When the Female Lead Went Off-Script, the Main Male Lead Became the Tyrant's Empress - Chapter 1.1
“Marry me.”
“Pffft!”
The finest wine sprayed from the Emperor Emeritus’s mouth.
A stream of wine, carrying momentum no less impressive than a waterfall, splattered across the imperial crest decorating the floor.
It was pointlessly brilliant and filthy.
Whether his father was coughing loudly in an attempt to regain his senses or not, this man…
The blond man who had been enthroned as Emperor only moments ago proposed to the black-haired man glaring at him in utter disbelief.
The only person unruffled by the sudden turn of events was the Emperor himself, who had just detonated an imperial palace romance bomb unlike anything one could easily witness elsewhere.
The beautiful young man who had received the proposal went pale.
“W-What did you just say……?”
“I said, let’s get married. The two of us.”
When the Grand Duke barely managed to move his stubborn lips and ask whether he was in his right mind, the Emperor answered calmly with an utterly shameless expression.
Only one minute earlier, the atmosphere had been exceedingly warm and cheerful.
Today was the day Crown Prince Arden Fairtrach ascended the throne as Emperor of the Ampherion Empire.
The honored guests celebrated the new Emperor’s ascension and prayed for peace and blessings upon the nation he would rule.
The Emperor Emeritus gazed proudly at his newly enthroned son and made a joke.
“Now, all you need to do is find a partner to stand beside you.”
“There’s no need to look. I’ve already decided on someone.”
At the Emperor’s confident reply, the nobles’ and the Emperor Emeritus’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.
Just which household’s noble lady had managed to get that frivolous fool under her thumb?
She was surely from an illustrious family, exceptionally beautiful, and capable as well!
Under the expectant and curious gazes focused entirely upon him, the Emperor rose from his seat as soon as he finished speaking.
He circled the table and approached Grand Duke Haster Valtor, who was seated a short distance from the seat of honor.
And then the bomb dropped.
Amid the bewildered honored guests at the inauguration banquet that had descended into chaos, one woman furtively darted her eyes around and gauged everyone’s reactions.
‘Is this… my fault?’
READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM
* * *
READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM
Let’s cut to the chase.
She had transmigrated.
And of all people, she had transmigrated as the female lead of the highly explicit, dark romance fantasy novel she had been reading right before she died.
“Goddamn. I’m fucked. I’m so fucking fucked.”
Nam Eunjeong regretted everything.
If she had known this would happen, she would have taken the day off and stayed holed up at home instead of walking beneath a high-rise building in the dead of winter.
Why had she dragged herself out of bed at dawn, so determined to go to work, only to get struck by an icicle hanging from a skyscraper and die instantly?
Clary Lurie, the female lead of 「Within the Cage, the Bird’s Wings Lay Broken」, lived a life steeped in tragedy.
She lived in wealth when she was young, but after her parents died, her family fell into ruin, and she suffered abuse at the hands of her guardian-slash-uncle.
Clary was forced by her uncle to become the second wife of an elderly rich man, but on the day of the wedding, she fled the bridal waiting room.
Then, just before her uncle could catch her, she encountered the male leads, the Grand Duke and the Crown Prince, and finally escaped her uncle’s clutches.
Judging from the story up to this point, one might think she could finally breathe a little easier, but this was only the beginning.
Amid misunderstandings and conflicts, jealousy and obsession, the beautiful Clary was tormented by the two men day and night. Even when she escaped, she was dragged back like a dog, living a life that was both lavish and miserable.
Aside from the two male leads, villains who tormented her and one misfortune after another kept coming her way.
It was enough to make one wonder whether the world itself had deliberately decided to torture a single person for sport.
The reason readers endure the suffocating sweet potatoes from stories like this is to savor the cathartic cider that follows.
But this story had none of that.
Perhaps the author of 「Within the Cage, the Bird’s Wings Lay Broken」 had sold off the catharsis to pay for self-publication, because there was no refreshing payoff, no catharsis, nothing.
Even when a villain was cut down, they died only after laying the groundwork for something that would later develop into an even greater incident, and Clary was the only one who suffered even more enthusiastically.
Even in the ending, Clary died in a remote place while giving birth to a child whose biological father she didn’t even know, her mind and heart completely broken.
The readers who had steadfastly continued reading, shouting, ‘Author! Please give us some payoff!’ and hurling curses all the while, cried out to ask why Clary was the one suffering, yet they were the ones being mentally destroyed.
Even readers who used to say, ‘Mmm~ the dumpster is cozy^^,’ ended up saying, ‘Fuck. If you put this work in a dumpster, even the dumpster would spit it back out in disgust.’
That said everything.
And now she had become the female lead of that novel.
Worse, she had regained consciousness in the bridal waiting room.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
