Chan-gin had clearly woken up, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes easily.
His whole body burned as if on fire. His head spun, and his stomach churned.
If it were up to him, he would’ve just kept sleeping like this, but he couldn’t. He had to endure that hellish commute, riding the subway for an hour and forty minutes to get to work.
Since he hadn’t heard his alarm, maybe it wasn’t time yet. But it was also possible that, because of his cold, he hadn’t heard it and had overslept. Either way, he needed to get up and check the time, then decide whether to go back to sleep or rush out like a madman.
“Ugh…”
Forcing his eyes open, Chan-gin felt a strange sense of dissonance at the blurry scene before him.
Sure, his vision being hazy could be blamed on being sick….but that unnecessarily fancy and unfamiliar ceiling was more than enough to throw him into confusion.
“W-What…?”
Chan-gin groped around for his phone. But instead of a phone, he felt someone’s hand.
This is insane!
He realized then that when a person is truly shocked, they can’t even scream. Something he hadn’t particularly wanted to learn.
A hand… in his tiny one-room apartment where he lived alone?!
“Mm… Sir Karl…?”
Even more surprising, the person sleeping beside Chan-gin was a woman.
Well….if it had been a man lying there, he was confident he would’ve screamed like a teenage girl and bolted, so maybe this wasn’t that surprising.
Chan-gin racked his fogged brain, trying to remember….had he been drinking last night? Had he met a woman while drinking? And just how far had things gone between them?
But the only memory he had was coming home after overtime, enduring the hellish commute, and collapsing into bed.
In the meantime, the woman stirred and started rubbing her eyes as she looked at him.
Slightly dry brown hair. Murky green eyes.
She’s a foreigner!
“Sir Karl, are you alright?”
“…Wh-Who… are you…?”
Chan-gin felt like he might stop breathing at any moment. Fortunately, the woman seemed to understand Korean.
At his words, a sad smile formed on her face.
“It’s me. I’m your nanny Cecil, Sir Karl.”
“..….”
Nanny? What is she talking about?
Thinking that, Chan-gin finally realized. She wasn’t calling him “Chan-gin”, but “Karl”.
And that both of them… were speaking not Korean, but another language.
“Sir Karl, it’s still time for you to sleep. Did you perhaps have a nightmare?”
Chan-gin was startled once again as his body was effortlessly pushed back down by Cecil’s hand.
He wasn’t particularly big, but he certainly wasn’t so weak that someone could handle him this easily.
Yet as he tried to sit back up after being pressed down, he noticed something strange.
“Wh-What…?”
Maybe it was because of the severe fever, but the hand he raised into his field of vision looked far too small.
Small, thin, pale fingers moved according to his will….and the sight was terrifying beyond belief.
Now that he thought about it, his voice sounded oddly thin as well.
This isn’t my voice.
“Sir Karl?”
As Chan-gin’s breathing grew ragged, Cecil reacted sharply. Her hand completely enveloped his now smaller one and warmth spread through it.
Surprisingly, Chan-gin realized that the touch of this woman whom he had only met today was enough to calm all his fear and panic.
“Shh… It’s alright. You must be tired from waking up so suddenly. Please drink a bit more of your medicine and go back to sleep.”
Cecil spoke gently, her lips trembling, as she brought a small glass vial to Chan-gin’s mouth.
But Chan-gin didn’t open his lips. Cecil’s face slowly twisted with anxiety, unease, and pain.
“Who… are you…?”
And when Chan-gin finally spoke in his confusion, Cecil’s haggard face crumpled beyond repair and she burst into tears.
Chan-gin realized that something had gone terribly wrong.
And he wished that all of this was just a dream.
But even as Cecil’s hot tears soaked the back of his hand while she sobbed, he couldn’t wake up.
He had no choice but to accept that this situation… was his reality.
***
At a late hour, the imperial physician Milton was summoned.
Unable to hide his fatigue, he examined Chan-gin from head to toe.
Only after the physician left did Cecil finally manage to stop crying.
With his body feeling somewhat better, Chan-gin listened to her explanation.
“…The Hardion Empire? And I’m the Fourth Prince?”
“Yes, Sir Karl. The Fourth Prince of the Hardion Empire. And please, speak comfortably. I am merely your humble nanny.”
Only after hearing the name “the Hardion Empire” did Chan-gin finally realize who he was and where he was.
The Hardion Empire was the nation that appeared in the novel “The Iron-Blooded Emperor Rules” which Chan-gin used to read. It was a place ruled by Eingir, whom he had nicknamed “Ingili,” after he ascended the throne.
Eingir was a man who perfectly embodied the term “iron-blooded”. In his rise to power, he slaughtered all of his brothers who might one day stand in his way.
Even newborn infants who had barely been born. Every single one of them.
And now, Chan-gin found himself dropped into the very world of that novel… where such a madman was the protagonist.
Racking his memory of the story, Chan-gin struggled to recall a character named “Karl” and barely managed to do so.
An extra who never even made a proper appearance. He was only briefly mentioned in a single line as having died midway through Volume 1.
A character that Eingir recalled once, merely as context while treating a newly introduced character’s illness. He was less a person, more a narrative device.
In other words, if the story of “The Iron-Blooded Emperor Rules” followed its original course,
Chan-gin….or rather Karl was destined to die.
“…How old am I?”
“You have turned sixteen this year.”
Hearing Cecil’s answer, “Karl” realized that knowing his age was practically useless.
Since he was a character who never even properly appeared, no one but the author would know his exact age anyway.
