The fluorescent light in the animal hospice hummed softly, mingling with the slow, steady beeps of the moniters. Mina Seo leaned on the counter, willing herself to stay upright. Her scrubs carried the faint scent of antiseptic and wet fur, and there was a smudge of dried iodine on her wrist she hadn't bothered to scrub away.

Nearly six in the morning. Her shift was over, but she still had to mop the treatment room before she could leave.

Her phone buzzed twice    the alarm she'd set hours ago to remind herself to eat something. She silenenced it without checking. She'd eat at home.

By the time she made it to her apartment, the sun was already creeping through the blinds. The place was empty    her roomate gone for the weekend    and the silence pressed down like a blanket. Mina kicked off her shoes, dropped her bag by the couch, and went to the cupboard.

Rice cake. Water bottle. Good enough.

Her laptop sat open on the coffee table, The Rose Bride aglow on the screen. She didn't love the book. The heroine was fine, the world itself decent, but the villainess    Lady Seraphine Arlowe    was the kind of person Mina had no sympathy for. Vain. Vicious. Blood on her hands both noble and servant. The sort of woman whose downfall you didn't just expect    you counted down the pages until it happened.

In the original story, the male leads had all the self-respect of strays loitering outside a butcher shop, trailing after the heroine as if she were the only source of food in the world.

 Mina could have stomached it if they'd had actual reaons for their devotion, but no  it was the usual harem nonsense. 

They hovered, competed, and fawned, while she stood at the center, all wide eyed innocence, never once thinking to send them away. Mina didn't believe she was malicious      just a bland, oblivous sun they all revolved around, basking in their attention without ever questioning it type nonesense. 

Meanwhile, the villainess, Seraphine, was out there commiting the kind of atrocities you couldn't come back from     kidnapping nobles, tormenting servants, killing without remorse and hunting people of all ages for sport.

 The male leads had wisely steered clear of her... until her trial. Even then, they only went to witness her downfall in hopes of being the one to finally land in the heroine's bed   

Mina caught herself.

    Heart.

Still... the book was an escape. And Mina, after weeks of night shifts and with vet school exams looming like storm clouds, would've read anything that wasn't a patient chart or pharmacology text.

She bit into the rice cake, scrolling to Seraphine's first scene     a ballroom entrance dripping with silk and venom. Onscreen, the villainess set her sights on a male lead, intent on luring him in and holding him hostage just to get her hands on the ever-so-perfect Elara      the darling commoner plucked from obscurity and dropped into high society because, apparently, being a helpless beauty was qualification enough. The sweet chewiness caught halfway down her throat. She swallowed hard, then harder.

The water bottle slipped from her hand, rolling under the table.

Her fingers clawed at her neck as her chest seized. The apartment was silent except the kitchen clock's steady tick.

Her vision tunneled, the edges fading to black.

Somewhere in the blur, she thought    bitterly    that Lady Seraphine would never die like this. She'd die under a chandelier, surrounded by enemies, not alone in a silent apartment, choking on a cheap rice cake.

Then the world went still.