ABFR 01

Chapter 1…

Prologue

No matter how much time passes, certain tropes remain timeless across all forms of fiction. In the romance genre, the ultimate evergreen theme is the “unordinary lover.”

My boyfriend is a school bully, a second-generation tycoon, a corporate director, an alien, a fairy, an angel, a devil, a dragon, a vampire, a crown prince, a duke, an emperor, a general, a prince… you name it. Through it all, the protagonist must live a completely ordinary life. That way, readers can project themselves onto the character and dream through the story.

I’m a normal twenty-seven-year-old college student who accidentally became a web novelist through stories I’d written since my school days. Just like everyone else, I’m at the age where I have to stress about graduating and finding a job. I’m constantly broke, skimping on convenience store meals just to afford a cheap drink at the end of the day.

Don’t ask me why I haven’t graduated yet when I enrolled at twenty. Let’s give each other some grace. There’s always someone like me around—so if you run into a senior from a decade-old class at an orientation retreat, just give them a kind smile.

Anyway, I want to tell you a rather regrettable story about my love life. As it turns out, I actually have one of those classic romance tropes going on in my own life: the “unordinary lover.”

So, who is my boyfriend? Unfortunately, he’s my own original character.

And no, I don’t mean a body pillow.

[Urging the Butler to Reflect] Written by: Yuan Na

To explain how a real character—not a body pillow or a photocard—became my boyfriend, I first have to confess that my life briefly crossed paths with the fantasy genre.

Possession, portal fantasy, medieval fantasy, steampunk, romance fantasy… pick any of those five terms. Have you ever heard of them?

Well, I’m someone who actually experienced a portal fantasy trip to another world.

Yeah, I’m not delusional; it actually happened.

Even I think it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it’s true.

I always thought you had to be a teenager to be the “chosen child,” but in my case, it happened when I was twenty-three. I had drafted a rough plot for my next novel, fell asleep on my desk, and woke up inside the bedroom of a genius inventor count—the exact setting of my upcoming book.

So there I was, dropped into another world. In a universe I thought I’d built from A to Z, inhabiting the body of a stunningly beautiful, ridiculously competent character… what on earth did I actually manage to do?

“Wait, are you Rayley?” “‘Are you Rayley?’ Master, that sounds rather distant of you.”

I fumbled my very first interaction so badly that on day one, my body’s former assassin-turned-confidant realized I wasn’t his real master and threatened my life. WTF, is this for real?

Maybe because things went wrong from step one, the rest of my time in that world wasn’t smooth sailing either.

Every person I met was a trashy, power-hungry noble—far too vicious for an ordinary citizen like me to handle. The female lead was literally the only person with a decent personality in that apocalyptic narrative.

I had the world’s deepest secrets forcefully dumped into my head, suffered existential crises on a daily basis, and got dragged around like a bystander caught in a war between titans.

In the end, once the brilliant, high-and-mighty power players finished their business, they graciously granted me passage back to my home world. Yep.

Of course, going through such an extraordinary ordeal gave me some deep insights and life lessons. I learned how to treat people, how to view the world, and experienced the kind of personal growth you’d expect from an isekai protagonist. But honestly, I’m not sure if any of that was actually useful for a modern person. Why does an average 21st-century human need to understand interdimensional dynamics?

Anyway, that’s all in the past. Since I made it back, the details of those struggles don’t really matter anymore.

What matters is that I successfully returned to my world, and against all odds, I experienced an incredible love story over there.

Granted, the guy I fell for was the same asshole who threatened to kill me on day one, demanding to know what I did to his real master. But after surviving countless accidents and life-or-death crises together, we somehow fell for each other.

So this guy, who had lived a brutal life without ever connecting with anyone, doing nothing but fulfilling his duties, looked at a woman from another dimension and said without hesitation:

If you can’t abandon your world, I’ll abandon mine.

Dammit, how could I not fall for that?

So, leaving that world one step ahead of him, I made a promise with no guaranteed return. Since I was originally from another dimension, leaving was relatively easy for me—it just meant shedding that physical shell—but I had no idea how it would work for him.

As the woman who once believed she was the author of that universe, possessing the power to write and set some of its rules, I told him:

I’ll leave a path open so you can find your way to my world.

And the man, born in an abandoned city and raised as a throwaway existence—someone who had never known mercy or love—replied:

I don’t know how long it will take, so you can keep someone else by your side. But when I find you, you’ll have to make room for me.

Described like that, it sounds like an epic romance, right? A classic trope, even: the fantasy hero who loves the protagonist so much he follows her back to the real world for a happy ending.

It was such a mind-blowing love story that I never doubted it was real.

Except there was one slight problem. After leaving that world, I scrapped my original draft, Serena’s Tea Time, and wrote Urging the Author to Reflect—leaving just enough room in the lore to keep that path open.

