A stuffy atmosphere filled the carriage.
“If you came to visit me and then asked who I am, what answer would you expect me to give you?”
“You used to say you loved me with tears in your eyes and that you knew I would 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 what you told me so I could get out of that asylum.
Should I continue to act here as well and say that I know you?"
"You already know who I am.
You reacted as soon as you heard my name earlier and now you're saying you don't know me?"
“Are there nobles who do not know who Grand Duke Theodore is?”
Annette's expression didn't change at all.
Theodore watched her face intently as she refuted his words.
"Who are you?"
“I'm Annette Scheringen.”
“No, I'm not asking about something as trivial as a name.
I know that face is Annette's.”
Theodore raised his index finger and pointed first to Annette's head, then lowered his finger to her chest and pointed to her heart.
“I'm asking who you are inside.”
“I can't understand what you're saying at all.”
Theodore moved from his seat, which was opposite Annette, to the seat next to hers, and sat down beside her; Then he grabbed her chin and made her look at his face.
“Listen.
From now on, don’t keep up this act in front of me.
It’s not me you should deceive, you should only deceive others.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Your identity.
What was your true identity before you entered Annette Scheringen’s body?”
“What do you mean by me getting into...huh?”
Annette couldn't finish her question.
It was because Theodore began to turn her face from side to side to examine her features with intense concentration.
"You look like a really different person even though you have the same face.
Am I going crazy or what?"
Theodore remembered Annette, who had come to meet him at the hunting ground in the rain.
“Will you believe me, Your Highness, if I tell you that this world is a world in a book?”
That girl who told him the secret of this world and suddenly left in the rain.
Annette has been missing since the day she visited Theodore, and has gone into seclusion without attending any parties or social gatherings.
Then…
A murder has occurred at Scheringen Palace.
“Next time you see me, I won't be me.”
Certainly Annette, whom Theodore met again, was different.
Her behavior had not changed much, as she still dared to open her eyes directly in front of him and stare into his eyes without fear, but the atmosphere around her had changed noticeably.
“Is it possible that you two are twins?
But I have not heard of the Marquis having another child out of wedlock.”
Theodore lifted Annette's chin.
Annette did not move his hand away, but she did not hide the displeasure evident on her face at his touching her.
It looked like a ferocious cat baring its claws and preparing to pounce.
“Or maybe you have a dual personality?
These days, people who study psychiatry - or something like that - say in the newspapers that there is a strange mental illness called ‘schizophrenia’.”
Finally Annette took the impudent Theodore's hand and held it away from her face.
"I'm Annette Scheringen.
I don't have any twin sisters, and I only have one personality.
I'm not comfortable talking about your doubts about my father's personal life, so stop playing with words."
“No, you're not Annette.
You said it with your mouth.”
“Did I say that with my mouth?”
“Rain.
Hunting ground.
Gun.”
Annette thought about the meaning of “rain,” “hunting ground,” and “gun,” but she couldn’t remember anything.
This must have been something the evil Annette had said outside of the script of the novel she had read, so she had no way of knowing what it meant.
“The fact that you don't react after hearing those words is proof that you're not Annette.”
The fact that she thought of words whose meaning should immediately come to her mind was proof that it was not Annette who had come to the hunting grounds.
“They also said at the hospital that you kept telling them that you were from outside this world and that you knew the future by reading the end of this novel in a book.”
Annette clenched her fists to suppress her displeasure.
Theodore had already investigated everything that happened to Annette in the hospital.
Moreover, he somehow knew Annette's true identity.
“This… They treated me like I was a crazy person, so I created this story accordingly.
Your Highness may not know this, but being locked in a room without sunlight is very boring.”
Annette continued moving her lips and looked for an excuse.
She wanted to deny him first, but she knew that bad excuses wouldn't work.
Annette never thought that the words she said randomly, because she thought she was going to die anyway, would come back to her like this.
She also never thought that any sane person would seriously listen to what she was trying to say to sound like a crazy person.
Of course what she said was true, but it is difficult for anyone in this world to accept him as he is.
“You said that we - you and I - are the villains in this story.”
“Bad guys?”
“That's what you said before you became someone else.
You said that this world is a lie and that the two main characters in it are Hugo and Yvonne.”
Every time Theodore spoke, Annette found it difficult to hide her nervousness, so she tried to hide her surprise by biting her lip.
The thing Annette said before she became someone else?
If so, this means that the Annette in the book was aware of the current Annette being reincarnated into her body beforehand.
