DSDD 01

Chapter 1

“That’s impossible.”

Erna Zacherete. 22 years old.

Over the past several years, I could confidently say that I had lived a relatively smooth life.

Born as the daughter of a prestigious marquis family, I had grown up without lacking for anything.

There had been some rather unhappy times, but I had overcome them all by now and was faithfully living each day as the head of my family.

At least, until just moments ago.

“Say that again. Laura. What exactly did I…… do?”

“Oh, honestly, why are you acting like this? The Marquess gave this to me last night. She told me to return it first thing tomorrow morning.”

At my words, Laura, the maidservant in charge with dark brown hair, answered with a frustrated expression as she held something out to me.

A letter.

She looked at me as if wondering what on earth was wrong with me.

Sorry, but I was the one who should have been asking that.

There’s no way. I clearly collapsed from overwork a week ago and only just woke up.

A week ago. While working in my office, I had lost consciousness.

The cause was overwork.

Ever since I was young, I had been terrible at pacing myself, so I simply worked on whatever came my way until this happened.

Suddenly, my vision spun, and I collapsed.

And yet, I only opened my eyes this morning.

“Pardon? What do you mean? It’s true that you collapsed a week ago, but you regained consciousness the very next day.”

“What?”

I had regained consciousness after only one day.

And apparently, I had been walking around as if nothing had happened.

What on earth was going on?

“Marquess? Are you listening to me?”

“No. Not at all. I’m really sorry, but could you give me some time to think?”

After calling for a brief timeout, instead of thinking, I pinched my cheek first.

Ouch. That hurt.

That meant this wasn’t a dream after all.

But it doesn’t make sense. I have absolutely no memory of the past week. It’s almost as if—

“It’s as though someone else entered my body and then left…….”

“Pardon?”

“No, nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

I shook my head quickly after mumbling absentmindedly.

Maybe I have short-term memory loss. For some reason, all my memories from the past week were erased.

Yes. That made some sense.

Losing my memory was certainly not something I could take lightly, but perhaps because I had found a possible clue as to the cause, I felt somewhat relieved.

“Speaking of someone else, now that I think about it, you really did seem a little strange last week, Marquess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Normally, you spend all day working in your office, right? But when you suddenly declared that you were going on strike because you asked why you should have to work, we were all really…….”

“Wait, what did you say? A strike?”

Did that mean…… after regaining consciousness, I hadn’t worked? For an entire week, no less?

“Do you think that was all? You hardly ever leave the estate, yet suddenly you started going out almost every other day. Everyone was so surprised.”

“…….”

“You also complained about why there were only such gloomy clothes in your dressing room. Then you immediately went to the dress shop and bought up dresses and accessories by the armful. Everyone was completely turned upside down over it.”

“What?!”

I jumped to my feet and immediately headed for the dressing room.

Since I usually spent so much time sitting and working, I preferred comfortable and practical clothes over elaborate dresses.

I also liked soft and understated colors rather than bright, eye-catching ones.

But now—

“W-What is all this?”

I froze at the sight of the dressing room filled with a dazzling array of colorful dresses.

There was a blue dress covered in gold-thread embroidery that even noble ladies would probably wear only on special occasions, as well as a gorgeous crimson satin dress that looked like something an opera singer would wear on stage.

There were hats densely decorated with delicate feathers and tiny pearls that sparkled brilliantly, along with high-heeled shoes adorned with straps and neatly embroidered with silver thread.

It was as if an entire dress shop had been moved into the room.

“I…… really bought all of this myself?”

“I told you so. Why have you been acting like this since earlier? It’s almost as if you don’t remember anything…… Ah!”

Laura stopped speaking with an expression of confusion.

Her eyes soon widened to the size of fists, and she began to breathe heavily.

“I knew it! I knew something was strange!”

Oh, no.

“Laura? I know you’re surprised. Yes. I’m also extremely confused by this situation right now. That’s right. It seems I may have lost my memo—”

“You worked so much that your mind temporarily snapped, didn’t it?! Right?!”

“Huh?”

I stopped for a moment at Laura’s shout.

The idea was somewhat similar, but the conclusion was a little different.

Still, that’s probably better than memory loss. I can just call it a little rebellion.

After quickly calculating the situation, I hurriedly nodded.

