To save the novel’s dark, brooding villain, I volunteered for a mission to enter his world. Seven years later, I was declared a failure and sentenced to death.

As punishment, the System forced me to watch, as a spirit, while someone else tried to win his heart. She was vibrant, radiant, impossibly beautiful.

She took him bungee jumping, playfully poured hot water on his numb legs out of curiosity, and snuck him out to eat at greasy food stalls near the old campus. She never, ever treated him like he was disabled.

This was the same man who kept me at arm's length for years, who would disinfect his skin with alcohol if I so much as brushed against him. Yet the first time she touched him, the tips of his ears flushed a deep crimson.

And for the first time, I heard the System let out a shriek of pure excitement: 【Affection level just shot up from 0 to 30!】 It was a far cry from the usual exasperated roar: 【A single point in a whole month?

Are you an idiot?!】 It was only then that I understood. He wasn't a cold, unfeeling statue. His heart was just never meant to bloom for me.

1 On the day I learned my mission had failed and I was going to die, I didn't tell Alistair a thing. I quietly made his favorite braised short ribs and laid out the clothes he liked to wear.

I placed his antidepressants on the nightstand, right where he could easily reach them. He watched me with a frown, his gaze as cold as ever. I knelt before his wheelchair, meeting his eyes with a calm smile. “Alistair, something’s come up back home.

I might be gone for a while.” He wheeled past me without a word, his voice a shard of ice. “That has nothing to do with me.” He was right. It had nothing to do with him.

All he needed was someone else to come and serve him, someone who could withstand his dark moods and violent temper. It didn’t matter that we had spent seven years together. In the end, I was no different to him than a stranger.

Martha, the housekeeper, looked at me with a pained, worried expression. I gave her a slight shake of my head, signaling that it was okay. I’d endured far worse than his cold words, even his insults.

Martha had my detailed notes on all his preferences and habits; she would take care of him. Besides, he never cared about me. My disappearance wouldn’t make a ripple in his life.

Someone else would just have to get used to his temper. … The System’s voice echoed in my mind, dripping with sarcasm. 【Seven years. You gave everything—your energy, your life.

Was it worth it?】 At that moment, Alistair was sitting in the garden, staring blankly at the flame tree I had planted just for him.

His features were sharp and cool, his thin lips pressed into a line, his eyes holding an endless, chilling indifference. He barely flickered an eyelid as I draped a small, soft blanket over his legs. I sat quietly beside him.

The tree was a blaze of crimson against the fading sunset, casting dappled shadows across the lawn. He grew drowsy and leaned his head against my shoulder. I gazed calmly into the distance, silent. Was it worth it? I asked myself the same question.

In my original world, my parents had died in a car crash. I was in a coma, a vegetable, and my relatives saw me as nothing but a burden.

When I entered this world, I felt a deep empathy for Alistair, who was just as trapped, just as hopeless as I had been. I thought that by saving him, by preventing his fiery end in the novel, I could somehow save the helpless girl I used to be.

You can’t live your entire life with cold, calculated clarity. And love… love never follows logic. My feelings for Alistair were about me, not him. It wasn’t his fault. I had no regrets.

It was worth it. 【Ten… nine… eight…】 The System began my final countdown. My fingers started to turn transparent. I took one last look at the man to whom I had given everything. He was sleeping against my shoulder, his breathing soft and shallow.

His long lashes trembled, and beneath his pale skin, I could see the faint blue of his veins. He looked as if he would shatter at the slightest touch. 【Five… four…】 I gently lifted his head and rested it against the other side of his wheelchair.

I brushed a speck of dust from his forehead.

And then, for the very last time, I leaned in and whispered with a soft, warm smile, “Alistair… you have to live well from now on.” 【One.】 With a soft pop, my body dissolved into motes of light, scattering on the wind and fading into nothing.

2 When I opened my eyes, I never expected to see Alistair again. A girl was hovering around him, chattering endlessly. She was sweet and adorable.

