Hush Now, Saintess! - Chapter 2

“Oh my, the Saintess is crying!”

“She must be feeling very moved.”

Truthfully, rather than feeling moved, just seeing the sight before her with so many of her faces flying at her right then, she felt a wave of shame. Those who didn’t know what she was thinking began to comfort her.

“Please don’t cry, Saintess!”

“Do-not-cry! Do-not-cry!”

At the shouts that filled the road ahead, a weak smile graced Roella’s features as she wiped her tears away.

My only dream was to have a ton of money while being unemployed.

My life, what happened that it’s come to this…?

If I’m to sum up my whole life in just one line, then it’s ‘fated to die after only working’.

Back when she was only a newborn baby, her parents abandoned her and dumped her onto her grandmother.

After that, her memories were just filled with poverty.

Her grandmother managed to raise her by picking up paper thrown in the trash. Besides that, her grandmother also took on her father’s debt, and they didn’t even know whether he was still alive or not.

They were always poor, always hungry.

That’s how she lived until she turned seventeen years old.

Her grandmother ended up being beaten down by poverty.

It was too late when she found out that her grandmother was sick. And they wouldn’t have been able to heal her sickness because they didn’t have enough money to pay for the treatment.

And that’s how she ended up alone.

Her father’s debt became hers as well.

Without any time to grieve, she had to work and make money.

After working part-time at dawn, she went to school, and after coming home from school, it was time for her to work part-time again at night.

Having to do it twice was only a given.

Thrice, even.

Her grades weren’t bad, but in the end, she had to give up going to college. After she became a full-fledged adult, she lived an even busier life.

Barbeque restaurants, convenience stores, supermarket taste test booths, health clubs, insurance sales, department store sales. Etcetera, etcetera.

There’s nothing she hadn’t done.

And that day, too, was yet another busy day just like any other.

At the PC café at daybreak, at the supermarket in the morning, and lastly, at the convenience store come nightfall.

‘Ah, I’m so tired I could die.’

She was sitting behind the convenience store counter, but then she kept feeling sleepy for some reason.

With her eyes drooping with drowsiness, she took out her phone.

‘This can’t go on. I’ll at least read a novel.’

Just in time, today was a regular release day of her favorite novel.

〈 The Lily Blooming on the Field Will Not Weep 〉

It was a free-to-read novel that was known as the undisputed number one in the charts, and also the undisputed representative novel that’s going on the most dooownhill decline.

Eighty percent of the comments were curses, and it’s impossible to know where the plot was leading, but there was a certain taste to the novel that you just couldn’t stop gobbling it up.

That’s why it was the undisputed number one.

‘I wonder what kind of poppycock is waiting for me today?’

With a reader’s anticipation over what kind of crazy drama was going to happen this time, she tapped on today’s chapter.

But then, the moment she read everything until the final sentence of the novel,

—And so, Hildeon died a lonely death. 〈 End. 〉

She had no choice but to doubt her eyes.

‘End?’

That 〈 End 〉 that’s written right there, that didn’t mean the end, right?

“Eheyy, no way.”

There’s no novel in the world that ends after just killing off its male lead in the last chapter like that.

Chuckling in disbelief, I quickly tapped at the comments section.

The responses over there were much the same as mine.

‘???’

‘????’

‘????????????’

It was an endless feast of question marks.

Also.

‘the writer really went as far as they could go, huh.’

‘hey writer, just please get out of the way as soon as you can. the readers will just do a relay race and write the rest of the novel.’

‘save our baby leopard Hildeon ㅠㅠㅠㅠ you psycho writerㅠㅠㅠ’

‘give me ur address, dear writer. i just wanna send you a present. i’m telling the truth. please give me ur address.’

The commenters were all worked up.

Only then did she truly realize that this astounding fact was real.

‘Wow. So this is really the end?’

It was so famously known as a crazily disastrous novel that couldn’t get any worse than this, but wasn’t this just too much?

As a matter of fact, this novel wasn’t this hopeless in the beginning.

The story unfolds with the characterization of the female lead, ‘Sylvia’, who was born as an orphan, yet was actually the real saintess.

While the plot revolved around driving out the fake saintess who was bullying her as she also healed the male lead, who was a cursed imperial crown prince, the novel gave off this strange vibe.

However, that lasted only for a while.

The novel soon showed its true colors.

Suddenly, a new male lead candidate appeared, and the plot progression soon went on a hopelessly downward spiral.

Obviously, he wasn’t male lead material, but the writer was determined to push him to the top.

Then, after everything that happened.

Today, this.

Rather than being cured, the crown prince’s curse had turned for the worse, even to the point of deluge.

—“Hildeon, I’m sorry. But I’m the saintess. For the sake of the Empire’s peace and harmony… Please die.”

It was even the female lead who offed that male lead.

And then, end. Series complete.

Even if she thought about it again, it was such a dubious ending that just rendered everything futile.

…Was this truly the end?

Ding—

It was at that moment. With the sound of the notification bell for the usual novel upload, the writer’s note came up.

‘Yeah, of course!’

She blinked and hurriedly pressed the notification window.

That 〈 End 〉 proclamation must have been a mistake.

Despite everything, that just couldn’t be the real ending.

— Writer’s announcement: Thank you very much for enjoying 〈 The Lily Blooming on the Field Will Not Weep 〉 thus far. Actually, the male lead wasn’t Hildeon, but Demos! 〈 The Lily Blooming on the Field Will Not Weep 〉 will be back with the second book in the series after a fresh start. Thank you! ^}^ —

…was what it said.

It really was the ending.

“Hey, writer, have you gone nuts?”

After reading that announcement, I just got more flabbergasted.

I was so aghast that my heart started racing.

My head was spinning and it felt as if I was about to throw up, and I couldn’t even breathe properly.

…Huh?

‘Wait a sec, that’s not because I got shocked…’

This seemed to be an emergency situation, s’all.

As soon as she realized this, she swayed and staggered, then eventually fell off her chair.

She could clearly feel her breaths coming out in huffs as the strength in her body starting to drift away.

Gradually, she lost consciousness, and the world around her turned pitch black.

And, when she woke up again…

‘Roella Brietta.’

She became the fake saintess in the novel, 〈 The Lily Blooming on the Field Will Not Weep 〉, and the villainess who was going to get killed.