I Didn't Know I Was Secretly Dating the Emperor
I never expected to find out who I was in my previous life in such an ordinary way.
Yet that bizarre moment arrived during the most mundane part of my day.
Like, for example, on my commute to work as a low-ranking official in the Ministry of Finance.
I was dozing off in the shared carriage headed for the imperial palace when the realization hit me.
‘I’ve reincarnated into a book.’
The moment I became aware of my past life, twenty-something years on Earth flashed through my mind like a panorama.
And then the contents of this world—the original story I was now living in—rose up with vivid, meticulous clarity. It felt almost like divine intervention.
But strangely, I didn’t feel much of a reaction.
‘A warmongering tyrant emperor ends up in a contractual relationship with the sunny female lead and they fall in love. That’s just tabloid gossip for high society.’
I had no lingering attachments to my previous life. No family, no close friends.
It simply felt like I’d gained an extra twenty-something years of memories.
‘It’s kind of funny that my name is the same in both lives.’
On Earth, I had been Kwon Rina. Here, I was Carolina.
‘Maybe my soul is just branded with “Rina” somewhere.’
If I had to name one other trivial similarity, it was that in both lives I worked as a low-ranking bureaucrat.
‘As long as I don’t repeat the part where I get stuck with a crazy boss, work myself to death, and die from overwork.’
I offered up a small prayer as the panorama ended on the image of a certain city hall office.
The fact that I had already been “stuck with a crazy boss” made me even more anxious.
‘I just want to live a long life.’
In this life, I desperately wanted to work an ordinary, uneventful job and retire at a proper age.
Unfortunately, the emperor—who had spent nearly ten years rampaging across battlefields and terrifying the entire continent—was about to return in triumph.
Every department was on high alert, bracing for the arrival of this long-absent, notoriously prickly superior.
‘They say he’s going to demand work reports the moment he returns, so everything’s piling up. Surely not…?’
While I was busy worrying about dying from overwork, the shared carriage had already arrived at the Ministry of Finance building.
I gave the driver a half-hearted greeting and trudged toward the office with zero enthusiasm.
“What time is it?”
The moment I opened the door, the familiar grating voice of my insane boss greeted me.
“It’s ten past eight, Donovan,” I answered, checking my watch without much care.
Normally, the second I told him the time, he would have launched into a tirade about how I was late even though I arrived earlier than required, or how when he was a new hire he used to come in two hours early.
But today, Donovan’s outburst took a slightly different direction.
“What? Donovan?”
My boss, Donovan, was the kind of man who took excessive pride in the fact that he was a baronet—barely clinging to the very bottom of the noble register.
Even though rank took precedence over title within government offices, so there was no need to use noble honorifics.
‘Well, it’s not like he’s asking me to call him Daddy.’
“Sir,” I added the honorific without enthusiasm.
Only then did Donovan’s face relax a little.
“I’m not the type to be overly authoritarian, you know.”
It was almost as if there were a law stating that truly authoritarian people had to begin every sentence that way.
“Even if imperial regulations state that official position takes precedence over peerage, there is still a clear difference between commoners and nobles, wouldn’t you agree?”
Donovan kept shooting me looks that begged for agreement.
‘Technically, I’m a commoner too.’
My father had been a baronet like Donovan, but baronet titles were not hereditary.
Therefore, I was a commoner with a noble father.
‘Thanks to that one foot barely inside noble society, my situation is a bit better than most commoners.’
Still, this wasn’t the time to mention it, so I gave him the bare minimum reaction.
“Yes, well.”
Apparently satisfied even with my half-hearted response, Donovan continued to grumble.
“How could they promote that Rachel instead of me? That commoner.”
Now I understood why Donovan’s tantrum had taken a different turn today.
‘The promotion announcements must have come out.’
Rachel was the head of a neighboring department and didn’t get along with Donovan at all.
‘Of course not. Rachel is a competent, self-made official, while Donovan is only here because of his parents’ connections.’
I must have let my inner praise for the imperial personnel department’s fairness show on my face.
Or maybe he was upset that I hadn’t joined him in badmouthing Rachel.
Donovan, who had been maintaining some semblance of composure, suddenly flushed red and shouted.
“What’s with that expression? Are you actually thinking that Rachel deserves the promotion?”
“Of course not. How could I?”
That’s office life for you. I carefully schooled my expression and denied it.
“Like hell you don’t! You’re siding with her because you’re a commoner too. Tsk. My mistake for thinking that growing up in a noble household would have given you some discernment.”
After dumping on me for a while and huffing angrily, Donovan slammed the door and left as the other employees began arriving one after another.
Connie, who had watched Donovan storm out with a face still twisted in rage, cautiously approached me.
“What’s wrong with that guy again?”
“Looks like he got passed over for promotion.”
No matter how little sentiment I felt about my reincarnation, having to deal with such irrational anger right after experiencing an identity crisis left me in a foul mood.
