Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 42

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 42
I flipped through the pages in my mind slowly, but no matter how carefully I retraced my steps, I found no memory of Everett appearing anywhere.
‘Surely not?’
Whether I’d fallen prey to confirmation bias or not, all I could recall were the scattered facts I’d picked up: that the Imperial Aides, aside from Everett, were generally servants who had stood by the Emperor since his childhood.
‘The latest to join, with a meager background to boot—doesn’t that check all the boxes of a disposable extra character?’
Despite it being summer, a chill ran down my spine.
“Hey, you okay?”
Coni asked with concern, noticing my face had gone pale.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I saw puzzlement flicker across Coni’s eyes and forced the corners of my mouth upward into something resembling a smile.
If they asked why, I’d have no answer to give.
‘It’s too early to despair and collapse just yet.’
Instead, as if I’d felt a chill despite the summer heat, I wrapped my arms around myself.
When I lightly joked that if I had a talent for storytelling I’d have bought a building in the Capital by now, Coni forgot the unease he’d felt toward me and began teasing me back.
“I’m looking for a Carolina Diaz to verify whether I have any talent for witty banter or not.”
“I refuse. A person understands their own talents better than anyone else.”
Coni didn’t mind my rejection in the slightest.
“I refuse your refusal! You’re the one who brought it up, so listen here. Once upon a time, in a distant land, there stood an abandoned house where eerie shadows appeared every night, and…….”
He set the mood deliberately, then attempted to tell a scary story in the bright sunshine of high summer.
I lifted only one corner of my mouth and smiled at Coni’s fumbling attempt.
“So did a ghost appear in the abandoned house with the eerie shadows?”
Coni visibly flinched at the mention of ghosts.
I pressed him with mischievous intent.
“So tell me—after this story ends, who’ll be the one losing sleep tonight? You or me?”
Of the two of us, Coni was the one who was more afraid of spectral, ghostly things.
‘Overwhelmingly so.’
The Capital was a city where land prices increased exponentially the closer you got to the Imperial Palace.
Though the Park Cemetery existed, Indar Street was close enough to the Imperial Palace to be commutable on foot and affordable enough in rent that it had become a reasonably popular district for lower-ranking officials.
In the row-house apartment where I lived, roughly half the residents were Imperial Palace employees.
‘The land prices around the Imperial Palace are scarier than any ghost.’
Yet Coni endured a longer commute and lived on the outskirts of the Capital because Grizel Park frightened him.
In that moment, Coni—who’d chosen something he disliked just to tease me—flinched.
I shook my head gently, as if to say I’d let it slide.
“Alright, let’s stop the joke-trading and get back to the hamster wheel, shall we?”
“Yeah.”
Coni nodded readily at the generous suggestion.
Living alone, Coni fell quiet—perhaps worrying about his sleep that night.
‘He hates ghosts that much and still brought up the story.’
My brief click of the tongue at his slow approach faded quickly.
Even as I led the way back to the office, my mind remained tangled.
‘There should be a notebook at home where I compiled the Original Work.’
The contents of the Original Work remained fairly vivid in my memory, but I was now losing objectivity.
‘Information is so scarce that even a small interpretive error could skew the results significantly.’
At great distance, the slightest adjustment of aim could send an arrow far wide of the target.
Analyzing the deeds of that Aide mentioned only a couple of lines in the Original Work was like firing an arrow at a target the size of a fingernail from across a vast gulf.
I silently prayed that the past me, having just recovered memories of my previous life, had written down something that might serve as a hint.
The tension eased a little after the banter with Coni, but time still crawled by.
As if someone had stretched it out thin.
* * *
‘At least quitting time comes.’
The moment the workday ended, I abandoned my remaining tasks and hurried home, searching first for the notebook where I’d recorded my past-life memories.
Without bothering to change clothes, I stood and flipped through the notebook quickly, scanning its contents.
The first chapter of the novel begins with the female protagonist Ibeta’s Regression scene.
‘For convenience, I’ll call the period before Ibeta’s Regression the First Timeline and after as the Second Timeline.’
In the First Timeline, Ibeta was a low-ranking priestess from Gubin Temple.
She was conscripted under the pretext of being expendable; a Will-Stripping Curse was etched into her soul, and she was mobilized to carry out the High Priest’s dark deeds.
‘Then the Emperor, who couldn’t turn a blind eye to the Temple’s crimes, gradually pressured them.’
It didn’t take long for the High Priest—who had dismissed the Emperor as a mere brute with strength—to find himself cornered.
‘Sensing crisis, the High Priest set his sights on the Holy Relic, known only in legend.’
Priests in circumstances similar to Ibeta’s were expended in the search for the relic.
‘In the end, Ibeta, the sole survivor, found the Holy Relic.’
But she too was dying from the injuries she’d sustained during the search.
In the moment before death, the curse etched into Ibeta’s soul lost its power.
Before her eyes, all the dark deeds she’d committed by the High Priest’s command flashed past like a lantern show.
Though not of her own will, they were deeds she had performed.
They tormented Ibeta more than the mortal wounds to her body.
In her final moment of life, Ibeta prayed earnestly to Minos.
‘May the sacrificed be blessed by divine grace. And may the High Priest pay the price for his sins.’
‘Whether it was in response to her desperate prayer or the relic’s own will, Ibeta regressed to the past.’
With the Regression, Ibeta awakened as a Saint and joined hands with an Emperor who shared the same enemy.
‘That’s also when the Contract Romance began.’
As the curse shattered and Ibeta’s memories returned, the novel’s central story followed her methodically dismantling the High Priest with knowledge of the future—and the Emperor achieving revenge alongside her, their eyes meeting, their happy ending.
‘And she and the Emperor find love through their shared revenge. Happy ending.’
The notebook, written with meticulous detail when my memories were sharpest, proved considerably helpful.
‘Everett is definitely not there.’
After the Original Work’s beginning—from the point where the Emperor and the Saint first met—Everett never appeared, confirming this fact for me.
‘He might have transferred positions, or perhaps received a fief and retired to the countryside.’
Unwilling to accept this reality, I kept searching for other possibilities.
Yet I couldn’t simply remain reassured by optimism.
I stared down at the list of Imperial Aides I’d obtained through a distant acquaintance.
Most names were marked.
Among the Imperial Aides, only three people were never mentioned even once in the novel—Everett and two others.
‘One of three.’
I simply exhaled a long sigh.
33.3%
Too large a number to dismiss carelessly.
Though the Aide wasn’t described in detail, his failure caused the Emperor’s plan to immediately eliminate his political rival, Duke Camelot, to fail.
In particular, Duke Camelot was a person of concern the Emperor had harbored a deep grudge against since long ago and had been watching closely.
He was already described in the Original Work as receiving “severe punishment,” but the current Emperor’s tyranny quotient was rising faster than expected.
He might impose an even harsher punishment than in the Original Work.
I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, trying to dispel various cruel imaginings.
‘Should I intervene?’
Not that I didn’t want to save that Aide who might be Everett.
‘What if my actions change the future?’
The fact that the future seemed to be warping bit by bit made me even more anxious.
Fortunately, my hesitation wasn’t prolonged.
‘I’ve read a fair bit of regression romance.’
The more you worry about the Original Work falling apart from Original Work Syndrome, the more the future actually does.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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