Some people would jump at the chance to become hopelessly, intimately entangled with a murderer awaiting execution.
People like me, for instance.
“Come again?”
“Please sign here.”
“No, before that.”
“I asked you to marry me.”
We were in the visiting room of a musty underground prison. Moments ago, I'd proposed to a murderer. Now I was trying to close the deal.
“So, let me get this straight. If I marry you, you'll prove my innocence?”
“That's right! All you have to do, dear client—I mean, Your Grace—is sign this contract.”
“…”
He regarded me with even greater suspicion.
Left with little choice, I summoned my most dazzling professional smile and met his gaze.
A strong jaw, a perfectly straight nose, beautifully shaped lips—every feature of his face seemed meticulously sculpted.
The man sitting across from me was none other than Grand Duke Benedict Richard, the villain of a novel I'd read not long ago.
“I guarantee it! One hundred percent! I'll prove your innocence, Your Grace!”
“And in exchange, you want half my fortune.”
“Exactly! Simple, isn't it? Just leave everything to me.”
I gazed at him with an expression positively brimming with sincerity and unwavering commitment.
As though mesmerized, he reached for the contract.
My eyes followed his fingers as he prepared to sign, gleaming with the predatory hunger of a starving hyena.
Then his shoulders jerked.
“Wait.”
“Y-yes? What is it?”
My heart sank. There was something unusually solemn about his expression.
“I'd like to amend the terms.”
My smile vanished.
Absolutely not. There was no way I was letting him negotiate down my fee.
I immediately adopted a serious expression.
“I'm terribly sorry, but the success fee is nonnegotiable—”
“Neither of us is to develop any personal feelings for the other.”
“…Pardon?”
What on earth was he talking about?
“Especially love. That's strictly forbidden.”
“Ah… Yes. Of course. Whatever you say.”
It was an utterly absurd condition, but I nodded along.
Right now, securing his signature mattered more than anything else.
As for how a contract drawn up in this miserable prison had come to contain such incongruous words as marriage and love…
Well, to explain that, we'd have to go back a few days.
******
“Pretty modest for Hell.”
That was my first thought when I opened my eyes and found myself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
After all, I was supposed to be dead.
Cause of death: a traffic accident.
The other vehicle: a dump truck.
Even as excruciating pain tore through my body, I'd been mentally reviewing the relevant statutes.
Article 3, Paragraph 2, Subparagraph 2 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Settlement of Traffic Accidents. Crossing the centerline. One of the twelve major traffic violations.
That should make for a pretty hefty criminal settlement.
I'd barely reached that conclusion when the truck driver approached me.
“Should've been more careful whose side you took, lawyer.”
That was when I realized it hadn't been an accident.
It was murder.
You see, I'd been what people commonly called a money-grubbing lawyer.
Justice? Truth?
Neither mattered nearly as much to me as the success fee my clients were willing to pay.
I'd made a tidy fortune defending scumbags. I was a damn good lawyer, after all.
As it happened, I'd recently represented one side in a dispute between rival gangs and won the case.
I'd suspected the opposing gang might hold a grudge.
I just hadn't expected them to send a dump truck to run me down.
“Nice weather for a trip to Hell, wouldn't you say?”
Those were the last words I'd heard before dying.
And frankly, I couldn't disagree.
Looking back on my previous life, Hell seemed a far more appropriate destination for me than Heaven.
It wasn't as though I'd particularly enjoyed defending criminals, but still.
Money was money, no matter whose pocket it came from.
I slowly surveyed my unfamiliar surroundings.
“Well, I suppose it could be worse.”
Considering all the crooks I'd helped escape punishment, I'd been prepared for a lake of fire at the very least.
Instead, I found myself in a filthy room with mold growing here and there.
The temperature was comfortable enough, though, and the air wasn't particularly humid.
All things considered, it wasn't bad.
“What the hell? You're still in bed, you lazy good-for-nothing!”
A thunderous voice rang out from somewhere nearby.
Ah, yes. About time one of Hell's wardens showed up.
Judging by the shouting, perhaps I'd been assigned to the Hell of Sloth.
But I don't remember ever being particularly lazy…
I was still puzzling over my supposed punishment when a thoroughly drunk middle-aged man stormed over, seized my wrist, and hauled me upright.
“Elena Christie! You worthless girl! Get out there and earn some money!”
…Excuse me?
Ele… what?
I froze and blinked.
I knew that name.
And something far more astonishing than Hell itself was about to happen to me.
******
After being dragged out of bed by the middle-aged man, I found myself doing menial labor on a filthy farm.
I spent the day desperately questioning everyone around me, gathering whatever information I could.
By the time I'd pieced it all together, I'd reached one inescapable conclusion.
After getting killed by a truck, I've ended up inside a novel.
A romance fantasy novel, to be precise.
It was the story of a crown prince and a commoner girl who overcame every obstacle standing between them and true love, from the imperial family's opposition to the wicked schemes of the prince's younger half-brother, the mastermind behind the story's events.
As for Elena Christie, the woman whose body I'd apparently taken over…
She was an insignificant extra who appeared in exactly one line of the novel, during a scene in which the heroine, Vivian, reminisced about her childhood.
“The only person in our village poorer than Elena Christie is Vivian.”
The reason I'd recognized my circumstances so quickly was thanks to a client who'd visited me shortly before my death, claiming someone had plagiarized their novel.
The case hadn't looked remotely profitable, and a quick read had convinced me there was probably no plagiarism involved anyway.
Naturally, I'd turned it down.
Yet everything around me now pointed to the same conclusion.