I gave Connie a short answer and headed to my desk, saying I was going to start working.
Connie looked like she wanted to ask more, but she didn’t stop me.
Maybe because my day had started off terribly, I couldn’t focus on my tasks at all.
Even work that would normally be easy kept going wrong.
‘Get a grip. Just get through today and it’s the weekend.’
I tried to pull myself together, but it didn’t help much.
“Are you out of your mind? These calculations are wrong.”
Donovan, who had found an error in the documents I submitted, yelled as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.
An abacus came flying toward my desk.
I had checked it multiple times with extra care, but I had still missed it.
“Do you not understand how important the raw tax collection data from each territory is? This is the foundation for the reports that will be submitted to His Majesty!”
The fact that it was an extremely minor mistake—just copying one number wrong during the calculation process—didn’t matter.
The fact that we had magical tools to double-check everything at the end and catch errors before they became a problem didn’t matter either.
What mattered was that Donovan, who was already in a terrible mood, had spotted my mistake before the final verification.
Since I had indeed made an error, I silently endured Donovan’s tirade, which was closer to him venting his frustration.
When I returned to my seat, Connie glanced nervously at Donovan before slipping me a note.
Half of it was written in the secret code used by Ministry of Finance employees, viciously tearing Donovan apart.
The other half suggested that since I was probably in a bad mood, we should grab a drink at the pub after work.
‘Nice.’
I made a circle with my fingers toward Connie.
Thanks to the promise of cold beer, the remaining hours felt a little more bearable.
After enduring for several more hours, the bell signaling the end of the workday for imperial officials finally rang.
I left all my remaining tasks for next week and quickly escaped the office.
The moment I stepped out of the Ministry building, it felt like someone had removed a boulder that had been weighing down my shoulders.
“Let’s worry about next week’s work next week.”
I left the outer palace and waited for Connie in the shade of a tree in a quiet corner where the departing employees wouldn’t easily spot me.
It was the meeting spot Connie and I had agreed on so we could avoid picking up unwanted company for after-work drinks.
I waited about ten minutes, but Connie still hadn’t appeared.
‘I did leave a bit early.’
Another ten minutes passed.
‘Did something happen?’
I was starting to get worried.
Just as I was about to head back to the office, I saw a figure approaching from afar.
“Um, Carolina?”
But the person who approached wasn’t Connie.
“It’s been a while, Heather. Have you been well?”
Heather was Connie’s childhood friend. Even though we worked in different departments, we knew each other by sight.
When I greeted her, Heather smiled brightly.
“I’ve been fine. Oh, here. Connie asked me to give this to you.”
Heather handed me a crumpled note.
When I unfolded it, the scribbled handwriting read: I got held up with work and can’t leave yet, so let’s grab that beer next time.
“Ugh, working overtime on a precious Friday evening.”
“Tell me about it.”
Heather, who had delivered the note, nodded in agreement.
“Looked like she was about to leave when Donovan caught her. He nitpicked over nothing, then told her to redo it immediately and bring it back.”
‘Poor thing.’
So I guess Connie had become the next target.
“She said she’s really sorry.”
After faithfully delivering even the postscript, Heather left.
‘What now?’
Normally, I would have quietly gone home since the plans were canceled, but…
Today, my stress had reached its peak, and I really wanted a cold beer.
‘I’ll just go by myself.’
The pub Connie and I had planned to visit was close to the palace, so the security was decent.
The early summer evening weather was perfect for a walk.
I headed toward Rikel Street at a leisurely pace.
It must have been the day of the night market celebrating the victory, because from the entrance of the street, merchants were already calling out to customers.
The eyes of other passersby were drawn to the merchants who were shouting at the top of their lungs to promote their wares.
But my gaze landed on a young girl with a still-childish face who was selling flowers.
She seemed shy; I noticed her hesitate several times before she could bring herself to call out to the people walking by.
‘It’s about time to change the flowers in the vase anyway.’
When I approached the flower stall, the girl’s face lit up.
I smiled back and bought a bunch of freesias.
“Freesias are hard to find this time of year.”
As I gently touched the petals in wonder, the girl—who was wrapping the freesias with surprisingly skilled hands—explained in a shy voice.
“They’re from the northern part of the capital. The blooming season is a little later there. It’s the very end of spring even in the north, so these are the last ones.”
The girl handed me the bouquet with a bashful smile.
I accepted the flowers and breathed in the early summer freesia scent. At that moment, a man wearing a hood pulled low over his face quickly approached the flower stall.
“Do you have any freesias?”
“Oh no… The customer who just bought them took the last bunch.”
The girl’s troubled gaze turned toward me.
The man’s gaze followed hers and landed on me as well.
His face, which had only shown his jawline before, now filled my entire field of vision.
‘Wow, he’s gorgeous.’