SIWALL 1

“Mr. Brown! Mr. Brown! You didn’t go hanging yourself or picking up some poison to eat again, did you?”

The sound of fierce knocking on the door and a woman’s heavy, commanding voice mercilessly shattered the morning’s deep sleep.

Who is it. Who is being this loud in the morning….

Lim Seongsik forcedly lifted his eyelids, which were so swollen they wouldn’t open properly.

Sunlight that felt like needles stabbing into his eyes poured through the cracked glass window.

He could see patterns resembling giant beetles arranged regularly across the tattered curtains. While counting those patterns—one, two, three…—in his hazy state of mind, Lim Seongsik—no, Elliot Brown—jumped right up out of bed.

“W-well, you see, Mrs. Kelly! I’m up! I’m not dead!”

The pale man with a scrawny body hurriedly scrambled into his pants and hastily opened the door.

Standing in front of the door with her arms crossed was a middle-aged woman with a fierce glare.

“Finally!”

Mrs. Kelly shouted, letting out a snort.

“It has only been a week since your suicide attempt, so I expected you wouldn’t die yet. But I’m going to keep checking like this until you pay the rent, Mr. Brown.”

“Yes, yes. I absolutely will not die until I pay the rent.”

“I hear you haven’t taken on any work for the past week either? If you really want to die, pay the rent and clear out of the room before you take care of it.”

Even as she said that, Mrs. Kelly thrust her face forward like a competent drug-sniffing dog and scanned the inside of the house here and there. She was probably looking for signs of suicide.

Elliot stepped aside so she could check everything and be at ease.

“If you don’t plan on dying, hurry up and start ghostwriting again. Money doesn’t come out of the tip of a pen, Mr. Brown. It comes out of people’s wallets.”

“Haha, yes, yes, ma’am. I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience~”

When Elliot chimed in cheerfully with a musical tone, Mrs. Kelly turned around with a look as if she had seen a ghost.

“He really went crazy after coming back from the dead.”

After Mrs. Kelly left, Elliot lay back down on the bed.

He reached out his arm to find the thin glasses he had placed on the nightstand and put them on. The pattern on the curtains, which looked sharper than before, came into his view.

“I need to… work… But damn it, how on earth am I supposed to do this?”

Next to Elliot, who was lamenting as if sobbing, a pitch-black cat suddenly leaped up. Feeling the cat’s tail swipe across and brush past his cheek, he recalled what had happened a week ago.

Elliot—no, Lim Seongsik—was a 24-year-old South Korean citizen, a proud individual who had achieved the myth of working seven days a week… No, that wasn’t it. He was a low-education, dirt-spoon youth who only had his physical body to rely on.

Passing through part-time jobs at amusement parks, movie theaters, clothing stores, and cafes, all the way to call center agent, kids’ cafe assistant, and wedding hall usher.

A man who was chosen as ‘Employee of the Month’ everywhere he set foot, receiving the favoritism of countless bosses. That was Lim Seongsik.

Lately, he had been working as a family restaurant server. When restaurant work ended, he worked a convenience store part-time job at night, and occasionally when he needed extra money, he would also run morning logistics or factory part-time jobs.

In fact, a week ago, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Lying in bed at four in the morning on Thursday, thinking, ‘If I sleep now, I can still get four hours of sleep….’ was the last thing he remembered.

When he opened his eyes again, he had entered this bizarre novel world. In the body of a man named Elliot Brown.

That’s right. A world inside a novel.

Even to Lim Seongsik, who had been struggling in a reality so worn out it was practically rotting, an event called ‘possessing a character inside a novel’ had arrived.

To make matters worse, this novel was a BL novel called {I’ll Tame the Masked Grand Duke}, Lim Seongsik’s secret guilty pleasure.

After clicking on it because he liked the art style, and momentarily panicking that it was ‘BL,’ Lim Seongsik read through the newly launched webtoon in a single day. Just because you read a BL webtoon doesn’t mean you suddenly become gay. (In fact, Lim Seongsik had hesitated to read BL webtoons for that exact reason.)

Thirsty for the story, he searched for it and found that the original novel was completed, so he nibbled and read one chapter a day of the novel that unlocked for free every day. Unlike the webtoon, which had a fair amount of comedic elements, the novel was quite a heavy, depressing ruin-porn work.

To start with the ending, almost everyone in the novel dies at the hands of that Masked Grand Duke.

And Elliot Brown dies first.

The owner of this body, Elliot Brown, was a writer. To be precise, a ghostwriter.

When he had first possessed the body, he was out of his mind, but his name was unfamiliar too, so he never could have imagined this place was inside a novel.

However, as a result of thoroughly searching the desk piled messily with paper and books, he found out that Elliot Brown was the villain ‘El Black’ from {I’ll Tame the Masked Grand Duke}.

