When the Romance Fantasy Became a Soap Opera
In a romance fantasy where a situation straight out of an adult-rated melodrama film from around 2010 Korea was unfolding, “This is Sir Bale’s room. If there’s anything lacking, please let me know anytime.”
The bedroom I was guided to was more luxurious and spacious than I had imagined. A large, fluffy-looking bed, a high-end carpet, and even a desk and study area that filled one entire wall.
“No, it’s too magnificent. I don’t know where to put myself.”
“I’m glad. Then I’ll take my leave. Please rest comfortably until dinner.”
Just as Lady Rebecca was about to leave after her greeting, I realized I had forgotten to ask where the bathroom was.
“Ah, my lady. Just a moment.”
I hurriedly called out to stop her.
“Where is the bathroom? I haven’t been able to wash properly for several days….”
“Oh, the bathroom? It’s prepared separately inside that room over there. I’ll show you myself.”
Lady Rebecca approached me again and moved toward the inside of the room. Following behind her, I opened the bathroom door. The sight that unfolded before me made me suck in a sharp breath.
“This… is the bathroom?”
The bathroom was every bit as wide and luxurious as the bedroom itself. The floor was paved with white marble, and in the center sat a bathtub large enough to easily fit two or three adults.
“Yes. Hot water will come out if you pull the lever over there.”
Lady Rebecca kindly explained as she stepped closer to the tub. But the moment she tried to pull the lever, something seemed wrong; it rattled and spun uselessly.
“Oh dear, why is this happening? It was perfectly fine yesterday…”
As Rebecca pulled the lever again in confusion, a tremendous jet of water suddenly burst out with a loud whoosh.
“Eek!”
Lady Rebecca screamed and staggered backward. But it was already too late. The pouring stream completely soaked Rebecca’s body, and I had no chance to dodge either.
“Ugh!”
In the blink of an eye I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. The water soon subsided, but the two of us were already drenched.
“Ah, I-I’m sorry, Sir Bale! I made a mistake…”
Lady Rebecca apologized to me in a panic.
“I-it’s all right. I can just dry off.”
I hurriedly looked for a towel to wipe myself, but my gaze had already fixed itself on Lady Rebecca.
Her wet clothes clung transparently to every curve of her body. Water droplets glistened on her pale skin, and her damp hair stuck to her face.
For a moment, a strange atmosphere swirled inside the bathroom.
“…….”
“…….”
We couldn’t speak, both avoiding each other’s eyes. Only the sound of falling water droplets filled the silence.
What the hell has this become…!
Inside my head, that sneaky feeling I’d had toward Lady Rebecca earlier began creeping up again. I shook my head hard, trying to regain my senses.
No, no. I’ve only seen prostitutes at the wall. That’s why I’m feeling this. Get a grip, Bale!
I turned my gaze away from Rebecca while making that resolution inside. But my heart was already pounding like crazy.
Even though she’s a mother…
Considering noble customs of early marriage, Lady Rebecca was probably only in her late twenties. Moreover, in the past year at the Northern Wall, the only women I had seen were the rough, crude wandering prostitutes who occasionally visited the barracks.
My brain, pickled in the stench of blood and sweat for so long, had zero resistance to the sight of a beautiful noblewoman carrying the faint scent of fragrant soap mixed with moisture.
A strange, tingling feeling crept up.
Get a grip, you son of a bitch!
The woman in front of me was the Grand Duke’s wife, the person who had taken me in like family.
Plus the Grand Duke thinks of me as a brother! She’s my sister-in-law!
If I looked at her the wrong way here, I’d be branded an ungrateful bastard who repaid kindness with enmity. Never mind losing my head; the self-loathing alone would be unbearable.
I desperately clung to the thread of reason.
“A-anyway! I was planning to wash immediately, so I’m really fine! Please dry yourself first, my lady!”
I practically shouted in the stiff, loud voice of a soldier stating his rank and name. Then I snatched a pure-white towel that had been neatly folded on the shelf.
“Here, take this! This towel is really…”
To somehow dispel the mood, I thrust the towel toward her with an exaggerated gesture.
“This towel is so fluffy! Really incredibly fluffy! I’ll wait outside!”
Lady Rebecca accepted the towel with a dazed expression, clearly not understanding what was happening. I didn’t have the courage to face her reddened cheeks and trembling eyes any longer, so I practically fled, throwing the bathroom door open and rushing out.
Bang!
Only after the door slammed shut did I lean my back against the wet wall and breathe raggedly.
