Chapter 4
Chapter 4
I Only Left a Supportive Comment
《Love on the Day of Judgment》
That was the title of the romance fantasy webtoon I clicked on out of curiosity.
A classic male and female lead duo consisting of a Hero and a Saintess who grew through adventures and hardships.
At first, I thought it was just another standard heroic story where an absurdly righteous Hero and a kind Saintess overcame crises together.
But the further I read, the more blood started flying everywhere, characters who seemed important dropped dead left and right, the setting turned out to be surprisingly dark, and provocative scenes kept appearing nonstop.
Yeah.
It was a work with more than a few drops of dark fantasy mixed into it.
And I ended up reincarnated as one of the characters in that less-than-wholesome world.
Not as a member of the Justitia Church, the church of the Goddess of Order and Justice where the protagonist couple belonged—
But as Beatrice, the Saintess of the Eris Church, the church devoted to the Goddess of Love and Battle.
Beatrice was a supporting character created solely to highlight the cruelty of the villain, Cassian.
She was mercilessly trampled both physically and mentally by him, existing only as a tool to display his wickedness and brutality.
A textbook example of the “woman in the refrigerator” trope.
The whole thing was way too excessive, and there were even heavy implications that she suffered repeated sexual abuse.
Since I had zero tolerance for misery-porn stories like that, I ended up dropping the webtoon during the Eris Church arc.
“Ugh… I seriously can’t keep reading this. I’ll just binge it after it’s finished.”
When had I said that and closed the tab?
After that, I completely forgot about it.
Then one day, while casually browsing an online community, I accidentally clicked on a post and got spoiled on the ending.
The protagonists lose to the demons, and humanity ends up being raised like livestock by them?
“No way. I know the setting’s dark, but they seriously ended it like that? In a Korean webtoon?”
Half in disbelief, I opened the final chapter and skimmed through it.
It was real.
I hated bad endings.
I didn’t like open endings either.
Call me cliché, but I preferred proper happy endings with everything wrapped up cleanly.
“Good thing I stopped reading it. If I’d kept going, I would’ve taken massive emotional damage.”
Thinking that, I casually opened the comment section.
As expected, it was complete chaos.
There were colorful insults, savage criticism aimed at the author, and somehow an endless parade of food recipes.
I laughed while reading through them, and even copied down some recipes that looked tasty into my memo app.
Then suddenly, a thought flashed through my head.
“What would happen if someone left a supportive comment in the middle of all this hate?”
So I wrote a shamelessly pretentious comment defending the author.
The kind of brainless shielding comment that sounded like someone suffering from terminal art-snob syndrome.
[Honestly, isn’t an ending like this memorable in its own way? I think Korea needs to develop the cultural maturity to appreciate bad endings as art too. I hope the author doesn’t get intimidated by all these mindless hate comments and change the ending. This is way better than some predictable happy ending… aren’t you guys just addicted to generic stories?]
…It was just a joke.
A tiny splash of oil thrown into a raging fire.
So why the hell did I end up reincarnating into this webtoon because of that?
“You fucking bastard of an author… is this how you repay kindness?”
If anyone was supposed to get reincarnated, shouldn’t it have been the people writing five-thousand-character hate essays or screaming profanity in the comments?
All I did was laugh while watching people lose their minds over my comment before going to sleep.
Then I woke up in a filthy medieval back alley that smelled like rotting garbage.
Worse, my sturdy body built through years of exercise and martial arts was completely gone.
Instead, I had become some scrawny little brat.
But the truly horrifying part was something else entirely.
The lifelong partner that had faithfully stayed between my legs my entire life had disappeared too.
I had gone from a healthy Korean man in his twenties to a homeless little girl in a medieval world overnight.
I cried hard enough to shake the heavens once after realizing I’d become a girl, and then cried again after realizing this world was actually the setting of 《Love on the Day of Judgment》.
But there was no time to sit around drowning in despair.
Life as a back alley orphan didn’t allow that luxury.
