G6’s left eye zoomed.

Distance collapsed.

There he is. The face from the file. The original.

“Target for appraisal.”

A pulse crossed her vision.

“Primary target confirmed.”

G6 raised her pistol.

Wind moved across the church roof while the car raced toward the intersection.

She adjusted her aim.

Distance and velocity. Glass. Angle. Movement.

Everything reduced itself into one clean solution.

What a pain in the neck.

Her finger settled against the trigger.

“Locked in.”

—BANG!

The windshield burst.

The driver jerked violently.

Tires screamed against the wet road as the vehicle swerved, clipped the barrier, and spun sideways. Metal folded and glass scattered before the car slammed into the stone divider.

BOOM—CRASH!

Smoke rolled upward while traffic behind it stopped in confusion. Horns erupted and people screamed.

G6 kept her pistol raised, her ocular display fixed on the wreckage.

One second passed.

Then—

“Biometric termination confirmed.”

G6 lowered the weapon.

This time, there was no mistake.

“Mission complete.”

She paused.

“G6 signing out.”

For a moment, the city simply continued beneath her. Neon reflected across wet streets, smoke rose from the wreckage, and somewhere in the distance sirens had begun to scream.

One man had ceased to exist, and the world had barely noticed.

G6 stepped from the church roof with her arms spread. For one brief second, she seemed almost weightless, like something made for falling.

Unlike Reise Worthon, however, G6 knew exactly where she would land.

Her name was Akira Gemstone.

Codename: G6.

She was the sixth Gemstone assassin to inherit the title of Reaper.

Among the Gemstones, a number was never merely a codename. It marked succession. The numbered heir was raised with the expectation that one day they would take the head of the Gemstone household—and with it, command of the Gemcardia Organization.

G6 had not merely been trained to kill.

She had been trained to inherit.

The title of Reaper was not bestowed for elegance or mercy. It belonged to a weapon polished far beyond what was expected of ordinary human beings, trained in marksmanship, close combat, swordsmanship, surveillance, pursuit, and everything else required to make reaction precede thought.

Her body had been conditioned and augmented until technology itself had been woven into flesh.

Raised among killers who had survived long enough to retire, competence had never been optional.

It was the minimum.

Once a name appeared on G6’s list, death did not knock.

It entered.

「APARTMENT」

“G6, this book feels ancient, yet the story is so similar to modern novels.”

Pisces sat comfortably on the couch, turning another yellowed page beneath the apartment lights.

The book looked completely out of place in his hands. Old leather, old paper, and a story that seemed as though it belonged inside a sealed archive rather than a luxury modern apartment.

“Right?”

G6 stood in front of the refrigerator.

“I don’t even know why I was drawn to that stupid book.”

She pulled out two beers and closed the refrigerator with her hip.

Her gaze passed over the counter and stopped briefly on two small vials sitting near the shelf.

Ah, right. My vitamins.

Without giving it much thought, she picked one up, shook out a pill, swallowed it, and washed it down before carrying the beers toward the couch.

Pisces continued flipping through the book.

“And the way it ended with the villainess dying, yet the title is The Wonder of a Wonderful World? It’s kind of unsettling.”

G6 dropped onto the couch beside him.

“You kill people for a living.”

She cracked open her beer.

“Hearing you call something unsettling is more unsettling than the book.”

Pisces frowned.

“The commoner and the Prince are such a common storyline, though.”

“It’s trash.”

G6 took a drink.

“I dislike the heroine.”

“That is because you’re always on the side of darkness.”

“What does a kingdom already at its peak need with some convenient ‘Blessing of Prosperity’ anyway? They already had the Three Pillars handling the kingdom.”

Pisces stared at her.

“You remember far too much of a book you supposedly hate.”

“I remember everything I read.”

“That does not make it normal.”

“Your face isn’t normal.”

Pisces sighed.

A few minutes later, he stood and pulled on his jacket before offering the book back to her.

“Don’t fall asleep with the television on. Have pity for the one who pays the bill.”

G6 turned the volume higher.

“Can’t hear you.”

“G6.”

She raised it again.

“IT’S DEAFENING!”

G6 drank her beer.

Pisces glared at the television, then at her.

To the world, G6 was a legend.

