Lily’s Sinister Plan – 9

‘Where… am I?’

Seol-ah barely opened her eyes. She had to make a desperate effort to grasp her still hazy consciousness. What she saw before her was a completely unfamiliar scene. A desolate room with only minimal furniture. No windows. Yet the lights were off. The only light she could rely on was a single beam shining through the gap in the door.

She couldn’t move her hands or feet. Seol-ah was firmly tied to a chair in the middle of the strange room. Her limbs were bound with knots that seemed impossible to untie alone. Still, she tried moving her hands and feet just in case, but they didn’t budge at all. Realizing that if she tipped over, she would have to lie tied to the chair until someone came, she quickly gave up.

“I’m f**ked.”

At least they didn’t blindfold her or put a gag in her mouth. Seol-ah was a well-behaved person who rarely cursed, both in Lily’s body and in her previous life, but she couldn’t think of any other words that could express her situation as concisely and accurately as that one phrase.

She was f**ked. No deep contemplation was needed. She had been dragged to some unknown place without her knowledge and was now tied up. Seol-ah recalled her last memory before waking up.

‘Lily, would you come with me for a moment after class today?’

‘Ah, I’m sorry. I have a prior engagement today.’

In the last afternoon when Seol-ah’s consciousness remained, she had declined Wilhelm’s suspicious offer. Although she was with him for her plan, she honestly didn’t want to get involved with him personally. Seol-ah got goosebumps every time Wilhelm hit and bit her, then whined while regretting it alone. She only intended to meet with Wilhelm personally when it would help her plan.

Wilhelm disappeared with an indifferent face, saying he understood.

After all classes ended, Seol-ah looked for Wilhelm, expecting him to cling to her as usual. That psychopathic lunatic always needed to be kept in sight.

‘What’s going on? Did he leave first?’

As she wondered about Wilhelm, who didn’t appear no matter how much she looked, Seol-ah suddenly felt a chilling sensation running up her spine. She quickly turned around, but it was already too late. Something covered her mouth. Then her consciousness was cut off.

‘Seriously, what kind of main character is he?’

Seol-ah had to admit that her plan had completely gone awry. Outwardly, Wilhelm had coolly let her go, but internally, he apparently hadn’t.

Seol-ah gritted her teeth. Anger at the author who promoted such a psychopath as the main male lead, anger at herself who had eagerly devoured that novel finding it interesting, anger at the transcendent something that had sent her to this world without any explanation.

Wilhelm seems to have decided to kidnap and imprison her for some reason after his proposal was rejected. She spent a while inwardly retracing her steps to see if she had missed something. But she hadn’t missed anything. The original story had gotten tangled due to Mikhail’s existence. However, it made no sense for such an important event from the original story to occur without any precursors.

This makes it seem like Wilhelm is not just a character but a living, moving person.

In the original story, Wilhelm feels strong possessiveness and obsession toward Lily, who is wavering between him and Mikhail, and proudly declares in front of everyone that she should become his. However, he is rejected by Lily, who judges that having too strong a connection with Wilhelm is not good yet. Eventually, his twisted desires explode, and Lily is imprisoned in a building he had separately prepared.

Of course, the most important trigger for this kidnapping and imprisonment is the public confession. Self-confidence, arrogance, pride, self-esteem, self-love. Anyway, Wilhelm never falls behind when it comes to emotions that start with “self-“. With an ego stronger than anyone else’s, he begins to rampage after the rejection of his confession.

But now? Wilhelm hasn’t even made a confession, let alone a public one. She couldn’t even guess why things had unfolded this way. She was about to mess up her hair but remembered her hands were tied and sighed.

The only one she could trust now was Mikhail, no, Bada. In the original story, it was Mikhail who eventually saved Lily.

‘Will he be able to find me?’

Seol-ah honestly wasn’t confident. Originally, she had planned to meet with Bada again and talk after Wilhelm made his public confession. Given how things turned out, she had to pray that he would successfully follow Wilhelm or thoroughly search every empty building near the Academy to find her.

But their last meeting kept bothering her. His words, which were no different from a confession, and his calm rejection kept ringing in her ears. After declaring so confidently that the original story had already begun, to end up like this. In this situation, he’s the only one she can trust. It’s a total mess.

Will Bada really come to save her? Frankly speaking, he could leave her to Wilhelm and live happily with his fiancée without any problems. Seol-ah found herself trembling before she knew it.

Everything felt foolish. Seol-ah’s original plan was to leave Bada alone for now, since he didn’t seem likely to give his heart to her immediately, and instead give Wilhelm confidence. So she deliberately didn’t speak to Bada and kept going around with Wilhelm. The goal was to make Wilhelm, now confident, move faster than in the original story. She thought that as she gradually accelerated the original story’s events, eventually something would happen, whether Bada fell for her or she returned to her original home. So she diligently followed the events experienced in the original story.

