2 How to handle a situation

" The real question is : Why am I back ? "

After contemplating for a while, I came to one conclusion :

'Hah… so it seemed like I came back to my previous life .'

Before that I was just a normal twenty-years old college student, named Eun Ae Kim, who majored in architecture and enjoyed life in her hometown Seoul.

Using my remaining brain cells I had, I reminisced my last memory, 'As far as I remembered, I stayed at home and read a novel in the evening, which a friend of mine recommended me. Soon I became sleepy and closed my eyes, once I finally finished the book…

Now I'm here… The only thing I remembered after falling asleep was someone telling me :

" If you get the chance to return, what would you like to change ?"

I heard a soothing male voice, but didn't see the person myself, unfortunately'. Convinced that it was probably a heavenly creature whom I shouldn't arouse anger with, I then carefully analysed the sentence that was left behind for me,

"…so you wanted me to reduce my regrets ,or what ?", I considered this possibility, however I didn't know the certain person's voice while searching through my memories, so I asked myself, why he would do such things for me. Not knowing what his real intention could be, I frustratedly walked around the room.

Nonetheless my gut feeling told me that I would someday meet the culprit. With the only evident I had I could still recognise him probably.

'Just let this issue aside. I have to think of the important facts now which I found out after remembering my life in the modern world.', thinking this way, I calmed myself down a bit afterwards. Suddenly a thought crossed through my mind and I heavily sighed as the result,

"Oh, right… I totally forgot it ….It seems that my previous life took place in the book I just finished reading before drifting to my dreamland …. Oh, man .Come on ! "

" It couldn't be any better !",I deadpanned with an expressionless face and continued with the next discovery,

"In addition to this, I'm also a supporting character from a novel. Not only an unimportant supporting role, but I'm the villainess !

Holy crap ?! It feels like my life was a whole lie. It was practically displayed and scripted in a book! Seriously ????

To top it off, the title of the book was "The archduke and the baron's daughter journey to love ", so you could already guess what happened in this novel.

Ahhhhhh… I get goosebumps. I don't want to imagine the things they had done behind my back. How disgusting !",I got goosebumps thinking about the scenes written in the story.

In the end I was convinced that the heavenly being just wanted me to get tortured, so I internally screamed to the sky, 'I HATE YOU !!!! I was pretty satisfied with my life in Seoul and wanted to find a boyfriend some day too! Why coming back ?! God, you doesn't want to let me live there ,right ?!'. In that moment I really wanted to show the middle finger to the ceiling where the god was portrayed.

Trying to calm myself down again, I walked around in circles in my room, but this didn't help me much at all. Soon I reached my writing desk and sat down there. I crossed my arms while I looked up to the painting in a daze. I knew that there must be a reason, why I am here? Only to get the chance to change my life ?

"What a joke !" , I laughed bitterly. " When they wanted to do it in the first place, why did they not have taken me back after I already died in this world .Why now ? ", I questioned the culprit with a frown.

I bent my body to the desk looking away from the ceiling and frustratingly held my head with my hands ruffling my nut brown hair slightly.

"Be calm, Eun Ae … No ,now Rosie !", I tried to cheer myself up.

'Nobody could answer my questions for now. Since I am here, I should think about my situation.',coming to this conclusion, I soon took paper and pencil from my drawer and wrote the whole story from the book and the experiences from my past life:

MY previous life took place in a European medieval era which contained fantasy creatures and magic. A typical fantasy romance novel.

The villainess, Rosie Ainsworth (that was me), came from a prestigious Marquis lineage, where famous generals originated there. The family took an oath to the royal family and served them for more than 500 years since then. To bond both families more strongly, she was early engaged to the archduke's son, Cedric Evergarden, the male lead of this story. They got to know each other , when she was just 14 years old while he was 18 years old . At first it was a politically engagement, but the villainess slowly fell in love with him for real, as she got to know him more .

From outside was he coldhearted and stern, but inside hard-working, sincere, warm-hearted, sometimes clumsy, talented and much more. These traits described the male lead.

In contrast Cedric only thought of her as a partner with benefits for the family. Just an obligation. Since the villainess was very doted by her whole family, she became hot-tempered ,irresponsible and arrogant. Always mistreating the servants and looking down on commoners, so naturally everyone avoided and hated her. Bad Rumours about Rosie spread around even before her debut and her reputation fell down since then.

The male lead slowly detested her nature and tried to distance himself from her while she on the other hand still tried to come close to him .

And you could already imagine then what happened next .

The female lead, which was Luciana Bareford, a baron's daughter, came to the stage and because of her gracious heart and beauty she captivated the male lead who never fell in love before (That broke my heart ). So he sometimes would meet the woman behind Rosie's back after one year of marriage ( How irresponsible ! ). After completing 2 years of marriage he decided to divorce, but Rosie didn't want it and tried to hurt the female lead to the point where Luciana almost died. The misdeeds were exposed in the end and she was later on executed. Then the male lead and female lead got married and had a happy ending . End

This was the summary.