To Pisces, she was a sharp-tongued twenty-one-year-old drunkard and professional freeloader who seemed determined to bankrupt him through electricity alone—his senior, his partner, and occasionally the greatest threat to his monthly bills.

He reached the door, then paused.

G6 noticed without looking at him.

“Watch your eyes.”

“Don’t be cold. I just wanted to say…”

His hand rested on the doorknob.

“Be careful. You might end up as the villainess in a story like that.”

G6 kept her attention on the television.

“If I were,” she said, “it would be their doom.”

Pisces shook his head and left.

The door clicked shut.

Silence should have followed, but the television continued screaming into the apartment.

G6 took another drink.

The ancient book sat within arm’s reach.

She ignored it for now.

❈.❈.❈

Birds were the first thing G6 heard before she opened her eyes.

The chirping was too close and far too clear, and when sunlight touched her face a moment later, warm against her skin, everything about it felt wrong.

Then a hand landed on her shoulder.

Her body reacted before consciousness fully returned.

G6 seized the wrist, twisted, and turned in one movement, dragging the figure forward and pinning her against the mattress. A terrified gasp escaped beneath her as G6’s knee came down beside the woman’s body while one hand controlled the wrist.

Her other hand moved instinctively toward the place a weapon should have been.

Nothing.

No knife. No gun. No weapon at all.

G6 opened her eyes fully.

A young woman stared up at her, dressed in enough frills to upholster a funeral carriage.

“What the fuck…”

The woman trembled.

G6’s grip tightened.

“Who sent you?”

The voice that came from her throat was wrong—light, soft, and delicate.

G6 froze.

Before she could process it, footsteps approached the doorway and another woman appeared, dressed in similarly ridiculous clothing.

“My lady? What’s wrong?”

G6’s attention snapped toward her.

Two people. One doorway.

Large unfamiliar room.

 Balcony. Windows.

No visible weapons.

Unknown location. Unknown threat.

And judging by the voice that had just come out of her mouth, an unknown body.

“What the fuck is this?” G6 demanded.

That same soft voice came out again.

Her expression darkened.

“Your kink? Fetish?”

She looked over their layered dresses.

“You want to wear that to your funerals?”

The two women stared at her.

Neither seemed to understand what she meant.

G6 slowly released the wrist of the woman beneath her and stood. Only then did she properly look around.

The room was enormous. Gilded furniture sat beneath heavy curtains, intricate carvings covered nearly every visible surface, and fabric seemed to exist everywhere, layered over furniture, windows, and even the ridiculous four-poster bed.

Everything was painfully ornate and decidedly medieval.

There was no television, no electric lighting, no visible camera, no firearm, no Pisces, and no logical reason for any of this to exist.

For one second, G6’s guard slipped.

Where the fuck am I?

She looked down.

Her hands were wrong—smaller, paler, delicate.

G6 flexed her fingers once, then again. Everything responded normally, without tremor, delay, or distortion.

“Talk.”

Both women flinched.

“Where is this?”

Again, that voice.

Too soft. Too feminine. Too wrong.

“Whatever do you mean, Lady Reise?” the woman near the doorway asked.

G6 stopped.

Reise.

The name landed cleanly, and recognition followed—not because she believed people could wake up inside novels, because she did not, but because she was a Reaper and every detail she had read remained stored in her memory with uncomfortable precision.

G6 turned toward the full-body mirror several feet away.

Her blood went cold.

The Wicked Rose of Worthon is a delicate, beautiful woman. Rose-gold hair. A face like a porcelain doll. Her eyes are as beautiful as moonlight caught in winter frost.

The description surfaced almost word for word.

The reflection matched.

Rose-gold hair framed a face that did not belong to her, while grey eyes stared back from porcelain-pale features too delicate to resemble anything G6 had ever seen in her own mirror.

The woman reflected before her was beautiful, fragile-looking, foreign—and completely unmistakable.

Reise Worthon.

The Wicked Rose.

The pathetic bitch who jumped off a balcony.

A laugh nearly escaped her.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Behind her, the two women remained motionless, still watching and still unknown variables.

G6 turned.

“Get the fuck out of this room unless you want to die.”

The voice may have been delicate.

Her glare was not.

The women stumbled backward and disappeared through the doorway so quickly that one nearly caught her heel against the frame.

