“Anyways, it was no use. Hestia always climbed up at the end of destruction. Oh, if there was one thing that had changed after I changed my mind, it was that Hestia began cussing out everyone instead of sobbing as she climbed up. Just so you know, the last scene of the book you read was censored quite a bit.”

She had taken a sip of water every few words–her glass cup was soon empty. She went quiet for a moment as she stared at the condensation on the glass cup.

After a short silence, Noirelle gently held my hand.

“But one day, right before the destruction, another girl, not Hestia, came to visit. Just once.”

Her grip was tight.

“At the time, I thought about requesting help from someone who was completely unrelated to this, someone in a different dimension. I thought it was just another useless idea, but that person listened to me and had a different reaction. While I had been looking for souls to complete this task, the person just watched from next to me and picked you.”

I asked who they were, but Noirelle shrugged their shoulders.

“As soon as I brought you back, time reversed. It was a bit strange, and I decided to follow what that child said, just like a gamble. I picked you again and made it so that you would be reborn as Shuraina in the next cycle, and the original Shuraina was put into a baby who would’ve died otherwise. Was her name Isabel, or?”

Isabel? My eyes grew wide at the seemingly random mention.

There was a girl who was always incredibly jealous of Hestia. She pretended she liked Hestia but got caught talking behind her back by me and we had fought….

For her to be Shuraina’s original soul. Mm, I could see it. No wonder I felt so distant from myself.

“You would only be able to change things if you knew something, so I used your interest in romance novels to tell you of this world. Then, I asked Hestia, who always bragged about her writing skills until my ears bled, to write it for me. When I told her that Shuraina was going to be the answer to our problems, she scoffed and asked if that was even possible. But it’s incredible how close you are now, you know?”

“The author was Hestia….”

I was able to accept her story without much issue. The concept of time rewinding over and over again, the revenge, and a lot of new information seemed to pop out of nowhere and were surprising, but she had proved enough of her story to be true. But the fact that Hestia was the author was a bit of a shock. I didn’t see it coming.

“Mhm. Isn’t it funny?”

And that had been why the others’ personal situations and hurts didn’t appear in the story at all. Hestia had written the story, so of course the story was going to be centered around her. Everything seemed to make sense, so I nodded.

“After you arrived, all of the tangled problems seem to be unraveling by themselves, one by one. That’s so intriguing, you know? How could everything change so much? Maybe it was because you were there, right when you were needed most? Anyway, you’re the one that changed it all!”

I lowered my head at Noirelle’s excited voice.

I changed everything? They tried their best and had overcome it all. I didn’t want to hear this. I felt like I had stolen all of their efforts.

I scowled as I stared at the floor. My legs were short, so there was a large gap between the floor and my feet. I shook my legs before sitting calmly. I breathed in deeply at a sudden thought.

“Then, did I just coincidentally save the empire? That’s bit bittersweet.”

“Yes, you’re a hero. Shuraina! You’re the one who broke the chains of time! You’re a hero to me too!”

I scowled as I shook my head. The real hero wasn’t me, it was Hestia. Just listening to the compliments made me feel uncomfortable. It felt like I was eating something heavy after finishing a greasy meal. I didn’t like how she made me sound like some main character.

Noirelle tilted her head curiously at my uncomfortable expression. She smiled softly and gently swept my forehead.

“All living creatures have an infinite amount of possibilities. Watching you, you’re incredibly kind to those around you. Out of all the possibilities in the world, you always chose the best option and persuaded them to do the same. If you’re a hero to a single person, then you’re also a hero to a lot of people at once.”

“Then let’s just say that everyone’s a hero.”

Me, who I thought had just been an ojakgyo, was a hero. Hestia, the pitiful female character and the four sons of bitches who were supposed to be male characters, all of them. All of us were heroes.

I had been so busy putting on the label of ojakgyo or male main character and stuff, but it had been meaningless in the end.

Everyone’s roles changed based on their point of view, so everyone was a main character, everyone was a villain, and everyone was an ojakgyo and everyone was a hero. Or maybe we were none of the above.

I thought that the reason why the world didn’t implode was because everyone played equal parts of importance and balanced each other out. In the end, I had no reason to be in the spotlight. Everyone deserved the spotlight together.

“Shushu. Wasn’t your goal in life to have a stable income and to be able to stand on your own? Look at you, it doesn’t seem like that’ll be the case. Stable income otherwise.”

It was true that I wanted to go my way. It was also right that I had sought out relationships based on gains and losses and that I didn’t act if I didn’t have any gains.

“Ugh, I don’t know.”

