A Wise Life in Captivity with the Mad Duke - Chapter 1

How did I end up coming to this man on my own two feet?

I looked at the man sitting across from me with a half-resigned face.

Silvery hair, fine as sand, and deep navy-blue eyes.

Maybe it was because there wasn’t a trace of warmth in those colors, but his mere presence carried a chilling air.

“Welcome, Rosetta.”

The man greeted me with his usual gentle smile.

But I knew. That smile I saw was nothing but pretense.

That man was someone completely devoid of emotion.

It was almost impressive how a person with no interest whatsoever in others could so perfectly emulate social grace.

Suddenly, with a sharp snap, a spark flared before my eyes. I flinched and looked up, only to see the man who had flicked his fingers grinning in satisfaction.

“What are you thinking about?”

Right. This man hated it when someone zoned out in front of him. A total attention-seeker.

Catching my gaze, he leaned back on the sofa and leisurely lifted his teacup.

“Are you going to keep staring like that? It’s starting to get embarrassing.”

Letting out a sigh at the nonsense he spouted as usual, I gave him the answer he wanted without delay.

“I’ll do it. The deal you proposed.”

“Why the sudden change of heart? You acted like you’d never agree.”

“I don’t think there’s any other way to escape from here.”

“You’ve finally accepted reality.”

The corners of his lips curved. The more he smiled, the stranger his emotionless eyes seemed.

I didn’t back down and demanded a promise.

“Please keep your word.”

“That depends on how satisfied you make me, Rosetta.”

For a brief moment, the dangerous man’s eyes curved softly, leaving me unsure what he was thinking.

***

Three weeks ago. Peru.

“Go-eun! Are you sure about this?”

The film director shouted with an anxious face.

And no wonder. I was standing precariously on the edge of a cliff in Peru, known as the Canyon of Hell, preparing to film the highlight scene of the movie.

It was the scene where the killer spots her target and rides a zip line across the canyon. Because I was a high-paid actress, even after thoroughly checking the safety gear, everyone still looked uneasy.

“Should we switch to a stunt double?”

A staff member beside me asked with a grim face. I shook my head as I glanced at the drone hovering in midair.

“It’s fine. I’ll go myself.”

I’d come all the way overseas just to shoot this one scene. There was no way I’d let someone else do it now.

There were many scenes that would only work if I did them myself, and thinking of the buzz and reputation it could bring later, it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.

“Action!”

As soon as the cue signal came, I pushed off the cliff I’d been balancing on.

The pulley’s ropes tightened around my safety harness as the descent gained speed.

‘See? Nothing’s wrong. This place is a famous tourist spot; there’s no way the safety design could be sloppy….’

Relieved at last, I let myself hang from the pulley and focused on the chase scene.

Soaring through the open sky, a surge of accomplishment and exhilaration from overcoming fear washed over me.

Every time the vast wilderness rushed beneath my feet, it felt like I was freely flying through the heavens by my own will.

But just as the filming was going smoothly, a foreboding noise suddenly pierced my ears.

Snap. Crack.

‘…What’s that sound?’

My stiff neck lifted as I looked up. At the same moment, one of the ropes snapped right before my eyes, and before I could grab hold, the other tangled cords began to break one after another at lightning speed.

‘Ah, I’m screwed.’

I tried to grab the rope, but it snapped faster than I could reach.

And so, before I could even scream, I plummeted endlessly into the deep gorge below.

***

But I survived. Miraculously.

“Ugh….”

I staggered to my feet and brushed the gravel off my cheek.

There was no other way to explain it except sheer luck. I’d fallen off a cliff, yet I was still breathing without a single broken bone.

Just then, I heard the sound of someone running frantically toward me.

‘Is that my manager?’

I massaged the back of my neck, which refused to turn, and calmly reported my condition.

“Oppa, I just twisted my neck a little, but I’m fine. Please tell the director for me. You know how he gets. If he has a mental breakdown, he won’t be able to hold a camera for a while.”