G6 listened until both sets of footsteps faded down the hall before turning back toward the mirror.

This was not her face, her body, or her world.

Her fist moved.

—CRASH!

Glass exploded beneath the impact.

The sound tore through the bedroom and echoed down the halls outside.

G6 stared at the fractured reflection as blood gathered over her knuckles.

Real blood.

Real pain.

She opened and closed her hand, cataloguing the sharp sting and warmth without any delay or dreamlike distortion.

She scoffed and dragged the bleeding hand through her rose-gold hair.

“The pain is fucking real.”

Hurried footsteps approached.

Her door flew open.

A maid wearing eyeglasses stood in the doorway, breathless. Unlike the others, she did not look frightened.

She looked worried.

G6 noticed the difference immediately.

The maid’s eyes dropped to the blood covering her hand.

“MY LADY! WHAT IN THE WORLD HAPPENED?!”

She rushed forward.

Too close.

G6 slapped her reaching hands aside with the back of her injured hand.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The maid froze.

Her expression changed—not merely shock, but recognition colliding with confusion.

“W-what do you mean, my lady? Tina—who else?”

Tina.

Another fragment surfaced in G6’s memory: a peaceful garden and Reise turning toward the bespectacled maid beside her.

Tina, this garden is peaceful, no?

G6 remembered the line.

Ah. That maid.

She opened her mouth, then stopped when something beneath the pillow caught her eye.

A book.

Every instinct she possessed reacted before reason could explain why.

G6 shoved Tina aside—not hard enough to injure her, only enough to move her out of the way—and pulled the pillow aside.

There it was.

Old leather. Ancient pages.

The same impossible object she had left behind in another world.

The Wonder of a Wonderful World.

Her stomach lurched, not with fear but with something uglier: the sensation of reality becoming unreliable.

“Of course.”

Her laugh held no humor.

“Of fucking course.”

Static suddenly pierced her ears.

G6 flinched as pain detonated behind her eyes. Both hands pressed against her temples, smearing blood into her rose-gold hair.

Then came a whisper, thin, weak, and desperate.

It would be great if I was not her…

G6 stopped breathing.

“What the hell is happening?”

“My lady, are you quite alright?”

Tina remained close, but no longer tried to touch her. She watched G6 carefully, like someone approaching an injured animal that still had teeth.

G6 ignored her.

Her chest felt wrong, too tight, and her breathing accelerated despite every instinct ordering it to stop.

Control it.

She inhaled slowly, held it, then exhaled.

Again.

The body refused to cooperate.

Apparently, this delicate thing considered fainting a valid response to stress.

“Lady Reise, please speak.” Tina’s voice softened. “Are you upset because His Highness has not visited?”

His Highness?

G6’s eyes narrowed.

That royal ass?

Then something heavy pressed against her chest.

Sadness.

Deep and humiliating.

Definitely not hers.

G6 knew it immediately because she would rather bite through her own tongue than ache over some man refusing to visit her.

What the fuck is this?

The feeling remained, borrowed grief living inside borrowed flesh like a ghost in the machine.

G6 sat on the edge of the bed and dragged both hands down her face, leaving faint streaks of blood across Reise’s delicate features.

I can’t breathe.

No. Think.

She lacked information. The environment was unknown, the body was unknown, and whatever circumstances had brought her here were beyond anything she had been trained to process.

For a moment, it was simply too much.

Am I inside the novel I was reading?

That is absurd and impossible.

She rejected the thought immediately, then forced herself to consider it anyway.

Alright. Hypothetical. Be rational.

Her injured hand stung.

The pain was real.

The room remained stable no matter how many times she looked away. Nothing dissolved or shifted, and no hallucination behaved this cleanly.

Her mind moved backward through every explanation it understood and discarded them one by one.

Then Pisces’s voice surfaced from memory, annoyingly enthusiastic.

Listen, G6. This guy is an ordinary office worker in his previous life, but he died and reincarnated as a slime.

G6 went still.

The conclusion arrived before she wanted it to.

“No.”

Her face lost color.

“I…”

The word barely escaped.

“Died?”

For the first time in her life, Akira Gemstone—G6, the Reaper—could not produce a useful thought.

She simply sat there.