“Haah, damn… I nearly had a heart attack.”
I roughly swept my wet hair back. My body was chilled from the cold water, but my ears burned as if they would burst.
It felt a hundred times more tense than the moment an immigrant’s axe had grazed my cheek at the wall.
I had transmigrated as a minor extra in a dark romance fantasy, yet I had no idea why the genre was suddenly trying to morph into some cheap harem story or misunderstanding trope.
I stood blankly in the middle of the bedroom, calming my wildly beating heart for a good ten minutes.
Click.
With a careful sound, the bathroom door opened.
“Sir Bale…”
Lady Rebecca emerged after roughly drying herself with a towel. But the situation was far from over.
“Gasp.”
I involuntarily sucked in a breath and jerked my head up to stare at the chandelier on the ceiling. The crystal pieces were truly brilliant and beautiful. So beautiful I wanted to count every single one.
It couldn’t be helped.
Although she had wiped herself with a towel, the thin fabric of her clothes had absorbed so much water that it had become completely see-through.
The rich curves that had been hidden beneath her usual voluminous and proper dress—the curves that had clearly received Grand Duke Gareth’s abundant love—plus one more curve I hadn’t noticed before, were now fully visible through the wet cloth.
Please save me. Someone please save me.
I couldn’t possibly make eye contact.
Noticing my gaze wandering in the air, Lady Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself and spoke in an extremely embarrassed voice.
“I’m sorry, Sir Bale… My clothes absorbed too much water. It would be unseemly to walk through the hallway to my room like this. I think I’ll have to wait until they dry a little.”
“I-it’s fine! Take your time drying them! I’ll just stare at the floor!”
I answered stiffly, like a private standing at rigid attention. At my wooden reaction, Lady Rebecca let out a small sigh.
“Sir Bale also needs to wash quickly and shake off the fatigue of travel, yet I’ve been occupying the bathroom. Since it will take some time for my clothes to dry…”
She continued carefully, as if having come to a decision. The words that followed made me doubt my ears.
“Please go into the bathroom and wash, Sir Bale. I’ll stay here, dry my clothes, and leave afterward. Wouldn’t that save time and be more practical?”
“…Pardon?”
I stupidly asked back without taking my eyes off the chandelier.
What are you saying, sister-in-law!!!!!
She would stay in a man’s bedroom to dry her wet clothes, so the man should go wash first?
This is exactly the awkward moment when a couple goes to a motel and the guy gets told to shower first!
No matter how pure Lady Rebecca’s intentions were and how much she was simply trying to handle the situation practically, this was too ridiculous. I should have realized it the moment that kindergarten-teacher tone slipped out earlier.
This Grand Duchess, despite her elegant appearance, had a seriously sloppy and quirky side somewhere.
This kind of woman gets violated by the damn uncle in the original dark story, gets pregnant, and dies?! Experiencing it myself, it’s fucking ridiculous!
But I had neither a good reason to refuse nor the confidence to keep enduring this stimulating, nowhere-safe-to-look scene.
I decided to choose escape instead.
“T-then! As you said, my lady, I’ll go into the bathroom first and wash! Please dry yourself comfortably!”
I tightly closed my eyes and walked toward the bathroom with robot-like stiff steps. I wanted to cross that threshold and flee into the hot water as quickly as possible.
But just as I reached for the bathroom doorknob, Lady Rebecca’s thin voice caught me from behind.
“Um, Sir Bale…”
“Yes! I’m listening!”
While I shouted while facing the door, Rebecca seemed to hesitate, mumbling. Then came the question that was perhaps the most absurd of all today’s happenings.
“By any chance… was my appearance when I got wet with water earlier… not attractive…?”
“Guh?!”
It was so absurd I nearly bit my tongue. Though her voice was tiny and crawling, the strange anxiety and shame packed inside it slammed straight into my eardrums.
My mind went completely blank.
Why was she suddenly asking something like that? Did she feel ashamed because I wouldn’t meet her eyes and kept staring at the ceiling? Or had she lost confidence while Grand Duke Gareth had been away on the battlefield for a whole year?
What kind of answer could possibly preserve the graceful hostess’s dignity while letting me maintain the model image of a vassal who doesn’t cross the line?
As I froze like a mute who had eaten honey and stayed silent, Lady Rebecca seemed to realize the nuance of her own words belatedly. She shouted in a fluster.