I was living inside that very novel.
Hold on. If you only skimmed it, how do you remember the name of an extra who appeared in a single line?
Simple.
I had a photographic memory.
Once I'd seen something, it was etched into my mind forever.
That little talent had helped me rake in a fortune as a lawyer in my previous life.
“Manual labor really isn't my thing.”
I muttered under my breath.
While my mind worked through the situation, my hands had been busy pulling weeds.
Unfortunately, Elena's body was apparently rather frail. Every muscle already ached.
Still, after spending the day working alongside the other laborers, I'd managed to establish a few important facts.
Ah. So this really is Hell.
Not the Hell of Fire or the Hell of Sloth.
No, this was something infinitely more dreadful.
The Hell of Poverty.
“Elena! Here you go. Three silver. Your wages for today.”
After spending the entire day bent over in the fields, I'd earned barely enough to buy a couple of loaves of bread.
“I worked so hard to escape this hell…”
I worried at my lower lip.
My circumstances in my previous life hadn't been much different from Elena's.
The only real distinction was that my father had been a gambling addict, while my older brother was a drunken womanizer.
I'd spent my entire childhood dreaming of escape.
The moment I became an adult, I left home, became a lawyer, and cut all ties with my family.
“And I'll be damned if I live like that again.”
With that settled, I wandered through the streets as darkness fell, spending every last coin I'd earned that day on newspapers.
People gave me curious looks.
After all, why would a shabby young woman who looked as though she desperately needed a meal waste her money on stacks of newspapers?
Reading wouldn't fill an empty stomach.
Save your pennies and you'll still have pennies.
Beneath the dim glow of an oil lamp, I leafed through the papers, nodding to myself.
There was only so much a penniless village girl could earn through physical labor.
And I had absolutely no intention of breaking my back to support a family of parasites.
No, I needed a way to make a fortune in one fell swoop.
And what better way than doing the thing I was best at?
Practicing law.
“Now, let's see. Whose head has the biggest price tag?”
I scanned the reports of recent arrests and upcoming trials with a practiced eye.
My years as a lawyer had taught me one universal truth.
The real money wasn't in defending innocent people who'd been wrongfully accused.
It was in defending rich villains.
And if those villains happened to wield considerable political power?
Even better.
As far as I knew, there was exactly one person in this fictional world who fit the bill.
“Found you, my walking fortune!”
At last, I spotted the article I'd been looking for.
A broad grin spread across my face.
******
The next morning, I dashed out of the house as soon as the sun rose.
The man who called himself my father would no doubt assume I'd gone off to work on the farm again.
But my actual destination was the imperial prison.
A group of burly men, each wearing a massive longsword at his hip, had gathered outside the gates to stage a noisy protest.
“End the imperial family's persecution of Grand Duke Richard! End it now!”
“Release Grand Duke Richard! Release him!”
As it happened, I was here for precisely the same reason.
To secure Grand Duke Richard's release.
The very man who'd served as the hidden villain of the novel.
And, more importantly, the man who was about to become my personal cash cow.
Benedict Richard.
On the battlefield, he'd slaughtered his enemies without a shred of mercy, earning himself the nickname the Battlefield Butcher.
Now he'd apparently graduated from killing enemy soldiers to becoming an actual murderer.
According to the novel, he'd been in love with the heroine.
When Vivian married the male lead, Benedict had been so consumed by jealousy and rage that he'd murdered her father.
That was how he'd ended up behind bars.
And since his victim was the crown princess's father, his execution was practically a foregone conclusion.
His trial was coming up soon, and there was little doubt he'd be sentenced to death.
I shook my head as I watched the protesters.
Are these idiots actively trying to get him executed?
The men looked terrifying.
Their faces were fierce, their bodies covered in scars, and every last one of them was dressed head to toe in black.
They were probably Benedict's former subordinates.
As a commander in the imperial army, the grand duke had led countless soldiers into battle.
And now those same soldiers had gathered outside the imperial prison to bellow demands at the top of their lungs.
The nearby citizens were visibly frightened.
Even the reporters lingering around to cover the demonstration looked terrified that the soldiers might turn violent at any moment.
Are they protesting, or threatening the imperial family and the courts?
This was hardly the way to win public sympathy for a man accused of murder.
Still, their foolishness might actually work in my favor.
If I played my cards right, getting an audience with the villain would be easier than I'd expected.
I approached the protesters, picked out the man who seemed to be in charge, and promptly threw myself against him.
Thud!
“Oh! Miss, are you all right?”
“Oh, I'm so sorry! I lost my footing.”
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
The man hurriedly helped me up after I'd tumbled against him.
I made a show of being flustered while quickly surveying the belongings on his person.
“I'm perfectly fine, thank you.”
I lifted my head and gave him a gentle smile.
His face immediately turned red.
Well, I couldn't blame him.
When I'd looked in the mirror that morning, even I had to admit Elena was quite a beauty.
Pale skin, delicate features, and lovely light-blue eyes.
To distract him further, I deliberately swept my hair back with a graceful flick of my hand.
My thick golden locks fluttered in the breeze, capturing his attention completely.
“P-please watch your step, miss!”
I answered with a playful smile that crinkled my eyes, then headed straight for the prison's visiting room.
The guard at the reception desk gave me a cursory glance.
“Here to see a prisoner?”
“Yes. I'd like to request a visit with His Grace, Grand Duke Benedict Richard.”
“Do you have identification?”
“Of course!”
Victor Genoa.
With complete confidence, I presented the identification badge I'd discreetly lifted from the man's belt just moments earlier.