Waking Up as Stella

Kim Yeong-ja was a normal office worker. She was one of the secretaries of a decent company.

She had a decent salary and she lived a perfectly normal life. She was happy with her current life and could not ask for more.

Yeong-ja always finished all her work in advance and clocked out on time. She never stayed for overtime and never reported on weekends for extra work unless required by the company.

Everyone thought she was the epitome of a good office worker who had a work-life balance.

They all thought she must be spending time with family or a boyfriend so she always put in the effort to finish all her work in advance.

What they did not know, was that she always went home on time so she could read novels.

She also spent her weekends at home reading novels. She was a bookworm through and through who read anything as long as it was a novel.

That day as well, she continued reading a novel she had been busy with the past days.

Its title was 'Loving My Forever.' She was finally at its ending so she read it for the whole night and planned to have it finished by dawn.

It was badly written. But she finished it anyway since she had been reading it for so long, so she wanted to know how it ended.

She also wanted to know what would happen to Stella, the female lead's best friend. She never knew just how much she would regret that decision.

The ending was non-sensical. There were too many plot holes and issues that were not resolved.

Everything was just pieced together so the male and female lead would end up together and live a happily ever after.

Stella, whom Yeong-ja admired so much since she was the most decent character in the novel; was killed off by the author so that the two main characters would be together with no problems.

Yeong-ja was in a bad mood as she went to work with no sleep that day.

And then . . .

. . .

'Where am I? My whole body hurts,' Yeong-ja tried to turn and stretch but her whole body ached even more.

"What is going on? Why does my whole body hurt? I feel so weak," she whined as she tried to move but could not due to the pain.

She had never felt that kind of pain before. It felt like her bones were going to shatter and her flesh would get torn apart at the slightest movement.

"My lady, are you awake?" she heard someone ask.

'My lady? What are we, in a play? Who says that these days?'

She slowly opened her eyes but shut them again due to the brightness. It was already morning and the sun was shining. She wanted to cover her eyes with her hand but she could not move them.

'Wait! I'm going to be late for work!'

She tried to sit up but she almost screamed instead due to bone-chilling pain. It felt like someone was drilling holes in her bones without any anesthesia.

"My lady, please refrain from moving," someone said.

Yeong-ja opened her eyes and saw a man wearing glasses.

'Huh? What is a man doing in my place?'

"Who are you?!" she fearfully screamed at the man but it came out as a weak raspy croak.

She was surprised by her own voice. She realized that her throat was so dry that it hurt and she felt so thirsty she might die of dehydration.

"I am your doctor, my lady."

"Doctor? Why? What happened to me?" She had to wonder how a doctor came to her place. Or perhaps one of her neighbors called him.

She was living alone in her apartment so she did not know how they could have known if something happened to her. She was sure she locked the doors properly.

'Or am I in the hospital?'

"Before that, please drink some water. It will help with your voice and ease the dryness in your throat," the doctor offered.

"Alright," she knew better than anyone how she badly needed that water.

If she could move, she would have run to get water first before speaking. She already felt like she might puke her guts if she does not drink anything soonest.

Ladies wearing maid outfits gently seated her in an upright position against the headboard.

Her body screamed with pain as they touched her that she could not help but wince and groan.

Despite being seated by the ladies and supported by the headboard, she felt so tired like sitting itself was laborious work.

"We deeply apologize, my lady," the two said. But Yeong-ja knew that they were already gentle enough.

Her body was the problem. She did not understand why it ached with the slightest touch.

'But since when did nurses wear maid outfits? And why do they keep calling me My Lady?' she wanted to ask.

One maid supported her while another helped her drink. She sipped little by little so as not to spill it on the sheets.

Once she drank a whole glass, she was about to ask the doctor when the door burst open and she flinched in surprise. Her body ached once again.

"Stella! My Stella, I heard you are finally awake," a beautiful woman rushed to her. She looked like she was about to hug her but the doctor blocked the woman.

"My apologies, Your Grace. The lady's body condition would not be able to handle hugs at the moment. It appears her body had weakened so much that the slightest touch is giving her pain," the doctor explained.

Yeong-ja could not be more grateful. If the woman had held her, it might feel like she was being crushed to death.

Sitting upright was already making her sweat. And she did not even know who that woman was in the first place. She felt like she had seen her before but she was in too much pain to think.

"Heavens! What kind of sin had my innocent daughter ever committed for her to suffer like this? Can you do something to ease her pain?" the woman cried.

She was trembling and tears were rushing down her cheeks.

Yeong-ja blinked repeatedly.

'Did she just call herself my mother? My mother was much older and she did not look that beautiful. And she did not wear such expensive-looking clothes.'

She stared at the beautiful woman. She looked like she was in her twenties.

'Why would a woman who probably looked even younger than me call herself my mom? Wait! Did she just call me Stella?'

"Stella," another person barged in. It was a middle-aged handsome man this time.

"Stella?!" Another man entered. He was quite young and good-looking. He was tall, but looked like he was a teenager. He was a younger copy of the middle-aged man.

"Milady," another young man followed. He looked like he was the same age as the previous one.

A cold chill ran down Yeong-ja's back.

There was a Stella she had recently encountered in her life and that was a person from a book.

She stared at everyone in the room and she finally recognized them all.

The crying woman beside her bed was Stella's mother.

The two ladies whom she thought were nurses were her maids.

And the doctor was the man who saved Stella's life when she was ten.

She looked down at her body and realized that it was smaller than it was supposed to be. It was the body of a ten-year-old girl.

'If this is a nightmare, I would like to wake up right now,' she prayed.

But the aching of her body said otherwise. She was experiencing something real.

Yeong-ja felt like she was going to faint as she realized that for some unknown reason she was in the body of Stella and she was inside the latest novel she had read.

It was a crazy idea, but with all the people in the book who were in the room right then, she could not deny that it was indeed happening.

'What was Stella's role again?' she thought and paled when she recalled that Stella was just a supporting character who was bound to die after she made the main characters shine.

Yeong-ja was furious and frustrated that of all the good books that she had read, she had to be transmigrated in the novel 'Loving My Forever' where all other characters were made merely to make the main character look good regardless of plot holes and then be killed off by the author like a pest in a flower garden.

The author even said that Stella had to die because she had no further role. She was killed off just because the author could not give her a better role or think of a better ending for the story.

It was fine when it was a novel. She merely had to badmouth the author and complain about it.

But now that it was her reality, what was she supposed to do? Live her life like how Stella did and die like she was supposed to be? Could she even beg to differ when it was already set in stone?

"What grave sin have I committed in my past lives that I have to end up like this? Why did I have to be someone who was fated to die?" Yeong-ja whined and bit her lip when she realized that she had said it out loud.

Everyone in the room froze and stared at her with wide eyes. Some looked at her with worry, some with regret, and some with pity.

They were misunderstanding things but she was also curious about what had happened to Stella for everyone to look at her like that. They surely thought that she was complaining about her body's current state but she was grumbling about an entirely different matter.