The Fake Saintess Awaits Her Exit - Chapter 1

I don’t know why or how I became the 49th Saintess, Yvelina either.

I thought of how I was before I transmigrated into her body.

The ward I was in was where the long-term hospitalized patients were gathered.

The same routine of lying in bed all day, getting a checkup at a set time, getting an injection, and eating a meal. Moreover, most patients had difficulties moving freely, and so they found things they could do while in bed.

The most suitable thing was to play games or watch videos on your phone. If you got tired of that, you could read as well.

That’s how I spent my days as well. Since I was hospitalized for a long time, my parents visited me only about once a week, and I didn’t have any friends who visited since I hadn’t attended school for a long time. I did all sorts of things when I was first hospitalized, out of boredom. The person in the next bed said this when I was installing a social media app on my phone.

“You won’t be able to do that for long. It just brings your mood down afterwards.”

Why would you say that to someone who is about to start using it? I ignored the remark with a frown. But I soon found out why. The only posts I could post while I was in the hospital all day were always the same. Instead, I saw every second of the daily lives of people outside.

A person posting a picture of the subway saying they’re late to an appointment with a friend, a person posting a picture of a concert hall because they’ve finally come to the long-awaited concert of a singer, and a person posting a picture of a cat they adopted because of how adorable it is, and more.

I looked at other people’s daily lives whenever I could as if I’d been possessed. But one time, I rushed into the intensive care unit because of an unknown seizure. The first thing I did when I came back to the hospital room after regaining my consciousness was checking my phone.

Of course, no one had contacted me. I opened the social media app I had enjoyed using as I looked at my phone that had no notifications, and felt despondent. The outside world was so peaceful even as I had nearly died. People continued to post about their daily lives and posted pictures of how happy they were.

I deleted the social media app, just like that. I could finally understand what the patient in the next bed had meant. It just brought my mood down. They were right.

After that, I only read books. There were only special stories written, not everyday life stories, and these stories always came to an end.

Now that I think about it, I think I liked the fact that there was an ending. The characters who met an end before I did. A world that came to an end. It’s embarrassing, but I guess I liked it. The kinds of lives I could feel sorry for, despite the fact that I’m stuck in a ward. Although I knew it was wrong, I wanted to read the stories of those who were more miserable and unlucky than I was. I wanted to think that my life was alright compared to theirs.

In the meantime, my body grew weaker. My parents, who I had usually seen about once a week, were coming less frequently. I didn’t mean to blame them. Since some time ago, they were beginning to look more fatigued than me, though I was the one that was hospitalized.

So I also felt more comfortable when my parents didn’t come. Because I was the one making them like that.

‘I should just be grateful that they’re paying the hospital bills.’

My condition was getting worse, but I tried extremely hard not to show it. I could already feel that I wouldn’t be able to make it past this year.  One day, as the days went by, I picked up a book in the lounge on the floor of my hospital room.

At first, I thought it was a book in the lounge, but it was very clean and there was no sign or writing indicating that it belonged to the hospital. I wondered if I should just leave it there, but ended up bringing it with me to the hospital room. I planned on asking a nurse to find its owner after I read it.

Lying on the bed, I looked at the cover of the book. The title was <Iris>, and the number 2 was written after it.

‘Is it the second book of the series?’

Somehow, I felt a bit disappointed. It would’ve been nice if it was the first book. I wondered if I should look up the first book on my phone, but got lazy and just picked up the book again.

‘Let’s just read it from here.’

It wasn’t a book I really wanted to read anyway. So I began reading the second volume of <Iris>. I could guess what the first book was about without even reading it. The second book began with Iris realizing that the power she had was holy power. At the same time, the powers of a Saintess named Yvelina, who was at the Grand Temple, disappeared.

Then came the misdeeds of Yvelina. She became nervous after the disappearance of her holy powers, and began acting more self-indulgent. She refused to attend prayer meetings where showing her holy powers were required, and spent the night with men who only whispered sweet words to her.

She was deceived by those who flattered her, driving away the priests, who told her what the right thing to do was, and gave out the temple’s treasures and property under the name of the Saintess.

So much of the story was about Yvelina that I thought the book should be renamed “Yvelina”.