More importantly, they were standing so close, and Alistair was actually smiling, not rejecting her in the slightest. The System was still in my head. Its tone was that of a gleeful spectator. 【The Agency sent in another Player. Look and learn.

She had him in three months.

His affection level for her is already at 98.】 【I wondered what would happen to him after you failed and died.】 【Turns out, he just looked for you for two days, threw a massive tantrum, burned everything you owned, and then accepted someone new without a second thought.

Your seven years of onesided devotion meant nothing!】 Ninetyeight. That meant she was just one step away from mission success. Two years had passed.

I didn’t know what had happened to Alistair in that time, but he seemed to be doing better than when I was with him.

I was silent for a moment, then asked a different question. “Why am I still conscious?” 【You will remain by his side until the next Player succeeds,】 the System explained. 【Only then will you truly die.】 It was another part of my punishment.

3 “Hey, cripple! Daydreaming again?” “A bet’s a bet! You have to wear a dress for me today!” “And you have to try the food I made for you! It wasn't easy, you know.

I burned my hands all over.” Christina stood with her hands on her hips, laughing as she pushed a plate of… something… toward him. She held up her hands to show off her minor injuries. If you could even call that charred black mess fried rice.

My eye twitched. I watched Alistair’s face, waiting for the explosion. He was an incredibly picky eater. The slightest imperfection, and the plate would be swept to the floor, the utensils hurled at whoever served it.

I’d had to get a professional chef’s certificate just to get him to eat a few bites. He also despised it when people tried to use their good deeds to guilt him. And his legs… they were his deepest wound.

Anyone who mentioned them would be dragged before him by his bodyguards, forced to watch as the person was beaten half to death. But he didn’t get angry. He didn’t throw anything.

Under Christina’s expectant gaze, Alistair lowered his head and took a large bite. The System’s voice was laced with scorn. 【Did you really think she was you?】 My throat tightened. I couldn’t speak. She wasn’t me. I remembered how hard it had been.

I once spent an entire day crossing the city just to buy him a specific brand of dumplings he’d mentioned wanting. He’d taken one look at them, thrown them in the trash, and told me my efforts were pathetic and unnecessary.

His affection level hadn’t budged. … Alistair chewed a few times, a frown creasing his brow. He paused, his eyes downcast. Christina immediately grew anxious. “What? Is it bad?” His knuckles were white around the spoon. “It’s good,” he rasped.

I knew him. He was at his absolute limit. So this was what it was like when he loved someone. He could endure anything, tolerate everything. Finally, Christina sensed something was wrong.

She took a bite herself, then immediately spat it out, grabbing the plate from his hands in a fluster. After dumping the blackened mess in the trash, she playfully tapped his forehead. “Alistair, are you an idiot?

Why would you eat something that tastes so awful?” He wasn’t angry. He just looked at her and smiled, a genuine, gentle smile. A dull, persistent ache started in my chest, growing sharper and more intense with every passing second.

So this was the punishment the System had planned for me.

4 Over the next few days, my shock turned into a numb acceptance.

When Alistair’s depression and anxiety flared up, Christina would hire male models and flirt with them right in front of him, and somehow, it would actually pull him back from the brink. He would tremble, begging her not to leave, to stay by his side.

She would take boiling water and playfully pour it on his numb legs, just to see his reaction. He wouldn’t react at all, just lower his gaze and let her do as she pleased, until the family doctor would rush in, horrified, and check him for burns.

She would sneak him onto the back of her motorcycle, letting him experience the terrifying thrill of neardeath at high speeds.

Alistair, who had a deepseated trauma related to extreme sports, would just cling to the back, his eyes squeezed shut, his face pale, biting his lip so hard he drew blood, but he would never make a sound.

Afterward, when the fear triggered stomach spasms that left him vomiting for hours, he would still gasp that he liked it. … “Alistair is emotionally fragile, and his health is poor,” I said, my voice barely a whisper to the System. “He might say he likes it, but she can’t keep tormenting him like this.