I had been worried about my personality because I was a bit weak when it came to fighting for myself after years of taking care of my younger siblings, but apparently that had helped people along the way and had even saved the world. I guess I was going to live the way I was living already. I didn’t plan on saving the world, but I was living in the world I had saved, so. Maybe it wasn’t so bad?

“Then, Shuraina the hero, can I ask you for an important personal favor?”

“You made me sound like a hero for this promise, didn’t you.”

Noirelle blinked her dark jeweled eyes slowly then posed as if she was taking something out of her pocket.

She took out a thumbs up.

“So what’s the request.”

I wondered what the black dragon, Noirelle’s, request was going to be, so I decided to listen to it at least. No matter how nice the atmosphere was right now, I wasn’t going to do it if it was too risky or if it was impossible.

“It’s okay. It’s something you can do without much effort. You’ve prepared for this yourself, you know.”

Noirelle took me towards the white magic pillar slowly.

“I found a medium that can later become Blanchielle’s body. I wanted to find the body of a dragon, but the only two dragons in existence were me and Blanchielle, so it was a bit hard. But I was recently able to acquire a white dragon egg from the eastern continent. The soul had died inside and is currently empty, so I’m just keeping the physical body alive.”

Oh, I had wondered what that was but it had been BLanchielle’s future body.

Noirelle’s tone was both calm yet excited. She touched the sharpest point of the pillar as she muttered to herself.

“I need to get my heart back, the one that was stolen by the royals. I can’t bring Blanchielle back to life with this itty bitty piece of my heart left. I can’t even use half of my power right now.”

Her request was for me to steal the royal family’s heirloom.

I scrunched my eyebrows together in silence. I had been to Hylli’s room so often with Cory that breaching the palace’s security would be easy, but for me to steal the royal heirloom? And from what I knew, it was being kept in a central, hidden maintenance room in the center palace.

“When the egg hatches, I’ll give you the magic pillar.”

Instead of accepting it right away, I gave Noirelle my home address. It’s the Sydinish Northiness West Territory, the Western Estate. Even if there’s no actual chance of it breaking, please make sure to wrap it in as much bubble wrap as possible. I want to play with it.

If I had such a huge, fancy pillar made of precious white magic, it would be nice to show it off in my room and put my clothes on there.

When I asked what was going to happen to me if I failed at accomplishing the mission and was sent to prison for treason. Noirelle said that if I had someone from the Blanche family on my side, I didn’t need to worry. I assumed she was talking about Swanhaden.

Then, even if I had left traces of myself after my success, she promised to use her returned power to erase any traces of me.

Thinking about it, it didn’t sound like a very risky deal. I nodded excitedly.

“I’ll get you to the center of the royal palace right away. I drew out a circle there to make it easy for me and my monster army to get there early on. You can just use that. I’d used a lot of my power to interfere with you, so it’s hard for me to leave. I’ll send someone I’m controlling your way.”

She was assured that this was going to be a piece of cake for me. She was speaking as if she was asking me to buy some ice cream on my way home.

“The person closest to you would be…. Oh, the principal! The principal will guide you.”

At that, she grabbed her stomach and burst into laughter. She kept laughing as she clutched my shoulder.

I had been curious from earlier, but she always burst into laughter at any mention of the principal. What was so funny about it?

I patiently waited for her laughing to abate.

“It’s an incredible honor to be escorted by the founding emperor, you know.”

“What?”

Noirelle said, dropping a bomb on my state of mind after she calmed down.

“My life span is almost infinite, and the founding emperor ate my heart, one of the building block of my lifespan. Of course he’s not dead. Even if his soul is gone, his body alive. It was perfect for controlling. I’ve been using it well, you know.”

She said that after she had stolen his body from the royal cemetary, she had a lot of fun playing pranks.

She had made his naked body run around the fields in rural areas, that she had made him get slapped in the face with dishes in his naked state. She was the one controlling him, so she had been the one getting the pain, but she said that it was worth it.

“Oh, and take him too.”

Noirelle crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her feet on the floor a few times. A small bit of dust rose up. I wondered what she was doing, so I patiently stared at her. Nothing had happened yet.

She patiently stared at the ground before stomping on the ground near the white magic pillar. The place where she stomped began to rumble.

After her third stomp, something began to happen. A hand popped out from the ground.

There were a few blood vessels popping out from the pale white hand in the ground. A hand popped out, and a small hole formed on the ground.

The familiar top half of a face popped out from the hole. I could just see the hair and eyes. White, almost silvery hair, covered in dirt.

Beautiful jewel eyes that would glow in the darkness stared at Noirelle.

