Chapter 1
Seo Juha, in the body of an unfamiliar woman.
When she opened her eyes in the body of a young lady named Eleonore de Béarn, her first thought wasn’t some silly observation like, ‘What an unfamiliar ceiling.’
“This bed is ridiculously soft.”
Rubbing her heavy eyelids beneath elegantly curved lashes, Eleonore murmured to herself.
The canopy bed, draped with gauzy curtains, seemed to swallow her uncomfortably slender waist. It was also several times wider than her body.
To Seo Juha, who was used to a hard, cheap single mattress, this bed felt utterly unfamiliar.
“Ugh. This is seriously uncomfortable.”
The sleepy voice of a young girl filled the spacious bedroom.
It had been almost two weeks since she’d possessed the body of this blonde young lady.
And yet, she still couldn’t get used to this enormous bed, fit for a princess in a little girl’s cartoon.
And it wasn’t just the bed.
The walls and floor around her were made of stone in muted shades.
A chill seeped from the bare stone walls and floor, unlike anything she’d ever felt from faded wallpaper and sticky linoleum.
The furniture, made from genuine hardwood rather than cheap plywood or plastic, looked completely different at a glance.
Beyond the wood’s elegant grain, a rich scent of timber—both heavy and comforting—lingered in the air.
The skirt brushing over the pale skin on her inner thighs made her shiver with ticklishness.
The two mounds of flesh—though not particularly large—made their presence known whenever she moved, and they bothered her a great deal.
Everything she felt was so unfamiliar.
Among all these new sensations, Eleonore let out a small sigh.
And the first thing Eleonore did after getting up with a dry sigh was—
Pulling the service bell cord beside her bed was something she’d never once done in real life.
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That day had been ordinary, too.
No, it had been a little luckier than usual.
She’d started working the night shift at a convenience store, hoping to earn enough to cover her living expenses, even if she couldn’t pay her tuition herself.
In over a year of working there, it was the first time she’d had a quiet night without any obnoxious drunks.
There were hardly any customers, so naturally, the store was already clean without her needing to do a thing.
The shelves and refrigerators were just as tidy. She didn’t have to crawl into the cramped fridge or sweat buckets while restocking the shelves.
Her first peaceful night since starting the job.
Beyond the checkout counter, Juha spent the entire night absorbed in the tiny text on her web novel app.
As if that weren’t enough, for some reason, all the novels she’d bookmarked were updating with multiple chapters that day.
The good fortune that lasted all night didn’t end with a peaceful shift.
For some reason, the manager, who always showed up later than scheduled, arrived fairly early that day.
The register balanced on the first try, so Juha was able to leave the checkout counter earlier than usual.
After changing out of her shabby uniform, Juha was handed a lunchbox by the manager, as if he were doing her a favor.
It was the Double Max lunchbox, loaded with meat. It was pricey for a lunchbox, and its lavish contents were something she’d been eyeing for ages.
She didn’t think twice.
In case the manager changed his mind, Juha snatched the lunchbox right away.
Thanks to that, her usually exciting trip home was even more fun than usual that day.
She even found herself humming, swaying along to a girl group’s song through her cheap wired earphones.
And.
That was where her good luck ended.
She never got to taste the meat-packed Double Max lunchbox she’d been eyeing for so long.
As if it meant to claim the price of the good fortune she’d enjoyed all night—
A convenience store delivery truck came barreling toward Juha as she waited for the light at the crosswalk.
Under normal circumstances, she would have easily dodged it.
But she was already caught up in the music and had turned her phone’s volume way up.
And while waiting for the long light at a large intersection in the busy district, she’d been reviewing the web novel she’d read during her shift.
Beyond her tilted field of vision, what came to Juha’s mind wasn’t the memories of her life flashing before her eyes, as people often described it.
Simply because it was a tragedy.
Simply because it was a romance fantasy.
The latest novel by her favorite author, which she’d read only the prologue of before setting aside to binge later.
Every single line of that prologue—
Kept circling through Juha’s mind as her vision turned red.
‘If I’d known this would happen, I should’ve followed along instead of saving it for later.’
That was the last thought Juha had in her original world.
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“Come to think of it, I’m pissed all over again! I’m no Kim Cheomji! And what the hell is a reincarnation truck, anyway? Aaaargh!”
The sight of the young lady clutching her head and shouting nonsense had become familiar to the servants of House Béarn.
Their young lady had fallen unconscious and hovered near death from a mysterious fever.
The servants of the estate simply shrugged off her strange behavior.
That morning was no different.
The maids, dressed in black dresses with pristine white aprons, passed by their young lady as she clutched her head, pretending not to see her. Then, as usual, they paired off and set to work tidying the bedroom Eleonore had messed up through the night.
“You’re very late getting up. The young master is waiting for you in the dining room.”
The one who spoke to Eleonore was Manuela, the head maid of the estate.
With a stern-looking face behind square glasses, she approached Eleonore, her hands neatly clasped at her waist.
“If I’m late, you could come wake me up yourself.”
The young lady stopped her usual morning antics and answered in a sulky voice.
At the sight of her young lady’s puffed-out cheeks, Manuela coaxed and soothed Eleonore, just as she had ever since the girl woke up.
