RVCM | Chapter 004

Chapter 004

A stifling atmosphere filled the carriage.

“If you came to visit me and then ask who I am, what kind of answer do you expect me to give?”

“You were saying you loved me with tears in your eyes and that you knew I’d come to find you, but now you act like you don’t know me?”

“Your Highness the Grand Duke threatened me to pretend to love you. So I did as you told me to get out of that asylum. Do I have to keep acting here and say I know you?”

“You already know who I am. You reacted the moment you heard my name earlier, and now you say you don’t know me?”

“Are there any nobles who don’t know who Grand Duke Theodore is?”

Annette’s expression didn’t change in the slightest.

Theodore closely observed her face as she deflected his words.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Annette Cheringen.”

“No, I’m not asking about something trivial like a name. I know this face is Annette’s.”

Theodore raised his index finger, pointing first at Annette’s head, then lowering it toward her chest to indicate her heart.

“I’m asking who you are here, inside.”

“I can’t understand what you’re saying at all.”

Theodore moved from his seat opposite Annette to the one beside her and sat down; then he grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at his face.

“Listen. From now on, don’t keep up this act in front of me. I’m not the one you need to deceive—only the others.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean.”

“Your identity. What was your real identity before you entered Annette Cheringen’s body?”

“What do you mean by entering… Huh?”

Annette couldn’t finish her question.

That was because Theodore began turning her face from side to side, examining her features with intense focus.

“You really seem like a different person despite having the same face. Am I going mad or what?”

Theodore recalled the Annette who had come to meet him at the hunting grounds under the rain.

“Would Your Highness believe me if I told you this world is a world within a book?”

That girl who had told him the secret of this world and then suddenly left in the rain.

Annette had disappeared since the day she visited Theodore, retreating into seclusion without attending any parties or social gatherings.

Then…

A murder took place at the Cheringen estate.

“The next time you see me, I won’t be me.”

Indeed, the Annette Theodore met again was different.

Her behavior hadn’t changed much—she still dared to meet his gaze directly without fear—but the aura surrounding her had noticeably shifted.

“Could it be that you’re twins? But I’ve never heard of the Marquis having another daughter out of wedlock.”

Theodore lifted Annette’s chin.

Annette didn’t push his hand away, but she didn’t hide the clear displeasure on her face at his touch.

She looked like a fierce cat baring its claws, ready to pounce.

“Or perhaps you have a split personality? These days, people studying psychiatry—or something like that—in the newspapers talk about a strange mental illness called <dissociative personality>.”

Finally, Annette grabbed Theodore’s impudent hand and pushed it away from her face.

“I’m Annette Cheringen. I don’t have a twin sister, and I only have one personality. I’m not comfortable discussing your suspicions about my father’s personal life, so stop playing with words.”

“No, you’re not Annette. You said so yourself.”

“Did I say that?”

“Rain. Hunting grounds. Pistol.”

Annette thought about the meaning of “rain,” “hunting grounds,” and “pistol,” but she couldn’t recall anything.

It must have been something the villainess Annette said outside the novel’s script, so she had no way of knowing what it meant.

“The fact that you show no reaction after hearing these words is proof you’re not Annette.”

The fact that she had to think about words whose meaning should have come to her immediately was evidence she wasn’t the Annette who came to the hunting grounds.

“They also said at the hospital that you kept telling them you’re from outside this world and that you know the future by reading the ending of this novel in a book.”

Annette clenched her fists to suppress her frustration.

Theodore had already investigated everything that happened to Annette at the hospital.

Moreover, he somehow knew her true identity.

“That… They treated me like I was crazy, so I made up that story to match. Your Highness may not know this, but being locked in a room without sunlight is extremely boring.”

Annette kept moving her lips, searching for an excuse.

She wanted to deny his words first, but she knew poor excuses wouldn’t work.

She never thought the words she had spoken randomly, believing she was going to die anyway, would come back to haunt her like this.

Nor did she ever think anyone sane would seriously listen to what she was trying to say to sound like a madwoman.

Of course, her words were true, but it was hard for anyone in this world to accept them as such.

“You said that we—you and I—are the villains in this story.”

“Villains?”

“That’s what you said before you became someone else. You said this world is just a lie and that the main characters in it are Hugo and Yvonne.”

With every word Theodore spoke, Annette found it harder to hide her nervousness, so she tried to mask her shock by biting her lip.

Something Annette said before she became someone else?

If that was the case, it meant the Annette in the book knew in advance about the current Annette’s reincarnation into her body.

How in the Creator’s name could that happen?

