TNDOBM 01

Chapter 01

A deep night, with not even a sliver of moonlight to be found.

A woman, adjusting her slipping shawl, gripped an old lantern more firmly. The beam was faint for illuminating the dimming corridor, but it didn’t matter.

Her destination wasn’t far.

Standing before the tightly locked door right next to the man’s bedroom, the woman soothed her pounding heart.

*’Calm down.’*

She had confirmed that the man was fast asleep. Hadn’t she even prepared strong liquor on purpose?

All to uncover the ‘secret’ her lover was so desperate to hide.

But in this moment, with the truth right before her eyes, why did a fairy tale she vaguely remembered from childhood come to mind?

Bluebeard’s wife, who couldn’t overcome her curiosity and faced a horrifying truth.

She was sure she had clicked her tongue at that wife’s foolishness. But only after finding herself in the same situation as that wife did she feel she understood why she had to open the forbidden door.

The faint bitterness that followed the sweetness the man gave her had now filled her mouth to the brim, and her tongue ached so unbearably that she could no longer ignore it or swallow it down…

Even knowing that what lay beyond the door was neither heaven nor utopia, she ultimately had no choice but to open it.

Thus, like the foolish and honest wife of Bluebeard, the woman grasped the doorknob and finally set foot into the forbidden place.

*Creak.*

Beyond the door, which opened with an eerie sound, the space was empty. A very strange room with not a single piece of furniture, yet its walls were densely filled with ‘things’ no larger than a palm.

As she stepped further inside, the lantern light reached the walls.

At that moment, the woman stopped breathing.

[It would be best not to enter this room. It’s not tidy.]

When she had once grasped the doorknob of this tightly shut room, he had dissuaded her in a nonchalant voice. But she vividly remembered his eyes, which hadn’t been able to hide their discomfort.

At the time, she had dismissed it, thinking it was probably a room with risqué books or traces of a former lover…

Forgetting even to blink, the woman stared at the wall in shock.

A photo of ‘Cecilia’ taken during a visit to the temple, a childhood photo of ‘Cecilia’ from the territory’s newspaper, biased articles praising ‘Cecilia’ as the saint of this era, and even paintings of everyday ‘Cecilia’, whose existence there was inexplicable.

‘What in the world is this…’

The moment her eyes met with ‘herself’ wearing a white dress and smiling brightly, Cecilia faltered and took a step back.

*Thump.*

At that moment, her back hit something hard. Her amber eyes, trembling like a lantern in the wind, stiffly looked up.

“…What are you doing here.”

Somber, sunken eyes were quietly looking down at her.

“…Rien.”

Her tightly clenched palms grew damp with sweat.

Whether it was embarrassment, anger, betrayal, or perhaps fear.

The voice she finally managed to let out was pathetically trembling.

“What, in the world, is all of this?”

She didn’t shout or curse because she believed that this man—however irrational his mind might be, he had a gentle heart—must have at least a shred of a reasonable explanation.

Who was it that looked like they were about to cry, their eyes instantly reddening as the man painfully parted his lips.

“Th, that’s why I told you not to go in there…”

At his single remark, Cecilia’s brow finally twisted sharply.

You should have said not to go in because it’s a room full of your photos, the product of stalking, you bastard.

—

Women were generally unlucky.

From failing her college entrance exam and entering an unfamiliar department as a safety school, to just studying hard to make up for it only to become a graduate student, and then being possessed into another world right before graduation.

When she first opened her eyes in this other world, she thought she had time-traveled to Europe’s past.

And soon after realizing that was impossible with modern science, she thought she had finally lost her mind.

After all, she was a graduate student.

It was a very plausible basis.

But no matter how long she waited, she didn’t come to her senses with medication or wake up from a long, great dream. Rather, the sense of reality only grew stronger.

She finally formulated her third hypothesis.

‘Could this be that thing, possession into a book?’

She had often read web novels where the protagonist possessed an unfamiliar world. The actions of protagonists who escaped reality and thrived in another world gave her, worn out by graduate school life, great catharsis.

But…

‘I never thought I wanted to be a possession protagonist!’

Especially not at this timing—not at the beginning of grad school, but after finally overcoming all the hardships and finishing the graduation thesis, graduation exams, and defense.

Damn it, give me back my diploma!

She hadn’t been hit by a reincarnation truck, nor had she ever obsessed over a specific character in a book or left comments like ‘I could do better than the protagonist!’

It was truly an unjust situation.

After struggling for three whole months, unable to let go of a school bag strap that had grown by a mere 5cm only to be completely severed, she tried everything.

The woman, no, ‘Cecilia Weberdin,’ finally declared defeat.

‘It’ll work out somehow.’

