RPL 2

Chapter 2

The pitch-black darkness filling her vision made the child flinch and take a step back.

In that brief moment, a servant locked the shackle around her ankle.

“S-stop it!”

Even with her refusal, the servant didn’t back down. He finished the job and left.

The child spun around in a panic, searching for the father who had brought her here.

“Daddy!”

Her eyes went wide.

The door was closing. Little by little the light was being cut off, sealing her away from the outside world.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

The child—Regine—stretched both hands desperately toward the shutting door.

Because she could still see her father through the gap. Because if it was her dad, he would save her from this place.

With that simple, natural trust a child has in a parent, Regine called out for him and reached out, even though she knew he was the one who had brought her here and ordered the servant to put the shackle on her. Because he was her dad.

“……”

But he wouldn’t look at her.

He kept his head turned slightly away, ignoring the desperate cries of his little daughter.

“Daddy! I don’t wanna! I hate it here! Daddy!!!!”

And before the door had even fully closed, he turned his back.

The last thing Regine saw as she was locked away was the back of the father who had put her in this place.

Just like that, she was completely cut off from the world and trapped in pure black darkness.

Regine’s jaw trembled. Her soft little head couldn’t process any of this.

The fear was stronger than any question of why or how.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!! I won’t do it again! Please save me! Please let me out!”

She pounded on the closed door with both tiny hands and shouted.

“I’ll study really hard!! I won’t eat too many snacks!! I’ll be good! I’m sorry!”

I must have done something wrong. I must have made Daddy upset.

That’s probably why he’s mad. That’s why he left me here.

Regine cried and sobbed for a long time, pounding until dark bruises formed on her small, soft fists.

“Daddy……”

But her father never opened the door. He didn’t even let her hear his voice.

Exhausted and gasping, Regine slid down and crouched with her back against the door.

“Mommy. Mommy…”

After crying for so long, the words that came out of her mouth were all mashed together.

“Mommy……”

She hugged her knees and desperately called for her mother.

Where did Mommy go? Why isn’t she coming to help me?

Regine tried to remember what had happened right before she was brought here.

Her mother’s personal maid, Dasha, had said something strange—“You should say your final goodbye”—and taken her to the square.

In that square, the mother she hadn’t seen for a while finally appeared.

“An empress, and she still wasn’t satisfied? Had to go and commit treason.”

“I know, right. How greedy can one person be?”

“Ugh, spit on her! I was the idiot for ever treating someone like that as empress!”

The crowd packed into the square started pointing and cursing the moment they saw her.

*That’s not Mommy.*

Listening to them, Regine vaguely thought.

Mommy always wore fancy dresses and sparkling jewelry. She was always beautiful and pretty.

So the haggard woman in those filthy, ragged clothes couldn’t be her mother.

She didn’t understand why everyone kept calling that woman the empress.

Maybe that was why.

Even when the woman kept looking around as if searching for someone and their eyes met—

Even when the woman suddenly burst into tears and then smiled so brightly—

Even when she was forced up onto the execution platform—

Even when her lips formed Regine’s name—

Even when the blade finally took her head—

To the very end, Regine never accepted that the woman was her mother.

She only thought how horrible it looked when someone’s head was cut off.

And yet, in the middle of all this fear and pain, why was she only now calling for her mother?

“Mommy, I’m here. I’m right here.”

Regine buried her face against her raised knees and kept searching for the mother she could never meet again.

* * *

I blinked. I could still almost hear a child’s tearful voice calling “Mommy” right by my ear.

*A dream?*

I must have fallen asleep without realizing it.

When I sat up, a metallic clank came from my foot.

“……”

I stared at the shackle locked around my thin little ankle, blinked a few times, then looked around.

The same bleak, unfamiliar room filled my sight.

“Shit……”

I buried my face in both hands.

A few days had already passed, though I had no way of knowing the exact date.

The whole time I’d been denying reality, trying every possible way to escape this place.

I’d even begged the men who brought food every day to save me, to let me out.

Of course none of it worked.

No matter how desperately I closed my eyes hoping it was a dream, nothing changed. Just like right now.

*I’m hungry.*

It felt almost funny that I could still feel hunger in a situation like this. I let out a dry laugh and swung my legs off the bed.

My toes met the slimy, sticky stone floor.

*Is there a single normal thing in this place?*

I let out a deep sigh and raked my fingers through my hair.

The conditions here were terrible. I’d learned that while searching every inch for a way out.

All there was: an old-fashioned toilet, a water spout that only ran cold, a hard bed with a paper-thin blanket, and a half-broken chair.

No daily necessities. Not even a single sheet of toilet paper.

When was the last time this protagonist changed clothes—or even washed properly?

I felt like I was starting to smell.

“Ugh, now everything itches.”

