* * *
BOOM! CRASH!
“…You’re doing way better than I expected. It’s almost ridiculous. Honestly, it hurts a little.”
Along with an earth-shattering crash, the front door burst open.
And through it came a voice—one I could never forget even if I wanted to.
The moment I heard it, goosebumps ran down my spine and a chill spread through my body.
I had escaped the palace just to get away from him.
I worked so hard to forget him… no, I am still trying to forget him.
After waking up in this novel as one of its characters, I barely managed to change the story’s course.
I escaped the imperial palace alive, avoiding the death written for me.
I gave up everything—not just the title of the Empress, which would’ve made me his official spouse, but even the lower rank of royal concubine.
Actually, it wasn’t so much giving up as it was throwing everything away and running.
Knowing how the novel ended and what fate awaited the character I’d become, it was only natural to give up my place at his side if I wanted to live.
After all, he was the man who annihilated me and my entire family in the novel.
Even when I left him, things hadn’t turned out much differently.
I barely managed to toss the divorce papers and flee.
So how the hell did he find me here?
Last I heard, he was enjoying life with his new Empress.
I thought he’d given up on me and my brother.
“Your Majesty, how did you even find this place? What brings you—”
“…How long has it been since we last saw each other?”
“How did you even know where I was?”
“Why do you think I found you? Maybe I’ve always known where you were.”
I instinctively stepped back, watching him warily.
Not found me—he’s saying he already knew?
Don’t tell me… was he watching me this whole time?
That sounds just like him.
A cold shiver ran through me.
Was I going to die, just like in the original story?
In the novel, the Grand concubine died at the age of twenty-five.
I’m twenty-five now…
No.
In Korea—the world outside this novel—I also died young, after struggling my whole life with a hereditary illness.
Here, I was finally free of disease.
I could live without fearing death.
I even got to see my little brother again, the one who died before me.
I was finally starting to forget the Emperor.
I was finally starting to live the life I’d longed for.
But now, Emperor Joo Minhyuk cornered me, stalking slowly forward as I backed away.
His eyes, fixed on me, were like those of a predator refusing to let its prey escape.
Those were the eyes I once loved.
And the moment I saw them again, I realized—everything I had now, this entire life I’d built, had just vanished into thin air.
“Why? Is seeing me again so horrible it brings you to tears? I just changed my mind. Letting you go… I realized what a fucking mistake that was. I never should have let you leave. I was too late.”
And there it was—the one thing I never wanted to hear from him, falling from his lips.
The man I tried so hard not to love after waking up in this novel.
The man I eventually gave my heart to, only to realize I could never trust him.
The man I ran from because I wanted to live.
I got transmigrated in this world as the most villainous concubine in an omegaverse BL novel—an omega who died by the Emperor’s hand.
Every day after school, I ran straight home.
My little brother, three years younger and suffering from the same illness as me, would be waiting alone.
His health had recently deteriorated, and he looked eerily similar to how our father had looked just before he passed away.
So I stopped hanging out with friends.
I dedicated all my time to caring for my brother.
He was my family—my only blood relative.
That mattered more than friendship.
We both inherited a genetic disease from our father, but my brother’s condition was worse.
His only joy came from reading novels while waiting for me or spending time with my only friend, Hyunwook.
“Seojoo, I’m home. Did you eat and take your meds? Wait, are you reading that again?”
I laughed when I saw Seojoo, tablet in hand, so engrossed in a webnovel that he didn’t even notice I’d come in.
“Haejoo hyung! You’re back? The final volume just came out. I bought it right away. Come read it with me!”
“I lost interest after the Grand concubine died. It was way too unfair. He stayed by the Emperor’s side since childhood and ended up killed by the man he trusted most. It was just… pointless.”
“I know, right? But he was the most popular character. He was beautiful, and his story was great—even as a villain, he was fascinating.”
I flopped onto Seojoo’s bed and lay down beside him to read together.
At least when he read this novel, some color returned to his cheeks.
That was enough for me.
The webnovel Seojoo had fallen for was a famous BL story—so well-known that even people who didn’t know what BL was had probably heard the title.
It had a setting almost identical to modern Korea, but with emperors and nobility still in power, all wrapped in an omegaverse structure.
