"I want to get divorced." The words, though spoken with a deliberate steadiness, trembled ever so slightly in the vast, imposing office. Blanche Remington stood before her husband, Grand Duke Atticus Ravenswood, a man currently so engrossed in the papers spread across his mahogany desk that he seemed utterly oblivious to her presence.
A knot of frustration tightened in Blanche's chest. He can't possibly not have heard me, she thought, her inner turmoil a stark contrast to the placid mask she carefully maintained.
Yet, outwardly, she offered no hint of her rising annoyance, repeating her demand with the same measured tone.
"Grand Duke Ravenswood," she began again, hoping the use of his given name might penetrate his wall of concentration, "I wish for us to dissolve our marriage."
Still, he remained a statue of focused indifference.
Impatience finally overriding her carefully constructed composure, Blanche took swift strides toward the desk. In a sudden, impulsive act, she snatched the documents from beneath his oblivious gaze and flung them into the air. A flurry of paper rained down, disrupting the silent order of the room.
Her husband's assistant, a young man with perpetually wide eyes, gasped audibly and scrambled to retrieve the scattered sheets, his movements frantic. "Lady Blanche!" he stammered, his voice a high-pitched squeak of alarm.
Blanche, meanwhile, fixed her gaze on Atticus, her brow furrowed in a delicate scowl. Planting her hands firmly on the polished surface of his desk, she leaned forward and stated with a deceptive calmness, "I want you to divorce me, Your Grace."
Finally, his glacial blue eyes lifted, their gaze piercing and cold as they settled upon her. A shiver, unbidden and unwelcome, traced its way down Blanche's spine. He's like ice, she thought, a familiar tremor of fear attempting to surface. But she resolutely pushed it down, anchoring herself to a semblance of confidence.
"No," he stated flatly, his voice devoid of emotion, each syllable a sharp, dismissive shard. "Absolutely not." B
lanche stared at him, momentarily taken aback by the sheer, unwavering finality of his response. "But… why?" she finally managed, her voice betraying a flicker of the confusion swirling within her. "Surely you… you have no affection for me."
Atticus merely regarded her with an inscrutable expression. Without another word to her, he inclined his head slightly towards the door.
"Elara," he called, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. A moment later, a stout, matronly maid appeared in the doorway. "Escort the Duchess back to her chambers," the Grand Duke commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Before Blanche could fully comprehend what was happening, Elara's surprisingly strong hands grasped her arm, beginning to steer her away.
"Wait!" Blanche protested, digging her heels in slightly. "Your Grace, we need to discuss this!"
But her pleas fell on deaf ears as Elara's grip tightened. Dragged unceremoniously towards the exit, a single thought echoed in her mind, a desperate, bewildered cry: This wasn't supposed to happen!
***
Yujin Park, purveyor of mediocre spreadsheets and consumer of copious amounts of instant ramen, harbored a secret, burning passion: the gloriously cheesy world of fantasy romance novels. Her latest obsession, "Summer's Beauty," was so deliciously dramatic that even her soul-crushing overtime, courtesy of her boss who seemed to have graduated from the Cruella de Vil school of management, couldn't entirely extinguish her joy.
Clutching her beloved paperback, she navigated the treacherous sidewalks of Seoul, utterly engrossed in Ophelia's latest predicament involving a runaway carriage and a suspiciously handsome stable boy. That's when the universe, clearly lacking a sense of literary appreciation, decided to write its own tragicomic plot twist. One moment, Yujin was mentally scoffing at the villainess's ridiculously elaborate scheme; the next, she was intimately acquainted with the grill of a rogue delivery truck. Curtain.
Except, the curtain didn't lead to the expected celestial chorus or fiery damnation. Instead, Yujin blinked open her eyes to find herself in a room so aggressively opulent it could make a Versailles decorator blush. Gone were the beige walls of her tiny apartment; in their place were velvet drapes the color of royal bruises and enough gilded furniture to outfit a small kingdom.
