By Zephyria 
Crash! Bang!
“…I’m actually appalled by how well you’ve been doing without me. I feel neglected.”
Along with a thunderous roar, the voice of a man I wanted to forget but couldn’t echoed over the shattered front door. The moment I heard that voice, goosebumps broke out across my skin and my entire body turned cold. How hard had I fought to escape the palace and forget that man? No, how hard had I been trying to forget him….
After waking up as a character in this novel, I barely managed to change the flow of the story to escape the Imperial Palace without dying. I gave up the position of the Empress, the Emperor’s official spouse, and even the position of a Palace Lord, a concubine. Rather than giving them up, it would be more accurate to say I threw everything away and ran.
Since I knew the plot of the novel and the end that awaited the character I possessed, it was only natural to give up the spot beside this man if I wanted to keep living. After all, he was the man who had massacred both the original version of me and my entire family in the novel, and the situation hadn’t been much different when I left his embrace.
I had barely managed to throw down the divorce papers and flee; how on earth did he find out where I was? I thought he was getting along famously with his new Empress. I thought he had given up on me and my brother…
“Your Majesty, how did you find this place, and why….”
“…How many years has it been?”
“How did you find me?”
“Why do you think I ‘found’ you? I might have known all along.”
I stepped backward, watching his every move. He didn’t find me, but knew all along? Could it be… had he been watching me this whole time? He was exactly the kind of man capable of that. A chilling, strange feeling washed over me. Am I going to die just like in the original story?
The Grand Imperial Concubine in the novel died at twenty-five. I am twenty-five now…. No. In my original world, Korea, I had suffered terribly from a genetic disease and died after a long illness.
In this world, I had escaped the disease I so desperately wanted to be rid of and lived without the fear of death. And I had reunited here with my younger brother, who had died before me…. I had finally begun to slowly forget the Emperor and start living the life I truly wanted.
The Emperor, Joo Min-hyeok, slowly followed me as I backed away, cornering me. The look in his eyes was like that of a predator refusing to let its prey escape. It was the same gaze I had once loved. And looking into those eyes, I realized. The life I was living now—everything—had vanished into thin air in this single moment.
“Why? Is reuniting with me so horrific that you’re tearing up? I simply changed my mind. I realized that letting you go was an act of madness. I shouldn’t have let you leave when you said you were going. I’m too late.”
In the end, the words I least wanted to hear in my entire life came from his mouth. The man I had tried so hard not to love after possessing the novel. The man I had eventually given my whole heart to, but whom I could no longer trust, leading me to run away because I wanted to live.
I had been reborn as the most despicable concubine in an Omegaverse novel, the Emperor’s Omega who is eventually killed by his own hand.
∗ ∗ ∗
I always ran straight home after class. This was because my younger brother, who was three years younger and suffered from the same disease as I did, would be waiting for me alone.
As his health deteriorated, he began to look far too much like our father shortly before he passed away. Consequently, I had long since put off meeting friends to take care of my brother. My blood relative, who waited for me alone, was more important than friendships.
We had both inherited a congenital genetic disease from our father, and my brother’s symptoms were more severe than mine. My brother’s only joy was reading novels while waiting for me or spending time with my only friend, Hyun-wook.
“Seo-joo, I’m home. Did you eat and take your medicine? What, are you reading that again?”
I burst into laughter seeing Seo-joo, who was so absorbed in a web novel on his tablet that he hadn’t even noticed I had arrived.
“Hae-joo hyung, you’re here? The final volume came out, so I bought it right away. Come here and read it with me.”
“I lost interest after the Grand Imperial Concubine died. It’s just too unfair. He stayed by the Emperor’s side since they were young, only to be killed by the husband he trusted. What’s with that? It’s so futile.”
“I feel the same. The Grand Imperial Concubine was the most popular character. He was the most beautiful and had the best narrative; even though he was a villain, he was charming.”
I settled onto Seo-joo’s bed and lay flat on my stomach beside him to read the novel together. I was just glad that Seo-joo’s complexion improved, even if only while he read this novel.
The web novel my brother was obsessed with these days was a famous BL novel, a work whose title even people who didn’t know what BL was had heard at least once.
The setting was almost identical to modern Korea, but it featured an Emperor and nobility, and it was set in an Omegaverse. I suppose it was a relief that there were no slaves or untouchables. It was a world where the author’s preferences for settings and titles were freely applied, ranging from the Palace Lords—who were once called the Emperor’s daughters or concubines—to the Prime Minister.
