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“I am an orphan who has no ties to this world, so I don’t really understand the grief of losing family well. Because of that, it seems I might not have fully grasped what was in your heart, Sir Hereis, after losing your family to your own family.”
-Ah.
-T_T
The protagonist looked visibly flustered, as if he hadn’t known about the life of the maid Belita.
Bringing up one’s own intimate story first is an implicit prompt for the other party to open up comfortably as well.
Furthermore, it serves as a gesture of reconciliation, essentially saying: I am sorry I didn’t recognize your feelings all this time, and I am trying to understand you now.
“Both of my parents were strict, but their excessive expressions came from an eagerness to raise me correctly; it wasn’t that I was unloved.”
Instead of giving a half-baked consolation, the protagonist replied calmly.
Since this meant he possessed the will to continue the conversation, I could view it as a positive sign.
“Does that mean you had a good relationship?”
“Yes…… Well, they did with me.”
“Then, did you come all the way here to exact revenge on Jeffrey Rubel?”
“Is that not obvious?”
The protagonist spoke with a cynical twist of his lips.
“Why? Am I not allowed to seek revenge? Because it is an immoral act that the Saintess’s companion shouldn’t commit?”
-Why is he suddenly flying off the handle?
-To be fair, his environment is exactly the type to make someone twisted~
-But he just feels like a child throwing a temper tantrum right now.
Averting my gaze from the protagonist, I stared off into the far distance with empty eyes.
“It seems I burdened you out of my own greed, Sir Hereis.”
“……”
“I merely wished to keep you by my side. Even to the point of weaving a lie that you are my companion. I am truly sorry. But I was anxious. Anxious that you might look at someone else who isn’t me.”
-???
-?????
“Even so, I hope you won’t worry too much. I shall be retiring shortly. When that happens, you will be liberated from the destiny of being my companion as well. You will become a free man.”
“No, wait a moment. What on earth do you mean by…?”
“Since you aren’t my real companion anyway, you have no need to concern yourself with me any longer. I hope this serves as an atonement for causing you such suffering.”
With my palms sweating, I secretly sneaked a glance at the protagonist while pretending to be calm.
The protagonist lost his words for a brief moment, and soon after, he covered his face with both hands.
Because his face was remarkably small and his hands were large, his ears were the only things visible to me, but I could tell with absolute certainty.
His two cheeks were burning a bright shade of pink.
“T-That means… the Saintess l-likes me…”
“I do. Romantically.”
-Wow, I did not expect a confession right here holy crap.
-Look at the protagonist blushing LMAO
-Doesn’t seem like he hates it?
“This confession isn’t just charity extended to use me once again, is it…?”
“I didn’t spin a lie to use you; I pulled a stunt because I wanted to be with you. I am sorry for causing a misunderstanding.”
As expected, even if it is categorized under dependence, a numerical value of 100 affection does not disappoint.
Then again, emotions are bound to be complex. While depending on me, it seemed he wasn’t entirely devoid of feelings in that regard either.
“I only wish that you won’t dismiss my feelings as a falsehood. I can swear this upon Ralphican.”
I had occasionally read and researched some romance novels inside the Great Cathedral’s library, and the people of this world seemed to really love it when you mixed an oath to Ralphican into conveying your sincerity.
“If that weren’t the case, why on earth do you think I’ve been keeping the women around you in check all this time?”
“Ah…”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
With his eyes wide open, the protagonist gave a nod.
Sensing victory, I desperately held back the corners of my mouth from curling up.
With a sufficiently ticklish atmosphere established, I rose from the stool and approached the protagonist.
“Sir Hereis. You are incredibly exhausted, aren’t you? Once this matter is completely resolved, how about going somewhere quiet together with me to rest?”
Saying it out loud, it felt exactly like a death flag line, but it didn’t matter.
Embracing my pounding heart, I extended my hand toward the protagonist.
The protagonist wore a blank face, but he didn’t look displeased.
“To tell you the truth, I am a bit exhausted myself.”
“You are too, Your Holiness…?”
“Yeah. To the point where I miss the times when I was just an ordinary Belita. Do you not miss it, Sir Hereis? The times when you were just an ordinary knight.”
Staring intently at the extended hand, the protagonist slowly raised his right hand.
Right at the exact moment our fingertips were about to touch, I pulled my hand back just a bit.
Left stranded in midair, the protagonist’s hand gave a hollow flinch.
Don’t be too disappointed.
My pulling back a single step is merely to gather a much greater momentum.
“For your information, this is a marriage proposal.”
!!!
I certainly wished that this would simultaneously resolve the mental state of the protagonist—who was behaving exactly like a person who had purchased a high-speed express ticket to a Bad Ending—and the proposal required for the quest all in one go.Hiding my anxiety, I pressed on.
“Taking my hand means…”
-Oh?
“I shall accept it as agreeing to the proposal—”
“There is an intruder! Search every nook and cranny!”
……!!!
-Wow, the timing.
-Is this the karma for crashing other heroines’ events all this time? LMAO
Oh boy, perhaps because the words were cut off, a choice window didn’t even pop up for Mo Je-won.
