Yes, I Sent a Letter to the Wrong Person
Yes, I Sent a Letter to the Wrong Person
I possessed the body of a character in a romance fantasy novel I was reading.
Basically, I ended up in a world that's as common as they come, where the female lead goes through all sorts of trials and finally ends up with the male lead.
Of course, if there's one thing that differentiates me from the typical transmigrators....
It's that I didn't possess a character who's at least a supporting role just by the sound of their name, like a Northern Duke, a Crown Prince, or a Magic Tower Master.
I possessed an ordinary 21-year-old commoner male who barely appears once in 160 chapters....
"Well, possession is possession, right?"
I decided to look on the bright side.
Think about it. What is the life of a Northern Duke described in romance fantasy novels like?
You have to fight bloody territorial battles against monsters in a barren land where blizzards rage all year round.
Some Northern Dukes even lose an arm or their entire family while trying to protect the female lead.
Forget finding love; they spend their whole lives suffering from the aftermath, only to watch from afar as the female lead finds happiness.
What about the Crown Prince?
He might look flashy on the outside, but he lives with chronic indigestion from fighting for the throne against the noble faction while being threatened with poisoning every single day.
The Magic Tower Master? He's bound to go bald from solving mana formulas while locked in a back room before he even meets the female lead.
And the sub-male lead? Needless to say, he was the ultimate pushover who sacrificed everything for the female lead's happiness and exited the stage lonely.
'Yeah, I'd rather stay like this than go through that hell of a time.'
Isn't the life of an extra the true honey pot?
Anyway, this romance fantasy world was a peaceful place that existed solely for the female lead's romance, with almost no threats from outside the empire.
In a word, whether the main characters beat each other up or not, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.
I just need to earn enough to get by and live comfortably.
"What, then it was simple."
Having neatly organized my plans for the future, I traced the faint, lingering memories of the body I possessed.
I started moving toward the house that would become my cozy nest.
Determined to live my second life simply and peacefully, no matter what.
But that simple dream vanished the moment I arrived at the house where a man named Zenon lived.
"...... This is a house?"
I rubbed my eyes several times, unable to believe the reality before me, and stared straight ahead.
What stood before me was a ruin that wouldn't be surprising if it collapsed tomorrow.
The roof was half-gone, and the door creaked every time the wind blew.
But surprisingly, this was the least of my worries.
The real problem wasn't this hideous building itself.
"Oh, look at our little rat. Finally crawled back in, have you?"
Two large men were standing crookedly on the crumbling threshold.
Covered in scars, they looked at me with a smile that said they were oh-so-happy to see me.
And the moment I saw them, Zenon's body reacted instinctively.
My legs and hands were trembling.
The original owner of this body was terrified of them.
"10 Gold coins, including interest on the arrears. It would be 12 Gold coins if we added the interest for the day after tomorrow, but we're kind-hearted, aren't we? We'll just take 10 Gold coins."
One of the men took an old ledger from his pocket and said, tapping it.
10 Gold coins.
In this setting, that was a huge sum of money that a commoner would have to work 10 years without even breathing to get their hands on.
"W-wait. What do you mean by......"
"You're not going to give me some bullshit about not having the money, are you? I'll give you exactly two days. If you don't bring 10 Gold coins within two days, I'm going to cut your stomach open and sell your fresh organs one by one."
"You'll get to experience firsthand what it means to become 'mysterious'."
As soon as I was threatened with the murderous intent of the two loan sharks, my mind went completely blank.
Look on the bright side, my ass.
If I stay like this, I'll be gutted and killed within a year, let alone living a peaceful extra life.
'I have to find a way to survive. Anything, even the smallest clue.......'
I calmed the two loan sharks down for a moment and started to recall the early settings of the original novel one by one.
I needed a lifeline that would allow a commoner to gain immense wealth and power in a short time, or at least save my life.
Then, suddenly, a family came to mind.
'The Denius Duchy.'
The most powerful family in the empire, and the place where two of the villainesses who tormented the female lead so viciously in the original work were stationed.
Couldn't I use that place to my advantage?
First, the first villainess was the first daughter, two years younger than the female lead, Rihel Denius.
She was a typical villain who used her unique arrogance and wealth to interfere with the female lead's entry into high society at every turn.
And one more.
Mirea Denius.
'Damn it, I remember the first one well, but... who was Mirea Denius?'
Was she the second daughter? Or the Duke's hidden illegitimate child?
I only remembered that her personality was even more fucked up and cruel than Rihel Denius's, but I couldn't recall her exact status or history.
I clearly remembered that she had a lot of screen time because she didn't have a bad relationship with the first daughter, though....
That was when.
"Hey, are you listening? I said two days."
Less than two minutes after I'd fallen into thought, one of the loan sharks started threatening me again, brandishing a dagger.