“Ah, ah, no! What kind of stupid thing did I just say! Please pretend you didn’t hear it! I really asked something strange! Hurry and go wash!”
I didn’t turn around, but I could clearly picture her covering her face and stomping her feet. I felt like my lifespan would shorten if I stayed in this space even one more second, so instead of answering I quickly threw myself into the bathroom and locked the door with a click.
“Haah…”
Only after hearing the lock click did I slump to the floor. It felt as if an earthquake had swept through.
I roughly stripped off my wet clothes and approached the bathtub. Fortunately the second attempt at the lever succeeded, and pleasantly warm water began filling the wide marble tub.
Splash.
The moment I submerged myself, the muscles that had been stiff with tension finally melted.
“It’s supposed to be a dark romance fantasy…”
I leaned my head against the edge of the tub, staring into space, and muttered.
Why is it turning into some rom-com… No, fuck, this isn’t a rom-com, it’s a full-blown melodrama situation?!
And at the level of those adult melodramas that used to play in Korean theaters around 2010.
This world was definitely the novel A Rose Blooming to be Broken, full of political intrigue and revenge. Yet every single thing I experienced after transmigrating had one screw loose.
The Grand Duke who was nothing but a doting father, the elegant and graceful but occasionally clumsy and quirky Grand Duchess, and even the timid little villainess who hid behind her father and was always busy running away.
The few hours I had spent in this mansion had scrambled my mind more than the entire year I spent wielding a spear at the Northern Wall.
Still, it wasn’t bad.
Yeah… I survived the Northern Wall. Something like this is nothing.
In a bathroom that smelled faintly of fragrance instead of blood, I was already starting to resign myself and adapt to this strangely off-kilter genre dissonance.
“Whew, that feels refreshing.”
After soaking in the hot water for a long time and finishing a thorough bath, I changed into the soft indoor clothes provided in the bathroom and stepped out.
The bedroom was quiet. Lady Rebecca had already dried her wet clothes somewhat and left. Only the faint, lingering scent of soap proved she had been there.
“Huh?”
As I approached the bed, my eyes caught a single luxurious sheet of paper neatly placed on the table. It was a letter carefully sealed with wax bearing a wolf emblem.
I picked up the letter and broke the seal. Inside, it was densely filled with very elegant and graceful handwriting.
The letter was filled with elegant, graceful handwriting—every line carefully penned. I couldn’t read a single word of it, but the intent was obvious even without reading.
— Rebecca von Arteta
“……”
I stood there blankly for a long time, holding the letter.
I didn’t need to read it to know the contents. It was probably a long apology letter expressing regret for the bathroom accident and embarrassment over that earlier quirky remark.
Given Rebecca’s kind and upright nature, she must have felt uncomfortable simply leaving and wanted to express her apology somehow.
However, the problem was—
“You silly auntie… I confessed earlier that I’m illiterate.”
I let out a hollow laugh and clutched my forehead.
It hadn’t even been two hours since I confessed that I couldn’t read the letters at all. Moreover, after she had so confidently declared that she would teach me herself, she had gotten flustered, completely forgotten that fact, and left behind such a sincere letter.
“Really… She’s foolish but cute.”
As I quietly stared at the letters crawling across the white paper, a faint smile unconsciously spread across my lips.
No matter how hard she tried to maintain her dignity, that kind and clumsy side couldn’t be hidden. Could a child who grew up receiving such abundant motherly love really become the bloodless, tearless tyrant of high society described in the original work—the Poison Rose of the North?
No, there’s absolutely no way.
I was certain. Veronica, taking after her mother, would have an endlessly kind and tender nature at heart. It was just that the terrible tragedies had gnawed away and twisted that small child’s soul.
Her father, Grand Duke Gareth’s death. And the subsequent event where the uncle who usurped the Grand Duchy violated the now-powerless mother Rebecca and ultimately drove her to death. All of it had turned Veronica into a monster.
I carefully set the letter back on the table and clenched my fist tightly.
I must protect them.
At first I had only planned to prevent the Grand Duke’s assassination to save my own neck and maybe get a few crumbs of favor. But the family I had seen in this short time was so warm, a little clumsy, and therefore all the more endearing.
The Grand Duke’s brother—that damn uncle who had failed the assassination—would definitely not give up and would try another scheme.
I have to protect them. If I want to live comfortably too.
I firmly resolved inside that I would protect this kind and quirky family and completely shatter the original work’s tragedy.
Because the people who had given me this excessive favor and the fluffy bed were now my family.