Just now I was in the middle of the scene :

In the afternoon I fell on the back, after I climbed up on a tree to get my hat from a branch. That explained that aching from before, which slowly subsided over time fortunately. At that time my husband, no EX-husband now, came in and wanted to discuss our divorce. There was talk about it, when we ate breakfast today. I just forgot it.

"OMG ! WHY is it that I am the villainess here ? This is so unfair ! I want to return !",I cursed angrily for a while, suddenly I noticed something important. My eyes widen at this realisation.

…..

…..

'Wait, something wasn't correct! That didn't make sense.', I thought strongly while holding my chin.

It's not because I questioned why I became this evil or why I behaved like one as scripted.

"It's just that I was never bad to this point in my past life, that you even label me as the villainess in the first place.", I murmured, trying to remember every actions I took in this world before I died:

Never did I mistreat my servants or looked down on the commoners or even hurt the female lead so much that she almost died .

Where did this come from ? Where did she see mistreatment anyway ?

In my past life ,as far as I remembered I got along with my servants, more like I never saw them as only workers of our mansion, but they were also part of the marquess family and the same went for them in regard to me too. They always liked to talk to me, even joined me to some tea .

Furthermore I loved to go downtown. A lot people in the village of the countryside, where my Ainsworth family lived, knew me personally. We interacted with them gently and most of the time both of us were on good terms, especially the old people because they saw me as their own grandchild. I even helped some of them in their work before, because I was practical and liked to use my hands in comparison with many other normal noblewoman, if I had to say.

I learnt mathematics, history and other subjects, that you usually wasn't allowed to be deeply taught as a female in this century.

Fortunately, my whole family as well as our branch families were open minded through. The reason was, so whenever the men would go out for war while having too many duties to fulfil or also had to work as a CEO of the company, the women of these families took their responsibilities as a substitute or even participated in some regularly .

"Less burden, less stress and more happiness !"

The idea came from my great-great-grandma , Lilia Ainsworth .

'Thank you, great-great -grandma, you're the best !', showing my admiration.

'Naturally, in real life this couldn't happen in that century, but , hey , this was a novel .

Fantasy, magic, demons and so on ….everything was possible.', I convinced myself, nodding to my theory.

After the engagement was established, I always visited the archduke in the capital for our rendezvous'. However Cedric never visited me once because of his work and the long distance between his home and mine and also my father sometimes had work in the royal castle, so I always tried to accompany him. This way I could come to see him. As a result only me was paying a visit to my fiancé.

Every time I was at his mansion, the servants there cautiously looked at me. I felt extremely uncomfortable with these observant gazes. At that time I just thought they monitored me for the previous archduke, so they could evaluate me, if I was the right partner for Cedric. Therefore I always carefully behaved myself and didn't think more into this.

Never once crossed my mind that the servants, who must have heard the rumours as described in the novel, surely resumed that I was ill-tempered, so they always kept quiet and avoided me as much as possible. No wonder the people thought I was mistreating THEM from their perspective. Also what were the complaints that EX- husband blabbered to me ?

Even after marriage they looked at me with fright and coldness. I remembered that even though I tried to speak to them nicely or smiled a lot to soften our relationship, they still didn't change at all. Sure, I was shy and nervous that time too because I was more used to old people in the countryside but I wasn't that anti-sociable. This felt in many ways wrong.

Second, somehow according to the book I looked down on commoners, but which couldn't be true because one thing I got along with the people of my territory and the next I never really interacted with the residents of the capital first of all, just once when I wanted to buy souvenirs . As far as I knew, they just avoided me, especially the men. It must be because of the rumours again.

Third, I never hurt Luciana, I only warned her multiple times not to come close to a married man and also to not meet him that often. I even went to her home to consult the whole family with this.

The result : execution

In conclusion, I was just misunderstood in my previous life. The rumours could arise, as I was just a secluded princess until my society debut which was on my fourteenth birthday. Before that they already knew of me because of the fame of my family's people. SO rumours could easily circulate without my knowing. At first I thought it began after my marriage only. How naive I was !

I don't know, if I should be happy that I was popular for the first time in my life or cry ?

The quote ' Words can hurt more than a sword .' perfectly fit here.

Now I reached half of the story, where Cedric and Luciana only met up sometimes, but didn't really get to the lovey-dovey part yet. At the moment my ex-husband just wanted to fulfil the contract, reaching the approximately marriage period of 2 years. It seemed that he only saw me as burden to get rid of .

My to-do list :

1. Avoid these love birds ( no execution)

2. Return to my family and consult with them

3. Try to make money

4. Investigate these matters

5. Train my swordsmanship

Noting the last point, I remembered that every member of the family, even the females, had to learn swordsmanships. A trademark of our family .