How in the world could this happen?
Even though she was busy being surprised, her lips continued to make excuses as if she was 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 this nonsense.”
“Annette Scheringen is the one who told me this.
If she asked me whether or not I believed her words… I honestly didn’t believe anything she said, but I thought it would be fun to see her fooled by her words.”
Theodore was a man who doubted even his own feelings.
He was not such a docile person as to immediately believe the words of Annette, who had a bad reputation in social circles.
So when Annette came to the hunting grounds to meet him, it was raining and Theodore assumed she was just a crazy woman wandering around.
However, the series of events that happened next didn't make sense for him to simply ignore her as just talking nonsense.
The Marquis Scheringen was murdered and his daughter was accused of the crime.
A trial was also scheduled, but the accused who was scheduled to be interrogated disappeared.
“I expected that she would leave this world, and that her body would disappear, so she made me play the role of mediator to find you.”
Theodore was not interested in people, but Annette's nonsense was so plausible that his curiosity exasperated him.
Moreover, even if he tried to ignore it, he had no choice but to participate.
The gun that killed the Marquis was found at the crime scene, and it was the same gun that Annette had taken from Theodore in the hunting grounds.
Annette had set up an ambush to somehow involve Theodor in this case, so he had no choice but to call Hans.
“Go find that woman.”
When Theodore ordered his assistant to find her, he looked like he was even madder than the woman who was talking nonsense, but he had no choice but to do so.
Pandora's box was then opened, and Theodore finally found traces of Annette.
“There is a crazy woman in Elysia Mental Asylum who claims to know the end of this world.”
Theodore had never thought that she could talk about direct evidence of her find with her own mouth, and then he was disappointed after hearing about her life in the psychiatric hospital.
That woman, who didn't even know how to hide her identity, didn't seem to have any special abilities.
However, the reason he came here was because he couldn't forget the look in Annette's eyes at the hunting ground.
Her stubborn personality aroused his annoying 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 would it make if I were really from another world?”
“Your usefulness and value will increase.”
"I've been accused of being a murderer, and my reputation in social circles was worse before that even happened.
It stands to reason, Your Highness, that since I come from another world and know all this, you should already know the general situation here better than I do.
So, where do you plan to use me like this?"
“In the Imperial Palace.”
Theodore's eyes smiled.
His eyes were like those of a beast preying on its prey, and it was clear what he was aiming at.
“Annet Scheringen.”
He looked at her maliciously and put on an expression like that of a very satisfied predator.
“Use the future you know to put me in the position of Emperor.”
“What will I get as a result?”
“Do you dare to make a deal with me?”
“It is an arduous task to make an emperor, so I also have to gain something.”
Annette's pronunciation was so clear that it stuck in Theodore's ears.
This was the first time a woman had dared to ask Theodore for anything in return.
“Isn't the fact that I got you out of that hell enough of a reward?”
“If you save someone who was supposed to die, you have to take responsibility.”
“I will return you to your original world.”
“What did you say just now...”
“I know how to get you back to where you were.”
Annette looked at Theodore without blinking.
For the first time, the woman who maintained an indifferent attitude in front of him could not hide her confusion.
It never occurred to her that there was a way back.
Since she didn't know why or how she had reincarnated in this place, she assumed that there would be no way to return to her original world.
But how in God's name could a villain who would be destroyed without being able to save her life know how to return her to her world?
“I know how to bring you back, and you know how to make me Emperor.
Seems like enough payment to go through with the deal, doesn't it?”
Annette remained silent, and thanks to this, only the clatter of the moving car could be heard.
After a while, Annette took a breath as if she had made up her mind, covered her trembling fingertips with both hands, and then slowly opened her dry lips.
“I will only ask you one thing.”
"What?"
If this man really knew how to bring her back to her world, she couldn't help but think of this hypothesis.
“Do you have anything to do with my coming into this world?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Don't pretend you don't know.
Your Highness said he knew whether I was a lie or not, but I am the one who knows your future and death.”
Theodore's mouth was getting drier and drier the more he talked to Annette.
In this case, Theodore longed to hear more from this mouth that responded to his every word, and he also looked forward to seeing him utter lies and evil words in front of the Crown Prince.
“Answer me.
I’m asking you if you were the one who summoned me to this world!”
After Annette's fierce questioning, the answer finally came.
“Well, it's me.”
“You bastard.”
The profanity flowed from Annette's mouth without hesitation.
She did this in order to struggle to avoid shedding tears.