TVRP 01

Chapter 1

Thump, thump…….

My heart was pounding like crazy.

I was at the checkpoint in the border city of Vernil.

The bustling city was overflowing with energy wherever I looked.

“I heard His Majesty the new Emperor has decided to cut the tax rate in half!”

“I can hardly believe it! Who would have thought such a day would come? And I heard they’ve stopped conscripting young men in droves to use them as shields against those monsters!”

“I heard His Majesty can take on a hundred monsters all by himself. They say even the Sergegnev family, that famous swordsmanship clan, has to admit defeat when it comes to His Majesty!”

Emperor, Emperor, Emperor.

It was nothing but the Emperor wherever I went.

I let out a deep sigh and turned my head, only to lock eyes with a wanted poster hanging nearby.

It was a poster searching for someone, with a woman’s portrait drawn in enormous detail.

“But we can’t exactly celebrate without a care, either. Her Majesty the Empress has gone missing…… It’s such a frightening and heartbreaking thing.”

“What kind of bastard would dare abduct Her Majesty the Empress?! Whoever kidnapped Her Majesty should have all four limbs torn off the moment they’re caught!”

I cautiously felt my limbs.

My disappearance—no. The one who had planned and carried out my escape was none other than me.

“But let’s not worry too much. I hear His Majesty the Emperor has dispatched knights throughout the entire Empire to find Her Majesty the Empress.”

“Ooh, that certainly puts my mind at ease.”

‘That lunatic! Was plastering missing-person posters everywhere not enough? Now he’s wasting knights, too? Does he have manpower to spare or something?’

I was so dumbfounded and furious that I thumped my chest with my fist.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This suffocating escape drama had never been part of my plan.

“And that’s not all! I hear the young masters of the Sergegnev family are combing through every inch of the borderlands as well!”

At the sudden mention of my brothers, I grabbed my head.

‘Why did you guys come out here? Just mind your own business at home!’

I had suddenly found myself being chased by three knights who were supposedly the strongest on the entire continent, and cold sweat poured down my face.

None of this had been included in my contract with that bastard.

‘Still, I’m almost there.’

Once I passed through this checkpoint, I would be out of the Empire.

And then I would run with all my might toward the place where I could finally enjoy my peaceful retirement!

That was when it happened.

A sparrow suddenly fluttered down from somewhere and settled into my arms.

[Emergency! Emergency!]

The sparrow—or rather,

the magical puppet I had personally developed, ‘Rossi,’ whispered in a voice only I could hear.

[That bastard approaching! That bastard approaching!]

There was only one person Rossi ever referred to as ‘that bastard.’

I whispered in horror.

“What? How close is he?”

Just then, the border guard shouted.

“Attention! Inspections are suspended until further notice! Everyone, remain where you are!”

People began murmuring at the sudden order.

‘They’re suddenly suspending inspections? Don’t tell me…….’

Damn it. It seemed he really had come right up to my doorstep.

I had to make a choice.

Should I pretend I was dead and stay put, or should I just make a run for it?!

Before long, I saw the guards checking the faces of everyone standing in line one by one.

Biting down on my lip, I slowly moved my hand toward the knife hidden inside my sleeve.

I had spent most of my time at a desk fiddling with mechanical parts and doing research, but I was still a member of the Empire’s greatest swordsmanship family, the Sergegnev family.

When it came to physical activity, I was actually pretty confident.

I had prepared a means of spatial transportation for precisely this kind of situation.

I decided to escape to the place where it was located and quietly slipped out of the line.

“Hey! Stop!”

Unfortunately, a sharp-eyed guard spotted me.

I dodged the hand reaching out to grab me and pulled out my knife.

“Let go!”

“Gah!”

I swung it, startling the guard enough that he released me.

Good. Now all I had to do was press the nerve points with the blunt side of the knife to incapacitate him, then run……

Just as I thought that—

Thud.

Someone grabbed my wrist.

“That’s not how you do it, Lily.”

A low voice that made it difficult to breathe.

At the same time, a hot body temperature wrapped around my back.

Goosebumps rose all over my body.

I barely managed to turn my head and saw beautiful golden eyes, curved like they held the light of the sun.

The person who had taught me swordsmanship.

And my one and only childhood friend.

Eden.

“You’re supposed to aim precisely for the throat like this when you’re going to stab someone.”

As if demonstrating, Eden used the knife I was holding to aim at his own throat, all while continuing to hold me from behind.

