I Thought It Was a Common Transmigration - Chapter 143
9. Flashback (2)
‘She seems to know what it means to be responsible for the weapons documents, but she doesn’t seem to realize that this is the part of the episode that’s going to strangle her.’
LizĂ©, who had a keen sense of Edith’s psychology, glanced at her as she worked, though she pretended not to.
She’d thought it before, but Edith was a good worker.
She was unfazed by the important documents she was suddenly entrusted with, and with just a quick glance, she had them organized into categories.
‘What on earth did she do in her previous life?’
Lizé did her best to hide her discomfort with the seemingly more competent Edith than her.
But then something Edith did caught her attention.
She was organizing information in a table that wasn’t in any of the other documents.
‘Huh? Yeah, that’s it!’
At that moment, Lizé had an idea of how to make Edith the culprit in this document leak.
‘Because the original story doesn’t mention anything about using tables to organize documents……!’
She hastily added a setting to this world that said, “No tables are used for formatting.”
Now that nobody knew about the concept of tables, Edith would be framed if the Riegelhoffs found any documents with tables in them.
Unaware of LizĂ©’s true intentions, Edith completely ignored LizĂ©’s explanation that she was helping out because she was new to the job, and even went so far as to try to impress the Duchess with her capabilities, which further ruined LizĂ©’s mood.
‘She’s acting like she’s an expert for doing something so simple, not realizing that it’s going to trip her up.’
Lizé smiled innocently at Edith, but inside she was sharpening her knives.
‘Sooner or later, Count Riegelhoff will send Edith a letter to steal the documents.’
LizĂ© timed it so that she could take Edith’s organized documents, forge her handwriting, make copies, and send them to the Riegelhoffs.
It was so easy, so simple.
And just like in the original story, Edith was immediately framed for the incident.
‘She didn’t do it, and it happened just like in the original story. Now what is she going to do?’
LizĂ© waited for Edith’s panicked response.
However, there was a pause, and then Cliff and Killian began to investigate LizĂ©’s movement radius and alibi.
This had never happened before.
‘What the hell? Why are Cliff and Killian interrogating me when they should be interrogating Edith?!’
She was perplexed, but she played it cool until the end.
After waiting a few days, the original flow took place, and the document LizĂ© sent to the Riegelhoffs was now in Duke Ludwig’s hands. Of course, it was ‘proof that Edith was the culprit.’
‘Now she won’t even be able to make a defense, how crazy will she be?’
This episode was the first hurdle that most Ediths fell into.
LizĂ© came to the office on the Duke’s call, expecting the 13th Edith would also fall this time.
The atmosphere in the office as she was called to testify was somber, as expected, and LizĂ© feigned surprise and studied Edith’s expression.
‘She’s still alive, isn’t she?’
But soon she would fall on her face.
LizĂ© answered the Duke’s questions, faithfully framing Edith like a criminal.
But instead of being intimidated, Edith looked mocking.
LizĂ© glanced back one last time, hoping she had seen it wrong, but Edith’s chin was still lifted in defiance.
‘What in the world is she thinking? Isn’t she afraid to sit as a suspect before the Duke?’
LizĂ© was so curious about this that she waited for her outside Edith’s room. When Edith was escorted back to her room by the knight and maid, she planned to feign concern and ask her what she was thinking.
But it wasn’t the knight and maid who escorted her.
“LizĂ©……?”
“Ah! Killian…… Edith……!”
Lizé was so surprised that she almost made a weird face again.
But she skillfully feigned concern and gave them a look.
Edith looked a little more distraught than she had earlier, but for someone who had almost been kicked out of the house, she seemed pretty nonchalant.
But Edith wasn’t the only one who seemed odd.
“LizĂ©. Let’s not talk about this anymore.”
“Killian?”
“Don’t dig up what’s done. Forget about it. Okay?”
Killian wasn’t thrilled to hear something that could be used against Edith.
Instead, he urged Lizé to forget about it.
Edith hadn’t even met the first exception condition yet, and Killian’s feelings for her were already changing.
‘What’s going on? Isn’t this character change threatening the flow of the story? Edith Riegelhoff, what the hell are you doing?’
For the first time, Lizé felt a shiver run down her spine.
***
‘It’s time to stop relying on exception conditions and the flow of the original story. I need to crack down on Killian.’
