Tick, tick, tick.

What should I do? Cold sweat trickled down.

Tick, tick.

It was the first time the clock’s second hand sounded so loud. Gulp, I swallowed dry saliva.

“I’ll ask again, Count. No, Lady Celi.”

“……”

“Is Valerie my child?”

Karl’s gaze intensively scanned my face.

“Celeste.”

He called my name, emphasizing each syllable. His voice was incredibly cold, yet somehow gentle. But his sharp gaze, seemingly penetrating my innermost thoughts, made my shoulders repeatedly shrink.

When did he find out? No, when did he start to notice? Had he been pretending not to know all this time? Sweat began to form on my clenched fists.

“…I didn’t know either.”

After much deliberation, this was all I could manage to say. It was nonsense to anyone who heard it. How could a child’s mother not know the father?

But I really felt wronged. It had only been a little over half a year since I entered the book and became possessed by Celeste. How could I have known whether the real Celeste had given birth to a child before that?

I lost my original life and suddenly became Celeste, and upon becoming Celeste, a child that wasn’t even in the book suddenly appeared. Up until now, ‘I’ hadn’t done anything wrong. And yet…

“Are you trying to get away with claiming memory loss again?”

All the actions committed by the original Celeste were becoming my responsibility. To me, who was only Celeste on the outside!

“I really didn’t remember! It’s not all a lie.”

Not all a lie. Does that mean part of it is a lie? Damn. Realizing the duality of my own words too late, I quickly closed my mouth.

Karl’s eyes, deep in thought, narrowed even further. ‘Do you really not remember?’, ‘Do you truly have no memory?’ Karl’s expression seemed to say.

“That night.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten even that night. Celeste.”

What does he mean? My eyelids fluttered rapidly.

“I haven’t forgotten a single moment of that night.”

Depending on how one hears it, it’s an extremely strange… peculiar and oddly ticklish statement. What? Night? What night?

“Please answer, Celi. Is Valerie……”

I shouldn’t get involved with this man. Karl is the male protagonist in the work “Rose of Lahat” I was reading, the man who kills Celeste, the villainess. A warning sound rang in my head. Beep, beep. What answer should I give?

“My child?”

I couldn’t say yes, nor could I say no. As I kept swallowing dry saliva, Karl pulled something out from his breast pocket.

Upon confirming the identity of that something, I immediately decided on my next course of action.

I had to run. No matter what!

* * *

About a month ago, Southern Urentum.

Our eyes met.

With two blue eyes shining as clear as if embedded with crystals.

“Umm……”

It was quite awkward.

“Aboo.”

“It can’t be.”

“Abu, abubu.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Abubu. Ppuu.”

“No way.”

I couldn’t understand what I was doing.

As I exchanged meaningless sounds with someone I couldn’t communicate with, I closed my eyes tightly, feeling a sudden headache.

“It can’t be. Me having a child.”

I was about to get up leisurely as usual and enjoy my morning tea time. Putting in tea leaves, pouring hot water, closing the teapot lid, and then 3 minutes. This had been my morning routine for several months.

If someone hadn’t knocked on the door and called me out, I would have been sipping my tea as usual by now.

“Is this a dream?”

I went outside at the sound of knocking, but there was no one to be seen. Only a large basket covered with a blanket was left.

Thinking ‘It’s not a terror attack or an explosive, right?’, I carefully lifted the blanket, and lo and behold, a baby was lying there with shining eyes.

Until then, I thought someone had come to the wrong house. That is, until I discovered the envelope attached to the baby’s necklace.

This is Lady Valerie, the child of Lady Louisette. As the promised time has come, we are bringing the young lady to you.

The short message in the letter was written in an impeccably neat handwriting, but just a few words were enough to confuse my mind.

My head was filled with question marks.

Celeste Aisha Louisette.

She was praised as the most beautiful woman in the Empire and simultaneously criticized as the most evil villainess in the Empire’s history.