“Anyways, it was no use. Hestia always climbed up at the end of destruction. Oh, if there was one thing that had changed after I changed my mind, it was that Hestia began cussing out everyone instead of sobbing as she climbed up. Just so you know, the last scene of the book you read was censored quite a bit.”

“Oh, no wonder. I thought she was too mild.”

She had taken a sip of water every few words–her glass cup was soon empty. She went quiet for a moment as she stared at the condensation on the glass cup.

After a short silence, Noirelle gently held my hand.

“But one day, right before the destruction, another girl, not Hestia, came to visit. Just once.”

Her grip was tight.

“At the time, I thought about requesting help from someone who was completely unrelated to this, someone in a different dimension. I thought it was just another useless idea, but that person listened to me and had a different reaction. While I had been looking for souls to complete this task, the person just watched from next to me and picked you.”

I asked who they were, but Noirelle shrugged their shoulders.

“As soon as I brought you back, time reversed. It was a bit strange, and I decided to follow what that child said, just like a gamble. I picked you again and made it so that you would be reborn as Shuraina in the next cycle, and the original Shuraina was put into a baby who would’ve died otherwise. Was her name Isabel, or?”

Isabel? My eyes grew wide at the seemingly random mention.

There was a girl who was always incredibly jealous of Hestia. She pretended she liked Hestia but got caught talking behind her back by me and we had fought….

For her to be Shuraina’s original soul. Mm, I could see it. No wonder I felt so distant from myself.

“You would only be able to change things if you knew something, so I used your interest in romance novels to tell you of this world. Then, I asked Hestia, who always bragged about her writing skills until my ears bled, to write it for me. When I told her that Shuraina was going to be the answer to our problems, she scoffed and asked if that was even possible. But it’s incredible how close you are now, you know?”“The author was Hestia….”

I was able to accept her story without much issue. The concept of time rewinding over and over again, the revenge, and a lot of new information seemed to pop out of nowhere and were surprising, but she had proved enough of her story to be true. But the fact that Hestia was the author was a bit of a shock. I didn’t see it coming.

“Mhm. Isn’t it funny?”

And that had been why the others’ personal situations and hurts didn’t appear in the story at all. Hestia had written the story, so of course the story was going to be centered around her. Everything seemed to make sense, so I nodded.

“After you arrived, all of the tangled problems seem to be unraveling by themselves, one by one. That’s so intriguing, you know? How could everything change so much? Maybe it was because you were there, right when you were needed most? Anyway, you’re the one that changed it all!”

I lowered my head at Noirelle’s excited voice.

I changed everything? They tried their best and had overcome it all. I didn’t want to hear this. I felt like I had stolen all of their efforts.

I scowled as I stared at the floor. My legs were short, so there was a large gap between the floor and my feet. I shook my legs before sitting calmly. I breathed in deeply at a sudden thought.

“Then, did I just coincidentally save the empire? That’s bit bittersweet.”“Yes, you’re a hero. Shuraina! You’re the one who broke the chains of time! You’re a hero to me too!”

I scowled as I shook my head. The real hero wasn’t me, it was Hestia. Just listening to the compliments made me feel uncomfortable. It felt like I was eating something heavy after finishing a greasy meal. I didn’t like how she made me sound like some main character.

Noirelle tilted her head curiously at my uncomfortable expression. She smiled softly and gently swept my forehead.

“All living creatures have an infinite amount of possibilities. Watching you, you’re incredibly kind to those around you. Out of all the possibilities in the world, you always chose the best option and persuaded them to do the same. If you’re a hero to a single person, then you’re also a hero to a lot of people at once.”“Then let’s just say that everyone’s a hero.”

Me, who I thought had just been an ojakgyo, was a hero. Hestia, the pitiful female character and the four sons of bitches who were supposed to be male characters, all of them. All of us were heroes.

I had been so busy putting on the label of ojakgyo or male main character and stuff, but it had been meaningless in the end.

Everyone’s roles changed based on their point of view, so everyone was a main character, everyone was a villain, and everyone was an ojakgyo and everyone was a hero. Or maybe we were none of the above.

I thought that the reason why the world didn’t implode was because everyone played equal parts of importance and balanced each other out. In the end, I had no reason to be in the spotlight. Everyone deserved the spotlight together.

“Shushu. Wasn’t your goal in life to have a stable income and to be able to stand on your own? Look at you, it doesn’t seem like that’ll be the case. Stable income otherwise.”

It was true that I wanted to go my way. It was also right that I had sought out relationships based on gains and losses and that I didn’t act if I didn’t have any gains.

“Ugh, I don’t know.”

