OBNVZ C8

Chapter 8

“I’m fine.”

When Yu Sara tried to stand up on her own, Praha felt an unsettling sense that he had become a truly despicable person.

A faint smile had been on her face, but her expression wavered in confusion.

Her hand lifted slightly, then hesitated and curled inward.

Everyone saw it—the way her outstretched hand failed to find someone to take it, and slowly lowered back down.

That gaze she had then… Praha felt like he wouldn’t be able to forget it for a long time.

When was it? I once watched a movie with my college friends and said something like this afterward.

“Breaking up is hard, so people make a ‘decision to break up.’ If it were easy, you’d just do it—you wouldn’t need a resolution for it.”

“Who says that?”

“The director who made the film.”

The idea was that people either fail to break up entirely, or even if they succeed, the process is so emotionally exhausting and difficult that it becomes the subject of a film titled Decision to Break Up.

I agreed.

“Come to think of it, when we make decisions, we say things like deciding to save money, deciding to quit a job, deciding to stop drinking—we don’t say we’re making a ‘decision to lie down after work.’”

“That’s not a decision, that’s greed. ‘Greed to lie down’…”

“Calling lying down greed? Are we slaves or something?”

Anyway, what I mean is—if not causing trouble were easy, I wouldn’t have needed to make a “decision not to act out.”

Not causing trouble is hard.

Especially in situations like this, with fools wandering right in front of me.

Maybe I was more stressed than I thought.

Suddenly being possessed into this world, people picking fights out of nowhere, and cold-hearted strangers who wouldn’t even help me up after I fell.

Maybe I’d been dumping all that frustration onto some innocent nuisance man.

Picking on someone’s appearance just to attack them—what a cheap, petty thing to do.

My personality is seriously rotten…

“Okay, I’ll do my self-reflection at home!”

I cut off my spiraling thoughts. Reflecting could wait until I was lying in my own bed.

My first goal was getting home.

With that “decision to lie down and reflect at home,” I looked around.

While I had been spacing out and the nuisance man had been muttering while rubbing his elbow, the others had been recovering themselves in their own ways.

“My soles hurt… they’re all red.”

“The soles are thin. Thick socks would help.”

“I feel like stealing a maid’s socks at this point.”

“I’m sure we’ll all wake up tomorrow with sore muscles.”

Watching them, I finally realized why the Crown Prince and the Grand Duke had been wasting so much time here.

‘They’re not physically fit.’

They didn’t have the stamina to walk briskly nonstop from the left staircase to the kitchen.

Even crossing this vast mansion from end to end was too much.

For someone like me, who commuted daily on the subway, it might not be much—but for nobles through and through, it was probably extreme exertion.

Of course, I was currently possessing a noble lady too…

Come to think of it, this noble lady Yu Sara supposedly had the same name and face as me… but I hadn’t actually checked how similar we were. My limbs felt almost identical though. Is there a mirror here?

No. There wasn’t. This wasn’t the time to think about mirrors anyway.

I glanced between Supporting Character 2, who had taken off her shoes and was massaging her bare feet, and the nuisance man still drenched in sweat. Both looked pale.

‘Did I make things worse by picking a fight and draining everyone’s energy?’

I quietly asked the kindest-looking one among them, Supporting Character 2.

“You must be tired. Walking all the way here.”

“Huh? …Yes. I don’t usually walk much, so it was a bit overwhelming.”

“How much do you usually walk?”

“Well… I sometimes go to the park on sunny afternoons.”

“Oh, you take walks in the park?”

“Pardon? No. I go to a spot where I can see the lake and sit there with friends.”

“So you walk from the park entrance to the lake? How many steps is that?”

“I’m not sure. We usually have the carriage stop right in front of the lake.”

…That basically means you don’t walk at all.

“Just to clarify, how did we get here? After leaving the portal.”

“A carriage dropped us off at the entrance.”

“……”

So I was escaping with people who don’t walk even five minutes on their own.

My “decision to reflect at home” instantly turned into a “decision to exercise.”

When I got back, I would start working out. Increase my three-times-a-week early morning swimming to five times.

Please, let me never have to run away with these people again.

“Lady Yu Jein, how is your ankle?”

“I tried using my ability… but I think I haven’t recovered yet. I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize.”

A faint white light flickered briefly at Yu Jein’s fingertips before disappearing. She withdrew her hand from her ankle and looked like she was about to cry from guilt toward the Crown Prince.

‘When I imagined divine power, I thought it could resurrect the dead and talk to gods. Why are the gods here so stingy? They could at least fix an ankle.’

Still, healing even small injuries with divine power was impressive in itself.

“I’ll take a look.”

The Crown Prince and the Grand Duke, who had assigned Darjeeling to guard the entrance, approached us. The Crown Prince took Yu Jein, and the Grand Duke came to me.

