The following web novel series is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

I Will Become the Villain’s Poison Taster

Chapter 1

I’ll Pass on the Death Sentence, Please

“What in the world...?”

The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was a set of menacing iron bars. Who in their right mind would design such a terrifying bed frame? It’d scare the user into thinking they were in a prison cell.

My body felt heavy, and as I groaned and struggled to move, my senses gradually returned. The dull, aching sensation throughout my body was impossible to ignore.

A splitting headache. A dry, cottony mouth. Soreness everywhere. Had I gone overboard drinking last night? No, I clearly remembered working overtime at the office until past midnight before finally heading home.

Then I’d stepped out to hail a taxi and spotted a car swerving wildly across the centerline of the road. Assuming it was a drunk driver, I was about to report it when…

“I got into a car accident...!”

The memory hit me like a lightning bolt, and I shot upright, only to be met with a wave of dizziness so intense I nearly blacked out again. My head felt like it was going to explode.

“Tsk, so you’ve woken up again.”

“Huh? Uh, what?”

“Figures. A witch like you wouldn’t be affected by a mere trace of poison.”

“Excuse me?”

Before I could fully grasp the situation, a hand shot through the shadowy iron bars in front of me. I barely had time to register before it grabbed me by the collar.

“Open your mouth.”

A firm grip forced my jaw open, and a strange liquid was poured down my throat.

Caught off guard, I instinctively swallowed the mysterious substance. As soon as the grip released me, I collapsed to the ground, coughing violently.

“Kegh! Kegh, kugh!”

My throat and nose burned, tears welling in my eyes from the sharp, acrid sensation. Was that... medicine?

No, wait! What kind of hospital treats car crash patients like this?!

“What the—kegh! Sheesh! Kugh, kegh!”

The taste in my mouth was sickly sweet, like strawberry-flavored children’s syrup. Covering my mouth, I continued to cough when I heard a flustered voice above me.

“Why aren’t you dead?”

“You were actually trying to, kegh! Kill me, kegh, kugh, kugh?!”

My fit of coughing wouldn’t stop once I got going. I was worried I might vomit at this rate. Forcing myself to grit my teeth, I finally managed to suppress the racket, but my nose still stung unbearably. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I lifted my head.

By now, my eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could make out a man standing beyond the iron bars. He wore strange garb I’d never seen before, his face obscured by a mask that left only his eyes visible. For some reason, he looked utterly taken aback.

“W-what’s going on? Are you really some dark mage?”

“What are you talking about? And who even are you?”

After steadying my spinning head, I glanced around. This was no hospital. It’d be more accurate to call this a prison.

The scene resembled something straight out of a movie set. Confused, I glanced back at the man just as he started yelling, his tone accusatory. “Why isn’t the poison working? What kind of trickery are you pulling?”

How am I supposed to know?

“Maybe you brought the wrong stuff!” I snapped, annoyed.

The man faltered, taking an awkward step back. His gaze darted to the small bottle in his hand.

“That’s impossible. They said just one drop would send you straight to the afterlife.”

Wait... What did he just say? One drop to the afterlife? And he seriously just poured that down my throat?

Stunned, I whipped my head up to glare at him, and our eyes met. He looked just as bewildered as I felt.

“Excuse me? What did you just say? Afterlife?”

“Maybe I really grabbed the wrong bottle,” he muttered to himself in a troubled voice, then brought the bottle’s opening to his nose and sniffed it. After a moment of hesitation, he tilted the bottle carefully, letting a single droplet form at the edge.

As the drop clung to the tip, he hesitated briefly before touching it to his tongue. And then—

“Kegh! Hrk—ack!”

The bottle slipped from his grasp, rolling away on the ground. The veins in his face turned an alarming shade of blue and bulged grotesquely.

“Ughguh!”

In seconds, his face darkened to a terrifying purple hue, and he collapsed to the ground. His eyes remained open, bulging in an unseeing stare, as his body convulsed a few times before falling still.

“Uh... hello?” I gazed at the unbreathing figure, then reached out cautiously toward the iron bars, but stopped short of touching him. I clenched the bars with trembling hands and raised my voice. “Hey!”

The man didn’t respond. No way. This couldn’t actually be happening. Was he... really dead?

My eyes drifted downward, landing on the bottle now lying on the floor. It had rolled onto its side, the mouth tilted just enough to reveal its empty contents. Not a single drop remained inside.

If what he’d said about the poison being able to kill with one drop was true, he’d just proven his point by dying almost instantly. Then why was I still alive after drinking almost the entire thing?

“Huh? Why’s the door open?”

While I was still frozen, staring blankly at the corpse, a sudden beam of light flickered down the hallway. Along with the light came hurried footsteps, and I could make out the faint silhouettes of several people rapidly approaching.

“A—a body!”

“Someone’s dead!”

The new arrivals immediately caused a commotion upon discovering the corpse. Still gripping the iron bars, I could only blink in dazed confusion until the beam of light swept over me, snapping me back to reality.