“I can’t just enter the bedroom of a young lady about to make her debut. Now, milady, please get up.”
The voice that came from the head maid’s lips was much softer than her stern appearance suggested. Manuela even smiled, though the expression seemed at odds with her face, and held out her rough hand to Eleonore.
But one word in that gentle voice made Eleonore shudder.
Milady?
Sigh. Milady, of all things. Me, a young lady!
It was stifling. She felt as if something were lodged in her chest.
It was like being forced into clothes that didn’t fit, so tight around the neck that she wanted to stretch the collar out.
Something she couldn’t put into words was welling up to the back of her throat.
Whenever the people of the estate called her a young lady, or treated her like one, Eleonore always felt this way.
But she couldn’t just let whatever was building up inside her spill out.
She’d never even been able to complain to her manager, who was late every day.
Besides, over the past two weeks, she’d seen with her own eyes how devotedly the people at the estate had cared for her.
Even Manuela, with her stern appearance, had burst into tears when Eleonore opened her eyes.
Seo Juha wasn’t the sort of person who could snap at people like that.
So Eleonore simply pressed her lower lip tight and took Manuela’s hand.
Manuela carefully helped Eleonore to her feet.
Manuela gently took Eleonore’s small, fair, soft hand—so different from her own rough one—and led her to the full-length mirror to the left of the dressing table.
The maids, who had finished tidying the bedroom, stood demurely behind Manuela.
Manuela’s white cuffs moved back and forth.
At that signal, the maids sprang into action once more.
Creeeak, thud.
The heavy wooden bedroom door made as much noise as it looked like it would before closing firmly once more.
At the rather loud sound, Eleonore swallowed hard.
“Milady, please excuse us.”
The girls’ voices echoed behind her.
With the most troublesome part of her day ahead, Eleonore steeled herself.
#.
The moment the words left her mouth, the girls came closer to Eleonore.
One began undoing the buttons of her nightdress over her small breasts, while another brushed through Eleonore’s tousled hair.
A third girl stood behind her, waiting with the clothes she was to change into.
And Eleonore herself, her face stiff with what could only be called a look as if she’d bitten into something foul, glared at the platinum-blonde woman in the mirror.
As the maids’ hands moved faster, the front of her dress opened wider and wider.
At the soft touch brushing over her collarbones and bare shoulders, Eleonore furrowed her neat golden brows.
The girl brushing her tousled hair from behind spoke to her through the mirror, her voice full of concern.
“Milady, are you uncomfortable?”
Clutching the large brush to her chest, the girl looked at her with wide, dewy eyes. Eleonore gently shook her head.
“No, Sophie. I’m fine.”
“Is there something you don’t like about your clothes? Should I bring you something else?”
“Mm-mm. I’m just a little tired.”
What would I know about women’s clothes after living as a man for twenty-one years?
Eleonore forced a smile as she answered.
Beyond the large mirror, she could see Manuela nod.
The maids, who had paused at Sophie’s worried voice, got busy again at Manuela’s nod.
One, two.
The buttons on the nightdress, which had seemed so complicated when she tried to undo them herself, were all undone before she knew it.
The white nightdress, which had been perched precariously over her small breasts, soon gave in to gravity and slid down over her pale legs.
At the same time, Eleonore’s slender shoulders trembled.
Was that just what a woman’s body was like?
Or was this young lady’s body unusual?
The feeling of soft fabric gliding over tender skin was far too stimulating for Eleonore, whose memories of being a man were still so vivid.
The way her breasts swayed after her shoulders trembled was just as bad.
Seriously… It’s my body, but even I don’t understand it.
In case another worried voice came her way,
Eleonore forced down the sigh that was about to escape and looked at the large mirror in front of her.
In the mirror, a blonde girl with a sullen expression and flushed cheeks glared at Eleonore, her pale body completely bare.
Objectively speaking, the woman in the mirror was beautiful.
She looked that way from Eleonore’s perspective, and from Seo Juha’s, too.
It was as if a character from a novel illustration had stepped right out of the page.
‘Ah… I was a character in a novel.’
As she slipped her arms into the white blouse held by one of the maids, Eleonore let the thought settle in.
Her tiny face was framed by translucent skin without a single freckle or blemish.
Her large, sky-blue eyes radiated a cool, refreshing clarity, even as she merely gazed at herself in the mirror.
Beneath her sharp nose, her tightly pressed lips were pink and moist, even though she’d only just woken up.
Her cheeks were inexplicably flushed, and her recent illness had made all her baby fat disappear.
The platinum-blonde young lady in the mirror had a distinctly ambiguous charm, somewhere between girl and woman.
It wasn’t just her face, either.
Her snow-white body was free of an ounce of extra fat, and her breasts and hips formed the elegant curves only a woman could have.
She might not have had a particularly voluptuous figure, but her curves were still enough to set men’s blood racing. The flush on Seo Juha’s—or rather, Eleonore’s—cheeks proved it.
Her long legs, stretched out beneath a sky-blue skirt, made Eleonore stand out among the girls around her, even though they were all about the same height.
‘Sigh. So what if I’m this pretty… What’s the point? There’s a grown man inside me.’
As she let the maids dress her and fasten her blouse, Eleonore thought to herself.