2. Escape in the Night

“How can she be so lovely.”

“She’s like an angel.”

“Her genes must truly be extraordinary.”

Kim Jihye regained consciousness to the sound of people conversing. She had clearly been in a traffic accident.

When she came to her senses, Kim Jihye was gone, and unfamiliar women were looking down at her.

‘……Where am I?’

“Poor Miss, I’ll protect you in place of your late mother.”

“No matter how cold His Grace the Marquis is, he would surely be captivated if he saw Miss’s face even once, but he never comes to visit. How heartless……”

Marquis?

As words that seemed to come straight out of a novel were exchanged, Jihye tried to speak, confused by what was happening.

“Aboo.”

‘Eh? Why are my words coming out like this?’

Kim Jihye reached out her hand in surprise.

She saw a tiny hand reaching toward the air. The joints were extremely short and small to be called a hand.

It was an infant’s hand.

“Oh my! Our Miss is awake?”

The woman who had called herself the wet nurse quickly stopped talking at the baby’s babbling.

As time passed, Kim Jihye realized that she was the small baby in the cradle.

‘Reincarnation.’

For some unknown reason, Kim Jihye seemed to have been reborn in an era clearly different from the Republic of Korea where she had originally lived.

And through the conversations between the wet nurse and the maids, she was able to learn a lot of information.

A week had passed when it happened.

Click. Kim Jihye turned her head at the sound of the door opening.

She thought it might be another chatty maid. However, contrary to her expectations, the heavy footsteps she heard were not those of a maid.

‘Who could it be?’

Her curiosity was short-lived.

The person who approached spoke in a dry voice.

“Is this the child?”

Soon a shadow fell over Kim Jihye, who was in the form of a newborn.

“Yes, Marquis. Isn’t Miss very beautiful?”

Gray hair and eyes devoid of any color. Though none of his features stood out in terms of color, perhaps due to the man’s deep facial features, he exuded a mysterious atmosphere.

Kim Jihye was about to open her mouth at his extraordinarily beautiful appearance.

“Adeline Credion, that’s her name.”

Severus Credion. The man never held his daughter despite her being his own flesh and blood.

He merely left the name the child would be called by and departed immediately.

‘Credion?’

That day, Kim Jihye received a new name.

Having never experienced having parents in her previous life, Adeline felt nothing special toward the indifferent marquis.

She only wondered where she had heard the familiar surname Credion before.

Thus, Adeline, born as the only daughter of the Credion marquis family, learned as she grew up that she had been born in the Soltarius Empire.

‘Soltarius Empire.’

The familiar empire name and family name gave her a sense of déjà vu, as if she had heard them somewhere before.

Before long, Adeline was able to identify the source of this uneasy feeling.

She recalled seeing it in that romance fantasy work she had glimpsed right before Kim Jihye’s life ended.

And only after realizing that she had been reincarnated into that web novel she had closed after reading just the introduction did she remember.

The Adeline that Kim Jihye had reincarnated into was.

‘The daughter of Marquis Credion.’

The third fiancée of the mad crown prince.

And a minor character in that crazy novel who would die at the young age of 24 at the hands of her fiancé.

⁕⁕⁕

The marquis family had not always been a prestigious noble family.

After the previous Count Credion passed away, the current Marquis Severus became the new head of the family and was elevated to a marquis family.

One day he suddenly entered central politics, gained enormous power, and now there was hardly anyone in the empire who didn’t know the name “Credion.”

Generation after generation, the people of the Credion marquis family possessed cold gray eyes.

Though their eyes were cold enough to freeze onlookers, people unanimously declared:

They must be descendants of angels who had fallen to earth.

With their beautiful appearance, not only nobles but also commoners knew of their looks.

This was true not only for Marquis Severus but also for his only daughter and heir, Adeline.

This life came with plenty of money and high status.

Even a refined appearance that resembled the marquis. It seemed she had all three advantages.

But Adeline always felt anxious.

The passage from the novel that had caught her eye right before she died.

A minor character among minor characters who, despite belonging to the notorious marquis family, would end her life at the tender age of 23. She knew this was her future.

