Chapter 4
“Are you awake?”
When I opened my eyes, the handsome man from before was right in front of me.
I must have fallen asleep at some point.
I pressed a hand to the floor and sat up.
Soft.
The feeling under my hand was unfamiliar. My body was swaying steadily, and the light coming through the window moved across the wall of the carriage.
‘We’re moving.’
As my dulled senses slowly woke up, I heard the sound of horse hooves.
“You are inside a carriage. You fainted, so I had no choice but to carry you.”
The man remained polite the whole time. I lightly shook my head and remembered what had happened before I lost consciousness.
I had tried to escape. Everything had gone according to plan.
Based on the guards’ habits that I had studied for three months, I avoided their watch and planned to beat up just one of them before getting out.
I even got some satisfying revenge.
Then, with the sound of something cutting through the air, this man appeared. And then the building started collapsing.
‘People are going to die!’
I shouted that while grabbing his hand and running out of the prison. The man tilted his head, his eyes calm and indifferent.
So what?
That was the clear meaning in his eyes: everyone else can die, as long as you survive.
I had no words.
‘Let’s go, Klone.’
He was polite, but chilling. He was trying to save me, but I did not welcome it, so I stubbornly resisted.
‘Make sure no one else gets hurt!’
Since I was asking a favor, I even spoke more respectfully. The man granted my request without complaint.
‘Arte! There’s a girl named Arte—please make sure she survives!’
Boom.
A huge explosion rang out, and the man wrapped me in his robe.
That was my last memory.
“I fainted?”
“Yes. You must have been very shocked.”
I pulled up the blanket that was slipping down to the floor and stared at him.
There was no way someone like me—who had rolled forward, backward, and even done flips in a martial arts world—would faint just because of an explosion.
Did I overuse my internal energy and pass out?
I considered that possibility, but quickly decided that was not it.
I knew exactly how much internal energy I had, and I had been using it carefully according to my escape plan.
So if this man said I had fainted, then he was lying. It was much more likely that he had made me lose consciousness.
‘Did he use a pressure-point technique?’
I stared at him hard. Maybe he felt my gaze, because he looked back at me.
End My Life
That title came to mind—a title so awful that not even a writer of tragic melodrama would use it.
People were too embarrassed to say the full title out loud, so the novel was better known by its shortened nickname than by its real title. And just like its title, it was a completely miserable novel.
Was it “the end” because it was good?
No. It was “the end” because it was frustrating beyond belief.
When this novel was at the height of its popularity, social media was full of people posting proof that they were drinking soda because of it. It became such a thing that a soda company even sent the author several boxes.
And the reason I knew End My Life so well was, of course, because of my friend.
I only read it because my friend kept bothering me, saying they wanted to write something like it and asking me what was different between that novel and their own writing.
‘That was not a friend. That was an enemy.’
It was only natural for me to resent them, since I kept getting reincarnated into novels I had read because of that friend.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
The man pulled me out of my wandering thoughts. I naturally focused on him again.
Golden eyes sat inside his nicely shaped almond eyes, staring straight at me.
A man whose thoughts were impossible to read, but who was gentle at least to the woman he loved.
Karl Reinhardt.
He was the male lead of End My Life, loved by countless women and hated by countless men.
Karl was the lord of the Reinhardt Duchy, which protected the empire’s border.
In short, he was a man worked like a dog by the emperor.
Looks, skill, and a great family. At first glance, he seemed to have everything, but there was one thing he did not have.
Money.
Even in this strict class society, where blood decided everything, wealth still mattered greatly. In any world, survival comes first.
The duchy, whose lands were overrun with monsters, had no chance to develop its economy.
They were too busy surviving to think about economic growth.
Since the land produced nothing, the greedy emperor had given it to Reinhardt.
In short, Karl was a complete pushover.
But why had this man come to save me?
I remembered Karl, but strangely I could not remember anything about Klone herself.
“Where are you taking me?”
“We are going home.”
“Whose home?”
“Our home.”
“Ours?”
“Yes. Yours and mine.”
“Why?”
At my reflexive question, Karl’s eyes narrowed. He slowly looked me over as if thinking, then opened his mouth.
“Who am I?”
He stole the question I should have asked.
“Karl Reinhardt.”
“Since you know me, you cannot have lost your memory. So why are you pretending not to know?”
I was starting to get annoyed.
“I lost my memory.”
Back when I had been reincarnated into the martial arts novel, I learned what answer to give in a situation like this.
Amnesia. There was no better excuse.
“But you remember me?”
“You stand out.”
Because you are the famous male lead of End My Life. The protagonist everyone knows even if they never read it.
A faint smile appeared on Karl’s lips. It looked like the smile of a predator after finishing a satisfying meal.
“How much do you remember?”
The suspicion disappeared from his eyes, and he became gentle again.
I told him what I knew—my age, that I was unmarried, and my name.
“You know nothing about yourself.”
He frowned.
“Some of that is wrong too.”
Karl muttered that, and since I clearly heard him, there was only one thing for me to say.
“If you know anything about me, then tell me everything.”
A commanding tone came out of me out of habit. It was a habit left over from my ten years in the martial arts world, when I was the successor of the North Sea Ice Palace and a master of the martial world.
I kept telling myself I should fix it, but it was not easy.
I worried Karl might think it strange, but unexpectedly, he did not care at all and simply nodded.
“You are married.”
“Me? Married? To who?”
Dan-a told me to marry someone I love. But not only did I not have someone I loved—I had apparently already married someone whose face I did not even know.
Hopeless.
“Do you dislike being married?”
“I do not… like it.”
Every time I spoke, the smile disappeared from Karl’s face, so I quickly changed my tone.
A man who stopped smiling looked very dangerous. He was not even giving off killing intent, but the pressure coming from him alone made my gaze waver.
“You do not look pleased.”
He was the male lead, and he was taking me somewhere unknown, so there was no need to be hostile toward him.
Fortunately, I also could not sense any intention from him to harm me.
When I spoke in a calming tone, Karl tilted his head.
“Anyone in my situation would not feel pleased.”
“Why? Is there some problem?”
Karl had just gone through something huge—well, more exactly, he had caused it by blowing up the prison—but for someone like him, maybe this sort of thing was normal.
He let out a dry little laugh.
“What husband would be happy to hear his wife say she dislikes being married?”
I blinked.
It took me quite a while to understand what Karl had said. The situation in front of me was far too strange and unexpected.
“Married? You and me?”
As my finger pointed back and forth between Karl and me, he nodded firmly.
“Ha! Since you are a duke, that makes me a duchess?”
“Yes. Lady Reinhardt.”
I grabbed my hair.
Karl’s wife.
With that one sentence, I finally understood exactly who I was in End My Life.
Klone Iclonia.
The youngest daughter of a newly rich count’s family.
Klone—the person I had reincarnated into—was a complete mess who had committed all kinds of evil acts since childhood, relying only on her pretty face and wealthy family.
She was the worst kind of bully. If there were an award for abusing power, she would win first place without question.
She was not as bad as the insane emperor, but since she did not have power on his level, let us leave him out of it.
Before marriage, she had been called the troublemaker of the Iclonia family. After marriage, she was called the duchess, the shame of the Reinhardt family.
That was why I had not recognized who I was just from hearing the name Klone.
“It seems your memory has returned. And we have arrived home at just the right time.”
Karl pulled back the curtain and opened the window. A gray castle with sharp towers stood over us.
“You have returned, Klone. Welcome to the Reinhardt Duchy.”
Karl smiled like a painting.
At that moment, my heart dropped.
In the novel, he was supposed to be harmless to me, but his smile felt dangerously harmful.