Getting pushed around by other beggars while trying to ask for food, or having coins stolen by thugs after some passerby pitied me enough to toss me money—
That was normal.
Getting proper sleep was impossible too.
I had to curl up in alley corners and sleep lightly.
The moment I fell into deep sleep, there was a good chance I’d wake up stuffed into a human trafficker’s sack being sold somewhere.
The hunger and misery quickly eroded what remained of my modern conscience.
When I got too hungry, I stole food.
I roamed marketplaces picking pockets.
When plague spread through the slums, I robbed the belongings of sick people too weak to resist.
I even searched through piles of corpses looking for anything useful or valuable.
Living like trash, half a year passed before I realized it.
And during that hellish time, I discovered two things.
First.
This body possessed absurd physical ability.
A single swing of the wooden club I carried for self-defense was enough to send grown men crashing unconscious into walls, and my movements while climbing over fences were agile and nimble like a cat.
Second.
I occasionally dreamed of danger before it happened.
Scenes from those dreams became reality shortly afterward.
Thanks to that, I managed to avoid kidnappers and starving drifters trying to attack me.
Those two things—
Monstrous physical ability and dreams that foresaw the future—
Were the reason I managed to survive alone in the back alleys for half a year despite being trapped in a child’s body.
But I guess this was finally the limit.
Shiver shiver shiver—
That sound?
That was my body shaking uncontrollably.
I was trembling so hard I practically felt like a living earthquake.
Back in Korea, I used to prefer winter over summer.
But now I realized that was only possible because I used to have something called a home.
Carrying an armful of branches, I shivered my way beneath a bridge into the crude little shelter I’d made there.
I lit the wood I gathered and wrapped myself tightly in a moldy blanket I couldn’t even remember where I’d found.
Only after sitting by the fire did my frozen body finally begin thawing slightly.
“S-So fucking cold…”
Winter was still far from over.
At this rate, freezing to death would probably happen before starving or getting beaten to death.
Cold was something neither physical ability nor prophetic dreams could solve.
And lately, another problem had started appearing.
The older this body grew, the more beautiful it became.
My hair was uneven and ragged like rats had chewed on it, stained so badly its original color was impossible to tell.
My face was covered in soot.
I wore foul-smelling rags and looked painfully thin.
And yet, this body’s beauty still couldn’t be hidden completely.
…I still remembered the disgusting looks men gave me after the one time I washed properly in the river.
And my body was that of a little girl.
Those insane fucking bastards were lusting after a child.
Back in Korea, men like that would’ve been slapped with ankle monitors instantly.
But this world was full of them.
To make matters worse, maybe rumors had spread about a girl surviving alone in the slums.
This morning, some neatly dressed brat who looked like a trainee knight specifically sought me out and tried to take me somewhere.
What did he say again?
Come quietly and he’d take me somewhere far better than this place where I could live in luxury?
I wasn’t some naïve little kid stupid enough to fall for pretty words.
The moment he let his guard down, I smashed his temple with my wooden club and knocked him unconscious.
Then I beat the hell out of him and hung a sign around his neck that read:
[I’m a disgusting creep who lusts after little kids.]
After pulling that stunt, there was no way they wouldn’t come searching for me with bloodshot eyes.
People obsessed with stupid things like pride and chivalry would never overlook a trainee knight getting humiliated like that.
If things went badly, a whole group of knights might come after me.
My physical abilities were impressive for a child, sure.
But could I escape from a group of knights?
Honestly, nine times out of ten I’d get caught.
Did I act recklessly despite knowing that?
Absolutely not.
This body had its reasons.
Honestly, with my personality, if I only vaguely thought, “I should leave this place someday,” I definitely would’ve kept procrastinating.
But if staying here meant I could genuinely get screwed over at any moment?
Then obviously I’d force myself to leave as fast as possible.
I’d aimed for two birds with one stone.
Vent my frustration and create overwhelming motivation to escape.
…Well, what was done was done.
I needed to leave this “Kingdom of Orphans” as quickly as possible.
A place overflowing with absolute bastards, just like its nickname implied.
