Chapter 4
I'm a Homebody, But I Possessed a Grim, Captive Story
Episode 4
“Wake up.”
“Just 5 more minutes….”
“I said wake up, you lazy, lowly slave girl!”
My eyelids, heavy with fatigue, barely lifted as I forced them open, revealing a familiar face.
It was Lemeia Solt, the jewel of the Kingdom of Salt, as beautiful as a blooming lily, and my half-sister.
“Why is the Princess here….”
“I came to teach you a lesson, you slowpoke. How dare you, a bastard, think you could sleep soundly in my father’s house?”
If I had been the real April Solt, I might have been hurt by every word that belittled me based on my bloodline…
Whether by misfortune or good fortune, I was a 21st-century Korean, completely detached from the class system.
‘Right, my blood must be dirty water, and yours is some kind of pure gold.’
Pretending to be meek, I raised my middle finger inside my pocket and quickly got to my feet.
“What is it?”
“They’re asking why the old men increased the import volume for food and daily necessities for the next quarter! I was dying of a headache because I didn’t understand what they were saying!”
Rustle!
A pile of documents thrown by Lemeia struck me directly in the face before falling to the ground.
Only then did I grasp the situation. The Minister of Finance must have found something strange while organizing the budget report and come to Lemeia.
“Well…”
But for some reason, the words caught in my throat and wouldn’t come out easily.
‘Because in the second half of the year, the Cletan Empire plans to cut off exports to our kingdom.’
I knew that countless citizens of the Kingdom of Salt would suffer afterward.
But this was a future event written in the novel. It was obvious that Lemeia would find the claim absurd.
No, for starters, there was no guarantee that Lemeia’s bird brain could even comprehend the sentence, ‘The Empire is cutting off exports to the Kingdom.’
“Well, as I was looking through last year’s report, it seemed like preparations for a poor harvest weren’t sufficient, so…”
“Do you think you’re a god or something?”
Before I knew it, Lemeia’s face was right in front of mine.
As I met her contorted face head-on, my breathing became irregular as if I were suffocating.
Strange. Lemeia never smiled properly for fear of getting wrinkles, so why was she using such free expressions?
“Just an extra. Did you think your pathetic life would change if you possessed a character in a novel?”
“How, how did you know?”
“Don’t worry, you’re scheduled to die from overwork in this life too.”
Thump.
My heart sank at the ultimatum-like judgment.
“Work like a slave, like an ant. While taking comfort in the saying that even a humble rat hole will see the sun someday.”
“Wait a minute!”
“You’ll be confined to my office until the day you die of illness anyway. Trapped by towering piles of documents!”
Whoosh.
As Lemeia’s voice echoed, the surroundings darkened as if the lights had been turned off.
Ah, I had already experienced this situation before.
In the end, I secretly persuaded the ministers and managed to get by with just a slight increase in food imports.
There had been a similar incident before, but the location and the content of the conversation were different.
So, this was a dream.
Lemeia didn’t know I was a transmigrator, and she wasn’t interested in such things in the first place, so she would never have come to my room.
‘Why am I having such a shitty dream….’
Once I understood the situation, my eyes snapped open.
“Gasp, gasp….”
As anyone who has had a terrible nightmare would, I sat up and panted heavily.
My back was already damp with cold sweat.
‘Scheduled to die from overwork even after possessing this body?’
There was no curse like this.
It seemed my nerves had relaxed, leading to a bad dream.
Looking around, the sun outside the window was already high in the sky.
“Ugh!”
As I tried to get up, I stepped on a book that had fallen on the floor and nearly slipped.
Looking down, the crumpled book cover bore the title ‘History of the Cletan Empire’ in large letters.
Each character was a powerful sleeping pill, so I must have fallen asleep without reading more than a few pages.
‘Maybe I would have had a better dream if I had read something like a comic book.’
After washing up in the bathroom, I brought the meal left at the door and ate it lying down comfortably.
The room, which had become familiar, felt like the coziest nest.
…Has it been about four or five days since I’ve been living like this?
Surprisingly, no one paid any attention to whatever I did here.
It was incomparably more comfortable than my usual life, where I lived by the minute and only fell asleep near dawn.
Of course, as this life continued, I occasionally had the luxurious thought of being bored…
‘That’s just a luxury, literally.’
Liam seemed to visit occasionally to check on my condition, but since I wasn’t even attempting to escape and wasn’t showing my face at all, he seemed to find it strange.
“Excuse me, Mr. Liam….”
