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Hello! My name is Dolores, a sister from a monastery in the countryside! Is what I would like to say if it weren't for this situation...
"Sister, do you hate me now? You said you'd come visit me…" the girl beside me said, clinging to my arm.
This was Adele von Konrow, my sister and the protagonist of the novel I previously read titled "How to Live as the Black Swan of the Cursed Ducal Family." Now, she was clinging to me like crazy.
"Adele! Don't act like that towards her!" The voice belonged to my brother, Mark von Konrow.
"Hmph. You're just jealous that I'm close to sister," Adele retorted, tightening her grip on my arm.
"You...!" Mark spluttered, clearly flustered.
I put out my cigarette and grabbed Mark by the neck, rubbing my fist on his head. "You little punk! I told you not to squeal on me, didn't I?" I said, holding him in a headlock.
"Ouch, ouch, ouch! It hurts, sister!"
"Don't you understand what you've done?!" I yelled, not loosening my grip.
"Sister! You don't know what I went through!" Mark struggled, but my strength kept him in place.
"Adele, don't be like your idiot brother, okay?" I said, smiling at her.
"Of course, sister. I would never be like my incompetent brother," she replied, still clinging to me.
"Then, why did you do it, Mark?" I tightened my grip slightly.
"I had no choice! They said they'd destroy the duchy!"
"Better," I muttered.
"Sister!" Mark pleaded, his face desperate.
Hmph. It's not like I have good memories of that place either.
"Unless those idiots work together, there's no way they'll find this—"
[Xipe warns you of jinxing things]
"Oh, fuck," I muttered as a young sister barged into my room.
"Magdalene! I told you to knock before entering!" I scolded.
"B-but sister!"
"No buts!"
"S-sister! Listen, it's urgent!" she panted, clearly having rushed here.
"Okay, shoot."
"There are these guys who want to meet you! They said they'll destroy this place if you don't show up!"
A vein throbbed in my head as I slowly stretched my body and clenched my fist.
"Pieces of shit," I muttered under my breath.
"I told you, sister! They kept wanting to see you—" Mark's voice was cut off as I knocked him on the head.
"Shut up, you incompetent brat!"
"Do you really have to do this, sister?" Adele asked in a worried tone.
Tsk. She's the one who started this mess, but I can't help but adore her. I patted her head gently.
"I could never repay the debt I owe you, so let your sister handle these idiots," I said while giving her a big smile.
"Sister..." Adele said as she surprised me with a hug on my waist.
Suddenly, the door flung open and dust enveloped the room, and through the fog came a figure I recognized even before the dust settled, because there was really only one person in this entire world who had golden blonde hair and piercing blue eyes and a face that seemed like the gods spent a little too much time on it.
He was Peter Edencrown, the crown prince and the male lead of the novel I used to read like it was just entertainment.
'Of course it's him.'
"Where is Dolores?" His cold voice cut through the air.
I lit a cigarette between my lips, slipped my hands into my pockets, and strode towards him.
"I'm right here, huh?!" I spat at him, my face contorted in contempt. "How dare you come here, wreck my place just to find my sister, huh?! Do you want to die?!"
"No," he replied calmly.
"Huh?" I was taken aback by his response.
"I came for you, Dolores, no, Josephine von Konrow," he declared.
I took a step back in disbelief. "W-what?"
He closed the distance and moved closer to my face, and then before I could even process it, he reached out and took my hand, pressing his lips to it gently.
"Become my queen, Josephine," he said in his low yet terrifying voice.
Suddenly, a large fireball came at us and we dodged before it could connect.
"You damned imperial rat! I knew I shouldn't have trusted you!"
I didn't even need to look to know who that was, because there was really only one person who had red hair like something permanently on fire and red eyes to match and the kind of righteous fury that only someone who was always certain they were correct could pull off so convincingly, and that was Marcus, or Mark, and honestly I kept mixing them up in my head for some reason.
He was the Archmage of the Magic Tower and the sub male lead of the novel, and right now he looked like he was about to burn the whole monastery down.
"Dolores will become my partner," he declared proudly.
Another vein throbbed on my head as frustration slowly boiled inside me.
[Eros smirks and says that it isn't over]
"Huh?"
I was startled as someone suddenly enveloped me in a tight hug from behind. "Josephine," a deep yet mellow voice murmured. "You said you wouldn't leave me."
I glanced up and, for some reason, the first thing I noticed was his eyes, because they were the kind of eyes that the novel had spent three whole paragraphs describing and still somehow hadn't quite gotten right, obsidian and cold and yet not quite empty in a way I couldn't explain, and the jet-black hair and the sharp features were exactly as the novel described them too.
Damian was the Grand Duke of the North and the antagonist of the novel, and for some reason he was here with his arms around me.
'Why is he here too.'
"You...!"
"Will you please stay away from the saintess?"
I turned, and there was Jude, the pope of the cathedral, and he seemed like the kind of person who had been deeply, genuinely inconvenienced by everything happening in this room and yet was somehow still maintaining enough grace to make the air around him feel heavier just by standing in it, with hair as white as snow and eyes that shimmered with something that felt genuinely holy and robes that made everyone else in the room look underdressed.
Another figure suddenly appeared, forcefully pulling me away from Damian's grasp.
"Why are you all so fixated on my fiancée?"
That was Jhake, the Marquis of Wealth and my former fiancé and honestly the one I had understood the least even after reading the whole novel, and looking at him now with his platinum blonde hair and his sharp features and those green eyes that always seemed to be calculating something, I still didn't understand him any better than I had before.
Another vein throbbed in my head as my patience started to dissipate.
[Hecatia is angry at them on your behalf!]
[Loki tells you to snap at them]
[Thor hits his brother Loki]
[Tyr tells you that it's fine to snap.]
"Fuck this! I can't take it anymore!"
I snapped my fingers, creating a massive sound wave that reverberated throughout the entire forest.
The room fell silent.
I sighed.
How did it turn out like this?