Irene Yuris (1)
Reading romance fantasy novels was a hobby that was embarrassingly difficult to admit to other people.
Whenever I told a friend I was into ro-pan, they’d usually give me a look and ask what on earth I was reading.
And as for finding common ground with women, there weren’t any women around me to begin with.
“Hmm.”
The appeal of romance fantasy was that, unlike ordinary fantasy, romance took center stage.
Honestly, I found stories that focused more on the love line than on the protagonist’s growth a lot more interesting.
A female lead who was utterly unlike anyone else, a woman who picked up a sword while everyone else was fussing over their appearance.
Wasn’t it only natural that she would catch the interest of a male lead bored to death by ordinary women?
What I loved about romance fantasy was the atmosphere you just couldn’t get from ordinary male-oriented stories.
Instead of tales about a hero becoming stronger, growing, gathering new companions, and breaking through to transcendence—
I found it more enjoyable to read about people simply dating in the middle of a peaceful everyday life.
And the biggest draw of all was the villainess who appeared in romance fantasy.
Not the old kind of villain, who hated the protagonist simply because she was the protagonist, simply because she was annoying.
But rather the villain who had her place stolen by an irregular, so to speak, and struggled in her own way to take it back.
I’d always had strange tastes—what people mockingly called a hipster’s sensibility—so maybe I’d been especially obsessed with the villains in novels.
Sometimes I cried along with them, sympathizing with their circumstances; other times I felt a vicious little thrill when the protagonist got what was coming to her.
But if I thought of the one novel I’d been most deeply absorbed in, there was only one I could point to in my entire life.
It was the villainess from a romance fantasy novel I’d recently read.
The wicked woman Irene Yuris from The Rose with Thorns.
When I read the scene where she was ultimately done in by the heroine and the crown prince and died, all I could think was that she was pitiful.
Raised from a young age by a stern father, she had only ever been wounded in the heart, and just when it seemed spring might finally come for her, the sudden appearance of the heroine had begun to bring her family crashing down.
She rebuked an ill-mannered young lady at a social gathering and was therefore cast out of the crown prince’s favor, and once she lost his interest, her ties with the nobility were cut off one by one.
The eldest son of a ducal house who had once promised to marry her as a child, the young ladies who had once been her close friends—all of them vanished.
The emotions she had never once been able to pour out in front of her father eventually exploded after the chain of events that followed.
With nothing left and nothing more to lose, she chose to stand against the heroine.
And the crown prince, interpreting that as treason, had her beheaded, bringing Irene’s story to an end.
How many pages had been allotted to her, really?
From the protagonist’s point of view, she was a villainess, but from my position as a third-party reader, Irene wasn’t a villain at all.
She was simply a poor woman who wanted affection more than anyone else, and loved more than anyone else.
“...How sad.”
For some reason, the fact that no one mourned her death felt terribly sad to me.
Even the comment section was celebrating her death, calling it satisfying and righteous.
It felt strangely like my own situation, and a dry laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
Before long, my eyelids grew heavy, and I rubbed my sleepy eyes before slowly closing them.
Even with my eyes shut, that scene kept replaying in my head, leaving my chest tight and uncomfortable.
Did she really have to die? Villains are forgotten the moment they die.
No matter how much they repented at the end, they were still nothing more than disposable pieces used to elevate the heroine.
So there wouldn’t be another appearance from her after this, would there?
That thought left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Would things have been different if she hadn’t grown up under strict discipline, friendless and isolated as a child?
Would things have been different if someone had stopped her actions and held on to the relationships she was about to lose?
Irene Yuris.
Even as sleep crept over me, the name kept circling in my mind, and I drew in a deep breath.
It was only a novel, after all. I should have been able to let it go by now.
“...Hoo.”
For some reason, that presence crouched at the center of my thoughts and kept sleep at bay, and that night the darkness felt especially long.
#
“Ah...”
Had I fallen asleep? What reached my eyes as I opened them was a blinding light.
It was so bright I could hardly believe it came from a semi-basement room.
It was midsummer, so I could understand the sunlight being strong, but wasn’t this a little too bright?
When I pulled the blanket up to cover my face, I realized the fabric under my fingertips felt different from usual.
Instead of the rough, ten-thousand-won comforter I’d bought at the market, it was a surprisingly fine cloth—soft the instant I touched it.
The bed beneath me was different too, and I frowned.
Had I been moved somewhere without realizing it?
When I forced my reluctant body upright, I noticed that even my eye level had changed.
It wasn’t just that the bed was taller or lower.
It was as if my body had been swapped out entirely.
My mind, still hazy with sleep, snapped awake in an instant.
Only then did I see it: the bed and blanket were no longer the same at all, but a complete, unblemished white.
For a moment, it felt like I’d been struck hard across the back of the head, and my vision swam.
How on earth was I supposed to make sense of this?
Even after sitting up, the way my view had dropped told me my body had gotten smaller.
I carefully plucked at a strand of hair and stared at it with wide eyes.
Blond. My hair definitely hadn’t been this color.