“If you intend to entice or bribe me, you should not do so even in the slightest. I am a man who has pledged loyalty to Grand Duke Bleil…”
“No, that’s not it. I just wanted to say that you don’t need to take time out of your busy schedule to visit.”
“Are you trying to escape by lulling me into a false sense of security? That’s a pathetic ploy.”
The man who revealed his name was Liam a few days after I was confined had more amusing aspects than I expected.
It seemed like every one of my actions appeared to him as a scheme to break through the surveillance here and escape.
Having no desire to clear up the misunderstanding, I gave up on explaining.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
Knock, knock.
“It’s Liam.”
Speak of the devil.
At the calm voice that sounded as usual, I grumbled a little petulantly.
“I told you I have no intention of escaping.”
“I am not here for that purpose today.”
Creak.
The door, which I thought would remain shut forever, opened, and Liam, with his finger on his glasses, beckoned me.
“The Grand Duke summons you.”
“What? Me?”
“Yes.”
Yes, you.
Seeing Liam standing there as if to say just that, I felt an ominous premonition.
Surely, this confinement I was enjoying… no, this amazing welfare for kidnapping victims wouldn’t end like this!
Feeling my heart shrink with fear, I began to prepare.
\ \ \
And so, now.
My sweet vacation was abruptly and forcibly interrupted, and I was dragged before the Grand Duke, unable to lift my head. More precisely, I couldn’t.
The first reason was the overwhelming pressure that suffocated me; the second was…
“Can you not hear me?”
“No….”
“Then why are you not meeting my eyes? April Solt, the second princess of the Kingdom of Salt.”
It was the Grand Duke, mocking me with a smiling face.
‘I was found out much faster than I thought.’
I hadn’t expected to be able to hide it until the end.
Even though I had mistaken the person, people as meticulous as those who infiltrated the royal palace of a nation to kidnap someone wouldn’t be fooled by my flimsy lies.
With trembling pupils, I looked up at the Grand Duke.
His eyes, drawn in a perfect arc, seemed to hold a semblance of kindness that was easily mistaken.
‘He’s scarier when he smiles….’
It felt like being a herbivore before a predator.
I let out a precarious sigh.
“Well, strictly speaking, it wasn’t a lie. I’m not a formal princess. Because I’m a bastard… I wasn’t officially recognized, nor was I ever treated as a member of the royal family….”
As the Grand Duke’s gaze turned cold, I quickly swallowed my excuse and apologized.
“I-I’m sorry.”
But I couldn’t help it!
I thought he would be angry if he knew that the useless bastard was kidnapped instead of the Crown Prince, whom he desperately wanted.
Moreover, if he made a negotiation offer to my biological father, King Verga, he would surely refuse it outright. To him, I was truly useless. Then the enraged Grand Duke would become even angrier.
In short, the reason I hid my identity was that I didn’t want to anger this terrifying man!
As I pondered how to phrase this, the Grand Duke spoke first.
“Before that.”
With those words, the light atmosphere instantly became heavy.
The Grand Duke, his smile gone as if it had never been there, was so menacing that it wouldn’t be strange if he drew his sword at any moment.
“How did you find out?”
…Find out what?
That I would be kidnapped?
I had read the original work, but I didn’t know that either!
Lost in random thoughts, I froze at his subsequent interrogation.
“The Kingdom of Salt’s food import volume has increased significantly.”
“What?”
“Normally, it could be overlooked, but the timing is strange. Come to think of it, the policies that have recently lowered Princess Lemeia’s popularity have repeatedly interfered with the Crown Prince’s schemes.”
Ha, haha, hahahaha.
I’m screwed.
I quickly fixed my gaze on the floor. I felt like my thoughts would be read if I kept meeting his eyes.
Then the Grand Duke (though there was no need to) personally stood up and descended from the dais.
“It was as if you knew everything in advance.”
Thump, thump.
His clean-shod footsteps approached right in front of me. My comically distorted face was reflected in the tip of his black shoes.
Was the nightmare I had last night actually a premonition?
Honestly, I wasn’t stupid, so I knew what the Grand Duke was interrogating me about.
And I had been worried about how much he would find out during his investigation into me.
Especially since the remaining Lemeia was not talented enough to fill the gaps.
“So, then.”
Swish.*
The Grand Duke’s fingertip lifted my chin.
Amusingly, even at that moment, I could only manage a pathetically awkward smile.
“Will you tell me, Princess, how you caught wind of the Empire’s scheme?”