In the midst of it all, the hood Eden had been wearing fell backward, revealing his face to everyone.

“Gasp.”

“H-His Majesty the Emperor!”

“Your Majesty the Emperor!”

Pitch-black hair and dazzling golden eyes.

Features so beautiful that he looked more like a doll or a sculpture than a human being.

His tall, imposing stature, and above all, the enormous greatsword strapped to his back.

There was no one in the Empire who could fail to recognize this new Emperor.

The terrified citizens began dropping to their knees before Eden one by one.

Slowly.

Like a wave rolling in little by little.

“……How did you find me?”

I bit my lip and glared at Eden.

He smiled brightly, like the sun.

“There’s no way I wouldn’t know what Lily was thinking. We’ve been together since we were little.”

“Then why won’t you listen to me—”

“I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

Eden pulled me tightly against his shoulder.

The boy who had once been smaller than me now enclosed me in arms that had grown overwhelmingly large.

“Thinking that you were dying every minute and every second somewhere without me.”

As he said that, Eden pulled something out from inside his clothes.

It was a fist-sized magic stone.

The citizens, who had been watching in breathless silence, widened their eyes at the mesmerizing glow of the magic stone.

“You need this to breathe, don’t you? Even if you’ve come to hate me, don’t reject the things I can give you.”

Huh?

A shiver ran down my ears at the syrupy stickiness of his voice.

“Now that everything has finally fallen into my hands.”

Eden wrapped his large palm around my neck and spoke as though pleading with me.

“But if you’re the one who leaves me…… then none of it means anything to me. I feel like I’ve become the king of a pile of dust. It’s miserable. Lily, do you know what this feels like?”

“Eden.”

When I called his name as if trying to calm him down, he looked down at me like an obedient puppy.

“So please, don’t hate me. Master.”

Eden whispered the old form of address as well.

“……What?”

As I stared into those beautiful golden eyes, where possessiveness was stuck like glue, I could only sigh.

I had raised him so carefully, watching every word I said and every action I took.

And in the end, this bastard had grown into a perfectly obsessive male lead just like the original story.

The problem was that the person hearing those lines was none other than me.

‘Where exactly did everything go wrong……?’

If this had been my previous life on Earth, I would have gone on television just to figure out exactly what was wrong with my parenting methods.

I recovered my memories of my previous life when I was twelve, at the exact moment I fell from a tree while trying to prank my older sister, Eloise.

In my previous life, I had been a job seeker who had graduated from an academy—or rather, a university—in a world different from this one.

My name had been Yuna Shin, and I had graduated at the top of the mechanical engineering department at the best university in Korea, a major famously known for being a job guarantee.

I thought all that remained was to get a job at some prestigious company and finally pay off the student loans I had taken out to cover even my living expenses.

But on the final list of successful applicants for the special recruitment program at my dream company, the name was not mine.

It belonged to a classmate who was always begging me for hints on assignments.

A classmate who subtly bragged about his parents’ friendship with one of the company directors.

I had always kept my distance from alcohol, but I drank quite a lot that day.

Perhaps the old saying that something always goes wrong when you do something you normally don’t was true after all.

As I staggered back toward my tiny rented room, a truck with failed brakes came barreling toward me……

Crash.

That was where my memories of my previous life ended.

‘After twisting my entire body trying so hard to rise from the gutter and become a dragon, it sure ended rather anticlimactically…….’

Unlike that unfairly ended previous life, in this life I had been born into a fairly respectable noble family.

And not just any family, but the Duke House of Sergegnev, renowned as the greatest swordsmanship family in the Empire!

It was certainly a situation worth dancing over, but…… Well, the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal for me to simply celebrate being born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

For one thing, this world was practically an apocalyptic setting crawling with monsters.

And more importantly—

‘The Duke House of Sergegnev…… I’m sure I saw that name in my previous life, too.’

Astonishingly, my current life was that of a character inside a game I had played in my previous life.

<The Demon King’s Consort>.

The main story was about the heroine, who had been abducted by the Emperor, struggling to escape the Imperial Palace.

No matter where she ran, however, it inevitably led to an infamous imprisonment ending called ‘You’re in the palm of my hand.’

And that poor heroine, ‘Eloise Sergegnev,’ was……

‘My sister?!’

My older sister Eloise was born with a frail constitution and received everyone’s attention.

Even my awful-tempered brothers, my frightening father, and our strict head butler all yielded to Eloise.