The brain of someone who spent all her time holed up in a corner reading novels needed a great deal of time to process a reality like this.
When you woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling and found your body had changed too, who could possibly accept that at face value?
What I did want to know was what world I had fallen into.
My feelings were nothing short of bewildered.
I’d never insulted an author online and earned their resentment, never been run over by a car, never written 5,700 characters in frustration because I hated the plot development.
In the first place, I couldn’t even tell whether this was a dream or reality.
Staring for a moment at the bright sunlight pouring through the window, I finally looked around the room.
Old wooden practice swords piled in one corner.
They were split, broken, and even the ones still intact were covered in nicks and dents, as if they belonged to someone who had trained very hard.
So... this was probably the room’s former occupant. And now it’s mine.
Looking down at the calluses packed tightly across my hands, I let out a sigh.
The only time I’d ever used my body seriously was when I ran a relay in a sports day event, and now I’d ended up inside the body of someone who used a sword.
I tried hard to remember whether any memories had been left behind in my head, but nothing came up except the things I already knew.
After taking in the room, there seemed to be only two things I could conclude.
First, apart from the fact that the owner of this body used a sword,
and second, that the person whose body I now occupied was not of especially high rank—and that the world I had entered was probably...
the same world as The Rose with Thorns, the one I had read right before falling asleep.
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them again and stared blankly at the emblem painted on the door.
“Ha.”
A laugh slipped out of me. It was because the situation was absurd, yes, and because everything was so ridiculous.
But as soon as I realized where I was, another thought made laughter spill out even more helplessly.
How could I possibly forget that emblem? One of the five founding ducal houses tasked with protecting this empire—
the Ducal House of Yuris, the house that bore a shield with thorns as its crest because it was entrusted with the shield.
How could I not know it?
Irene Yuris.
As I remembered the memory of the night I’d spent thinking of nothing but her name, a mere villainess from a novel, my eyes grew strangely sore.
Maybe.
Maybe I could change it. I didn’t even know what time period this was, or how I was going to meet Irene Yuris, but maybe...
Maybe I could really save her.
It might have been a ridiculous idea. I still didn’t even know exactly what kind of person I was in this world.
For all I knew, I might simply be a slave raised to serve as a gladiator for some noble house, and reckless hope would only invite disaster.
Slap—
After slapping both cheeks with my hands, my heart seemed to settle a little, and I drew a steadying breath while staring quietly at the door.
I couldn’t stay here forever. Just as I thought I needed to get out, I pushed myself to my feet—
bang—
The door flew open without warning, and I jolted rigid in place.
When I lifted my lowered head, I saw a rather rough-looking man.
He wore heavy, clattering armor, and at a glance he looked like a capable knight, so I straightened my stance the way I had back when I’d been in the military.
The man, who had been staring at me for a moment, finally spoke.
“What are you standing there staring into space for? The young lady is calling for you.”
“...Yes!”
I hesitated for a moment at the word young lady, but it wasn’t the time to ask questions, so I followed after the man who looked like a knight.
Still, wasn’t the height difference pretty significant? How old was this body, exactly?
That question was soon answered by my reflection in the clear glass. At a glance, fifteen—probably around that age.
Compared with my lowered eye level, I seemed to be around 170 centimeters tall, so for my age, I was actually on the tall side.
Once my age had been sorted out, the next question was that word: young lady. A young lady is calling for me.
What on earth was my role that she would summon me personally?
At the very least, I didn’t seem to be a slave, since the maids I occasionally met as I passed by smiled and waved at me.
Since this was the mansion of a ducal house, most of the maids were nobles as well.
Even if they were doing menial work like wiping floors and dusting, they were the children of barons or viscounts, so they probably weren’t of low birth.
Judging from the swords in the room, maybe I was a knight candidate?
A knight candidate. That wasn’t a bad position.
Even becoming an actual knight would earn me quite a valuable treatment. I might still be sent to war, but if my goal was simply to survive, I should be able to do it.
“What are you thinking about so hard? Hurry up and go in.”
“Ah, yes.”
While I’d been lost in thought, we seemed to have reached the residence where the young lady was, and the knight frowned at me.
I glanced briefly at the shield emblem symbolizing the Ducal House of Yuris, then exhaled and slowly opened the door.
“You’re only just getting here.”
Before I’d even fully opened the door or seen inside, a clear, lovely voice drifted out.
It was such a soft tone that hearing it alone made the heart feel at ease, and for a moment I was admiring it—until the sight of the woman before me froze my face solid.
“Have you been nervous? There’s no need to look so stiff.”
No, I wasn’t nervous. I was simply stunned by the name that had come to mind the instant I saw her face.
White hair as pure as the clouds in the sky, blue eyes that called to mind the clear heaven beside them,
and lips the vivid crimson of blood—those features alone were enough to summon the name I’d just been thinking of.
The woman standing before me, this so-called young lady.
She was none other than Irene Yuris, the villainess of The Rose with Thorns, the very woman whose death I had mourned so deeply.
---