A handful of maids lingered outside Ett's chamber, though none dared cross her threshold uninvited. The palace rules were strict enough, and so was she. Only one maid entered, twice a day now, down from three to slip in a tray of food, bow silently, and vanish. Ett had suggested the reduction herself. Meals were just background noise anyway. Unless she got hungry. Then, of course, exceptions existed.
"At least I'm not mistreated like other ancestors," she muttered one evening. Which was her way of admitting: she wasn't the main character.
And yet, she wasn't anyone either. Queen Dowager. Court strategist. Holder of an obscene amount of wealth. A role cushy enough compared to other walking tragedies in this world.
Less acting. Yippie.
Ett's gaze fell blankly onto the desk. Mountain of parchment. Documents demanding her signature. She wanted more than to toss the whole pile into the nearest brazier.
Paperwork, the world's eternal torment.. Some things transcended time and genre. If only she had her laptop, Excel alone would have cut these nightmares into neat columns and pivot tables. Color-coded tabs. Conditional formatting. Progress tracked in seconds. Instead, she had quills, ink stains, and enough parchment to deforest a kingdom.
"I can see my future," Ett sighed, lifting a paper like it might bite her. "Promoted office worker. Medieval edition. Hooray. Rejoice."
Now tell me, being a good mother is not her realistic view. No, thank you. If we die, then we die.
She ignored the documents for a week straight, cloaking her idleness under the convenient excuse of 'resting'. The truth: she was lazy. The reward: endless spirals of philosophical thought. A dangerous habit.
Because yes, she was the Emperor's last living relative. Yes, she should act like it. And yes, that made her an excellent target. Two birds, one assassination attempt.
"If they knew I was alive," she whispered, "Enemies should be sharpening daggers already."
Then she groaned, "I miss my masterpiece."
Here she sat, marooned in luxury, surrounded by wealth that could bankroll cities. Velvet drapes thicker than an iron gate, jewel‑encrusted vases that probably cost more than her old flat, and servants gliding through the hall like silent ghosts.
And yet her mind drifted backward, not to armies or politics, but to her old life: the cramped rental she called home, the half‑broken kettle that never quite boiled, and the stack of battered novels teetering on her bedside table. Overworked freelancer. Always broke. Always tired. But at least free.
Everything in that tiny flat shouted poverty… except her PC.
She remembered it like a lover she'd lost.
Not some bargain box, either. That was her rig, a gaming machine built with care and just the right brand of obsession. A sleek tower with a tempered glass side panel, RGB breathing softly like a heartbeat. Inside, a GPU that had once chewed through 4K ultra settings without flinching, paired with enough high‑speed DDR5 RAM to make load screens feel like a bad joke. A custom liquid‑cooled CPU that hummed like a contented beast. Two terabytes of SSD space for every game she'd ever loved… and the ones she hadn't bought yet.
She missed her PC, its glowing lights, its familiar hum, the way booting it up felt like coming home.
Here, in this empire of silver and gold, there was no machine like that. No familiar click of her mechanical keyboard. No flawless framerate rendering her favorite worlds vividly. She like to play solo but that doesn't mean her chat isn't used. She missed the players she added throughout the years with a few but memorable ones.
A butler might offer her tea. A noble might curtsy with flawless posture. But none of them had ever seen the satisfying frame‑rate counter hit a smooth, buttery 144 FPS on an ultra‑wide monitor. Free to scroll through fan forums in pajama pants while eating fried chicken, French Fries, Spaghetti, oh lala.
And she missed it.
More than she expected. "Most importantly," she mumbled, "my bed." Her voice cracked with longing. "I'd just bought a new duvet, too." She wasn't able to enjoy it!
She's depressed, Ett wants to cry of angst. There was a new update for her recent game. Ah.
The longing is longening.
If she han'dt waited, when she came here or maybe swept by the river that day Ett would be on the territory of the barbaric tribe, it was mentioned in the novel that she was "disgraced," 'injured," "unconscious." Whatever "disgrace" meant in this story, it wasn't pretty.