It was an obvious division of roles, clearly influenced by what had just happened earlier.

The Grand Duke knelt on one knee in front of me.

“Lady, please show me your hand.”

Without waiting for my answer, he pulled my hand toward him and wiped the wound with a damp handkerchief.

My hand instinctively flinched, but he firmly held it in place.

“Anywhere else injured?”

“No.”

“Think carefully. That fall wasn’t a small one.”

Despite his blunt tone, his touch was gentle.

His straight fingers brushed my palm, wiping away dust and dried blood as if sweeping it off with a brush.

‘It tickles… I feel like laughing…’

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Mascarpone, who was watching, clicked her tongue.

“Don’t be stubborn, Lady.”

She smirked slightly.

“You like it when people pay attention to you, don’t you? If not now, when else will you get the Grand Duke’s attention?”

She’s picking a fight again.

There was a reason Mascarpone always targeted me like this.

Years ago, at a concert hall—

Yu Sara had ignored the dress code, and Mascarpone had mocked her for being uncultured.

Yu Sara had then grabbed her hair right there.

Since Yu Sara already had a terrible reputation, she didn’t care—but Mascarpone couldn’t even leave the house for a while afterward.

The Grand Duke frowned.

“Both of you, are you going to keep fighting?”

Huh? I didn’t say anything.

“Stop fighting and focus on me. I’m the handsome healing fairy treating your injured hand.”

“…Good grief.”

The Grand Duke tore his handkerchief cleanly in half and wrapped my palm with the clean side.

While pretending to focus on treatment, he casually asked,

“Lady, do you think I have a good body?”

“Do you not own a mirror?”

I replied coldly.

He scratched his cheek.

“I do look in the mirror. But being told directly that I have a good body… it’s kind of…”

“Proud?”

“Embarrassing. I didn’t expect you to say something like that.”

“Well, yes.”

It wasn’t something Yu Sara would normally say.

I lost interest in the conversation (I’m still annoyed at all of you!) and turned my attention to Yu Jein and the Crown Prince.

Under Yu Jein’s dress hem as she sat on the floor, her small feet were visible. Her feet were tiny, but her heels were so thin they looked dangerously unstable.

The Crown Prince looked at them briefly, then said,

“Excuse me.”

He snapped the heels cleanly off with one hand.

“You were right. I should have done this earlier.”

He subtly glanced at me as he said it. I ignored him.

‘Both the Grand Duke and the Crown Prince have been watching my reactions.’

The Crown Prince suddenly called out to the nuisance man.

“Papri.”

“Yeah, brother?”

“I don’t think I said this earlier.”

“Huh?”

He looked down at him.

“I don’t consider anyone here baggage.”

“….”

“They are my guests. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t have been invited here or experienced any of this. Therefore, their safety is my responsibility.”

His perfect face tilted slightly.

“If you call them baggage just because the situation changed after inviting them, who would ever accept an imperial invitation again? Or do you simply not know that because you have no guests to invite?”

‘So he has no friends. I figured.’

The nuisance man didn’t respond. The Crown Prince didn’t say anything further either.

The break was over.

The formation shifted again as Mascarpone and Supporting Character 2 helped Yu Jein.

Now the formation was:

Grand Duke / Darjeeling
Papri
Mascarpone / Yu Jein / Supporting Character 2
Crown Prince / Yu Sara

Why am I in the back again?

Because I didn’t want to walk with Papri.

As we moved silently through the central hall toward the left corridor—

“Argh!”

Papri suddenly kicked the wall violently.

His heavy-heeled boots slammed into it with a loud crash, shaking the corridor. Even the armor on display trembled. Supporting Character 2 flinched. The Grand Duke said lightly,

“Papri, at this rate you’ll break something.”

A chill ran down my spine.

I looked toward the central staircase they had just passed.

The zombies—still not fully dead, only immobilized with severed bodies—twitched at the vibration and noise.

The grotesque sight of cut flesh swelling and deflating made my hair stand on end.

I grabbed the Crown Prince’s sleeve.

“Your Highness.”

“…Yes.”

“You said earlier the dead servant might have come through the servants’ passage.”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me again exactly where that passage is…?”

“……Inside the wall. A concealed space.”

Inside the wall.

The same wall Papri had just been kicking hard enough to shake the entire corridor.

“Your Highness… what are the chances that the severed servant locked the passage door before dying?”

Before I even finished speaking, the Crown Prince turned sharply.

The curtain-covered wall behind us was shaking. The “secret passage” was now obvious.

Everyone’s gaze slowly turned behind me.

Rattle, rattle.

The sound continued.

Rattle. Rattle-rattle. Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle—

CLANG!

“Run!”

[Imperial Villa – Second Floor Corridor]

Grand Duke / Darjeeling
Papri
Mascarpone / Yu Jein / Supporting Character 2
Crown Prince / Yu Sara

(Survivors)