1. I Became a Terminally Ill Extra Who’s About to Die Soon

I was a maniac for romance fantasy web novels with cider-like plot twists.

The world of web novels, which I discovered amidst my annoying daily life, was fantastic.

‘Sis, dump that guy and grab a new Benz!’

Every time the female lead dumped a crappy guy who cheated with another woman and switched to a handsome man, my wallet opened without hesitation.

The female leads ditched the crappy guys, bankrupted them, gave a hard time to their betraying close friends, and increased their wealth.

Crying over hardships was not something a cider-like female lead would do.

For someone like me, living in a frustrating reality, the protagonists in web novels provided vicarious satisfaction.

Watching rofan female leads bury all sorts of crappy guys in the ground was incredibly refreshing.

Each time, I expressed my gratitude to the author with generous payments and comments.

‘Author, please continue writing!’

After reading so many rofans, I sometimes imagined myself transmigrating in a romance fantasy novel. I’m the only daughter of a prestigious family with money and fame, but there’s a rumor that I’m a villainess, and my fiancé demands a breakup.

‘Really? Okay. If you don’t like me, I don’t want that marriage either. But since it’s the Duke who wants to break off the engagement, I should receive a large compensation for my honor.’

Then, I would coolly fix the breakup papers and attend a party to hunt for a new man with a ‘snap!’ People would look at me with envy while I enjoyed the social scene, even as they criticized me for the jewelry I wore!

‘The Black Rose of the Ines Ducal Family’ or something like that. If I were to give myself a nickname, that would be just right.

I was ready to secretly run a mercenary group, take on the protagonist’s requests, enjoy festivals, and even crash a slave market.

Not an extra who gets a single line and then erased from existence in the original work.

Not an extra who dies a tragic and short life.

Not an unfortunate, mistreated extra!

“But to become an extra wife who briefly marries the original male lead and then gets assassinated, are you kidding me? Is my life terminal? I want a refund!”

One day, while fighting with my mean step-siblings, I died in an accident.

When I opened my eyes, it was the world of the novel. Well, these days, readers of transmigration stories are all prepared to be transmigrated into their favorite novels if they die while reading.

The problem is…

“Miss Annette!”

“Is this… me?”

The name of the body I possessed was Annette Poche. The unnoticed and mistreated eldest daughter of the Poche marquis family, the extra who was merely the wife of the original male lead and dies right after being mentioned as married to him!

That was me.

“Alright, let’s spin the transmigration roulette again.”

As a romance fantasy enthusiast, after quickly assessing the current situation, my judgment was this: if I’m going to follow the rofan route, I need to abandon this body. There’s no answer.

Anyway, the fact that I transmigrated  into a novel was an impossible situation in itself. Since I’m already dead, I should spin the transmigration roulette one more time and hope to land in a story like ‘I Was the Youngest Daughter of the Tyrant Emperor’ in my next life.

I can be cute and adorable if the tyrant emperor hands me gold bars.

I admit it. I was a bit crazy back then.

‘The courage you have now determines the rest of your life as a transmigrator.’

“Miss Annette, what are you doing right now!”

“Let go of me, I need to enter another story!”

“Is this lady really crazy!”

My attempt to quickly restart by banging my head against the wall was unfortunately thwarted.

The servants, who usually didn’t care about Annette, were suddenly so attentive.

I ended up being tightly bound and confined to my room.

“No! If only I could cheat when the story first started! I’m not Annette, I’m not!”

“Are you going to keep spouting nonsense after eating expensive meals? No matter how much you don’t want to get married, is this how you should act? Calm down and gather your thoughts!”

Thus, my attempt at denying reality was thwarted.

‘God, please! I’d rather be a villainess who got dumped; at least she has money and fame!’

But Annette had nothing. Not even her lifespan.

Locked in Annette’s room, starving for a day, I thought, isn’t God being too harsh?

In my previous life, I was a child from a remarried family. My mother had passed away, and my father remarried a new mother as if he had been waiting for my mother to pass.

And that was the same situation for the body I possessed, Annette.

‘Could it be that I’m given this role because I don’t have a mother and my father remarried? Because I’m just like her?’

I couldn’t find any other connection between Annette and me.

In my previous life, I was the daughter of an ordinary family, but Annette was the daughter of a great noble family.

In my previous life, I didn’t want to hear that my new mother discriminated against her stepdaughter, so I pretended to care on the surface, but Annette didn’t even have that. Despite being the daughter of a marquis, her room was old and cold, and the servants ignored her.

