My Husband Picked Up a Woman - Chapter 1

My faith was solid. It was a faith built firmly, questioning everything from the smallest detail to the biggest.

I never imagined that the tower built with bricks of that trust could collapse in an instant.

Or perhaps, I was too afraid to even consider it, so I knowingly turned a blind eye.

“We only kissed.”

The voice that uttered those words was indifferent.

“Really.”

Almost brazenly so.

Tick-tock.

The sound of the grandfather clock’s ticking echoed loudly like a heartbeat, making my head spin. The ticking was so loud, it felt as if my heart had been moved into the clock, pounding fiercely, thump, thump, thump.

A faint ringing filled my ears along with the stark sound of my breathing, and my eyes felt as if they were burning, while my chest grew cold.

“Damian.”

“…”

“We haven’t even kissed yet. But with that woman…”

“Brie!”

“Ugh!”

My vision momentarily blurred, and I almost fell, but his hand caught me before I could plummet to the floor.

He was still everything I loved in a person. The perfect male lead, kind, and understanding.

If only I didn’t know that that perfect husband had kissed another woman.

If I hadn’t known anything, I would have been grateful that he caught me from falling.

Now, it just felt like insects crawling on me.

“Taking a mistress is common. So…”

“Damian, there was a clause in our marriage agreement that you wouldn’t take a mistress. That’s why I agreed.”

“Brie. Don’t act like a child. Things are different now than before we were married, aren’t they?”

“Damian.”

“If a kiss is the problem, we can do it now. We need to produce an heir, don’t we?”

Even his golden eyes, which once seemed like gold, now felt repulsive and terrible. The deep love I once saw in those eyes now looked like a Venus flytrap.

“Did that woman tell you to say that?”

“Brie!”

The woman who kissed my husband, Delilah.

She was the real female lead of this novel, the one who was supposed to be with my husband from the start.

“Let’s get a divorce.”

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I said those words and turned away.

“Do you think I’ll let that happen?”

Immediately, Damian’s hand grabbed me roughly.

“Let go!”

While trying to shake him off.

“Eek!”

“Brie!”

I fell down the stairs.

❖ ❖ ❖

I realized I had possessed this body when I was very young. It was on my fifth birthday.

In my previous life, I had died from overwork. I was an ordinary office worker, but I was forced to accept passion pay. I often thought that I was being paid too little for the intensity and hours I worked. Still, I worked hard, believing that if I worked hard, I would eventually have some leisure time.

Perhaps staying up for two consecutive nights wasn’t the problem. I had been chronically sleep-deprived, so I thought I had died suddenly because of that.

The documents I saw before I died contained urgent matters that I needed to handle. Suddenly, my vision blurred, and the white paper and black letters became strangely distorted, and then blood poured onto them from my nose.

The documents seemed to get closer and closer.

When I opened my eyes, I was here.

And this place was inside a book called <Delilah: Mistress of the Grand Duchy>.

I remembered the book because it was the only romance novel I had ever read.

The original story went like this: Delilah, the protagonist and a commoner, was a genius. Because of her genius, she was admitted to the academy that only nobles could enter.

There, she bickered with Damian, who was set up as her rival, and they fell in love.

Delilah fell in love with Damian, who ignored her but helped her in times of crisis, and who also saw her as a woman.

They had a subtle and thrilling relationship, and after their love blossomed on the battlefield where they fought together, they got married.

Delilah, a genius, revived the declining Grand Duchy, and she turned out to be the emperor’s lost child, even though she was thought to be a commoner.

Everything was set up so that only Delilah could be happy.

The problem was that I was the villainess in that book.

“Ugh!”

I looked around, but no one was there. Where had all the servants gone?

I tried to stretch out my arm, but it hurt too much. I must have hurt myself when I fell down the stairs yesterday.

Fortunately, nothing seemed to be broken. When I pulled back the bedsheets, I saw dark bruises all over my legs, visible through the negligee. On closer inspection, I had them on my arms too.

My stomach hurt so much that I lifted the negligee, just in case, and saw a large bruise on my stomach as well.

“Ha?”

I barely managed to turn over and try to get out of bed.

“Ugh!”

I fell straight to the floor.

“Ah,really?”

It was truly miserable.

The reason Damian and I fought yesterday was because of that female lead, Delilah.

I didn’t want to live as the villainess as in the original story, so I tried not to marry Damian. In the original story, the villainess, Briseis, was Damian’s fiancée. So she tormented Delilah.

