"Elena!"
The voice cut through the whispering crowd. People instinctively stepped aside, making way. A middle-aged man strode forward quickly, his face tense and his gaze heavy with commanding authority.
Elena glanced at him and immediately understood. The middle-aged man was Mario De Luca, the father of the body she now inhabited.
"Dad," she said softly, almost on reflex. The word felt foreign on her tongue, yet it slipped out naturally.
Mario looked her up and down, her soaked dress, her disheveled hair, the fire of emotion still burning in her eyes. Instead of concern, his expression hardened.
"Go to your room. Change your clothes," he ordered firmly. "Don't cause any more trouble."
The words struck her chest, tight and suffocating, before she could stop them. "Why does this hurt? When I read this part, I didn't feel anything like this," Elena thought, clenching her fists to distract herself from the ache in her chest.
Slowly, her feelings shifted from pain to irritation at her father's attitude. Why were those the words that came out of his mouth? Why not, "Are you okay?" or "What happened?"
At that moment, she wanted so badly to defy him. To shout that she was the one who had nearly drowned. That she was the victim. But her jaw tightened, her hands clenched so hard her nails nearly pierced her palms.
She swallowed it all. Without another word, she turned and walked away. Her steps were heavy, deliberately forceful. Her wet dress left a trail of water across the marble floor. Her face clearly showed that she did not accept any of this.
The staircase leading to the second floor felt longer than it should have. The guests' whispers still drifted faintly behind her.
Once inside her room, she flung the door open and slammed it shut with a sharp bang that echoed through the space.
"Bastards! Damn it!" she shouted, her voice cracking with a mixture of anger and frustration. "Why do they have to have faces like theirs?!"
Her breathing was ragged, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her head still throbbed, caught between the aftermath of nearly drowning and the chaos of thoughts that had yet to settle into order.
She closed her eyes, drawing in a slow breath and releasing it just as slowly. She tried to calm herself the way she usually did when dealing with stubborn writers or unreasonable manuscript revisions. One… two… three…
But the moment she opened her eyes, her body went rigid. A man was standing only a few steps away from her. Elena startled and instinctively stepped back, her back hitting the door with a soft thud.
"W–what are you doing?" she stammered.
The man looked at her without a trace of warmth. His gaze was calm, yet there was something dark within it, something she could not easily decipher. His clothing was simple, starkly contrasting with the luxury of the room.
Without saying much, he stepped closer. One hand reached out and caught Elena's wrist not roughly, but firmly enough to prevent her from pulling away.
"Weren't you going to do it," he said quietly, "if that man made you angry?"
In his hand now was a thin whip with a glossy black handle. Elena froze. The whip, Another memory, one that did not belong to her, but to this body, slipped into her mind. This room. Anger and punishment. A man who had always been the outlet for Elena De Luca's emotions whenever she felt humiliated.
She lowered her gaze to the whip now resting in her hand. Then slowly, she lifted her eyes back to the man before her.
"Lorenzo," she murmured softly, as if confirming something. "Your name is Lorenzo now."
The name fit inside her head, like a puzzle piece finally finding its place. Lorenzo, the character who appeared in the novel as the one who endured the torment of the cruel female antagonist. But Elena remembered something else.
In the end of the story, it was this very man who caused Elena's miserable death her punishment for torturing Lorenzo and hurting Tania, the novel's female protagonist.
Without much thought, Elena lifted the whip and looped it around Lorenzo's neck. Her movement was slow, yet calculated. Not to hurt him, only to test him.
Lorenzo fell silent after hearing what she had just said. There was no rebuttal, no flicker of surprise. He simply looked at her calmly, though with caution.
Elena stepped closer. The distance between them was now almost nonexistent. The end of the whip that had been coiled around Lorenzo's neck remained in her hand, but her grip was no longer as tight as before.
Their gazes locked, Lorenzo's eyes were dark, unreadable. There was no hollow obedience like the faint fragments Elena remembered from the storyline. That gaze was alive aware.
"What should I do with Lorenzo?" Elena's thoughts raced. "Let the female lead restore his memories… or should I do it first?"
She remembered clearly, in the original story, Lorenzo had lost part of his memory due to an accident. It was the female protagonist who slowly helped him recover it. From there, his loyalty and love shifted. From there, his hatred toward Elena grew deeper and deeper.
"But if his memories return now…" Elena's heart pounded harder. "Wouldn't that accelerate the plot? And that would mean… my death would come sooner, too."
Her breathing felt heavy as she recalled everything that had happened in the novel. "If I truly have to die at the end of this story, will I be able to return to the real world afterward?" she wondered.
To become Elena Park again, and return to her editor's office.
Her thoughts shattered when Lorenzo's arm suddenly wrapped around her waist. The movement was firm, causing Elena's body to stiffen on reflex. He pulled her slightly closer, enough to erase the remaining space between them entirely.
"Weren't you going to torture me?" Lorenzo asked quietly.
His tone was cold, not fearful, not pleading. As if he were merely reminding her of her role. Elena did not answer right away. She simply looked at him, trying to read the man before her. At this close distance, she could see the faint lines around Lorenzo's eyes, a thin scar near his jaw, and a gaze far too aware to belong to someone completely obedient.
Slowly, Elena's free hand lifted. The tips of her fingers touched Lorenzo's right cheek, warm and undeniably real. She caressed it gently, in stark contrast to Elena De Luca's reputation for cruelty and quick temper.
"What if we leave this place?" she finally said, her voice lighter now, almost like a shared secret. "I'm tired of being here."
A faint, genuine smile curved on her lips. Not the meaningful, calculated smile Lorenzo was used to seeing.
She continued to stroke Lorenzo's cheek gently, as if the whip in her hand moments ago had never existed. Inside her mind, a plan was beginning to take shape. If she wanted to survive, she could not follow the original storyline.
And perhaps Lorenzo was not a tool meant to be tortured, but the key to changing her fate.
Elena lightly pushed against Lorenzo's chest, just enough to create some distance between them. The whip had slipped from her hand at some point without her realizing it. Now, her fingers instead reached for his hand.
"Let's go," she said lightly, still wearing a smile whose meaning was difficult to decipher.
Without waiting for his response, she tugged at his hand, intending to lead him out of the room that felt suffocating with the shadows of the original plot. But Lorenzo did not move, he remained standing firmly in place, causing Elena, who had been pulling him, to stop instead. She turned back toward him, one brow lifting.
"Why?" she asked in confusion. "Don't you want to go out? Don't you want to get some fresh air?"
Lorenzo looked at her flatly. Then his gaze dropped briefly to the wet dress still clinging to her body.
"Change your clothes," he said shortly. "You're soaked."
Elena fell silent. For a moment, she simply stared at him, making sure she had not misheard. His tone had not been mocking, nor sarcastic. It was merely a simple statement.
She tilted her head slightly, studying his face more closely. "Are you worried I'll get sick?" she asked, deliberately flashing a mischievous smile.
"I don't care if you get sick," Lorenzo replied bluntly without hesitation. "I just don't want to be the one who gets sick because my clothes get wet from you."
The answer was so dry it was almost amusing. Elena's smile widened instead. "Alright," she murmured softly.