And she was also the flat evil character number 1 in a romance fantasy novel called “Rose of Lahat”, which was quickly forgotten without even settling in people’s memories.

But no matter how much I thought about it, I don’t think there was any mention of Celeste having a child in the original work.

“Bububu, buu.”

The child continued to babble incomprehensibly, pushing out its lips.

The purple hair and luminous blue-green eyes suited each other quite well.

The plump cheeks, which looked so biteable, were tinged with a rosy hue, and the large eyes, taking up almost half of the face, looked as if jewels had been embedded in them.

And what about those chubby arms and legs, like layers of milk bread? They looked so cute that I felt like nibbling on them with my lips.

“No, no. Get a grip.”

I almost fell for the child’s cuteness without realizing it. I shook my head vigorously. Get a grip!

“I don’t have a child.”

Right. There must be some mistake.

I stood up, leaving the child as it was.

No matter how I thought about it, this didn’t make sense. How could such a cute daughter be born to a vicious villainess who mercilessly killed anyone she disliked?

Whether aware of my conflicted feelings or not, the child was happily sucking its thumb, its eyes shining brightly.

Celeste Aisha Louisette.

The last heir of the Louisette County, which amassed enormous wealth by being the first to venture into the Empire’s mining industry.

Praised as the Empire’s finest lady, possessing both beauty and talent, but ultimately executed on charges of murdering her own kin, unable to let go of her desire for power – a villainess of the ages.

These were all the modifying phrases that followed her name in the work.

But nowhere in those modifiers was there a phrase like ‘she was married’ or ‘she had a child’.

“Babpapa.”

Hearing the child’s babbling, I muttered about ten times that I should wake up from this dream quickly.

I wasn’t the ‘real’ Celeste.

While the outward appearance matched the villainess Celeste from the novel, the inside was a completely different person. I was just an ordinary citizen living in 21st century South Korea, far removed from anything like empires or nobility.

Even when I tried to recall my life as a modern person, which had somehow become faint, my mind was a blotchy blank slate as if erased with an eraser.

Soon, I let out a sigh of resignation. I had fled to escape the predetermined death right after becoming Celeste. There was a reason I chose this place, Urentum, located at the southernmost tip of the south, as my hiding place.

“Abupbubu, buubu.”

The child, muttering incomprehensible babble, was admittedly quite cute. I glanced down at the child, who was stretching out its short arms as if wanting to be held, grinning, and then shook my head vigorously again.

Cute is cute, and absurd is absurd.

Oh my, my head was starting to throb.

It had been exactly half a year since I became Celeste.

In the original work, Celeste was a beautiful woman who had everything, but ironically, that led to her death. She was a very flat villain character.

Shall we say she didn’t care about means or methods to get what she wanted? In the end, blinded by desire, she committed patricide and was mercilessly executed by the male lead who became king, if I remember correctly.

Recalling the predetermined death right after coming back to life wasn’t a very pleasant thing. So, I made a big decision a week into my new life.

If you don’t want to die, you just need to avoid creating situations that lead to death. I immediately left the capital where everything was supposed to happen and went into hiding in the countryside.

To put it nicely, it was a retreat.

Fortunately, Celeste was the young lady of a wealthy count’s family, so she had villas and farms all over the country.

If I didn’t get greedy, and if I didn’t meet the female lead, living as Celeste didn’t seem too bad.

Beautiful appearance and abundant assets. And maybe a bit of intelligence too? No, why did she only do bad things with these great conditions?

As an ordinary citizen, I couldn’t understand the original Celeste. Of course, for the story to develop interestingly, a villain is absolutely necessary, so she probably just moved faithfully according to the given character setting.

“Little one, you tell me. Where did you come from?”

“Bubuppa.”

“Who brought you here?”

“Buu, buba.”

“Who’s your mother?”

At the word ‘mother’, the child looked up at me with round eyes. As if understanding what that word meant.

“Um. Umu.”

“What?”

“Umma.”