And then, four full years passed before that man, Rayley Kraha, actually showed up in front of me.

By the time four years had gone by, I had almost convinced myself it was just a self-indulgent delusion from writing too much. I was just about to accept a thought like, “How embarrassing! I must have confused reality with fiction!” when proof of my interdimensional trip suddenly dropped right in front of me.

Rayley Kraha appeared in the real world. That was about six months ago—right when I turned twenty-seven, had brushed the whole experience off as a vivid dream, and was finally getting over my writer’s block.

Damn it, I had walked right into my own trap. Back in that romance fantasy world, drunk on melodrama, I had foolishly let slip details about my real identity. With a level of useless talent as high as his terrible personality, Rayley Kraha managed to find a door to reality (or at least, my reality) and tracked me down to the exact spot on Earth where I lived.

With that level of effort, he could have succeeded at anything. Seeing him adapt to modern life in his own slightly unhinged way is a daily reminder that the guy is capable of anything he sets his mind to.

Anyway, one day out of nowhere, the man I fell in love with inside a novel appeared right in front of me. At first, it was great. Thanks to nostalgic rose-tinted glasses, every moment I’d spent with Rayley Kraha felt magical.

By now, you can probably guess where this is going. I severely overlooked one massive fact.

Was it the extra financial burden of supporting another person? Nope. Someone who possessed the resolve to cross dimensions had capabilities far beyond any modern human, and he adapted just fine after landing in a completely unfamiliar world. In fact, he seems to be living better than I am.

Then was it the strict modern legal system, which should be overwhelming for someone from a pre-modern society? Not at all. Rayley was originally an outlaw who didn’t care about the law anyway, but his determination to cross worlds apparently included a commitment to meet the minimum social requirements of mine. He actually turned into a surprisingly law-abiding citizen.

That said, before he even came looking for me, the very first thing he did upon stepping foot on Earth was forge his identity documents. Since he was from another world, I gave him a pass and swallowed my complaints, but as an ordinary citizen who had never broken the law, it made me dizzy just thinking about it.

I have no idea what he did to cross international borders after that—and frankly, I don’t want to know—so I didn’t ask for details. But ever since he found me and settled down, he hasn’t committed any notable crimes. He’s just become the type of guy who gives off a slightly chilling vibe without doing anything explicitly anti-social.

I can handle his creepy aura on my own, so that’s fine. The modern legal system isn’t really causing us any immediate problems.

So, what is the issue? I hinted at it earlier, but did you catch it?

Damn it all, my boyfriend is a complete piece of trash.

His previous job was as a butler, serving the shady count whose body I had possessed, but before that, he was an assassin. And before that, he was a notorious criminal and public enemy wanted across the entire continent.

If you ask whether that kind of personality fits into modern society, I’d immediately want to draw a huge red ‘X’. But out of the power of love, I forcefully draw an extra line to turn it into a triangle. Give me an effort award, seriously. I’m doing my best to reform him, so he should get better over time… right?

Even rose-tinted glasses have their limits, though. I like the guy, I really do, but there’s no sugarcoating it: Rayley Kraha’s personality is absolute garbage. Good luck finding a shred of basic decency, morals, or ethics in him. Common sense? Why would a fantasy character have that?

Every time he opens his mouth, he says things that make me look around for the nearest police officer. Other times, he drops wildly outdated, pre-modern commentary. On top of that, he’s a controlling, overly attached obsessive who tries to micromanage my every move. Basically, a textbook fantasy character who belongs strictly in another world has now become my (fake) modern boyfriend in the 21st century.

An isekai happy ending sounds great on paper, but whether living together in modern society afterward is actually “happy” is a whole different story.

Long story short, after six months of constant bickering, we had a massive fight two days ago because he tried to crash my college department retreat.

Look, if he just wanted to tag along out of curiosity, I could understand. Everything in this world is new to him, so I could have been open-minded and let it slide. But the reason he tried to crash it was the problem.

“Why are you sitting shoulder-to-shoulder drinking with other men?”

Well, holy shit, should I sit on their shoulders in a cross shape instead?! After a huge screaming match, I hung up without telling him where the retreat was. Yesterday morning, on the bus back home, I completely blocked Rayley Kraha’s number.

That refreshing feeling of freedom was short-lived. I had completely underestimated the toxic ethics of a fantasy inhabitant—and the dangerous competence that comes with his awful personality.

An hour ago, I got a call from a customer service number. Then from a hospital where I’d taken a health checkup. And now, my thesis advisor’s number was popping up on my screen. What on earth is this guy doing?!

I fell for it three times in a row because they looked like calls I had to take. Honestly, I figured this latest call wasn’t actually my advisor, but could I really afford to risk it? Reluctantly, I tapped the answer button.