She should… she should find another way to be with him.” He had finally opened his heart to someone. He didn’t deserve to be treated this way. The System just scoffed. 【You were careful. You were considerate.

You tended to his every need for seven years, Elara. And what was the result?】 That single sentence was like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head.

As a spirit, I shouldn’t have been able to feel anything, but a deep, bonechilling cold spread through me. I looked at Alistair, who was still gasping for breath, his brow furrowed, his eyes wide and searching for something in a panic.

Suddenly, his wet, redrimmed eyes locked onto the exact spot where I stood. Our gazes met, and my heart gave a violent lurch. But in the next second, Christina leaned down to check on him, and he looked up at her, forcing a reassuring smile.

All the fight went out of me. I didn't even have the energy to argue anymore. Alistair liked it. He liked it. What right did I have to say he didn’t?

5 Christina bounced over to Alistair, as cheerful as ever. He had started watching her for long stretches of time, his thumb and forefinger rubbing together on the armrest of his wheelchair, a gesture of intense, restrained emotion.

This time, he took her to the place where we had first lived together. The tiny, rundown apartment where our only goal had been to survive.

Back then, he was still an unacknowledged illegitimate son, his legs recently broken by his own mother in a fit of madness.

She would lock him in a dark, stuffy closet and whip him with thorned branches, screaming that he was a jinx who had driven his father away. When I first arrived in this world, Alistair's legs were beyond saving.

He was sitting in the darkness, holding the body of his mother, who had just taken her own life. His eyes were empty, filled with a suffocating gloom. That was a past he had never shared with anyone but me.

It seemed Alistair was truly ready to build a life with her, willing to tear open his old wounds and show her the bloody, raw history he kept hidden. … Christina’s expression soured as she looked around the cramped apartment.

She stopped in the middle of the room and said bluntly, “I don’t like this place.” Before starting her mission, Christina must have studied his file thoroughly. She knew about me, the failed Player who had cared for him here.

Alistair was staring at the closet, a cold, mocking smile on his lips. “I never liked it either. Someone was delusional, a fool who thought their onesided affection meant something.

Pathetic.” Christina froze for a second, her hands clenching into fists. Her eyes reddened with a look of humiliation. “Alistair, the past is the past. All that despair and helplessness… I’ll face it with you.

We don’t need anyone else.” For the first time, her usual bright, unbending confidence seemed to fade. She knelt before his wheelchair and looked up at him. “Okay?” Who could refuse a radiant sun who was showing such vulnerability?

But Alistair’s reaction was strange. His face was blank as he stared down at her for a long, unnerving moment. Long enough that Christina’s eyes widened in confusion.

Finally, he leaned in close, his gaze intense. “Then you have to promise me you’ll stay.

That you’ll never abandon me.” Christina, stunned by his handsome face so close to hers, could only nod dumbly. 【Affection level up to 99!】 the System shrieked, then added smugly, 【So he was just trying to make her jealous!

This villain knows how to flirt, making her feel sorry for him.】 【Dark, brooding villain? He’s just a poor, lovestarved boy!】 【See?

This is how you complete a mission!】 I stood silently in the doorway, staring at a faded childhood photo of him on the wall. It was a shame a spirit couldn’t wipe away the dust that had settled over the years.

Just as I had been too clumsy, too foolish, to ever wipe away the dust from his heart. The System thought I would be jealous and bitter, but I wasn't. Seeing Alistair happy… it made me happy. Happier than anyone.

I had always wanted him to live well, as if he were living for the both of us.

I looked at his younger self beneath the layer of grime and whispered, “Alistair, may you and the one you love have countless happy years to come.” I didn’t see him turn his head away, his fingers suddenly clenching so tightly that the sleeve of his shirt pulled back, revealing a network of fresh, deep cuts on his wrist.