I scratched hard at my skin. My broken, messy nails left scratches behind.

But something else bothered me more. Under my fingertips I could feel countless little bumps.

My best guess was insect bites.

Given the environment, bugs were pretty much guaranteed.

“…Might as well eat.”

I didn’t even want to think anymore. I sighed and walked over to the door where the food always appeared.

Today’s meal was the same as always—one hard lump of bread.

“At this rate my teeth are gonna fall out before I ever get out of here.”

I poked the bread with my index finger as I muttered.

It was so hard I honestly couldn’t tell if it was bread or a rock.

“They could at least feed me real food. Real food.”

Complaining didn’t change anything, so I picked it up anyway.

The second the hard bread touched my tongue, the tears I’d been holding back surged up.

*Yeah… I’m pretty much screwed.*

I had no choice left but to accept that I’d really possessed Regine.

And accepting it was exactly what made it hurt.

*What did I even do wrong?*

That thought popped up for something that had zero cause and effect.

Maybe some god—or whatever being that exists beyond normal rules—was punishing me for something.

But no matter how hard I thought, I was just an ordinary woman in her late twenties.

If there was anything unusual about me, it was that I wasn’t particularly close with my family.

*But that wasn’t even my fault, so it doesn’t count as something I did wrong.*

I bit my lip in irritation and started digging through my past, looking for some other reason.

Elementary, middle, high school—I studied hard because they told me to.

College life, job hunting, working life—I put in just as much effort as anyone else. I was sure of that.

*…So the problem was after that?*

After several years at the company I burned out completely.

Back then I didn’t even know it was burnout. I just kept telling myself, “Everyone lives like this,” and forced myself to keep going.

The moment I realized something was seriously wrong was while I was standing at a crosswalk on the way to work, staring blankly at the light.

I thought: if I got hit by a car and died right now, it would be a relief. Then I wouldn’t have to go to work.

It wasn’t a big deal. I’d had the same thought more than a dozen times a day.

But that day the urge was way stronger. Strong enough that I actually took two steps into the road.

“The light hasn’t changed yet.”

If someone hadn’t grabbed my arm in that exact moment… what would’ve happened?

The next day I handed in my resignation. And now it had been three months of being unemployed.

*Was three months of rest such a big crime?*

Big enough to get me stuck as the protagonist of a guaranteed misery story?

Big enough to lock me up in a place like this?

The second that thought hit me, the sadness flipped into anger.

I rubbed my eyes roughly and started chewing the bread with real force.

*I’ll survive this somehow and go right back to being unemployed.*

Human teeth turned out to be tougher than expected.

Tough enough to let me take out my anger on a rock-hard piece of bread.

* * *

“I’m getting out. I’m going to get out of here.”

After filling my stomach with the hard bread, I clenched both fists and made up my mind.

Even if I did get out, all that waited for me was people’s scorn and the stepmother empress’s torment.

*But at least the living conditions have to be halfway decent before I can start rolling around in the misery field or whatever.*

Regine’s confinement and this environment were just settings in the novel.

Not real hardships the protagonist had to overcome—just tools the author prepared to make her suffer.

So that later, when the protagonist succeeded in her revenge and rose to the highest position, readers would feel that sweet catharsis.

But shouldn’t the place at least be livable for a human being?

*And the protagonist is a little kid?*

The author had completely lost their mind with this setting.

I was clutching my head, desperately trying to remember how the original protagonist got out of this place, when I heard it.

“……?”

Footsteps. Coming from somewhere.

I immediately looked toward the window, then jumped to my feet.

It wasn’t time for the men to bring food yet.

*So those footsteps belong to…*

I scrambled over to the door, opened the food slot, and shoved my face into the gap. I saw the hem of a skirt.

Not the men who brought food. Someone else.

“Please help me!”

The second I shouted, hope flooded my chest.

“I’m locked in here, I’m trapped, please get me out! Call the police—wait, no, people! No, just call 911 or whatever first!”

I was so desperate I barely even knew what I was saying.

Whether this was possession or some kidnapper’s experiment, the fact that I was locked up was the same. The need to get out was the same.

So that frantic shouting was pure survival instinct.

“Save m—!”

“They said you’d gone crazy. Guess it was true.”

The woman’s voice cut in and I stopped mid-shout, swallowing the rest of the words.

This person knew me.

There was no other way she could react to a rescue call like that.

Did she know “me,” or did she know “Regine”?

What was the real truth behind why I was locked in here?

Who was I supposed to be, and what was I supposed to say, if I wanted to get out?

“Why’d you go crazy?”

“I-I’m not crazy, I just…”

My thoughts were still a mess, but the urgency made me start stumbling over words anyway.

“You might as well just die.”

The woman cut me off.