Then, after the war ended, she tried to kill Delilah after seeing the two of them return.

In the end, she was killed by Damian’s hand.

But perhaps because I was trying not to follow the original story, Damian was actually very kind to me. He did his best to give me faith in him.

Even though I was only five years old on the outside, there was someone inside who had lived much longer. Perhaps that was why I thought all of Damian’s actions were sincere.

Even better, the original female lead, Delilah, hadn’t appeared until Damian and I entered the academy.

So I became complacent.

Because I had acted differently, the original story had completely changed.

So I thought that even if I got engaged to Damian as in the original story, nothing would go wrong.

Unlike the original story, Damian went on a campaign to build up his military achievements, and because of that campaign, we got married earlier than planned.

However, we did not consummate the marriage.

‘If I die on the battlefield, please forget me and be happy.’

‘How can I do that?’

‘Please do so. If Brie can be happy, that’s all I need.’

That was why. He said he didn’t want to hold me in a war where he might die.

Fortunately, he returned with a great victory.

The problem was that when he returned with a great victory.

“Ugh!”

He also brought back the female lead, Delilah.

“Ha?”

The bell cord was too far away.

No matter how much I stretched out my arm, I couldn’t reach it.

And so, I fainted again.

❖ ❖ ❖

“Where’s Damian?”

“The master has gone to the academy.”

At those words, I frowned without realizing it.

A week had passed since I fell down the stairs and woke up again.

“Where’s Miss Delilah?”

“She went with him.”

The servant was avoiding my gaze as if she didn’t know what to do, which made me feel even more that this was reality.

The scene I saw.

During a party at the academy, I ran over when I heard that Damian had returned.

But what I saw when I ran over was Damian kissing Delilah.

‘Are you always such a good kisser, Your Highness?’

‘You’re my first. I keep looking for ways to impress you. I guess that’s why.’

Damian’s gentle voice, and Delilah’s high-pitched voice.

All of that was real.

“I’m going too.”

“But, Your Highness.”

“I’m going to the academy too. Get ready.”

I held out my arm as if asking to be helped up, and the maid, Ella, seemed flustered but grabbed my arm.

“Ugh!”

“You really shouldn’t push yourself.”

I shook my head at Ella’s words. Then Ella sighed worriedly and said,

“It’s hard for you to even walk like this. You have too many bruises.”

“Did the doctor say anything?”

“Yes, he said it was just bruises, but…”

I sat down at the dressing table with Ella’s support. Seeing Ella’s tearful expression in the mirror made me feel a little calmer.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m not fine, Your Highness. You’re hurt. And you didn’t wake up for a week.”

Ella was a maid I had brought from the Filia Marquisate, and I had cherished her since before my marriage.

“Please do my makeup.”

At my words, Ella nodded and helped me with my makeup.

In the mirror, I saw my own reflection, with red hair and sky-blue eyes, looking flamboyant and villainous to anyone who saw me.

“Can you make me look gentle?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t help but say that because I remembered what Delilah’s impression had been like yesterday.

Gentle eyes, brown hair, and golden eyes.

Compared to her gentle and kind-looking impression, I looked truly vicious and fierce. Perhaps that was why I was feeling intimidated.

“Please don’t make it too flashy either.”

“Yes!”

Ella was becoming more and more gloomy at my words. As if she had noticed the emotions I was feeling.

After finishing my makeup, I immediately wrote a letter.

“Send this to the Jeronis Law Firm.”

At those words, Ella nodded with a determined expression. The Jeronis Law Firm was known for specializing in divorces.

❖ ❖ ❖

When I arrived at the academy, it was barely time for the first class to start.

Wearing the white academy uniform, I had to focus on my toes to avoid falling.

I was climbing the stairs to get to Class 1, where I belonged.

“Brie?”

The voice that called me by my nickname was someone who was not at all close to me.

“I heard you fell down the stairs, how did you get here?”

The person coming down the stairs towards me was Delilah. Wearing a perfect academy uniform.

“Oh, so you were faking it after all?”

Strangely, there was no one around. This was the time when there would be many people going up and down the stairs.

Suddenly, this scene felt similar to the scene in the original story where Briseis pushes Delilah down the stairs.

“So naive.”

At that moment, Delilah pushed my shoulder.

I fell backward, seeing her smiling face.

“How foolish.”