Not knowing the entire content of the novel, Adeline felt extremely uneasy about that one passage she had seen before dying.

“I can’t die like this.”

Adeline began to prepare to avoid the future that might actually happen.

She had no intention of staying in the marquis family when she knew she would die.

She planned to leave the marquis family and live alone if necessary, and to prepare for that, she started building her personal assets.

Being in her second life, it was easier to create personal funds by managing the abundant money.

Adeline diligently saved money using her allocated allowance and expensive accessories.

Meanwhile, she tried to understand the world of this novel.

To do so, she wrote down what she remembered from the comments she had seen in her previous life.

People who cursed at how the crown prince could be the male lead. If the crown prince who would kill Adeline in the future was truly the male lead.

‘I must avoid the engagement with the crown prince at all costs.’

She couldn’t recall all the comments she had seen.

But among the numerous comments, there was one that stuck in her memory.

□□□□□□(xxxx***) Even in a remote village, how can there be no one staying at a duke’s villa? How does an injured duke die from excessive bleeding? It seems obvious the duke is the male lead, and if the duke dies, this novel is doomed.

Though the ID was blurry, this person’s comment stood out among the countless curses against the crown prince.

This person speculated that the male protagonist was not the crown prince but a duke.

‘In this novel, the duke is……’

There was only one. Duke Torpeo.

Adeline decided to believe that comment.

If there was a possibility that the duke was the male protagonist of this novel, she thought her life might change if she saved him.

Her predetermined death in the novel was on her 24th birthday.

Adeline had people watch over Duke Torpeo until she received a marriage proposal.

Since she didn’t know when the duke would be dying at his villa.

She believed that all she needed to do was have someone ensure the duke’s safety.

But life didn’t go according to Adeline’s plans.

A week after her late debutante ball at the age of 23,

Perhaps because Adeline’s beauty couldn’t be hidden.

The crown prince’s second fiancée died in a mysterious accident, and a month later, the fateful letter arrived.

⁕⁕⁕

The marquis had been consistently indifferent to Adeline from the moment she was born until now.

He never cared about how much she spent or what she did.

Even during dinner time, the only occasion they met, they merely shared the space without any meaningful conversation.

And that remained the same even now that Adeline had become an adult.

Inside the dining room where only the clinking of tableware could be heard.

The marquis and Adeline sat facing each other across the long table. The atmosphere between them was too bleak to be considered a father-daughter relationship.

Today was no different from other days. Adeline was quietly continuing her meal when it happened.

“Adeline.”

It was Marquis Credion who broke the silence first.

“Yes, Father.”

Their eyes met for the first time since entering the dining room.

Adeline swallowed hard as she saw the marquis’s expressionless gaze.

“A marriage proposal has come from the imperial palace.”

Adeline dropped her utensils at the news of the marriage proposal she had expected to receive only at the age of 24.

Like a broken machine, Adeline muttered to herself.

“Th-that can’t be.”

A marriage proposal from the crown prince? Why now when the proposal was supposed to come a year later?

Adeline’s eyes wavered aimlessly.

However, the marquis, seemingly unconcerned with Adeline’s reaction, simply handed over the marriage proposal.

“His Highness the Crown Prince wishes to be engaged to the Credion family. The engagement will be at the end of this month. Prepare accordingly.”

With these final words, the marquis wiped his mouth and left his seat.

‘Why has the marriage proposal come now?’

There was still a year left until the scheduled time.

Adeline sighed.

Seeing the marquis tell her to prepare, it seemed her opinion on this engagement was not important.

The imperial family and the marquis had probably discussed this in advance.

She couldn’t die like this.

What kind of new life had she obtained?

The marriage proposal was mercilessly crumpled in Adeline’s hand.

Before she could save the duke, Adeline herself was about to cross the river Jordan.

Adeline made up her mind.

‘Yes, let’s run away first.’

If she waited, the duke might come to the villa after being injured.

So, if she escaped now and hid at that villa, she might eventually encounter Duke Torpeo.

That was the best option for now.

Thus, feeling as if death was approaching right before her eyes, Adeline hastily packed her belongings and escaped in the night.