I had been jealous and resentful of my sister, so I often bullied her.

‘I’d yank her hair at the drop of a hat, trip her, and even release mice into her room…….’

Even this time, I had fallen from the tree while trying to climb up and dump water on my sister.

Now that I remembered the memories of the twenty-four years I had lived in my previous life, I realized that I had been an absolutely horrible problem child until then.

‘I was completely rotten……!’

When Eloise heard that I had regained consciousness, she came rushing over.

“Lily, you’re finally awake! Thank God. Thank God……”

For the sake of the little sister who had climbed a tree to dump cold water on her and then fallen all by herself, my sister cried and cried.

As she hugged me tightly, I sniffled a little.

‘Stupid sister.’

What a pushover.

Why was she crying this much over a sister who had been bullying her and then received her comeuppance?

Twelve-year-old immature Lilyan had thought that all of her sister’s kindness was fake.

But……

“I was so worried something would happen to you, Lily. Thank you so much for waking up. Yes, that’s all that matters.”

My sister said that as she held me in her arms and shed endless tears.

Her body was hot, perhaps because she had been taking care of me despite being ill herself.

Looking through the eyes of twenty-four-year-old Yuna Shin, I could understand.

This wasn’t an act.

My sister had genuinely been worried about me.

Now, before, always.

‘Sister…….’

I don’t know why I started crying so much once I realized it.

In the end, I burst into tears like an idiot.

“Waaaaah.”

Sister. What am I going to do about you?

“Waaaaah!”

They say my sister is the heroine of this world.

They say she’s destined to get a captivity ending at the hands of some crazy psycho obsessed with her.

“Lily! Lily, why are you suddenly crying? Does something still hurt? Is that it?”

“Waaaaaaah!”

Those insane developers were such perverts that they had littered my sister’s path with nothing but bad endings!

As I sniffled and covered my sister’s chest with snot, I made a vow.

‘To hell with the original story and everything else.’

My sister—my angelic sister—was going to live a life a hundred million light-years away from that kind of hardcore angst.

I would diligently save up escape money, survive, and run away with my sister to that warm and peaceful southern country.

‘And above all, I’ll make sure we never even cross paths with the male protagonist, that insane psycho captivity freak!’

That was the vow I had made just last night.

“Lilyan Sergegnev. This is a gift.”

My father had returned to the castle after being away for a long time, and that was what he said as he tossed some boy toward me.

His black hair was as dark as night, while his eyes were so beautiful it was chilling, as though they had been made by melting down gold.

“F-Father? Who is this……?”

My father looked terrifying. Monster blood was splattered across the armor he was wearing.

When I asked hesitantly, trembling with fear—

“Your doll.”

The answer was as curt as a sheet of ice.

Father had returned from a business trip and brought his daughter a doll!

At first glance, it almost looked like a heartwarming, domestic scene……

‘But he’s not a doll. He’s a person!’

I could only protest inwardly as I looked up at my enormous father.

No matter how sophisticated the ‘magic dolls’ noble children played with these days were, there was absolutely no mistaking it.

That was a living, breathing human being!

“You’re at the age when you should be playing with things like this. Throw away those mechanical contraptions only commoners fiddle with.”

Perhaps it was simply my unavoidable fate, because I had loved tinkering with machines even before regaining my memories of my previous life.

My father continued describing the ‘doll’ in his chilly voice.

‘No, I’m telling you, that’s obviously a person……!’

More importantly, though.

The appearance of that doll—no, that boy!

The boy truly had exquisitely beautiful features, like a doll.

And my eyes were especially drawn to his dazzling golden eyes.

‘Golden eyes…… and rare black hair?’

An ominous premonition suddenly ran down my spine.

Swallowing my unease, I asked the boy,

“What’s your name?”

The boy lifted his eyes toward me.

His gaze was frighteningly sharp and dark, far too fierce for a child.

“Answer.”

My father spoke coldly as he looked down at him, and the boy twisted his face.

Crack.

Grinding his teeth, the boy spat out his answer.

“……Eden. I don’t have a surname. Just…… Eden.”

“G-Gasp.”

I stumbled backward, making a strange sound.

Eden.

That was the name of the male protagonist in this world’s <The Demon King’s Consort>.

‘M-M-Mad psycho captivity freak!’

I sprang away from him as though he were covered in germs.

Oh, God.

What kind of cruel joke is this?

I tried to avoid the original story,

and the original story’s male protagonist had been thrown into my life under the name of a doll.