The concept of a world where men could have children was very foreign to me at first, but the novel I read to converse with my brother was incredibly attractive and interesting.
It was a typical, cliché story about a Dominant Alpha Emperor and a Dominant Omega who became the Empress, who together wiped out the family of their enemy, the Grand Imperial Concubine, to build a happy home.
Terms like ‘Emperor’ and ‘concubine’ felt outdated, but blending them into the modern world we lived in gave them a certain charm.
Furthermore, there was a villainous concubine who was more attractive than the protagonist ‘bottom.’ Though his name was never mentioned, he entered the palace at the age of twelve as the highest-ranking concubine, the Grand Imperial Concubine, and became quite a loving couple with the Emperor.
No, they were always a couple that looked good together. The Emperor cherished the Grand Imperial Concubine the most. The finest items and the best food belonged to the Grand Imperial Concubine, and the Emperor spent many nights in the Grand Imperial Palace.
The Emperor’s devotion was absolute. I was horrified later to learn that the Emperor had been feeding the Palace Lord food containing contraceptives for years, but on the surface, he loved the Palace Lord.
Even the Grand Imperial Concubine’s family was powerful. Above all, his older brother, a soldier, had prevented numerous wars from the position of Brigadier General. With a brother who had contributed so much to the country, the Grand Imperial Concubine’s prestige was naturally sky-high.
And then, the protagonist, the Yeonghwa Palace Lord, finally appeared, and with his arrival, the Grand Imperial Concubine gradually lost favor. As for the rest of the story, it was a cliché plot where the Grand Imperial Concubine, driven mad by jealousy, tried to harm and kill the Yeonghwa Palace Lord countless times, only to be killed in return.
The author’s insane writing skill covered everything, but I hated the Emperor, who used the Grand Imperial Concubine from beginning to end, more than the Grand Imperial Concubine himself, who committed all sorts of corruption and evil deeds. How could the Grand Imperial Concubine say he loved the Emperor until the moment he died? Even for a novel, I couldn’t understand that feeling.
“Hyung, still, I envy the people in this novel.”
“What? What do you envy?”
“It’s a world where you can openly admit to liking men. I think it would be fun if I could live in a place like that. Even as a minor extra… if I were healthy and didn’t have to hide my feelings….”
“Huh?”
I couldn’t understand Seo-joo back then as he muttered with flushed cheeks. I didn’t know if he was too immersed in the novel, or if he was wishing for that instead of becoming a convenience store owner; regardless, I couldn’t grasp my brother’s words at the time.
I only realized the meaning of those words a while later, when Seo-joo passed away. I realized it while watching my friend Hyun-wook cry hysterically as he witnessed Seo-joo’s end. By the time I understood what it meant to not have to hide one’s feelings, it was already too late.
And perhaps because of the shock of losing Seo-joo first? My condition suddenly worsened severely, and exactly six months after Seo-joo left, I reached the end of my life at the age of eighteen.
Will I be able to meet my father who went first? And our Seo-joo? I miss him. I desperately miss my brother. I want to live together with a healthy body. If I could see my brother just one more time, I wouldn’t care if Seo-joo didn’t recognize me.
My mother, who had left home, never appeared, not when Seo-joo passed, nor when I died. I closed my eyes without even being able to comfort Hyun-wook, who had held my hand and stayed with me until the end, his face drenched in tears.
The life of Cha Hae-joo, a high school student in the Republic of Korea, ended like that. But strangely, my real life began after I died.
Was it because of the memory of the happiest times I spent with my brother, or because of my sympathy for the Grand Imperial Concubine? I woke up not in heaven, hell, or any afterlife, but in the bed of the Grand Imperial Concubine from the novel.
When I realized I had possessed a character in the novel, I thought my head would explode from confusion. What did it mean to wake up in the body of a Palace Lord with such a bad end? Was I being told to die again since I had already died once? Or was all of this a delusion?
If not that, was I spending time in the imaginary space that left the strongest impression before being reborn? I had no way of knowing. All I knew was that I was currently the fifteen-year-old Grand Imperial Concubine in this place.
I had certainly died, but for this to be my afterlife, everything was too vivid. The voices and breaths of the people calling me, and even the sensations of my own body.
And amidst that time of confusion, while I remained shut in my bed, something happened that forced me to admit that this world was not a fictional world from a novel, but the world I now belonged to.
That problematic Emperor came to find me.