‘Even her marriage with the male lead is already confirmed.’

Didn’t the maid say earlier that I’m putting on a show because I don’t want to get married? It felt like she was declaring that I didn’t have much time left until my death.

The male lead was a man for the female protagonist. So to touch such a man?

‘That’s why you meet an assassin and die!’

This novel, ‘The Abandoned Saintess Goes to the Northern Grand Duke,’ was the first rofan novel I ever read.

As the title suggests, the saintess and the grand duke are the main characters, and the story is about them joining forces to defeat the demon king.

Annette Poche was an extra who couldn’t even become a villain in this novel.

The male lead was an excellent lord who loved the north, but the north was always a poor land.

At this time, the wealthy southern Poche family, which had a bad relationship with the north, proposed marriage with a dowry, and the male lead accepted a wife without love.

The male lead, who married Annette without love, sent her to a separate palace and deliberately neglected her, and Annette lived a lonely life in neglect until she was suddenly killed by an assassin.

Upon hearing of Annette’s death, the male lead showed no particular reaction.

‘That’s unfortunate.’

The male lead expressed his condolences and then met his true love, the female lead, and lived happily ever after, which is the story of ‘The Abandoned Saintess Goes to the Northern Grand Duke.’

As a reader, it was fun, but now that I see it, if Annette had seen it, she would have been so frustrated that she might have come back as a ghost.

‘If I had possessed Evangeline’s body, I would have boldly declared that the lonely Grand Duke of the North, Darius, is my man.’

Knowing in advance what would happen in the novel, I wouldn’t have worried.

But Annette was an extra with not much time left to live, regardless of the events in the novel.

‘No, wait. Even if I’m Annette, I still know what’s going to happen in the future, right?’

The problem with Annette was that she was sent to a separate palace right after marriage and met an assassin before she could live a different life, wasn’t it?

So… what if I change that route?

For example, if I use my knowledge of the original work to let Darius know what’s going to happen to him and prove that I’m helpful to him?

Then Darius wouldn’t have a reason to send me away, right? Then I wouldn’t meet an assassin, would I?

By staying by Darius’s side, helping him, watching him meet the female lead, and staying quiet, maybe I could start a second life different from the original?

‘Yeah, extras who help the protagonist have a significantly higher chance of survival!’

I clenched my fist and made up my mind.

After the commotion of the first day passed, I quietly assessed the situation. If I had to continue living in Annette’s body, the longer I stayed confined, the more I would lose.

When I stopped shouting and kept my mouth shut, the servants untied the ropes binding me with sharp glances.

“The Grand Duke will be here soon, so don’t do anything foolish and change your clothes!”

The maid leading the charge against me was Annette’s nanny.

〈The young lady has come to her senses!〉

The first voice I heard when I woke up in Annette’s body was also the nanny’s voice.

As a longtime rofan reader, I’ve statistically determined that when a female lead wakes up after losing consciousness, the person who says, “The young lady has woken up!” is 51% likely to be the female lead’s loyal maid. The remaining 49% are those who bully or try to exploit the female lead.

Sadly, this nanny did not fall into the loyal maid category.

Even though she was the closest to Annette and should have protected her, she was the one who bullied Annette the most.

How did I know?

Flap.

A bookshelf tightly bound with leather straps fell over.

What I held in my hand was Annette’s diary. When I first discovered it, I was a bit overwhelmed. There were dozens of volumes.

‘Why does she have so much to say?’

That’s what I thought.

“‘After my stepmother scolded me, the nanny called me aside and advised me. She said, ‘Miss, you have a habit of saying things in an unlikable way, so why don’t you try not to speak in front of others as much as possible?'”

“Wow. This house is really good at killing spirits.”

Each page of the diary was a record of how Annette lost herself and became timid.

‘Thanks to it, I was able to know what kind of place this mansion was and how Annette lived as if I had experienced it myself.’

<Are you uncomfortable being with me now? Why do you have such an expression while eating?>

<When an adult speaks, you should at least pretend to listen. Again and again, you’re not fully opening your eyes to what’s being said.>

<I was born with these eyes. If you’re so concerned, give me the money, and I’ll get surgery to fix the impression they leave. But if you’re not going to help, don’t tell me how I should look… Ah!>

Heh. Remembering the conversations that always took place at home, I couldn’t help but laugh.

To be honest, it was a familiar situation for me too. The difference was that Annette couldn’t respond, and I would retort with my head held high.