Chapter 4.1

I was so shocked he nearly made me faint right then and there. Today alone, I’d already endured several life-altering surprises, and now my life was literally being threatened.

“W-why are you doing this…?”

“I’ll ask you one more time. Who are you?”

“P-please don’t kill me…”

My voice trembled uncontrollably. He wasn’t bluffing. I could feel an icy chill behind my neck.

Through the strands of my pink hair, I caught a glance of the man’s black pants. If things went south, maybe I could punch him right in the privates.

Maybe then I won’t die here.

“Answer me.”

“I-I’m the person who saved your life!” I sniffled.

I dragged his half-dead body here, poured a healing potion on him, even tried feeding him porridge, and this is how he repays me?

As I recounted the day’s events, the fear that had gripped me slowly gave way to anger. Thankfully, the bowl of hot porridge was still sitting nearby.

If he tried threatening me again, I’d grab it and dump the whole thing on him.

It would buy me some time to escape while he screamed in pain. Desperate times.

“I apologize. I had no intention of killing you.”

But then, the pressure on my neck eased. The hand gripping my forearm let go as well.

The second I was free to lift my head, I let out an ear-piercing scream.

“Hey, you jerk!”

The man stared at me without so much as blinking, the dagger still in his hand.

He didn’t seem the least bit offended by my insults.

I, on the other hand, glared at him with my eyes wide in fury.

“You could’ve just asked instead of pinning me down!”

“I said I wasn’t trying to kill you. But this place—”

“‘Where am I? Who am I?’ If that’s the kind of nonsense you’re going to spew, you can go ahead and get lost!”

I had no patience left to deal with nonsense. I scrambled back, putting some distance between us.

The man slowly blinked his blood-red eyes before speaking.

“The world… what happened to it?”

What is he expecting me to say?

Shouldn’t he know better than me? I just got here.

I glared at him silently until my gaze locked with his crimson irises, stark against his pale skin. Instinctively, a shiver crawled down my spine.

“It’s destroyed.”

“I see.”

The way he calmly accepted it made it sound like he already knew.

I let out a long breath and asked, “Who exactly are you?”

And what’s with the way you’ve been talking down to me since the moment you woke up?^[1] I mean, sure, I was yelling, but still—

I kept the last part to myself. First, I needed to figure out who this guy was.

“I’m from Yustiva.”

“Where’s th—…Oh.”

I didn’t remember the details of the novel since I’d written it over ten years ago. I had barely scribbled down the prologue before abandoning it, so there was no way I could remember the details now.

But the moment he said “Yustiva,” something inside me clicked with cold certainty.

Yustiva. The Cocoa Empire’s only lawless territory and its criminal underworld.

That’s the location where the male lead, Louis de Cocoa, would first meet the female lead.

The scene is set where the female lead gets kidnapped by a bunch of villains, and Louis, who happens to be visiting Yustiva, rescues her.

It was the only region I ever mentioned in the handful of pages I’d written.

“Wait a second.”

Now that I thought about it, this man…

Black hair, red eyes. He had that unmistakable aura of a mafia boss…

“…Are you… Killian?”

He hadn’t appeared in the prologue, but I remember slapping together a backstory for him that said, “Plot twist: he was the mastermind all along.”

I even gave him a name with “Kill” in it because he was supposed to be the bad guy…

“How do you know my name?”

He narrowed his elongated eyes, his gaze sharpening with suspicion.

I reached for the spoon in the porridge bowl, ignoring it as it tipped over and spilled all over the floor. The anger I’d been holding back was about to explode.

“…Ah.”

I smacked his disheveled head with the spoon.

“Where are your manners?!” I snapped. “I’m five years older than you!”

For the first time, the ma— I mean, Killian’s eyes sparkled.

He fell silent, momentarily at a loss for words, before one side of his full lips pulled up into a smirk.

“I didn’t realize you were older than me. You look quite young.”

“…!”

“Ma’am,” he added, stifling a laugh.

Just then, I saw something move outside the window.

“P-People!”