“F-For now, please give me an ans—gack.”
Growing impatient, I unconsciously demanded an answer, but I couldn’t finish my sentence.
It was because the protagonist roughly grabbed my arm.
“It seems we must push that to later.”
While he whispered directly into my ear, the sound of rhythmic footsteps grew increasingly distinct.
Without a moment’s notice, we hid ourselves among the scattered furniture without letting out a single breath.
Slam!
Ultimately, soldiers barged right into the place where we were located.
“Cough! Ugh, look at all this dust… Mmm, surely they wouldn’t be in a place like this~”
However, after casually glancing around the room twice, the soldier hummed to himself and walked away without conducting a proper search.
Having held our breath tightly to avoid letting out even a sliver of a sound, the two of us let out a sigh of relief simultaneously.
“We were fortunate.”
We managed to slip past the crisis thanks to a complacent, time-thief of a knight.
We untangled our bodies from where we had been squeezed between the furniture and dusted the grime off our clothes.
“It would have been highly problematic if we were caught.”
“Quite so…”
Since the knight came alone, we would have had to quietly knock him unconscious and flee or something.
Well, either way, a reasonable crisis is always bound to exist right before a Happy Ending.
At any rate, it won’t be too late to hear the answer to the proposal once we get out of here.
First, I should sound him out to see if he has completely abandoned his revenge.
“Shall we head back?”
When I expressed my surprise at the unexpected words delivered before I could even say anything, the protagonist awkwardly scratched the back of his neck, avoiding my eyes as if embarrassed.
-Oooo.
-He gave it up much easier than I thought.
It was difficult to say he gave it up easily.
In spite of the Emperor’s and my restraints, didn’t he fling his own succession ceremony out the window and come all the way here?
He had splendidly caused every single accident imaginable.
“No, well. It is far too noisy here anyway. Right? Belita…”
Belita, huh. It was the original name of the body’s owner, which I hadn’t heard in a very long time.
Perhaps because it was amusing to watch the protagonist ramble on explaining his reasons with an embarrassed face, a chuckle slipped out of me.
Faced with my reaction, the protagonist also flashed a bright, refreshed smile at me.
Ding!
-Wow, the final choice has popped up.
-Does this mean we’re seeing the ending?
-Let’s go for the ending~!
“Phew~ Giving up on a bloody revenge to promise a happy life with Belita. This is a rock-solid Happy Ending!”
-The culprit has been caught too~
-The Saintess route was really fun.
-I enjoyed the stream~ Je-won-nim!
-Are you satisfied with the ending?!
“I’m completely satisfied with this! If he’s together with Belita, Hereis will be happy too. Returning to an ordinary life as a married couple, after all!”
-Feels like this is the most refreshing ending?
-Are you going to check out the other endings too?
-But aren’t there still a lot of leftover plot hooks?
-The other routes leave way more plot hooks unresolved LMAO
“It was a long journey. After enduring the viewers’ persecution and slander, I finally get to see such a great ending like this.”
-???
-Us? When?
-We cheered you on all this time, and this is what we get T_T
“Ahahaha! I’m just joking. Since this isn’t the complete ending just yet. Alright, here we go!”
The moment Mo Je-won pressed “Positive,” a white light enveloped the screen.
Following that, Hereis appeared, choosing the most expensive diamond ring inside a luxury jewelry boutique.
Because he had been agonizing over how to give an answer to the proposal, a full week had already flown by since the day he was proposed to.
By tomorrow, Belita would be returning to the Holy State.
Hurriedly holding the ring, Hereis stood right outside Belita’s room.
Upon his knock, Belita, having sensed a presence, opened the door.
Hereis immediately dropped down to one knee and extended the ring he had prepared.
“Belita. Please spend the rest of your life with me!”
The weight of the ring held in his hand felt exactly the same.
Belita remained entirely silent.
Fearing that his answer might have been far too late, Hereis’s heart sank.
However, looking up at Belita, Hereis couldn’t help but let out a relieved smile.
It was because Belita, her eyes pooling with red, was shedding heavy tears sorrowfully.
Fuck. This is deeply moving.
It was so incredibly moving that tears burst out of me.
‘I can finally go back home!’
My life of struggling with the quests and trapped inside Belita’s body had truly, finally reached its exclamation point.
Tears poured out out of sheer joy like a broken faucet.
‘I didn’t even realize it myself, but I guess I must have been having a really hard time.’
While waiting for a whole week, I had been sweating bullets. That ultimate king of avoidant personalities, the protagonist, only came to give his answer on the absolute final day.
I can’t even put into words how grateful I am that Mo Je-won selected the option to accept the proposal.
Since that fellow probably thought he achieved a Happy Ending as well, I guess it’s a win-win for both of us.
‘I will absolutely repay you with a subscription, seriously…’
Furthermore, as they say that good things always rain down at once, Fredrick managed to capture Jeffrey alive.
The Emperor was apparently deeply shocked that a Swordmaster returned wounded, and they mentioned that there was a remarkably skilled individual on the opposing side.