He was already a fragile person to begin with. I was worried he might have fainted from shock.

“Did you hear me? Why aren’t you answering?”

He was always perfectly fine until moments like this, when he’d suddenly act frustratingly unresponsive.

Frowning, I turned my head with effort. But instead of my manager, there was a young man around my age standing there, staring blankly at me.

‘…Who’s that?’

Narrowing my eyes, I looked him up and down.

Messy reddish hair and faint freckles scattered across his face. Overall, he looked like that girl from the story “Anne of Green Gables.”

The youngest crew member was supposed to be twenty, so maybe it was him? But no, he looked way too foreign for that.

“Wow!”

The boy suddenly gasped in amazement, his eyes sparkling as he approached me.

I openly showed my discomfort and glared sharply, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he leaned in with a face full of pure innocence.

“Noona, what are you? Immortal?”

“…Immortal?”

“Yeah! You just fell from way up there, but you’re totally fine!”

I followed his pointing finger blankly. There, towering above us, was a cylindrical stone building that looked like a replica of the Colosseum.

‘I fell from that building? What is he talking about? There was only dirt under my feet.’

The more I thought about it, the more things felt off.

The stone walls enclosing the area like a fish farm, the countless strange buildings with unknown purposes… it all felt wrong.

“What the hell is this…?”

As I snapped back to my senses and looked around, I finally realized something was very wrong. But the biggest mystery of all was why my body was so perfectly fine.

As if everything that had just happened was only a dream.

“No way.”

With a hypothesis flashing through my mind, I ran to the nearest building and looked at my reflection in the window. The moment I saw it, my breath hitched painfully in my chest.

“…Yeah. I figured it might be like this.”

Long, wavy red hair. Violet eyes. Sharp, upturned corners and a languid, weary gaze.

The features were foreign, but I knew exactly who this woman was.

“Rosetta Hilton.”

Eight years ago, before I possessed top actress Cheon Go-eun.

Maybe because it wasn’t my first time switching bodies, the shock didn’t hit as hard as before.

The first time it happened was when I was sixteen, on the night a huge fire broke out at the home of Baron and Baroness Hamilton, who had been my temporary guardians.

A massive beam fell and hit my head, knocking me out for a while. When I opened my eyes, I had become someone else.

‘That someone was Cheon Go-eun.’

Overnight, I possessed the body of a child actress my age, and I could hardly adjust to the new environment.

Cheon Go-eun’s parents, believing their daughter was suffering from severe aftereffects of the accident, canceled all her broadcasting schedules.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Cheon Go-eun had also been in a major car accident caused by her manager’s drowsy driving around that time, so even when I acted clumsy or confused, no one suspected anything. All I had to do was claim I’d lost my memory.

And so, I lived eight long years in Cheon Go-eun’s body.

Judging from that alone, the fact that I was back in my original body now meant that, just like the first time, my body must’ve suffered a near-fatal shock to trigger the switch.

Whether it was a coincidence or fate, it meant Cheon Go-eun must’ve gone through something on her side as well.

‘At this point, it can’t be a coincidence, right? It’s like our life threads are tied together. If one side gets injured badly enough to not recover, it seems to affect the other, too….’

If that’s really the case, then what happened to Cheon Go-eun? Judging by what the boy in front of me said, I supposedly fell from a building’s rooftop. Did she… take her own life?

“Noona, are you maybe a mutant? Like, do you have the power to fly or something?”

Mutant.

Hearing that term again, the one people used to lump all mages together as freaks, it really hit me. I was back in the Kingdom of Avelta.

Even after eight years, it seemed like mages were still treated poorly. Not that it mattered to me, since I wasn’t one.

The boy didn’t seem to care whether I answered or not. He just kept chattering beside me like he had nothing better to do.

“I won’t tell anyone else, so can’t you just tell me? Please?”

What the hell was this kid rambling about?

I gave him a sidelong glance, exhausted from his nonstop talking, and that’s when I noticed the name tag attached to his clothes.

No. 99.

What’s that supposed to mean?