Since it was still the beginning of the story, the events were just minor things like eating together and making eye contact. There wasn’t much mental preparation needed. Though it wasn’t a long time, she ignored Bada and focused on Wilhelm. Seol-ah felt the unbearable desire growing in Wilhelm’s eyes. It was clearly a faster pace than the original story.

If Wilhelm confessed at this rate, she planned to tell Bada and catch him in the act of kidnapping. Originally, she had planned to wait for Bada to come rescue her after being kidnapped, but seeing Wilhelm’s eyes, she became scared and changed her mind a bit. While the Lily in the original story was ambitious enough to think of using even unspeakable acts done to her after kidnapping as leverage against the Crown Prince, she herself simply couldn’t go that far. She absolutely had no intention of giving her first time, which she had cherished for over 20 years including her previous life, to such a crazy bastard.

Since the goal was to gain the upper hand in her relationship with Wilhelm, and the changed plan only accelerated the pace while remaining the same in the grand scheme, she thought there wouldn’t be any problems.

‘No problems? Everything’s a problem!’

It’s completely riddled with problems. After clinging to Bada more than in the original story, she suddenly cut off her interest and went all-in on Wilhelm, which must have caused some change of heart, leading him to jump straight to kidnapping. In trying to show her focus on Wilhelm, she deliberately ignored Bada and couldn’t tell him anything. Everything had become completely jumbled.

Seol-ah finally concluded that the only thing she could do now was to quietly pray. She prayed that Bada would find her before Wilhelm could do something to her. If she got back, she would never get close to Wilhelm, that psychopath, regardless of the original story or whatever.

After repenting for a long time, she finally abandoned her thoughts and devoted herself to faith.

‘God, Buddha, Allah, Jesus, Jade Emperor, all gods of heaven and earth, god of light, god of earth, god of voyages, who else was there? Anyway, please help me.’

For a long time, she prayed, calling upon not only the gods of Earth whom she didn’t even believe in normally, but also the gods of this world. She didn’t know how long she had been like this. With no clock or window in the room, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed.

-creak

At that moment, Seol-ah felt the door of her room opening.

“Bada?”

Please! She slightly opened her eyes, which had been closed for prayer, hoping that the man appearing before her would be Bada.

“Who is this Bada?”

‘F**k.’

Fortunately, Seol-ah didn’t make the mistake of uttering the curse out loud. What appeared before her eyes was Wilhelm with a face no different from usual, but with eyes burning with desire.

“Wilhelm, it was you?”

Seol-ah initially adopted an attitude of knowing nothing. She needed to find out why he suddenly made such a rash move.

“Answer me. Who is Bada? Judging by the name, is it a foreigner? It doesn’t match any country name I know.”

“It’s a nickname for my brother.”

She naturally spat out an excuse without even wetting her lips. Among Lily’s many brothers, there is one named Byden. If she insists shamelessly, it’s not so implausible that he wouldn’t accept it. I hope not.

“More importantly, what is this about? Did you come to rescue me?”

Seol-ah spoke as casually and calmly as possible. Wilhelm didn’t answer and took a step toward her.

“Eek!”

Seol-ah’s mask cracked. She tried to cover her mouth after the involuntary scream, but it was already too late. Wilhelm’s mouth twisted at her scream. A expression that could be either a smile or a cry. Wilhelm took another step forward.

“So you knew all along.”

“Knew what?”

Perhaps because they had completely deviated from the original story, Seol-ah hated her tongue that wouldn’t move as usual. The person now was not Lily von Adamas, the historical femme fatale managing men between the Crown Prince and the Duke’s heir, but Han Seol-ah, an innocent female college student whose hobby was reading romance fantasy novels at home.

“The fact that I’m the one who kidnapped and imprisoned you like this.”

“…”

“While asking with your mouth if I came to rescue you, your eyes are clearly trembling with fear. You even screamed when I approached.”

Wilhelm seems to have noticed all of Lily’s masks. How did he know?

“Why did you do this?”

Seol-ah decided to change tactics. Pretending to be the innocent Lily who knows nothing won’t work with him anymore. She needs to extract information through conversation with him and prevent him from touching her. It’s similar to Scheherazade from Arabian Nights that she read as a child. She needs to make him interested in her.

“Since the day of the eve party, after meeting Mikhail, your appearance has changed from before.”

“What do you mean?”

Seol-ah tried not to look guilty as she spoke.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice? The way you kept glancing at Mikhail even while talking to me?”

“…”

Seol-ah couldn’t say anything after hearing Wilhelm’s words. Was it so obvious that everything was revealed? She screamed inwardly.