“We had no choice but to shoot that fellow dead. He was far too threatening to leave alive…”
Well, anyway, taking advantage of him being captured alive, the Emperor fiercely pried into why he committed treason and what his hidden agenda was, but they reportedly gained absolutely nothing.
Even under brutal torture, Jeffrey didn’t open his mouth a single slit.
The protagonist also went to visit Jeffrey one last time.
Seeing Jeffrey locked inside a iron cage in a wretched state, he looked quite conflicted.
Even if he had tracked Jeffrey down himself, I wager the protagonist wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to kill him. From the start, the protagonist simply isn’t the type of character capable of murdering family.
To a kind-hearted protagonist like that, Jeffrey merely spat out the absurd remark that he wasn’t the one who murdered Robert.
Because he didn’t utter a single syllable regarding anything else, a thoroughly enraged Emperor ultimately reached the decision to execute Jeffrey tomorrow.
Staring intently at the ridiculously massive diamond ring, I thought to myself.
‘Will the quest clear the moment I accept this?’
Because the exact criteria hadn’t been specified, I couldn’t tell whether we needed to proceed all the way through a wedding ceremony to clear it, or if simply accepting the proposal was enough.
‘It’s a good thing I left that letter behind earlier.’
Before the protagonist arrived, I had written a letter for the real Belita, who might potentially return to her body.
If you woke up from a nap only to find yourself revered as a Saintess and turned into a Duchess on top of that, wouldn’t you be incredibly bewildered?
Not to mention suddenly having a husband.
‘Though if her husband is prime marriage material and the young master of the house she used to serve, I doubt she’d hate it.’
So I wrote down in meticulous detail exactly what had transpired during that time, how she ought to behave, and what she strictly must not do.
Since she would likely be highly startled by the massive shift in her circumstances, I even offered advice telling her to just pretend she lost her memory if all else failed.
‘I’ve done my fair share.’
It was something I had been thinking about for a while.
The quest to make Belita the Mistress of the Rubel Ducal House.
And the reward that promised to send me back to my original world once the quest was cleared.
Thinking about the consequences that would occur to those left behind after I cleared the quest, it was actually quite simple.
‘Belita survives and becomes the Mistress of the Rubel Ducal House.’
The entire purpose of the quest was solely for Belita’s sake.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that saving Belita from death and making her happy was the ultimate outcome the quest pursued.
Because I had been pushed into an extreme situation where my gender was swapped, it had merely felt like someone’s wicked, twisted prank.
Looking at the goal alone, it felt exactly like a desperate plea to salvage Belita’s life.
‘Man, I wish someone would hijack my body, make tens of billions of won, and then hand it right back to me.’
I am to the point of being envious of Belita.
‘Of course, it is quite pitiful, though.’
Being dog-ishly utilized by Jeffrey, only to be executed for a murder she didn’t even commit.
Above all, I feel pity for Belita’s loyalty, which was ruthlessly thrown under the bus by the person she trusted.
Perhaps Ralphican took pity on Belita and possessed me into her body, telling me to go ahead and fix her life up for her instead?
I should stop with these far-fetched assumptions right here.
At any rate, I had deliberately stuffed the letter in awkwardly so that she would inevitably be pricked and feel a sting every time she moved.
This way, she would notice the presence of the letter whether she liked it or not.
‘I wonder if Ilian is making good progress?’
Under my orders, Ilian had currently set out to find the real Saintess, Ivanke.
With the promise that we would publicly proclaim the existence of the new Saintess simultaneously with my declaration of retirement, that is.
‘Everything is perfect now.’
Seeing how desperately the protagonist was shaking from sheer nerves, I firmly grabbed the dynamically trembling diamond ring.
And then, I shouted.
“I-I’d love…! I, I want to do this marriage, t-too!”
Oh boy. Because I was nervous as well, the words came out sounding weird!
……!
Even so, seeing the heavy worry on the protagonist’s face instantly clear up into a bright expression, it seemed my meaning had been properly conveyed.
“T-Then, well…”
Fumbling around, the protagonist bolted up from his seat, pulled the ring out of its case, and slid it onto my finger.
And then, for some reason, his face started drawing closer…
No, to be precise, his lips were drawing closer!
‘This must be the f-final trial.’
Right. I can handle at least this much on my way out.
Checking the explosive reaction from the chat, I was right at the exact moment of closing my eyes along with him.
Ding!
What?
Before I could even process the thought further, a dizzying sensation of the ground collapsing beneath my feet hit me.
It was a sensation I had experienced before.
The exact same sensation from when I first dropped into this place and the prologue concluded.
The moment that fact dawned on me, my vision cut to pitch black.
As if laughing in the face of every single hardship I had endured up until now, blue windows began to pop up one after another.
“Belita!”
Faintly, I heard the protagonist’s voice reach my ears.
Clutching at a severe, burning agony twisting through my stomach, I coughed up a mouthful of something wet and viscous.
‘Is this blood?’
Just like that…
I died.
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