“Huu… I’ll leave after tonight.”
I beat up the trainee knight this morning.
I originally planned to leave under cover of darkness tonight, but today’s snowstorm was especially brutal.
Going out carelessly in weather like this was the perfect way to get lost and freeze to death.
It would be smarter to wait until the storm calmed down.
I’d already found several poorly guarded exits and holes in the city walls, so I wouldn’t get caught.
While comforting myself with those thoughts, I tossed firewood into the flames one piece at a time and sipped melted snow water.
Then—
Clank.
“…!”
My heart nearly stopped.
Amid the howling wind and blizzard came the unmistakable sound of steel rattling.
Armor.
The footsteps of armored people.
And judging by the noise, there wasn’t just one or two of them.
Worse, all of those footsteps were heading straight toward my hiding place.
“Knights? Ah, fuck. I’m screwed.”
If it were just one or two people, they could’ve been mercenaries wearing scavenged armor.
But with this many?
Definitely knights.
Thankfully, I’d already packed my important belongings beforehand.
I quickly slung the bundle over my shoulder and gripped my trusty wooden club tightly.
At least the snowstorm would erase my tracks while I escaped.
…Assuming I didn’t freeze to death first.
I boldly stepped outside into the blizzard where visibility barely existed.
Then—
Thud!
“Gah!”
A solid wall slammed into me even though there should’ve been open space there.
Caught completely off guard, I fell backward onto the ground.
What the hell?
There was no way a wall suddenly dropped from the sky.
Sitting there in shock, I slowly looked up.
What I hit wasn’t a wall.
It was solid metal armor.
Raising my gaze further, I saw a stern-looking middle-aged knight staring down at me through the snowstorm.
…Ah, I’m fucked.
“…We finally found you.”
“The hell you did! Go die!”
I reacted instantly and swung my club straight at the knight’s head.
With strength impossible for a child and the added force of momentum, the strike shot forward dangerously fast.
If it hit his temple directly, at minimum he’d suffer a concussion.
And even if he blocked it, I planned to use that opening to run.
But—
Thunk.
That plan shattered completely when the knight casually blocked my club with the gauntlet covering his arm.
“Hoh… I’m impressed. I finally understand how that brat Leonid ended up in such a miserable state.”
“Goddammit…”
I was screwed.
There was absolutely no escaping this.
This was not someone my crude skills could handle.
After only one exchange, I fully understood the overwhelming difference in strength between us.
I immediately pulled back my club and retreated several steps, trying to create distance.
“…My apologies. It seems my explanation was insufficient and made you wary.”
While desperately searching for a way out—
The knight suddenly knelt in front of me.
I froze completely.
Why was this old man kneeling all of a sudden?
Wait.
Could this body secretly belong to some abandoned royal or noble bloodline or something?
“I deeply apologize for arriving so late and allowing you to suffer such hardship.”
“Mister… what are you even talking about?”
“My name is Vargas, commander of the Holy Knights of the Eris Church.”
The middle-aged knight introduced himself while pulling back the cloak draped over his armor.
Engraved clearly upon his chestplate was a thorn-covered rose and sword.
The symbol of the Eris Church.
…Impersonating a church symbol was something even the worst criminals wouldn’t dare attempt.
Which meant this man really was the commander of the Eris Church’s Holy Knights.
My mind went blank.
No way…
No.
Please no.
I was just supposed to be some random homeless girl.
That was all it was supposed to be.
My hands began trembling violently.
A truth I’d desperately ignored while struggling just to survive slowly surfaced in my mind.
This body was female.
Silver hair hidden beneath dirt.
Mysterious white eyes.
Strange prophetic dreams that warned me of danger.
And now, the commander of the Eris Church personally coming to find me in this filthy slum.
Every clue pointed toward a single character.
I prayed it wasn’t true.
I repeated over and over that it couldn’t be true while staring blankly at Vargas’s slowly opening lips.
“We have come to escort you, Saintess.”
The moment I heard those words—
I blacked out.