CHAPTER~01
Dopamine Addict
It was pouring rain today.
The atmosphere felt like the opening of a ghost story, but I was in a fantastic mood.
No, I was ecstatic.
Because the psychopath who crawled into my bed every night to whisper how many people he killed and how he killed them was no longer by my side!
But this kind of life didn’t come for free.
It was a life I only achieved after cursing that psychopath, running away, and building a fake identity as a widow with about three ex-husbands.
Of course, rumors tied to that fake identity didn’t give me the best reputation.
‘But really, who would ever think someone like that is the former Empress?’
That was the whole point.
Goodbye forever, you garbage psychopath husband!
It was hell being with you, and let’s never meet again even in the next life.
Since this is my one shot as a transmigrator, I’m going to walk a flower path for the rest of my life.
Living my days rolling around lazily, eating expensive food, and eventually dying of old age didn’t sound bad at all.
I smiled contentedly and poured wine into a glass.
Crash!
Thunder struck outside the window.
“Ah, my wine!”
I mourned the wasted wine for a moment, then suddenly a memory resurfaced.
Someone from my memories had deliberately spilled wine on my foot and said with a blissful expression:
‘If I lick your foot right here, will it taste sweet?’
Ugh, disgusting.
At all times, why did I have to remember that dopamine-addicted bastard when looking at expensive wine?
Just thinking of him killed my appetite.
I was about to call a maid to clean the spilled wine.
“Please, help me!”
A woman’s desperate voice echoed from far outside.
I approached the window and peeked out.
A woman wearing a blue veil was lying on the ground.
And it was pouring rain.
Her thin body drenched in the downpour bothered me, but what truly caught my eyes was something else.
‘That blue veil… only the Emperor’s concubines are allowed to wear that.’
Come to think of it, I had heard strange rumors about the concubines recently.
Rumors like how multiple concubines entered the palace to replace the missing former Empress… and then all went missing themselves.
Crack.
A strange anxiety rose, and I bit my nails.
The woman spoke a sentence that nearly stopped my heart.
“Your Majesty the Empress, please stop His Majesty the Emperor!”
Damn it.
Someone please shut her mouth!
Forget how she figured out my identity—there was a more pressing issue.
Who knows how many more heart-stopping things she might blurt out?
I rushed out of the room.
Swoooosh—!
I hurried down to the mansion entrance and reached the woman kneeling in the rain.
“Empress? If someone hears that, I’ll faint—”
“Please, please! Your Majesty the Empress!”
“No… I’m telling you, I am not the Empress……”
“Please grant mercy and stop His Majesty! He’s imprisoning the concubines.”
Damn it.
I tried to ignore this, but this woman was fully convinced I was the Empress.
And based on what she said, that crazy Emperor must be causing trouble again.
As I struggled with a headache, the woman cried even harder.
“Please… please return to His Majesty and stop him… I beg you……”
“Sigh, at least get up first. You’ll catch a cold.”
“No. I won’t leave until you promise……”
Everything about this situation was a mess.
And if I turned away someone who knew my identity, there would definitely be consequences.
I held the umbrella over her head.
I planned to bring her inside to dry off, at the very least.
Fwoom.
“I… I think I have a fever… Could you maybe carry me?”
The woman suddenly collapsed against me, leaning close.
Close enough that her lips could brush mine.
The proximity made every hair on my body stand.
It was close enough to kiss—but one word caught my attention.
‘What… did she just call me?’
I froze.
“Did you just call me ‘my dear’?”
“Ah. Did I?”
The concubine smiled prettily at me.
A beautiful smile—yet somehow chilling.
My voice instantly turned cold.
“Take that veil off.”
“Huh? Why the veil…?”
A possibility struck me.
Because in this world, there was only one person who called me “my dear.”
“Take it off. Right now. Here.”
The woman clutched the veil tightly—then suddenly chuckled.
“Being pitied by you… was surprisingly thrilling.”
A gust of wind blew, revealing her entire face.
The long hair and lashes were gone.
White, snow-like short hair appeared along with sharp, striking features.
Her slender body stretched, broad shoulders emerging past the veil.
Her figure expanded with firm, toned muscles, growing until he towered a full two heads above me.
And to top it off, he lowered the veil slightly, revealing his neck and collarbones.
But one thing was certain.
“Pity… really isn’t my thing.”
Standing before me was the man I hated most in this world.
“I still love that contempt in your eyes.”
The Emperor of this Empire—Kallio—had appeared before me.
“My dear, have you been well?”
Kallio smiled slyly, eyes curving into a teasing crescent.
He lifted a bracelet-shaped magic restraint from behind him.
‘…Well, my ass.’
I want to live forever far away from you, you lunatic.
I turned my stiff neck away.
It seemed the chase with this crazy man was about to begin again.
Scheherazade.
The woman who survived a mad tyrant for 1,001 nights by telling him interesting stories.
In modern terms, she’s like an author who never missed a single update for 1,001 days straight.
Inspired by her, I once wrote a web novel based on Scheherazade.
The result was a spectacular failure.
Total chapters: 1001
Total views: 2500
Comments: 11
Total revenue: Not even enough to buy fried chicken.
After it was published, I never looked at my debut work again.
Using that failure as a lesson, I wrote around a hundred more works afterwards—print novels, paid serializations, everything.
Then while working on a contracted project, I died.
Cause of death: overwork.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Still, becoming a character inside a novel?
I grabbed the blue hair reflected in the mirror.
“Who even is this?”
I had no idea which character I had transmigrated into.
“And which novel is this supposed to be?”
I didn’t even know whose work I was inside.
With dazzlingly colorful hair everywhere in this world, I could only assume this was some fantasy novel setting.
“Damn it.”
Whatever this place was, I prayed it wasn’t one of my own novels.
Because in my novels, characters suffer until right before the ending.
The protagonist’s whole family died, and extras were crippled or killed.
Even though I wrote them, I never wanted to live in such a world.
A transmigrator should aim for a luxurious life followed by a peaceful natural death.
There was a small lamp next to the mirror, so I could at least see myself, but the rest of the surroundings were swallowed by darkness.
‘Great. Perfect setting to get stabbed out of nowhere.’
Wherever this was, the heavy, damp air made it feel like an assassin or trap could pop out any second.
No matter how I looked at it, this world wasn’t a healing story.
Just as I cautiously took a step—
Whack!
My nose hit something hard.
“Ow…!”
For a moment, I truly thought my nose bone cracked.
‘Did I walk into a wall? Why is it so hard…’
Then I saw the face in front of me and almost stopped breathing.
White hair as if dusted by a blizzard.
Fox-like eyes with a beauty mark.
The way those eyes curved looked like a smirking fox.
But that wasn’t why I froze.
“Is it you, my dear?”
A low, sweet voice wrapped around my ears.
“My wife for one night.”
This man valued thrill and pleasure above his own life.
A dopamine-addicted wife-murderer.
The sub male lead from my disastrously failed debut novel.