I had been worried about my personality because I was a bit weak when it came to fighting for myself after years of taking care of my younger siblings, but apparently that had helped people along the way and had even saved the world. I guess I was going to live the way I was living already. I didn’t plan on saving the world, but I was living in the world I had saved, so. Maybe it wasn’t so bad?

“Then, Shuraina the hero, can I ask you for an important personal favor?”“You made me sound like a hero for this promise, didn’t you.”

Noirelle blinked her dark jeweled eyes slowly then posed as if she was taking something out of her pocket.

She took out a thumbs up.

“So what’s the request.”

I wondered what the black dragon, Noirelle’s, request was going to be, so I decided to listen to it at least. No matter how nice the atmosphere was right now, I wasn’t going to do it if it was too risky or if it was impossible.

“It’s okay. It’s something you can do without much effort. You’ve prepared for this yourself, you know.”

Noirelle took me towards the white magic pillar slowly.

“I found a medium that can later become Blanchielle’s body. I wanted to find the body of a dragon, but the only two dragons in existence were me and Blanchielle, so it was a bit hard. But I was recently able to acquire a white dragon egg from the eastern continent. The soul had died inside and is currently empty, so I’m just keeping the physical body alive.”

Oh, I had wondered what that was but it had been BLanchielle’s future body.

Noirelle’s tone was both calm yet excited. She touched the sharpest point of the pillar as she muttered to herself.

“I need to get my heart back, the one that was stolen by the royals. I can’t bring Blanchielle back to life with this itty bitty piece of my heart left. I can’t even use half of my power right now.”

Her request was for me to steal the royal family’s heirloom.

I scrunched my eyebrows together in silence. I had been to Hylli’s room so often with Cory that breaching the palace’s security would be easy, but for me to steal the royal heirloom? And from what I knew, it was being kept in a central, hidden maintenance room in the center palace.

“When the egg hatches, I’ll give you the magic pillar.”

Instead of accepting it right away, I gave Noirelle my home address. It’s the Sydinish Northiness West Territory, the Western Estate. Even if there’s no actual chance of it breaking, please make sure to wrap it in as much bubble wrap as possible. I want to play with it.

If I had such a huge, fancy pillar made of precious white magic, it would be nice to show it off in my room and put my clothes on there.

When I asked what was going to happen to me if I failed at accomplishing the mission and was sent to prison for treason. Noirelle said that if I had someone from the Blanche family on my side, I didn’t need to worry. I assumed she was talking about Swanhaden.

Then, even if I had left traces of myself after my success, she promised to use her returned power to erase any traces of me.

Thinking about it, it didn’t sound like a very risky deal. I nodded excitedly.

“I’ll get you to the center of the royal palace right away. I drew out a circle there to make it easy for me and my monster army to get there early on. You can just use that. I’d used a lot of my power to interfere with you, so it’s hard for me to leave. I’ll send someone I’m controlling your way.”

She was assured that this was going to be a piece of cake for me. She was speaking as if she was asking me to buy some ice cream on my way home.

“The person closest to you would be…. Oh, the principal! The principal will guide you.”

At that, she grabbed her stomach and burst into laughter. She kept laughing as she clutched my shoulder.

I had been curious from earlier, but she always burst into laughter at any mention of the principal. What was so funny about it?

I patiently waited for her laughing to abate.

“It’s an incredible honor to be escorted by the founding emperor, you know.”“What?”

Noirelle said, dropping a bomb on my state of mind after she calmed down.

“My life span is almost infinite, and the founding emperor ate my heart, one of the building block of my lifespan. Of course he’s not dead. Even if his soul is gone, his body alive. It was perfect for controlling. I’ve been using it well, you know.”

She said that after she had stolen his body from the royal cemetary, she had a lot of fun playing pranks.

She had made his naked body run around the fields in rural areas, that she had made him get slapped in the face with dishes in his naked state. She was the one controlling him, so she had been the one getting the pain, but she said that it was worth it.

“Oh, and take him too.”

Noirelle crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her feet on the floor a few times. A small bit of dust rose up. I wondered what she was doing, so I patiently stared at her. Nothing had happened yet.

She patiently stared at the ground before stomping on the ground near the white magic pillar. The place where she stomped began to rumble.

After her third stomp, something began to happen. A hand popped out from the ground.

There were a few blood vessels popping out from the pale white hand in the ground. A hand popped out, and a small hole formed on the ground.

The familiar top half of a face popped out from the hole. I could just see the hair and eyes. White, almost silvery hair, covered in dirt.

Beautiful jewel eyes that would glow in the darkness stared at Noirelle.