“I don’t want to get engaged! No, no, no! I said I don’t waaaant to!”
At the blossoming age of sixteen.
While rolling dramatically across the floor in protest over my engagement, I accidentally tumbled down the stairs from the second floor.
“My goodness, my baby!”
“Cecilia!”
“Miss!”
Hearing my family’s horrified screams, I lost consciousness.
When I finally woke up again, two full days had passed.
But after that, I remained bedridden for another four days. Maybe it was because I’d hit my head, but recovering the memories of my previous life left me burning with a fever.
T-this is ridiculous…! Of all worlds, I reincarnated into an R-rated dark romance fantasy? Out of all the fluffy rom-coms, healing stories, and childcare novels, why did it have to be a tragic psychological one?!
I wanted to deny it, but there was too much evidence.
The familiar name, Cecilia Roheim.
The rare watery-blue hair and eyes reflected in the mirror.
A family environment where I was the spoiled youngest daughter showered with love.
And…
A fiancé who happened to be the Second Prince destined to become the next emperor!
“This can’t be real. This has to be a dream…”
“Sweetheart, did you hate the engagement that much?”
My mother, who had stayed by my bedside caring for me the entire time I was sick, looked as though she’d made up her mind.
“If you hate it that much, then we’ll call it off. The documents are still under negotiation, and the seals haven’t been stamped yet…”
“N-no!”
Startled by her words, I shot upright and grabbed her hand tightly.
“Sweetheart?”
“I was being immature. Even if the official documents aren’t finalized, the verbal agreement has already been made, right? If we suddenly cancel without reason, we could end up accused of insulting the imperial family.”
Actually, there was another reason this engagement absolutely couldn’t be broken.
But I couldn’t tell Mother what that reason was, so instead I claimed that I’d changed my mind while lying sick in bed.
“And besides! I heard the Second Prince is incredibly handsome. If I’m getting married anyway, I’d rather marry a handsome man.”
I deliberately added the comment in a childish tone.
Mother looked a bit flustered, but soon smiled gently and stroked my shoulder.
“Exactly. We wouldn’t choose your future husband carelessly. Your father, your siblings, even the people in the imperial palace praise him endlessly. They say he’s astonishingly diligent and upright—so much so that it’s hard to believe he’s royalty.”
“H-haha… I’m sure that’s true…”
But Mother, when the perfect model student goes astray, they commit disasters that ordinary troublemakers couldn’t even imagine.
That diligent, humble, upright male lead everyone praised would one day suddenly snap and become a crazed obsessive male lead…
Remembering the unspeakable things he’d done in the novel, I laughed weakly while swallowing back tears.
What am I supposed to do now?!
Using the excuse that I wanted to eat the cookies Mother baked herself, I sent her out of the bedroom and sat alone at my desk with a notebook open.
First, if I had to summarize this novel in one sentence:
A male lead who spent his entire life having everything stolen by his older brother loses even the crown prince position and fiancée he believed were finally his, descends into darkness, kills everyone, and kidnaps/imprisons the heroine in a high-intensity tragic romance fantasy.
How had I even ended up reading something like that?!
The obsessive male lead, Lionel von Altehyde, was born as the Empire’s Second Prince and was currently undergoing strict, brutal training to become emperor as the provisional Crown Prince.
Why the Second Prince instead of the First Prince?
Because the First Prince, Kaien, was the source of all problems.
Born so frail that he couldn’t bear the responsibilities of being Crown Prince—let alone emperor—Kaien spent most of his life bedridden.
As a result, he envied his healthy younger brother, who would take his place as Crown Prince, and constantly tormented him.
By stealing everything Lionel cherished.
Not just objects, but attendants, nannies, even beloved pets.
And Kaien’s cruelty didn’t stop there.
While Lionel was risking his life in the dangerous northern frontier, Kaien suddenly regained his health—and stole not only the Crown Prince position meant for Lionel, but even Lionel’s fiancée.
The heroine of the novel.
Namely, Cecilia Roheim.
Me.
The reason the First Prince became so spoiled and tyrannical was entirely the Empress’s fault…
Consumed with guilt over her eldest son’s illness, the Empress doted on him endlessly.
Meanwhile, she neglected—and almost seemed to hate—her second son, Lionel.
To what extent?
After Lionel lost the Crown Prince title, she deemed his continued presence in the imperial palace a future threat and exiled him to the Central Temple.
And so, after losing everything, Lionel descended into darkness.
Gathering forces from both the Central Temple and the underworld, he launched a rebellion—and succeeded.
Sitting upon a throne stained with the blood of his own family, he kidnapped and imprisoned me, the woman who had originally been his fiancée.
That was the opening of the dark romance fantasy novel I’d read—the one whose title I couldn’t even remember anymore.
As for the rest of the story… well. It was basically just him doing all sorts of things to the kidnapped and imprisoned heroine, so there’s no need to think about it.
The important thing was this:
The biggest trigger for Lionel’s corruption was losing both the Crown Prince position and his fiancée before being cast aside.
That was why I’d stopped Mother from canceling the engagement.
I was afraid that Lionel might already recognize me as his fiancée, and that losing me would accelerate his descent into obsession.
Though maybe it’s fine since only a verbal agreement exists so far…
But you never knew.
Maybe we’d met as children in a past I simply didn’t remember.
Because that’s a cliché too!
A gloomy childhood filled with harsh training and painful discrimination.
And within it, tender memories of first love blooming like a single flower.
Except I don’t remember any of it—and only the male lead does!
If that were true, then maybe the younger me had unknowingly become Lionel’s sole salvation, planting the seeds of obsession in his heart.
Besides…
I glanced into the mirror and nodded with satisfaction.
It felt a little awkward saying this about myself, but honestly, I was beautiful.
And when I’d been younger, I’d apparently been even more doll-like and adorable.
Honestly, it’d be harder not to fall for a face like this.
Maybe…
Maybe Lionel himself had been the one pushing for this engagement.
If that’s true, then running away recklessly won’t work. It could just accelerate his corruption.
The engagement had already happened.
There was no undoing it now.
So the only thing I could do was—
No matter what, prevent the male lead’s corruption.
The flow of events where the First Prince recovered and became Crown Prince…
I had no way to stop that. The novel never explained why he suddenly regained his health.
But I did know the trigger that caused the male lead to snap.
Maybe I could stop that.
No—I had to stop it.
For the sake of my peaceful future retirement, if nothing else!
But first, I need to see my fiancé’s face at least once.
At the very least, I needed to confirm what kind of feelings Lionel currently had toward me.
Having made my decision, I spoke directly to Mother when she returned carrying freshly baked cookies.
“Mother, how about inviting the Second Prince over for a meal sometime?”
“A meal?”
“Yes. He’s going to be my husband, after all. I want to see for myself whether the man Father and Mother chose is really as handsome and diligent as the rumors say.”
“My, that’s actually a good point. Very well. I’ll send an invitation to the imperial palace.”
And so, a few days later, I was finally given the chance to meet the fiancé who would one day become an obsessive male lead after descending into darkness.
However, things unfolded a little differently than I expected.
“What? We’re going where?”
“To the imperial palace. They invited the entire family.”
Instead of the Second Prince coming to our estate, our whole family was summoned to the imperial palace.
In other words—
Before the engagement had even been officially finalized, the two families were already meeting like it was a formal marriage arrangement