about something?’

Working as a rural patrol officer, she often experienced this kind of thing. Cases where elderly people suffering from long illness mistook her for their children and called her by those names. Each time, she would wear a kind smile and correct them. Just like right now.

“Haha, I’m not Marina. My name is Lee Su-jeong.”

The couple’s faces turned pale upon hearing the truth. They were so shocked that they couldn’t speak properly.

“Ah……”

“What in the world……”

It usually takes time to accept the truth. Feeling that they needed time, she leisurely looked around……

Only to belatedly realize that the person who needed to accept the truth was herself.

‘Uh…… wait. What is this place, is this Korea?’

The scenery inside the room, the clothes she was wearing, and finally even the elderly couple’s appearance. Although shabby and torn to pieces, everything was definitely ‘romance fantasy’ style.

‘Uh…… could this be that thing I only read about in words, no, in novels…… tra, transmigration?’

Just then, the stunned couple reinforced her name again.

“How could our Marina…… has she finally lost her mind?”

“If only we had fed her proper food…… sob, this father is sorry, Marina!!!”

‘My name is Marina……? Could it be that Marina……?’

That very villainess from the dark romance novel ‘The Villainess Defiles the Sun’ who burns to death…… Marina Enchester is me?

‘It was already unfair that I died by drowning, and now next is burning at the stake!?’

“Wait!! Am, am I Marina, Marina Enchester?”

She interrupted the couple who were only talking to themselves and lamenting their situation. She couldn’t believe it at all. She had to confirm it.

“Have you regained your senses? Yes, the only hope of our Enchester family, my daughter Marina!!”

She was too shocked to even scream. She thought she had become a water ghost after falling into the rapids. That’s what she thought…… that it would have been better to become a water ghost.

“No!”

Her scream filled the room.

⁕⁕⁕

“Cough……”

She was warming her body with the Enchester couple in front of the brazier to escape the cold. The Enchester family mansion that she examined after regaining her senses was a mess in one word. The inside of the house seemed colder than outside. She kept coughing.

‘That’s why…… the whole room creaked at my scream.’

Cracked and broken windows everywhere, shabby exterior…… The interior of the mansion that seemed ready to collapse at any moment was so shabby that they couldn’t even think of repairing it. Cracks ran through the floor and walls everywhere, or the wood had rotted and warped.

— Whoosh

As soon as the cold wind rushed in through the window, her body reflexively shrank. Not just her, but the other family members huddled together in front of the brazier were the same.

“I, I definitely blocked the window with makeshift cloth……”

“It must have torn again, dear.”

The Enchester baron couple, Marina’s parents, shivering from the cold, put their heads together to figure out if there were any cloth scraps left in the house, but……

“Where would we have cloth big enough to block such a large window in our house?”

“Then, even paper……”

‘There aren’t even cloth scraps left in the mansion!’

— Whoosh

When the wind rushed over the window frame once more, the family members blocked the front of the brazier without sparing their bodies to protect the remaining embers. With hands frozen stiff from cold, wearing a worn-out blanket, she could only grit her teeth.

‘It’s pitiful that the house is shabby, but of all things, it’s the Baron Enchester family that’s torn-apart poor……?’

The family of Marina Enchester, the female protagonist and villainess of the novel she transmigrated into, 「The Villainess Defiles the Sun」, had nothing and nothing to boast about.

‘That’s why Marina fell completely for the money the first prince offered.’

In the original work, Marina joined hands with the wicked first prince Kervic to rebuild her shabby family. Quoting the novel’s content, the Baron Enchester family’s situation was as follows:

「The reason the humble noble Enchester family was poor was entirely thanks to Baron Fort Enchester. Fort Enchester, who was Marina’s father’s father’s father, dominated high society and the trading business with excellent business acumen and eloquence. Well, there was some luck too. He received recognition for his loyalty to the Solium Empire and obtained a title, though only in name.

But the one who ruined it all was Marina’s father, Baron Robert Enchester. Robert was a collection of misfortunes with no economic acumen and no luck following him. He jumped into various businesses with the wealth his ancestors left him, but ruined them all and ended up in this state.」

‘Really unlucky to the core!’

What’s even more absurd is that the transmigration happened to be in the middle of winter.

‘I died swept away by rapids during summer vacation… and after transmigration, it’s the middle of winter, and at minus ten degrees at that? Are you kidding me?’

Only the sound of teeth chattering from the cold wave could be heard.

The unlucky Enchester couple and their daughter who is also an unlucky transmigrator. Something is definitely wrong with this!

She kept pinching both her cheeks. It hurt enough to make tears flow, so this was definitely the reality she faced. What she could do here was…… sadly and despairingly, only regaining her reason.

‘Let me trace my memory again. What was the original ending like?’

No happy ending with the female lead, the male protagonist’s rampage and anger, everything burned black leaving only ashes in a ruined ending……

“Ugh, this really can’t be!”

As the novel’s content flashed through her mind, the words that this couldn’t be came out of her mouth. She despaired while holding her head.

“Marina, what can’t be?”

“Just leave her be. She seems to need more time to recover.”

The couple seemed to think she hadn’t regained her senses yet.