'Why don't you protect yourself instead of waiting for your prince charming to come to a sh*t situation' was the motto', I laughed about the saying of my grandma.

Ending my analysis and happily knowing to have finished the first point which was divorce, I now directed my thoughts to my relationship of me ,Cedric and Luciana.

By avoiding this couple I should be possible to miss the love and the disgusting scenes that they would do behind my back. I was just in the way anyway. Even though I meant that I won't get involved with their lives, but normally, it would never go the way you wanted .

From reading several reincarnated and transmigration books I knew that if the person's character changed because of the transmigrated soul, the male lead would eventually fall in love with her, but …I didn't want this. For real I always pitied the previous soul. Sure, she or he was evil or whatever, nevertheless I was sad that a different person in the past owner's body could easily achieve the goal that the original always wished for herself or himself for their whole life. I just felt sympathy for them. Besides these male leads and female leads weren't worth to lose your life anyway.

A soul from the real world entered an imaginary figure of a book.

That totally fit in my category, unfortunately.

The only difference was that my soul came back to his previous life and my memories were transferred to this body. The fact that I once lived here written by an author of my modern world where I was reincarnated made me question, if this fantasy world was real to begin with.

Before my death every memory, meetings and feelings which the Ainsworth family and friends shared with me were all predicted and controlled, so did it mean they were all 'fake'?

Like them I also didn't have an own will on my life from the beginning. My future was predominated and actions completely decided by someone else like a puppet on the strings following the Puppeteer's instructions.

'My sole purpose as well as the ones of the others in this world was only to strengthen the main characters bond in this d*mn storyline', thinking that way, I became extremely depressed.

So were my feelings for Cedric also unreal? Did the author just integrate this love into me since my birth? I didn't develop them on my own in the end ?…

Upon realising this, I suddenly felt wetness flowing down from my eyes, so when I touched my cheeks, I saw some tears remaining on my fingertips. 'I shouldn't think about this', trying to distract myself from these thoughts, I remembered my college life just now.

'Then what was going to happen to my body in my modern world. Shouldn't I have died there the moment my soul has left the vessel?… I don't understand.', I began to feel down again, so I concluded to end these theories, 'Just forget this, it will only going to lower my energy.' It took me for a while to let my thoughts suck in.

I began to tap on my desk which slowly increased over time. Suddenly I accidentally hit my elbow against the table frame as the result. Pain spread around this area. I held on my injury rubbing it to relieve the sting. Soon realisation hit me, I widen my eyes and attentively looked at my arm seeing a small red spot there. I quietly spoke out my thought ,"I could feel pain…".

Although this world could be fake and all the characters behaved according to the author, everything here were still real for me. The sadness I felt after realisation, my impatience not knowing what to with these new information and the resulted pain on my elbow.

What I felt, tasted, smelled and touched at the moment couldn't possible be unreal. This applied to my family, friends and everyone here too. Nobody knew that they were created by the writer, so they lived normally like the humans in my other world.

If I looked at them as fake now, I would disregard their feelings and hard work throughout their lives as well as mine's. I had a soul who reincarnated as a commoner from South Korea, so that meant that everyone also had one in conclusion. I walked the way the author wanted me to before I died, but this time I should decide for myself which path I would take.

I won't love him in this life.

I won't stay in this mansion.

I will save my beloved family this time. And much more.

Getting motivated, I unconsciously showed a smile on my face. Soon I stopped imagining my already victorious ending, when I soon realised what I did before,

'Oh my, somehow, I felt a deja-vu. …Right, exactly like these transmigration books …. Never mind!' By changing the topic, I came to my last problem.

Now to my personality.

Since the memories of my modern life were just added to my own, I could call the experiences of two lifetimes my own. So naturally, my character changed a bit.

My life as a commoner who lived in an advanced society contradicted with my past life as a noblewoman from the medieval era. Each values, norms and morals were very different and they totally influenced my perspective of life in this world.

For example slavery, death punishment and strong class system seemed normal here, whereas in the modern world most people wouldn't accept such things because this would betray their principles .

I concluded that I should just find a perfect balance between my old and new self, not trying to lure any suspicion towards me. Fortunately, my character wasn't that different from my personality of my old world.

After I finished organising my thoughts which I wrote in Korean, I started to walk out. As soon as I opened the door, the servants near my room flinched. I saw some of them turning their heads, but ridicule and scorn they secretly showed to me were noticeable for me.

'It seemed like they heard of my recent divorce. This was faster than I thought. I just hoped, they didn't hear me speaking on my own in my room.' Ignoring their glances, I walked through the corridor to look for the head butler, so I could ask him to let them pack my stuff for my departure tomorrow.

All of the sudden I heard a maid speaking,

"Ha, she deserves this. Who could live with this arrogant woman? Master doesn't need someone like her."