Despite being preoccupied with her shock, her lips kept conjuring excuses, as if she were still trying to hide her identity from Theodore.

“I don’t know who told you that, but I didn’t expect Your Highness to believe such nonsense.”

“Annette Cheringen told me that. If you ask whether I believed her or not… Honestly, I didn’t believe anything she said, but I thought it would be amusing to see her fooled by her own words.”

Theodore was a man who doubted even his own feelings.

He wasn’t someone easily swayed enough to immediately believe the words of Annette, who had a bad reputation in social circles.

So when Annette came to meet him at the hunting grounds, with the sky pouring rain, Theodore assumed she was just a crazy woman wandering around.

However, the series of events that followed were too logical for him to simply dismiss as nonsense.

Marquis Cheringen was killed, and his daughter was accused of the crime.

A trial was supposed to take place, but the accused, who was to be interrogated, disappeared.

“She expected that she would leave this world and that her body would vanish, so she made me play the intermediary to find you.”

Theodore wasn’t interested in people, but Annette’s nonsense was so plausible that it sparked his infuriating curiosity.

Moreover, even if he tried to ignore it, he had no choice but to get involved.

The pistol that killed the Marquis was found at the crime scene, and it was the same pistol Annette had taken from Theodore at the hunting grounds.

Annette had set a trap to involve Theodore in this case somehow, so he had no choice but to summon Hans.

“Go find that woman.”

When Theodore ordered his aide to find her, he seemed crazier than the woman spouting nonsense, but he had no other option.

After that, Pandora’s box was opened, and Theodore eventually found traces of Annette.

“There’s a crazy woman in Elysia Asylum claiming she knows the ending of this world.”

Theodore never thought she would speak so openly about evidence leading to her, and he felt disappointed after hearing about her life in the mental hospital.

That woman, who didn’t even know how to hide her identity, didn’t seem to have any special abilities.

Yet, the reason he came here was that he couldn’t forget the look in Annette’s eyes at the hunting grounds.

Her stubborn personality had piqued his bothersome curiosity.

“I didn’t expect you to disappear like this when you asked me to find you.”

Annette opened her mouth in despair.

“What difference does it make if I really am from another world?”

“It increases your usefulness and value.”

“I’ve been accused of being a murderer, and my reputation in social circles was already terrible before that happened. Logically, Your Highness, since I’m from another world and know all this, you must already know the general situation here better than I do. So, where do you plan to use me like this?”

“At the imperial palace.”

Theodore’s eyes gleamed.

They were like the eyes of a beast preying on its target, and his intentions were clear.

“Annette Cheringen.”

He looked at her slyly, wearing the expression of a very satisfied predator.

“Use the future you know to put me in the position of Emperor.”

“What will I gain from that?”

“You dare to make a deal with me?”

“Making an Emperor is a daunting task, so I should gain something too.”

Annette’s words were so clear they lingered in Theodore’s ears.

It was the first time a woman dared to demand something from Theodore in return.

“Isn’t the fact that I got you out of that hell enough compensation?”

“If you save someone who was supposed to die, you have to take responsibility.”

“I’ll return you to your original world.”

“What did you say…?”

“I know how to send you back to where you came from.”

Annette stared at Theodore without blinking.

For the first time, the woman who had maintained an indifferent demeanor in front of him couldn’t hide her bewilderment.

She had never considered that there might be a way to return.

Since she didn’t know why or how she was reincarnated into this place, she had assumed there was no way back to her original world.

But how in the Creator’s name could a villain destined to be destroyed without being able to save his own life know how to return her to her world?

“I know how to send you back, and you know how to make me Emperor. That seems like a fair enough trade to move forward, doesn’t it?”

Annette remained silent, and thanks to that, only the clattering sound of the moving carriage could be heard.

After a while, Annette took a breath as if she had made her decision, hid her trembling fingertips with both hands, and slowly opened her dry lips.

“I’ll ask you just one thing.”

“What?”

If this man truly knew how to return her to her world, she could only think of one possibility.

“Do you have anything to do with my coming to this world?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Your Highness said you could tell whether my words were lies or not, but I’m the one who knows your future and your death.”

Theodore’s mouth grew drier the more he spoke with Annette.

In this situation, Theodore craved to hear more from this mouth that responded to every word he said, and he looked forward to seeing it spew lies and wicked words in front of the crown prince.

“Answer me. I’m asking if you are the one who summoned me to this world!”

After Annette’s fierce questioning, the answer finally came.

“Well, it was me.”

“You bastard.”

Profanities poured from Annette’s mouth without hesitation.

She did this to fight back the urge to shed tears.