1 So, this must be a dream, right? 1.1

Ryan went to bed after reading a novel adapted from an 18+novel, Kindred.

It'd been a romantic, erotic story about an ambitious woman and her relationship with the Emperor, which began after she went to attend a ball that was held to find him an Empress.

The majority of the novel was smut and the plot was quite secondary to but was interesting enough for her to keep reading; and, in part graphic enough to keep her heart racing. Like many novels, the female lead, Stella was a quiet, gentle young woman. She was unfortunately mistreated by her step-mother Lila, her father's former mistress.

Once her mother Julia died, her adulterous father married his mistress, who was his first love. The marriage was one arranged between two noble families looking to produce more suitable heirs in the future--the two lovers who had been together since children were broken up due to Lila's lower status as a commoner and foreigner. After they were wed, under pressure, Stella was born and Lila was forced by her father and his wife to marry an older man who paid an enormous dowry for her.

That's when the young woman's hell began. Her husband, fifty years her senior drank, a lot. If he wasn't out drinking, he was home angry. For the first time he attacked her, she found back in a frenzy. Then, eventually, she gave up. Two daughters bore from her pain. She often hid her children away, taking the brunt of the force from their father's torment. Oh, but did she love her children. Their smiles pulled her through the most agonizing days. No matter how much society saw her as an "evil step-mother" her children saw how much she cared for them and how much she endured.

Six years past, with her husband taking out his grievances on her, physically and mentally.

After a night of drinking, he went out drinking and Lila made her escape with bruises still on her body. Her feet lead her to the place where her salvation resided—Raymond's estate. She wanted nothing more than for him to hold her in his embrace.

She arrived at his residence, with her clothes ripped, her two children wearing barely their nightgowns as it rained. They hadn't spoken in years since they were forced apart by his family. A maid, who had recognized her from his days at his family's residence stared back at her wide and ushers her with haste as the night grew older.

Raymond had still been working in his private quarters had been notified of their arrival and quickly ushered them to august downstairs--far from the rooms of his family. After putting the children to bed and discussing their grievances, they held each other under the moonlight.

This became a regular arrangement, and when his wife died during a carriage incident, they fulfilled their wishes as children of marrying each-other.

She grew with the need to show that she and two daughters were good enough for high society after marrying him. She had to deal with rumors that she killed Julia and her ex-husband's disappearance was too suspicious to have been an accident.

After their marriage, Raymond, at every step, had protected her and her children from it all...until one day he had not arrived after doing business in another country. Days turned to months--those months turned into a year and eventually, a distraught and heartbroken Lila has presented the lost diary of the man who brought light back into her was gone. She was left to take care of his twelve-year-old daughter, in addition to her daughters who were ten and eleven retrospectively.

She had admittedly paid more attention to her children. So the case for mistreatment regarding Stella was that her step-mother never hit her or berated but instead acted as if the girl had been air. She was the daughter of her beloved, but also the child of the woman who had his child. Her feelings towards it were complicated, so complicated that she declined to deal with them and focus on her children. The first night after the search for her father stopped, Lila entered Stella

"Poor child, I cannot fault you, but I cannot bear seeing this beautiful face without thinking of my dear Ray..." With tears graining her words.

She'd made sure she was properly fed and clothed, but couldn't bring herself to give her a glance.

The girl, young Stella who had been raised by her caring mother was, in her eyes stripped of that gentleness and the love of her father by a vile woman. The girl, who's room was in the furthest home grew a fermenting resent towards her evil step-mother and her pampered step-sisters.

One day, the Emperor, who been pressured by nobles to take at least a queen consort, sent out letters to all families of nobilities and their daughters to a ball. Then, of course, Lila and her two daughters Grace and Kindred had received one--however, Lila who at the bare minimum had provided shelter and substance for Stella hadn't looked for an invitation for her--Stella instead found the letter that hadn't even been open, and while gripping it in anger decided this was her chance to escape her neglective household.

Armed with an aphrodisiac drug and her mother's old, yet somehow still dress, she attends the ball a week or so later with intention of drugging and seducing the Emperor--though, to her surprise, after their first night together, she became falling for the Emperor who seemed to be obsessed with her at first sight.