And then it hit her with the force of a poorly aimed Cupid's arrow: she was Blanche Remington. Yes, that Blanche Remington, the perpetually ailing, terminally naive doormat from "Summer's Beauty." Apparently, the afterlife had a bizarre sense of humor, or perhaps a particularly sadistic librarian with a penchant for isekai manga.
"Summer's Beauty," for the uninitiated (which, apparently, no longer included Yujin), was a rollercoaster of damsels in distress and ridiculously over-the-top romantic rivals. The heroine, the tragically orphaned Ophelia Breckenbridge, endured the tender mercies of her sadist uncle until she stumbled upon an injured man in the woods – who just happened to be Crown Prince Iain Barnes. Cue instant declarations of undying love and enough longing gazes to melt glaciers. But wait, there's more!
Enter Grand Duke Atticus Ravenswood, broodingly handsome and possessing enough raw power to make emperors nervous, who also loved Ophelia...but to a point of dangerous, savage love.
What followed was a delightful mess of clandestine meetings, dramatic confrontations, and villainous plots foiled at the last minute, all while Ophelia batted her eyelashes and somehow managed to remain oblivious to the sheer chaos surrounding her. Naturally, Ophelia chose the Crown Prince, because who wouldn't pick the charming royal over the guy with the ominous title and a penchant for dramatic entrances? The aforementioned villains, a delightfully nasty piece of work named Amelda Baxter and our very own Grand Duke, eventually got their just desserts via the executioner's axe. Ah, sweet narrative justice.
And then there was Blanche.
Poor, pathetic Blanche.
In the grand scheme of "Summer's Beauty," she was less a character and more a plot device with a persistent cough. Described as someone whose IQ likely hovered around room temperature (on a chilly day), she fluttered around being frail and adoring her emotionally unavailable husband. Her main contribution to the plot was being terminally ill and conveniently married to the Grand Duke, thus necessitating her swift removal when he developed his inconvenient obsession with Ophelia.
Yujin had always found Blanche utterly useless, a saccharine-sweet obstacle in the path of true romance. Her defining traits were a chronic cough, an unsettling level of naivete, and a friendship with Ophelia, who, bless her cotton socks, tried to find a cure for Blanche's mysterious ailment – a cure that, spoiler alert, arrived approximately five minutes too late.
And now, Yujin was this walking, talking (and probably soon to be coughing) plot device. Her survival hinged on one crucial, seemingly simple task: divorce the ridiculously handsome, emotionally stunted, and potentially homicidal Grand Duke. Then, locate the fictional cure for Blanche's fictional illness, and finally, stage a dramatic exit from this ridiculously dramatic world, preferably with a witty one-liner and a fabulous hat.
Avoid the main plot? Check.
Live happily ever after? Double-check.
Except, there was a snag. A rather large, brooding, and stubbornly uncooperative snag named Atticus Ravenswood, who, for reasons that defied all logic and literary precedent, refused to grant her a divorce. This was utterly baffling. In the book, he treated Blanche with the same detached courtesy one might extend to a particularly delicate houseplant.
His heart belonged to Ophelia, so much so that he, you know, murdered his wife to clear the playing field. Logically, he should be ecstatic at the prospect of being rid of the human equivalent of a porcelain doll with a persistent respiratory issue.
But no.
Lying on a bed the size of a small car, surrounded by enough lace to outfit a fleet of Victorian wedding dresses, Yujin – no, Blanche, damn it – sighed a delicate, authentically Blanche-like sigh. Her mind, however, was anything but delicate.
Wait a minute.
A slow, distinctly un-Blanche-like grin stretched across her face. An idea was forming, a deliciously devious plan that involved weaponizing her supposed frailty and perhaps a strategically placed fainting spell or two.
Yes, she thought with a spark of decidedly un-Blanche-like glee, there was a perfectly sarcastic way to make the Grand Duke not just agree to a divorce, but actively beg for one. Let the games begin!