Secret Love Affair between a Former Saint and a Dark Hero - Chapter 5
“Yesterday was Arcanda’s class….”
Yesterday, the same place, the same time as now.
Another girl who had been in this very spot was said to have received high praise from the teacher in front of her, to the point where his tongue dried up. It was the chatter of the maidservants who loved to gossip, so there was no doubt about it.
The girl who was always compared to Iora. The girl whom everyone acknowledged as the shining star, the true protagonist of this world. The girl bit her lip hard.
A bitterness greater than insult and shame squeezed her tiny heart, but no one knew it.
“I no longer wish to devote any more time to this, so let’s just finish the test. I hope you get more than half correct.”
“Explain what policies the 2nd Emperor implemented in the <Blue Cliff Incident>.”
Her pride hit rock bottom with nothing left to lose, and she burst into tears. Why? Iora desperately held back, feeling the corners of her eyes moisten with sorrow. Why, indeed.
I wish all of this were just a dream.
I could see the dense letters dancing in my vision, blurred by tears.
“Miss Iora, please answer quickly.”
“The Emperor… ”
The sharp voice of the teacher, the resentment that kept spewing out of his mouth when mentioning the subject of comparison, and above all, the inexplicable sorrow for her current situation, were all too much to bear.
‘This isn’t my reality, is it?’
Her current name is Iora von Ribandt.
“Why am I here?”
In the past, she was a typical university student named Kim Jiyeon in South Korea, but at some point, she transformed into the fake saint who threatened the true heroine in the novel <The Saint’s Flower>.
* * *
‘Iora? Me? Then who are you? Who am I?’
‘You. Don’t you know who I am? Ha!’
The first word she heard when she opened her eyes was Iora. It was now her own name, the name she had seen in the novel <The Saint’s Flower> before she died.
Even her reflection in the mirror felt unfamiliar.
Everyone around her had foreign faces, not Koreans. Pinching her cheek, she could feel the sensation. Amidst her confusion, she heard murmurs from the people around.
‘It seems like the shock of that day was quite significant….’
‘How dare you! Nothing happened that day.’
‘But, my lord.’
‘You. Iora. Don’t you know who I am?’
It was an extremely intimidating voice. She should have realized something was wrong from this moment.
Staring into the overpowering gaze, Iora responded in a daze.
‘I, I don’t know.’
There were plenty of other pieces of evidence that this was not Kim Jiyeon’s reality. She could understand what they were saying, even though she was surrounded by unfamiliar foreigners, and despite recognizing herself as Kim Jiyeon from South Korea, she slowly started to feel like Iora von Ribandt.
For several days, she experienced a state of confusion, as if two consciousnesses had merged, bringing about a transformation.
Fear, pain, a desire to escape, terror, resignation, hope, eager anticipation, and the will to change – it all intermingled.
The cynical and sharp-tongued Kim Jiyeon disappeared, and a quiet, unconfident girl named Iora emerged. It was a mysterious sensation.
After a few days of withdrawal, she went outside, still deeply moved and fearful. She looked at her family with a pleading gaze.
‘Please tell me who I am. Are you my family? What happened to me?’
Family – how much she had longed for that. Her heart raced with excitement.
‘Unbelievable. You don’t even know who you are?’
She laughed at the cold voice that mocked my wide-eyed anticipation. Without realizing it, she was happy.
With parents, family, and the certainty of a happy ending, she was a character from the novel. Oblivious to the maidservants’ uneasy and ominous movements, she beamed with joy.
Perhaps she didn’t even realize she had run away in fear from the sudden intrusion of reality. But clutching onto the faint memories of Iora, she whispered obsessively.
‘I am Iora. Iora.”
The noble’s daughter. The name she had seen in the novel.
‘I can also find happiness.’
She believed it that way, becoming one of the happy characters in the novel’s world. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t the protagonist. In the past, the depressed and sullen loner, Kim Jiyeon, had died, and she dreamed of becoming the lovable and cheerful Iora. It was an embarrassingly serious delusion.