"A-alright! Two days! I will definitely get it within two days! So please, just spare my life......!"
I prostrated myself on the ground, trembling and begging.
It was pathetic, but when a knife is about to be shoved into your stomach, who cares about pride?
The men snorted at my groveling, left one last warning, and then disappeared into the darkness.
Sitting on the ground with my legs giving out, I thought about the Denius Duchy again.
Yes, it's do or die.
Because there was no time to leisurely recall memories, and because I wasn't in my right mind due to the urgency and the loan sharks' threats.
In the end, my brain started working in a strange way.
If I don't deal with the loan sharks within two days, I'm fucked.
And with the power of the Denius Duchy, they could crush these loan sharks like bugs.
Lastly, I have some very good information from the original work that could make all of that possible, and a silver tongue to boot.
'Okay, then first, let's send a letter using the crest of Kardelde, who acted as the Duke's right hand.'
If I stamp that crest and send it, it will definitely get into their hands.
I just need to mix in some information from the original work to make them curious and completely bewitch them.
If I can make them focus only on me.
The original female lead will be free from harassment, and I can ride their coattails to live a flashy second life, right?
'With my flashy eloquence and decent looks... no, with the amount of information I have, I can definitely seduce them.'
Unfounded confidence welled up.
Sending love letters to two people at the same time? It's fine.
This world has a setting where polyandry and polygamy are legal.
As long as I get cursed at a little, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
However, even though I had planned everything to survive, the two-day deadline was still strangling me.
What if the letter sent to the Duchy gets ignored or lost in the delivery process? That would be an instant organ-harvesting ending.
I needed insurance.
Very strong and certain insurance.
'The Princess. Let's send a letter to the Princess of the Rodpen Empire, too.'
The sub-male lead and mastermind of the original work, Crown Prince Cherndea Rodpen.
Princess Ilusia Rodpen truly hated that Cherndea.
Even though she was born an illegitimate child, she possessed better qualifications to be Emperor than anyone else.
But in the end, because she was an illegitimate child and a woman, she was pushed aside by the incompetent Cherndea and lost her position as the successor.
And in the end, filled with rage and hatred, she would later torment the female lead viciously to cause Cherndea pain.
She was a character who met a miserable end at the hands of the male lead, the Marquis of the West.
'If I throw bait to Princess Ilusia with information that I can give her Cherndea's weakness and the position of Crown Princess, wouldn't I be able to seduce her easily?'
For the Duchy, I'll use the Kardelde crest and bet on a fifty-fifty chance.
For Princess Ilusia, if I send a secret letter through the old man who owns the Golden Hand, a continental merchant guild, it will definitely reach her.
Once I finished thinking that far.
Since I'd already started, and I'd die if I didn't solve it within two days anyway, I went straight into the house and started looking for ink and stationery.
And then, calming my trembling hands, I picked up a pen.
30 minutes later.
I smiled with a bit of pride after writing three letters, filled with plenty of early-morning sentimentality.
Each was a short note of about 200 characters, but they were packed with cringey content that women would like, the kind you'd only see in third-rate romance novels.
After that, I ran outside immediately, imitated the Kardelde crest as closely as possible, and put two letters in the mailbox heading to the Duchy.
Then, I immediately ran to the back alley and slipped a letter into the request box of the Golden Hand's Alden branch.
Now, all the dice had been cast.
Having returned to the thing that looked like a house, I sat blankly on the floor.
Since the ceiling was completely open, I was bathed in bright moonlight, and it hit me that I'd had a productive first day of possession.
To be precise, it wasn't productive, it was terrible... well, it's all the same.
Anyway, as I started to relax, my eyelids slowly began to close.
"To think I have to sleep without a blanket... another nightmare indeed......."
Just before I fell into a deep sleep.
The identity of Mirea Denius, which had been constantly hovering in my hazy consciousness, suddenly came to mind out of nowhere.
"Wait a minute?"
Second daughter? Illegitimate child? No, that wasn't it.
The moment the blurry puzzle of my memory perfectly clicked into place under the moonlight, the sleepiness vanished like a lie.
Yes, Mirea Denius is the current head of the Denius Duchy and Rihel Denius's mother.
The man she married through a political marriage was actually faking it to deceive the previous head of the family and completely swallow the Denius Duchy.
She even met a terrible end because it was revealed that he had drugged her to sleep and forcibly impregnated her, which resulted in her distrust of men hitting the max level.
And she is the craziest woman in the original work who would not hesitate to raise a rebellion against the empire if it were for her daughter.
"...... Wow, I'm fucked."
So, I, right now, just to try and live a little.
Just to try and help the original female lead a little and get the attention of the original villainesses.
Did I just send a love letter to a middle-aged widow in her mid-30s?