“The thought of you choosing Mikhail was unbearable.”

“I haven’t even spoken to Mikhail all week!”

“I know. That’s why I thought this was my chance. I originally didn’t plan this, but when you said you had a prior engagement, I used a somewhat forceful method. I wanted to mark you as mine when the distance between you and Mikhail widened.”

“You’re really crazy!”

Seol-ah couldn’t suppress the scream that was about to burst out at Wilhelm’s terrible words. This exclamation was also directed at herself. Isn’t this saying that such a fiasco broke out because she failed to maintain a perfect balance between the two, like the Lily in the original story?

“Is that your true self, Lily?”

“Yes. Are you disappointed?”

Seol-ah decided not to hide anything since things had gone this far. The kind and innocent Lily von Adamas is dead. Now she is the ambitious femme fatale Lily von Adamas.

“Rather than disappointed, I’m intrigued. Were you targeting me from the beginning?”

“Yes.”

“Then what about Mikhail?”

“If I only relied on you, I would inevitably be at a disadvantage in the relationship. I wanted to create another wall I could lean on.”

Wilhelm’s expression twisted once more at Seol-ah’s answer. Though he says it’s interest rather than disappointment, he clearly looks disappointed.

‘Pretending to be cool until the end.’

Seol-ah cursed inwardly.

“So it was true. The face you showed me and the face you showed Mikhail were different. Your smile toward me was somewhat empty. The appearance you showed me seemed artificial.”

“I won’t deny it.”

Seol-ah wanted to cry. Her acting was perfect. She just didn’t act in front of Bada. Wilhelm had perfectly caught that subtle difference.

“Then were all the appearances you showed me fake?”

“No, that’s not true.”

Though it was all fake, admitting it here might make Wilhelm, whose eyes had gone wild, do something unpredictable. Here, she needs to build a new character. Although Seol-ah was an innocent female college student whose worst misdeeds in life were skipping night study sessions to eat tteokbokki with friends, she had accumulated countless romance fantasy novel knowledge.

‘What’s needed here is a female protagonist who is ambitious and capable, but unknowingly shows humane and emotional aspects to the male protagonist.’

“Some of the times I spent with you were truly enjoyable. Remember? Before the eve party, when you took me to a boutique to have my clothes fitted?”

“Yes.”

“We made eye contact and smiled in the carriage heading to the boutique. Did that expression also seem like acting to you?”

It was all acting and done out of a sense of duty. In fact, Seol-ah was unsure even after saying it out loud. That devoted acting just now was done by Seol-ah, not Lily. It’s not perfect. I don’t know if Wilhelm will be fooled by this…

“Lily…”

Wilhelm, completely fooled by my acting, extended his hand to me with trembling pupils. Really easy. Seol-ah thought. However, accepting his touch here would lead directly to an R-rated scene and definitively confirm the Crown Prince’s route. She lowered her head sharply. Wilhelm’s hand caressed the air.

“Is it because of that bastard Mikhail?”

Wilhelm crumpled his face. He seems to think the reason she rejected his touch is because of Mikhail. Seol-ah suppressed the urge to snap back that it wouldn’t be him even if Mikhail didn’t exist.

“I’m sorry. But…”

“Stop, don’t say any more.”

“I’m really sorry. I’m not sure about my feelings yet either.”

Wilhelm looks completely immersed. Now, asking to be released so she can have a chance to choose him would be checkmate. It’s an absurd sophistry, but that doesn’t matter. What’s important is the fact that Wilhelm, immersed in the role of a protagonist in a love drama all by himself, will accept this proposal. Seol-ah smiled with her face lowered.

“If I could choose you…”

“Lily, I’m going to carve my mark on you. That mark will be a brand, a leash, and a restraint that you are mine. So that you can forget the likes of Mikhail, so that you will live your whole life looking only at me and thinking only of me. You are mine. I have no intention of giving you up to anyone.”

“What?”

What did he say? Carve what? Brand? Leash? Restraint? Seol-ah’s brain stopped due to the bombardment of decadent words from Wilhelm’s mouth.

“Don’t worry. I’ve practiced. Leave everything to me.”

“What did you practice?!”

“They were cheap prostitutes, but they were passable as practice partners.”

“F**k!”

Seol-ah couldn’t hold back this time. Finally, a curse burst from her lips.

“Lily, close your eyes. I’ll give you a memory you’ll never forget. It will be a blissful night.”

Wilhelm’s hand slowly reached out to her again.

“Kyaaah! Stop! I said stop!”

A scream escaped from Seol-ah’s lips.

-bang!

“I said stop, you crazy pervert!”

Wilhelm’s body flew up and slammed into the wall.