In the middle of the garden, overflowing with floral scents, Cecilia, having crumpled up the papers detailing her failed Plans A, B, and C, slumped limply into an iron chair. As she blankly gazed up at the painfully clear sky, a cautious voice interrupted from across.

“Um, miss. Should I bring you some tea?”

The maid, Melanie, who had her curly hair tied up high, was watching her mistress’s mood.

“Tea, no, peppermint tea would be good.”

‘What a godforsaken world without iced Americano.’

Irritation surged at this world that was ruined from the drinks up, but Cecilia still tried her best to think positively.

Yes, at least it wasn’t an SF novel full of bizarre creatures. There was one sun, twenty-four hours in a day, and humans reigned supreme as the top predator in the ecosystem.

Whether these beings were the same Homo sapiens as herself or merely bipedal alien species with identical appearances, she couldn’t tell…

Who knows. If she just drifted along like this, maybe one day a god-like higher-dimensional being would say, “Oops, my mistake!” and send her back to her original world, or a doctor would greet her back in 21st-century society with, “You’ve finally woken up from your coma!”

‘Most importantly, whether it’s graduation or possession, the fact remains that I escaped grad school!’

Goodbye, god-awful graduate life. Goodbye, even worse professors. Forget repetitive experiments and manual data, I’m off to the mundane world and its bindings.

Smiling like a madwoman, Cecilia decided to thoroughly shake off the accumulated worries and anxieties.

‘Then from now on, I’ll go with Plan D.’

Cecilia pressed firmly onto the remaining blank paper, writing out Plan D.

<Since I’m here, I’ll enjoy myself until a way back appears.>

For example, with dating, or dating, or dating.

If this really was a book possession, regardless of what her role in the original story was, she was effectively now a main character-level figure.

‘Even if Cecilia was just a minor supporting character A, the moment someone possessed her, she became a leading role.’

Moreover, given her background as the daughter of a marquis, the genre was most likely a romance fantasy. If so, wouldn’t the events start rolling once she began dating?

‘So, I will date!’

It was absolutely not because she was lonely, or to satisfy her own self-interest, or to relieve the frustration of not meeting a man during her long graduate school years.

However, even this last plan had one major obstacle.

‘To date, I need a partner.’

“There’s no way a decent encounter will happen in this backwater…”

Just as she was about to crumple Plan D and throw it away.

Startled by a tickling sensation around her ankle, Cecilia looked down.

“A cat?”

A ball of pure white fur, no, a cat, was swishing its fluffy tail at her feet.

‘I never heard they raise cats in the garden.’

Besides, the marquis’s garden wasn’t structured for stray cats to easily enter. With its well-groomed fur and the golden collar around its neck, it clearly wasn’t a stray cat to begin with.

“Where did you come from?”

Cecilia, who preferred cats to dogs, carefully reached out her hand.

But before her hand could even touch the collar, the cat slightly lowered its stance, jumped onto Cecilia’s arm as if hunting, and landed.

“Wh-what?!”

In a flash, it was over.

Cecilia, robbed of her sapphire bracelet, looked down at the little thief in disbelief.

The cat, with its pupils narrowed sharply, was holding the sparkling bracelet in its mouth.

‘I’ve heard of the term ‘thieving cat,’ but I never thought I’d meet a cat that actually steals.’

Truly, this other world was terrifying.

But whether it knew her forlorn feelings or not, the cat swished its tail and turned away.

“Wait!”

Cecilia awkwardly stood up, following the cat as it leisurely made its exit.

She blindly followed the cat, which moved at a pace neither particularly fast nor slow. Leaving the stone path, it cut haphazardly across the garden, passed a large broad-leaved tree, and revealed the wall surrounding the mansion.

The cat paused for a moment, as if looking back at her following behind, then slipped into a round hole at the base of the wall.

‘Was there a dog door here?’

The dog door, which looked deliberately made, was large enough for a small person to pass through.

‘I feel exactly like someone from Wonderland chasing a pocket watch-wielding rabbit.’

Even if she passed through that hole, she probably wouldn’t endlessly fall downwards or encounter cakes that make you grow.

Cecilia, lost in idle fantasy, willingly lowered her body. Putting aside her sense of adventure, the value of the stolen bracelet was too high to just give up and go back.

Well, it’s not like that was the only expensive accessory ‘Cecilia’ owned.

But she, who had never quite shed the memories and habits from her commoner days when she was pushed around by capital, struggled to pass through the hole.

“Whew, good thing I didn’t eat more macarons.”

It was the moment she dusted off the dirt and grass from her skirt and straightened her back.

Instead of a clock-wielding rabbit, she immediately came face-to-face with a large someone clad in a black robe.