El Black was someone who held a grudge against Grand Duke Arzen Teron, who carried the keywords of #ObsessiveMadDuke, #BastardDuke, and #NorthernGrandDuke in this novel.

El Black, who graduated at the top of the academy as a commoner, achieved massive success with {The Flower That Bloomed at the End of a Sword}, a novel depicting love blossoming on the battlefield. This masterpiece, which vividly portrayed the miserable reality of the battlefield along with a touching romance, was going to bring El Black tremendous wealth and fame.

He had risen to the ranks of an imperial writer at the young age of 24, and was scheduled to be awarded the Lantar Imperial Literary Prize and a barony. If only that man, Arzen Teron, hadn’t sneered at El Black at some banquet.

‘The reality of the battlefield? Don’t make me laugh. I guarantee that scribbler hasn’t even been near a street fight in a village market.’

Grand Duke Teron, who always walked around wearing a mask or a helmet, was a savior of the nation, the emperor’s only nephew, and the incarnation of victory who had swept across battlefields since he was thirteen years old. Also, he was famously known for enjoying reading.

At the words of the book-loving hero held in the unified adoration and love of the Lantar Empire, the nobles changed their opinions as quickly as flipping a hand.

If it had stopped there, it would have been a simple hapenny, but unexpectedly, this incident grew larger and larger. A certain knight commander who adored Grand Duke Teron, drunk on alcohol, burned El Black’s novel in the public square, calling it ‘garbage full of illusions.’

Shocked by this, El Black published an editorial slandering Grand Duke Arzen Teron in the imperial newspaper.

And that writing became kindling. Starting with knights and nobles, the middle class and commoners even joined the campaign to burn El Black’s novel. Beggars on the street tore up El Black’s novels to use as blankets.

Attacking Grand Duke Teron, who risked his life for the imperial citizens in a ‘real war’! What a reckless person!

It took less than a week for El Black’s name to become garbage that deserved to be burned.

In an instant, he became a coward of the empire, a ruffian holding a pen, and a commoner rat who didn’t know his place.

That was the end of it. The literary prize and title, as well as his lifespan as a writer, were over. There were even people who sued El Black.

Ever since that day, El Black lived soaked in alcohol. Living was no different from not living, so attempts at suicide became frequent. His body weakened, and his mind withered away.

He even threw away the name ‘El Black.’ He made a modest living by taking on ghostwriting under the ordinary alias ‘Elliot Brown,’ but that was all.

He had practically broken his pen for good, starting with the writing criticizing Grand Duke Teron. He could never write his own work a second time.

To him, an opportunity for revenge had arrived after four years. Loran Pedet, carrying the original work’s #BeautyShu #SchemingShu #Visual-SuckerShu keywords, had entrusted him with a commission! Namely, to ghostwrite love letters to seduce Grand Duke Arzen Teron!

El Black accepted that commission. And then he….

“Why-why-whreee! Rwawooong!”

What he did was….

“Whyoung! Why-y-y-young!”

The cat’s crying, sounding like it was scolding him, broke Elliot’s train of thought. The sleek, glossy black cat blinked its yellow eyes and flicked its tail restlessly.

“Oh my, is our Camembert hungry? I’m sorry, Mr. Camembert. I will help you with your meal. Please wait a moment.”

Elliot appeased Camembert just as he used to do when working part-time jobs as a half-joke.

He hurried out of bed and put the half-fish left over from yesterday into the cat’s exclusive bowl. This was the last remaining food left in this house right now.

“There’s no cat food here, so I’ll probably need to buy the food you eat separately too….”

When he lived as Lim Seongsik, he was always alone, and just taking care of his own well-being was overwhelming. With a newly acquired body and even someone like a child he had to look after, his worries were endless.

That cat, which the owner of this body had undoubtedly poured sole affection into and raised while spoiling, had high activity levels and would get hungry easily.

Camembert was the only entity in this world who noticed that El Black’s soul had changed. Perhaps because of that, he was extremely hostile to Elliot.

Still, what could he do? He had to feed and keep it alive first.

Elliot sat down at the desk, which had changed unrecognizably compared to a week ago. And he solemnly pulled out the papers he had organized.

The tasks he currently needed to do were writing the autobiography of a wealthy merchant and writing love letters for a playboy noble who was dating five people at once.

Right, what the heck, let’s write them. Language patching seemed to have happened as he crossed over into this world, so there was no problem whatsoever with reading and writing letters.

Elliot picked up the fountain pen and carefully dipped it in ink.

Let’s start with the easy one. Writing love letters first.

“Wait. I’ve never been in a relationship.”

Then the autobiography first. It was when Elliot was hurriedly changing his decision.

Knock knock knock— knock— knock— knock knock.

A rhythmic knocking sound echoed through Elliot’s small house.