While Lizé was thinking this, the word came that Edith had fainted. Killian rushed over, picked her up, and carried her away.
LizĂ© ran to the door of Edith’s room and found Killian, who looked as if he’d just had a heart attack.
Lizé grabbed his hand.
She was able to determine Killian’s “contamination level” from his hand.
‘This is so different from the original Killian at this point!’
He was feeling guilty about Edith, who had now fainted.
The phrase “Killian Ludwig feels guilty about Edith Riegelhoff” was something K had never written.
And now he was suffering from an excruciating headache from the effects of his deviation from the original story.
“Killian. It’s not your fault.”
LizĂ© comforted Killian, giving him a surge of the author’s power.
It was her way of reducing his headache while reinforcing the character’s setting, and subconsciously making him lean to her.
But Killian’s resistance was unexpectedly strong.
“I think Edith was more anxious than she looked. She was so anxious that she fainted……”
For some reason, Killian was defending Edith, even though he still seemed to dislike her.
“Maybe it hurt her so much when no one believed her even though she was innocent.”
A chill ran down LizĂ©’s spine.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before……’
It didn’t take long for that uneasiness to reveal itself.
[The first exception condition has been met. An exception has been granted and the author’s control has been reduced. The first exception condition will be removed.]
Lizé, who had been sleeping for a while, was startled awake by the voice in her dream.
‘What? Already?’
There had been many Ediths who had met the first exception condition, but never this quickly.
‘Which part of the original story did she follow?’
LizĂ© asked, and the world’s system showed her an image of a part of the original story in her dream.
It was the part where Edith, backed into a corner by the document leak incident, entered Killian’s bedroom in the middle of the night and seduced him.
‘She followed this part?’
Lizé hurriedly checked what happened last night.
“I Refuse Your Obsession: 13th Revision” unfolded before her eyes. As it was being revised in real time, there were still many blank pages at the back.
Lizé quickly turned the pages, searching for the scene from last night.
But she was forced to close the book before she got halfway through Edith’s revised version.
There was 19+ content she had never written.
‘This can’t be…… happening!’
The idea of Killian and Edith having a physical relationship was unthinkable.
It was as if Killian, who had never been more than a second male lead to Lizé, had completely given up on her and accepted Edith.
Never before had such an unthinkable thing happened, even when the first condition was met.
‘How on earth……!’
It was absolutely ridiculous, but she had no idea where to start to fix it.
***
For a while, Lizé observed Edith and tried to build a relationship with her.
Fortunately, Edith didn’t hate LizĂ©, despite the animosity from the Sinclairs.
In fact, Edith sometimes acted like her protector.
This was the case when she encountered Countess Breen, who seemed to find LizĂ© an eyesore, at the bazaar taking place at the Ermenias’ residence.
In front of Countess Breen, who was sneering at Lizé in a cold, sarcastic voice, Edith stepped forward, hiding Lizé behind her.
“I can’t seem to fit in with society these days. A bunch of village hicks wandering around the bazaar.”
Even Lizé was stunned by her bold words.
Edith, who had been dealing with Countess Bryn’s clique for some time, glared at them as they moved away as Cliff appeared.
She then whispered to LizĂ©, “Are you okay?”
There was genuine concern in her eyes.
‘I don’t understand.’
It was understandable that she wanted to look good in front of the female lead because she knew the original story, but still, how could Edith save Lizé without a second thought?
This was hard for K, who can’t stand people who are better than her, to understand.
That’s not to say that Edith was a clueless fool or an innocent child.
Edith was always proud of herself, and she never showed any signs of trying to please Killian.
It was unclear what part of Edith was making a difference in Killian, but at the bazaar, Killian’s demeanor was a far cry from the original.
Lizé greeted him first, but his gaze fell on Edith.
“What have you been up to?”
“No big deal, I was just a little…… bored.”
“Why? Because I wasn’t there?”
“Ha! Aren’t you being overconfident?”
Edith and Killian didn’t seem to realize it, but there was already a subtle pink current flowing between them.
Gazes met briefly and then turned away, but with a coy smile spreading across the corners of their mouths, sneaky glances at each other while pretending to look elsewhere, clearing their throats to mask the smile……
The flow of the original would retain its power if Edith fails to meet all three exception conditions, but once the narrative between the two of them is solidly established, there’s no telling what the ending would be.