Then, a smooth, deep voice flowed sweetly through the speaker.

—Ah-jin.

Time to hang up.

The moment the thought crossed my mind, his voice turned icy.

—You’d better think carefully. If you hang up now, your day tomorrow will start with a massive bouquet delivered straight to your department office.

“Are you insane?!”

—If you prefer, I can also send a box containing a wedding dress.

Fuck! A possessive, jealous control freak who tries to cut off all my human relationships belongs in a novel! And the person who dragged him out of that novel was none other than me!

I ended up screaming into the phone.

“Why the hell are you bringing up a wedding dress out of nowhere?! Do you actually think I’d marry you?!”

—I don’t particularly care for marriage either, but wouldn’t that make things far more troublesome for you, Ah-jin?

Rayley Kraha replied softly from the other end.

—If necessary, I’m willing to bake a five-tier cake and ship it along with it, so go ahead and hang up.

In the end, my finger hovered over the end-call button before pulling back. I ground out through gritted teeth, “Hey, Kim Rayley Kraha, do you want to die?”

—Your class ends at 5:00 PM today, correct? I’ll come pick you up.

“Pick me up for what?! Get lost! Just get lost!”

“Ah-jin, are you on the phone?”

“Ah, oh, yeah…”

Of all moments, class had ended right as I yelled. The underclassmen pouring out of the lecture hall stared at me with awkward expressions. I offered them a forced smile and slowly took a step back.

Noticing my awkwardness, two younger girls exchanged quiet glances before offering a friendly greeting. They probably felt bad for the senior who was five years older and always walking around campus alone.

“Are you heading off to lunch, Ah-jin?”

“Ah, no, I have another class coming up…”

“Ah, I see. Have a good class!”

“Yeah, enjoy your lunch, guys!”

I still had some pride left; there was no way I was going to intrude on a group of underclassmen five years younger than me. As I politely waved goodbye, the source of all my rage and the root of all evil clicked his tongue through the receiver.

—Shouting in a hallway full of fellow students… it seems I haven’t educated you properly.

“Who are you to ‘educate’ me?!”

—Since you keep behaving so regrettably, isn’t it my duty as your former butler to re-teach my Master proper etiquette and refined speech?

Rayley Kraha added in an unnecessarily handsome voice, as if whispering sweet nothings.

—I baked a cake after a long time, so I’ll bring some along.

“I don’t need—”

—And considering you haven’t cleaned your place since the last time I tidied up for you, we should clean your room first tonight, then head somewhere with a nice view for dinner.

“I sa-said I don’t—”

—How does French cuisine sound for dinner? I’ll pick up groceries on the way. If there’s anything specific you want to eat, unblock my number and send me a text.

Hearing that, I shut my mouth tight.

That’s right. Damn it all, this guy used to be an elite, personal butler.

The master he served was the greatest inventor and alchemist on the continent—a grand mage who trusted almost no one, leaving Rayley Kraha as the sole person by his side. Naturally, Rayley handled every single task in the estate: accounting, housework, combat, social diplomacy, medicine… he was ridiculously competent in every single field.

While I remained silent, Rayley asked again in a terribly gentle tone. His smug voice practically dared me to say I didn’t need it again.

—Do you really not need it?

“…I need it.”

In the end, I slammed my head against the wall, weeping inside.

“Damn it… a butler really is the best.”

So that’s how it happened. To summarize it in a trendy way, just like I mentioned at the start: my boyfriend is my own fictional character, and his former job was a butler. Even though I still call him a butler sometimes, he’s not really one anymore. His face is ridiculously handsome, but it’s inversely proportional to his actual personality. He uses polite honorifics, but there’s zero respect behind them.

How on earth did I end up dating a guy like this?

In the end, right after my class ended at 5:00 PM, I got picked up and ended up sitting on the sofa in Rayley Kraha’s apartment, eating cake, suddenly hitting a point in my life where I started questioning all my life choices.

In the first place, I only started flirtting with him because we’d spent so much time together in that world, and he was the closest guy around. Rayley, on the other hand, had simply fallen for the relaxed, peaceful attitude typical of a “modern human.”

In short, the original reasons for our love no longer exist.

And that’s precisely where this insane story begins.

Maybe it’s due to some damn narrative rule that says people who struggle to trust must go through miserable ordeals to confirm their love. Hearing the faint, creaking collision between reality and a fictional story—one that refuses to let go of its creator, no matter the world.

After the happy ending where a man from another world follows a woman across dimensions into hers…

I find myself facing another surreal, extraordinary summer at twenty-seven—headached by existential dilemmas and life-or-death romance that no normal modern human should ever have to deal with.

All while trying to figure out a happily-ever-after between two worlds that just refuse to fit together smoothly.