In contrast to Yvelina’s misdeeds, Iris helped people out with her powers. And by doing so, Iris met many people and became close to them.

‘Let’s see… commander of the army, crown prince, and king of the mages. As expected of the heroine.”

Before getting taken away by Yvelina, Iris had already established friendships with the male leads. Because of this, they moved quickly when Iris was in danger. After reading for a long time, I had already come to the point where Yvelina was getting burnt at the stake.

…This was the last of the fake Saintess.

This was how the 2nd volume ended. Since the greatly threatening villainess was gone, the next volume would be about Iris’ happy story. The main topic would most likely be the nerve-wracking love story with the three male leads.

‘There won’t be any need to read the last bit.’

If I did, I’ll just end up being jealous of the heroine of the story. I closed the curtains, turned off the lights, and got into bed.

‘When people come to make rounds in the morning, I’ll ask them to find the owner of the book.’

But I wasn’t able to.

I suddenly couldn’t breathe, so I pressed the emergency bell. The nurse came running, and she called the medical staff. I heard someone yell at me to wake up, and shocks jolted through my body several times. But my consciousness was fading away more and more. I turned my head as the people’s voices began fading away. I saw the book I read before falling asleep.

That was the last thing I saw.

That night, I died.

Yes, I definitely died like that.

“Ha….”

I let out a long sign and looked around the room.

It was a very big room. It was so big that you would need to take tens of steps to go from one end to the other.

It wasn’t just big, either. The walls and ceilings were filled with detailed and beautiful paintings that seemed as if they could move any second. There were also fancy gold and red colored ornaments decorating the room all around.

There was a fancy chandelier on the high ceiling, and curtains with fancy designs were on every window. In addition, the bed in one side of the room was the kind of huge, fancy bed you would only see in some foreign castle. It wasn’t just the bed. The cabinet, table, chairs, porcelain, and more.

In other words, it was an incredibly fancy room.

After staring blankly at the room for a long time, I got up from my seat and opened the door. My jaw dropped as soon as I opened the door, and I had to blink a few times. In there were items that made the fancy things in the room I had just seen look shabby.

A statue that seemed like it was made of pure gold, a glass studded with all sorts of jewels, a mountain of silk, and so on…. As I stared at all the luxurious items, I unknowingly muttered.

“No wonder you died like that since you lived like this….”

After muttering, I walked towards the statue that was placed on top of the cabinet. Then I looked at the mirror on the side. The statue made of pure-gold that was in front of me looked just like the blonde, blue-eyed woman reflected in the mirror. Then I saw the writing on the pedestal of the statue.

Yvelina.

“Yvelina….”

After muttering her name several times, I wrapped my hands around my head and clenched my hair.

“Why did I have to become her, of all people…!”

* * *

One week ago, I opened my eyes. I thought this was the afterlife, because I remembered how my consciousness was fading at the hospital. That was before I heard the voices calling out to me.

“Saintess! Are you alright?!”

Saintess? Who’re they talking to? When I opened my eyes, flustered, the people next to me called out to God and kneeled.

“Oh, God! Thank you. What are you all doing? Go tell the other priests!”
“Yes!”

The people I was seeing for the first time started yelling and praying by themselves and things were becoming chaotic. I stared at the scene blankly. It was because it didn’t feel real. It was to be expected, since they weren’t the doctors and nurses I was used to seeing, but strangers wearing clothes I had never seen before.

“You don’t know how worried we were because you fainted for a week, Saintess Yvelina!”

…Yvelina? Saintess?

It’s been a week since I’ve woken up like that. Now I knew exactly what situation I was in.

I had transmigrated into the book I read before going to bed. Into the body of a villainess that was destined to be burnt at the stake, at that.

“Why did it have to be Yvelina….”

I transmigrated after dying, but I was destined to die again soon. Within the week, I searched through my memories of the book I read and found out when this was. Right now was two years before my death. One year later, rumors of Iris’ appearance will spread throughout the world, and a year after that, I will die.

What should I do?

This was all I thought all week. The first thought that came to mind was: ‘I definitely can’t die like that’.

Now I had to think about what was next.

“…What should I do from now on?”