Declaring, "Woman, take responsibility for this." The two, through misunderstandings and conflicts eventually confess their love and go on to live and happily ever after.

In terms of plot, the story wasn't much but the smut was top-tier so she couldn't complain. Ryan had a hard time liking the heroine and leaned more toward liking the characters who were seen as the antagonists after the author wrote short stories written a few years later from their perspective--particularly for the youngest step-sister, Kindred.

The youngest of Lila's children. The novel is from Stella's perspective painted as a spoiled harlot with a body akin to that of swine. The girl, girl in reality was the exact opposite. With her plain looks and Rubenesque figure, she was a rarely-seen reserved girl born mute. A fact no one aside from her mother and sister. Unlike her beautiful sister, who adored being and looking flamboyant, Kindred spent most of her time inside, reading and occasionally being her mother's dress-up doll.

She was rumored to have been a frequent proprietor of brothels, using her familial wealth to buy men at her leisure. She even had the gall to prance about town with one on her arm! Amongst noble society, she was seen as trash that married in and belonged nowhere near their class.

Scenes from Kindred's perspective weren't dialogue-driven but simply silent recounts of her thoughts, her fears. Everything, up until her death by hanging. After being interrogated after her sister had fallen sick due to poisoning, and miscarried her first child. Kindred, who had no way of saying 'I cannot speak, I don't know how Stella got poisoned!', and her silence was accepted as guilt by the Emperor and the citizens of Aqulia. Their poor Empress was still being abused by her 'evil' family and their executions became a spectacle.

On the day that she was hanged, she was the last to perish--one after another, she watched the defeated and contorted faces of her family as they were hung like criminals. And, in her final moments, she could only call out to the one man she saw as a father that she'd see him, along with her mother and sister in heaven.

Her death was unfair, unwarranted--nevertheless, because she was a 'villainous', it was what she deserved, by Stella's thoughts on the matter.

When Ryan read the first novel, she couldn't see how Stella wasn't villainous--and even more, after reading Kindred's story. She died at the young age of twenty-four, unable to prove her innocence.

After finishing her story, Kindred, Ryan couldn't but feel wronged on her behalf against an author that acted like a god.

But what frustrated her the most about the series, aside from the treatment of the 'villains' or the female was the mistreatment of her beloved male lead.

In the story, Cassian Caesar Jovian who was twenty-one was described as a man who became the Emperor through bloodshed. The son of a distant country's princess married off as concubine, he eventually grew up to take the throne after slaughtering his father and brothers. He was a handsome, powerful man who didn't have many people close to him aside from his advisors--he was someone was untouchable--so how the fuck did the heroine get close enough to drug him? And in any case, wouldn't he had tried to silence her? She wasn't the first woman brazen enough to drug him.

But then again, for the plot's sake, she was 'different'.

After meeting Stella, Cassian became a shell of his former self was a lovesick man in power who'd do everything and anything to make Stella happy--including killing her 'evil' family.

Throwing the book across the room, she went to sleep angry.

And when she woke up, she on a bed that was much softer than her used mattress.

'Ah, I'm dreaming aren't I?' She thinks looking around the bedroom looking around with wide eyes. Everything to soft, delicate, and pink looking--yes, yes this has to be a dream. The room was bigger than her whole apartment--a mind's imagination is amazing. Ryan gets up and decided that as long as she's dreaming, she might as well explore.

She looks down at her hands, seeing they were small, plump, and smooth, unlike her calloused hands.

She swings her short, chubby legs, and makes her way out of the room with childish excitement. Seeing that the hallway was empty, her mouth opens for her to yell, 'Is anyone here?'

"..."

But no words seem to flow out--only a quiet emptiness where they should be.

Dreams sure are strange, aren't they?

She shakes her head, making her way down the hall.

"Miss Kindred, there you are!" Surprised, Ryan jumped, almost stumbling as she looked in the direction of the voice. It was a woman, a tall, thin one running towards her in a maids uniform. He had pale, freckled skin, and her short, ginger hair was cropped into a neat bob.

Wait, did she call her Kindred? Ah, it must be because she stayed up rereading that frustrating series! Well, since she was here, she should probably play along, right?