Still, thanks to Cecil carefully explaining the imperial family, he was able to figure out what point in time he was in.
Oh no…! This is already well past the beginning!
The story of “The Iron-Blooded Emperor Rules” begins in the spring of the year when Eingir, the second prince who had previously been indifferent to everything, turns twenty. It is triggered by the death of his mother Minerva the Empress, which causes his awakening.
After that, the main plot unfolds as he investigates the truth behind Minerva’s death and comes into conflict with Emperor Madius.
But now, it was autumn and Minerva had died in the spring of last year.
A whole year and a half had already passed!
Which meant the story had already progressed into the middle of Volume 1…
And before long, Karl’s death would come and go, reduced to nothing more than a brief passing line.
“Karl, the Fourth Prince, who had been languishing with a fever, met his death. He had never been any real threat anyway, but Eingir chose to take meaning in the fact that one competitor was gone. Not bad.”
That would be the end of it.
“Do you not remember anything about your mother, Lady Violet?”
“I don’t remember anything at all.”
Cecil seemed not just disappointed but on the verge of despair at Karl’s answer. But there was nothing that could be done. Since in the novel he had read as “Han Chang-in” the character Violet was never even mentioned, there was no way for him to know anything about her.
As Cecil spoke about this and that, clinging to her last hope that Karl’s memories would return, Karl listened half-heartedly while racking his brain.
Damn it! I should’ve just read it all the way to the end in one go!
Karl did not know how the novel ended. Volume 5 was where Eingir became emperor, war broke out with neighboring countries, and hints of some suspicious organization began to surface. And that was as far as Karl knew.
If he had known it would come to this, he would have stayed up all night to finish it…
Karl regretted it, but when he had arrived at his tiny studio after working late the night before, it had already been close to midnight, and with work early the next morning, he had no choice but to go straight to sleep.
He had to go to work to earn money, and he needed money to afford his hobby of reading novels and, well, to live…
How am I supposed to survive between Emperor Madius, a monster obsessed with politics, and that completely insane psychopath Eingir?
The moment Karl bit down on his lip in anxiety, he suddenly felt his vision spin.
“Sir Karl.”
As Karl squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced, Cecil, who had been speaking in a soft whisper, reacted sharply. In an instant, she uncorked a glass vial and brought it to his lips.
“If you drink this potion, you’ll feel better. Come on, quickly.”
Karl couldn’t do anything as a sudden, blazing fever surged through him. It was a horrific pain, as if each and every cell in his body were being carefully set on fire. It was hard to believe that a human could even feel such agony.
As Karl trembled helplessly, curled up like a child and unable even to breathe from the pain, Cecil realized that the situation was far more serious than usual and grew frantic.
“Please call Sir Milton! Quickly!”
At Cecil’s piercing scream, someone rushed off to summon the imperial physician.
Karl knew he had to drink the potion immediately, but he truly couldn’t move a single inch.
It was a terrifying illness.
Just as Karl was on the verge of losing himself to the pain, Milton came rushing back and abruptly splashed ice-cold water over his body.
The pain vanished in an instant. No…it hadn’t actually disappeared. It only felt that way because, compared to the inferno-like agony from before, it was now merely bearable.
As the pain eased slightly and his mind regained the smallest bit of clarity, what surfaced was none other than a life flashing before his eyes.
Karl realized something he never wanted to know again. When the pain becomes too intense, even a life flash won’t appear.
And yet, in a truly dreadful and despairing way, Karl felt nothing from the fragments of the life he had lived as “Han Chang-in” in that fleeting sequence.
Like watching a dull, low-budget indie film, the hard life Chang-in had struggled through with all his strength was nothing but tedious.
So it didn’t bother him at all that he couldn’t remember what his parents looked like or even what they were called. The love he had received from them and Chang-in’s desire to repay it had all crumbled into nothingness.
And that was what made it so terrifying and so painful.
Chang-in’s life had been discarded as something utterly worthless. A person’s entire life had come to a hollow end.
Just as “Karl’s” life had been reduced to a single short sentence, “Han Chang-in’s” life too ended there.
And because of that, all the more, Karl grew desperate.
“Karl… hurry, please… please….”
Cecil’s voice trembled as if pleading, as if praying. Her hands shook.
Trembling, Karl barely managed to open his mouth and drink the potion.
“Gah—! Hah…! Khah…!”
Gasping for breath, Karl collapsed limply onto the bed.
As the pain receded and his mind finally became capable of forming thoughts again, only one thing came to him.
I have to survive!
Emperor Madius, the protagonist Eingir… he didn’t have the luxury to worry about any of that!
Karl had thought he still had about a month left before his death in the story. But at this rate, it wouldn’t be strange if he died right now.
Everything else had to be pushed aside.
What Karl needed to focus on now was curing this illness!
But there was a problem.
Karl’s disease had never been identified before. It didn’t even have a name. No one knew why the symptoms appeared, nor when or how it would kill him. It was a completely unknown, incurable illness.
Even the imperial physicians, who had searched through the imperial archive said to contain all the knowledge in the world, had ultimately given up.
However, there was exactly one person in the world, only one, who knew the cure.
The remedy would only be discovered in Volume 3, four years later in the story… and only “Han Chang-in” who had read “The Iron-Blooded Emperor Rules” knew of it.
To be precise, now only “Karl” knew.
The sound of Cecil’s relieved sobs quickly faded into the distance at the edge of his consciousness.
Even so, Karl stubbornly repeated to himself, determined not to forget what he had to do.
Get the medicine. Survive.
That came first.
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