No slaves or outcasts, thankfully.
The author had freely mixed titles and roles—from palace concubines to prime ministers—based entirely on their own preferences.
The idea of men bearing children was bizarre at first, but the more I read (mainly to keep up conversations with Seojoo), the more I found it surprisingly compelling.
The story was your typical one: a dominant alpha Emperor and a once-concubine-turned-Empress omega crush the household of the Grand concubine—the villain—and live happily ever after.
Words like Emperor and concubine felt outdated, but placed into a modernized Korea, they took on a unique charm.
What really caught people’s attention, though, was the villainous concubine who was arguably more charismatic than the main characters.
His name was never mentioned.
At the age of twelve, he entered the palace as the highest-ranking concubine, the Grand concubine, and grew into a loving, devoted partner to the Emperor.
Or at least, they looked like a perfect couple.
The Emperor treasured him most.
He gave him the best clothes, the finest food, and spent countless nights in his bed.
His devotion seemed sincere—until readers later discovered he had been secretly feeding him contraceptives for years. Still, to outsiders, he appeared to love him dearly.
The Grand concubine’s family was incredibly powerful, too.
His older brother was a military general who had helped prevent countless wars.
Thanks to that, the Grand concubine’s status was unshakable.
Then, finally, the protagonist Yeong-hwa appeared.
From then on, the Grand concubine’s favor slowly faded.
The rest was a typical tale of jealousy and betrayal: a spurned lover tries and fails to kill the new favorite and ends up dead.
The author’s exceptional writing covered up the predictability, but I always hated the Emperor more than the “villainous” Grand concubine.
For all the Grand concubine’s sins, the Emperor was the one who had used him from beginning to end.
How could he say he loved the Emperor even as he died?
It made no sense to me—even if it was fiction.
“Hyung… I still envy the people in that story.”
“Huh? What part are you jealous of?”
“It’s a world where you can openly love another man. If I could live in a place like that, I think I’d be happy. Even just as some random extra with barely any lines… if I could be healthy and not have to hide my feelings…”
“…Huh?”
His cheeks turned red as he mumbled, and at the time, I couldn’t understand him.
I didn’t know if he was just too immersed in the novel, or if that wish came from somewhere deeper, beyond even his dream of running a convenience store.
I didn’t understand what he meant—at least, not until later.
Not until Seojoo passed away.
Not until I saw my friend Hyunwook sobbing like he’d gone mad at Seojoo’s funeral.
Only then did I understand what it meant… to live in a world where you didn’t have to hide your feelings.
By then, it was too late.
Maybe it was the shock of losing him, but my own illness suddenly worsened.
Exactly six months after Seojoo’s passing, at the age of eighteen… I died too.
‘Will I be able to meet my father, who passed away first? Will our Seojoo too? I miss him. I miss my little brother so desperately. I want to live together in healthy bodies. If I could just see him once more, I wouldn’t care even if Seojoo didn’t recognize me.’
When Seojoo passed away, and even when I died, our mother—who had left home—never came back.
I couldn’t even comfort Hyunwook, who held my hand and stayed by my side, drenched in tears until the end.
I simply closed my eyes.
Thus ended the life of Cha Haejoo, a high school student in South Korea.
But strangely enough, my real life began only after I died.
Was it because of the memories of the happiest times spent with my brother?
Or was it out of pity for the Grand concubine of Daebin?
I woke up—not in heaven, hell, or any afterlife—but in the bed of the Grand concubine of Daebin, a character from a novel.
When I realized I had possessed a fictional character, the confusion nearly made my head explode.
What could it mean, waking up in the body of a concubine with a tragic end?
I was already dead—were they telling me to die again?
Or was this all just a delusion?
If not that, was I simply reborn in the most memorable imaginary space I had known?
I had no answers.
All I knew was that in this place, I was the fifteen-year-old Grand concubine of Daebin.
I was definitely dead, and yet everything here felt too vivid to be an afterlife.
The voices calling out to me, the sound of breathing, even the sensations of my own body—they were all too real.
And as I lay in bed, refusing to move, still in a daze of confusion, something happened that forced me to accept this world not as a fictional setting, but as my new reality.
‘The problem was… the Emperor came to see me.’
* * *
Gostei!