"Where's the Emperor?" Ett asked one maid idly, breaking her own silence.
"In his study,with Butler Xiwen, Your Grace."
"How long?"
"Two hours."
"I see."
Of course, Guren. The workaholic child. In the book, he was so consumed by duty that even the female lead had to schedule an appointment to see him. Their 'chance encounters' were anything but. And now here he was, still a boy, already grinding himself into exhaustion under imperial duty.
The pile of papers he has is three times as large as what was on top of her table.
Ha. Was it even fair to call it unfair? Oof. He was eleven, ruling an empire. She was his mother, sitting here sulking in lace curtains. They were both part of the same tragedy.
"Empress Dowager, your dessert and tea."
"On the table." She waved, curt.
The maid retreated. The chamber closed. Silence wrapped around her again. Ett chewed the inside of her cheek, eyes drifting toward the distant horizon. There, framed against the dusk, the Hian Tree's massive branches scraped the sky like they were reaching for her.
Are you waving? Calling me back to the plot I've been dodging?
Sleep. Maybe if she just slept long enough, she'd wake up back home.
But she knew the story's beats too well. Nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday~. Right now, you can save up to 50 pounds~!.
Okay enough.
"I don't even know how to treat a child."
Her history with kids was short: Smile politely, keep them at arm's length, then retreat before things got messy. In the novel, her relationship with Guren was a battlefield of its own. Complicated. Fractured. Cold. And here she was, about to live it firsthand.
Let's go, people!
Ett waited. Maybe a trigger would come. A twist. Something to shove the plot forward.
"A novel once said, 'The silence was deafening.'" Ett snorted.
Outside these walls, the world knew nothing of her. As far as the public is concerned, Ett had died in childbirth. Guren was the miracle survivor. The late Emperor's one and only heir.
Ett's father, the old tyrant, had locked her away like treasure. Worse, he'd blinded her, meant to be arranged husband, Guren's father, just to keep his eyes from staring at her. A temporary blindness before doing the deed.
Like what in the world? That's just messed up. Good thing, he found the right hole...
Ett sneered at her reflection.
"Congratulations, Ett. You lived long enough to watch that scumbag die."
She held up a mirror. There it was again. That face. Too beautiful to be safe. Not cute, not soft, but dangerous. Lethal.
A beauty that could topple nations. A beauty that had shackled her life. Beauty is in th eye of the beholder they said, yet only counted people could tolerate her face, and they are not ordinary.
"Fantastic," she muttered. "Now what?"
This little porcelain girl had a son older than her own body. Incredible. Truly, what a plot.
She groaned. "At least make him younger. What's cute about being the child of your own child?"
The child of your own child...
"..."
Enough sulking. Strategy time. Step one: grow taller. Step two: survive. Step one...how to grow taller...can she grow taller?
"Oh, Prince of Vitamin D, A, C, Calcium, and Zinc," she intoned theatrically, "wherever you are, deliver your goods. My life for your supplements."
Her head dropped into her hands. Of course, the one who could 'help wouldn't appear until the end of the story. Plot convenience was cruel like that.
Too late to matter. Too late for survival.
"No, Sherlock. I'll find him early."
The sooner she did, the better her chances would be. Better to ambush the plot than wait for it to chew her up.
Because if not? Then history would repeat. Ett would die. Guren would die. The male lead would sweep in, overthrow the Adiand Empire, and gallop into his happily-ever-after with the female lead. Curtain call. Roll credits. The end.
"..."
No wait, why bother? So what if she dies earlier than expected? That's just her concern anyway, to die earlier than her appointed novel time.
She doesn't want to be affected by the tides of emotion in the story either. Ett continues to debate with herself.
"Nope," Ett whispered, curling back against her pillow. "Nuh-uh. Too selfish for that." But selfishness had its uses. It keeps her alive.
And if she had to play the role of the villain's mother? So be it.