“That’s right. No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired lately. I must have temporarily lost my mind.”

“See? What did I tell you? Didn’t I say getting plenty of rest was important? There’s no shortage of people who’ve gone crazy from working too much!”

“Yes, Laura. Everything you said was true. From now on, I’ll make sure to get plenty of rest whenever I have the opportunity.”

Only after I promised her that did Laura finally nod in satisfaction.

I secretly let out a sigh of relief.

Now, then.

“Speaking of which, I’m sorry, Laura, but I think I need to rest a little longer.”

With that, I asked her to leave for now, but Laura continued to look at me with concern until the very end.

“If you’re not feeling well, you must call for me immediately, all right?”

After she left, I was alone in the room.

Taking a deep breath, I unfolded the paper in my hand.

It was a letter that the version of me I had no memory of had apparently asked to be delivered to myself tomorrow morning.

[To Erna Zacherete.]

All right. Suspicious right from the start.

Who puts their full name on a letter written to themselves?

“It’s not as though you’re openly advertising that a third party wrote it.”

It felt dubious, but I suppressed my suspicions and began reading the letter.

[If you’re reading this letter, that means you’ve come back, right?

Everything is probably sudden and bewildering. It was the same for me.

It may be hard to believe…… but I came from another world.

A place called ‘Korea’ on Earth. There, my name is Park Sumin, and I’m 22 years old. I’m a university student.]

Earth? Korea? Where was that?

[One day, I dozed off for a moment while preparing a report, but when I opened my eyes, I was inside your body.

Erna Zacherete. I mean, literally inside your body.

And it didn’t take long for me to realize.]

What? Inside my body?

No, more importantly, she realized what?

[That this world is exactly like the contents of a novel I had read back there.]

“Exactly like a novel? What on earth does that mean?”

The flood of incomprehensible words made my head spin.

[To give you a rough summary of the novel, the female protagonist possesses the body of a saintess in a romance-fantasy world and goes around winning over the characters one by one in an adult harem story…… but I’ll skip the details.

Thanks to that, it was truly a dreamlike week. I stayed in a magnificent mansion, went to cafés in the city, and even drank tea elegantly. I also went shopping to my heart’s content.

Ah, I’m sorry for spending money without permission. I wanted to experience the life of a noble lady at least once♥]

I let out a small sigh at the hopelessly cheerful tone of the writing.

I was already overwhelmed by the situation, and this woman, who seemed to have nothing but flowers growing in her head, was driving me even crazier.

Perhaps she noticed how I felt.

[Don’t worry too much. I tried my best not to cause any trouble. There probably won’t be any major problems.

Still, I thought I should give you a report, so I briefly summarized what I did over the past week.

― Tea time at the Tea House

― Admiring masterpieces at the Gallery

― Watched three plays at the theater, .

.

.

.

Sorry. That’s about all I can remember.

I should have kept a record from time to time. Unfortunately, my memory isn’t very good.]

“Yeah. I can tell.”

At this point, I wondered if it would have been better if she simply hadn’t written anything at all.

Was she trying to make fun of me?

[Ah, I remember! And there’s one more thing.

This is really…… something I…… feel sorry about too…….]

What else is there?

The hesitation in the sentence was unmistakable, and there were an unusually large number of dots.

As anxiety slowly crept over me, I followed the trail of dots downward with my eyes.

And froze.

[……You slept with Leon Obsidian.]

“Holy shit.”

What kind of nonsense was this?

What? I slept with whom?

Leon Obsidian?

“Don’t tell me, ‘that’ Leon Obsidian?!”

Overcome with shock, I stood frozen for a long while.

Leon Obsidian. Who was he?

Well, for starters, he was the illegitimate son of the former Emperor and the current head of the Grand Duchy of Bernstein.

Furthermore, he was a handsome man renowned throughout the Orden Empire as the most beautiful man alive, as well as the richest man in the empire.

Hearing all that, one might think he was the perfect man.

But there was one enormous problem.

He was the commander of the Holy Knights who had sworn a ‘Vow of Purity.’

Because of this, there was a particular name by which he was known in Orden’s high society.

The ‘Greatest Marriage Scam of the Century’!!!

“But what the hell did I do with a Grand Duke like that?!”