“She’s killing people even from inside a cell!”

Excuse me?

“Even in the end, you’re not able to let go of your viciousness! Take this woman to—!”

“I didn’t do it!”

My panicked shout made the soldiers falter. Their outfits, straight out of a period piece, and the unfamiliar device casting light on me didn’t fully register.

All I could focus on was the fact that I’d just been accused of murder and that I had to fix this misunderstanding.

“That man came in here and poisoned himself!”

The soldiers still stared at me in suspicion with narrowed eyes.

“I’m telling the truth! It wasn’t me!”

Their expressions shifted ever so slightly, doubt creeping into their gazes.

“I really didn’t do it.”

The group of soldiers exchanged murmurs, their brows furrowed. Finally, they addressed me.

“So you’ve finally lost it, Giselle Rozevin.”

Giselle Rozevin? The name rang a bell.

“Deny it all you want, but the Rozevin family has already fallen. You’d best accept it and prepare for your hanging.”

Hanging? Wait just a second, Mr. Soldier. What are you saying?

Before I could ask anything, the murmuring soldiers hoisted up the body and left. Alone in the eerie silence, I belatedly realized why the name Giselle Rozevin was so familiar.

She was the infamous villainess from a novel I’d pored over recently. In the middle of the story, she was utterly defeated by the protagonists. Her entire family was annihilated, and she herself was sentenced to death by hanging. But before the hanging could take place, she was poisoned by an assassin sent to finish her off.

That Giselle Rozevin?

Oh, come on.

This can’t be happening.

***

There was a romance novel called The Poison Apple, and it was extremely dark and bleak. The reason it was so devastating wasn’t anything trivial.

The villainess—the female side character—was the first to meet her downfall out of the evil characters, and was poisoned. The male lead was assassinated by the evil mastermind, and the female lead, overwhelmed by despair, took her own life. And at the end, the evil mastermind was tricked into drinking poison and died as well.

In short, everyone died. Major characters, whether heroes or villains, were all wiped out.

I had pored over this novel because I was on the verge of exploding from work stress. My boss, my coworkers, the clients—if I could’ve wiped them all out, I would have. But since I couldn’t, I found solace in this novel instead.

Thanks to that, while other readers criticized the author, I was the only one clapping and cheering for the author’s bold decisions. I even left a lengthy comment, pouring out my thoughts on how impressive it was. I might’ve even said it could’ve been more bleak and lamented that it wasn’t.

Why on earth did I do that?

“I must’ve been out of my mind. I should’ve begged the author to spare the villainess because it was pitiful how stupid she was.” I clutched my head, belatedly consumed by regret, but it was too late.

No amount of beating myself up over it would change anything. Why had I been so devoid of humanity back then?

“No, wait. How could I have known this would happen?”

How could I have possibly predicted that I’d become Giselle Rozevin, the villainess who died first in the story?!

“Giselle Rozevin, you wicked witch. You must be punished for your sins...”

“Yeah, yeah. You brought the poison, right? Hand it over already.”

The assassin paused when I extended a hand out, my head stuck still in a death grip by the assassin’s hand. Half the assassin’s face was covered with a black cloth, but the confusion in his eyes made his hesitation clear.

I wondered if he knew how many assassins had already come before him. Not that it mattered. I’d just drink the poison and send him on his way.

“Are you not gonna give me the poison?”

“Oh, h-here...”

This time, the poison vial was rather pretty. I wondered what it would taste like.

As I stared at the vial, the assassin seemed to snap out of it and furrowed his brow again. He was probably about to spout some ominous threat, so I quickly popped the cap and drank it all in one go.

At first, I had been scared, hesitating endlessly. But after a few attempts, I realized all that hesitation was futile. The faster I got it over with, the better.

Oh, this one tasted like mild strawberry milk. Or rather, like milk with just a faint hint of artificial strawberry flavor.

“W-what? Why isn’t it working?” the assassin stammered, watching me in shock as I licked my lips.

I simply shrugged, unfazed.

“Maybe you brought the wrong poison. Want to check?”

I held out the vial, which had one gulp left. The assassin quickly snatched it. After dealing with these assassins repeatedly, I had come to one conclusion: they weren’t very bright.

Why do they insist on tasting the poison to confirm it?!

“Urgh, ack!”

Watching someone cough up blood and die right in front of you over and over again, you couldn’t help but grow desensitized. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel scared or startled anymore. It was just... humans were adaptable creatures, and I had learned to be less fazed by it.

Besides, this wasn’t even the world I used to live in. It felt so disconnected from reality that death didn’t hit the same way it should’ve. Honestly, I kept considering the possibility that this was all just some absurdly vivid dream.

The tastes, the textures, even the pain—everything was unnervingly real, but how else could I explain this situation?

“Hah, as if I somehow ended up inside a novel. That’s ridiculous,” I muttered with a hint of false bravado, but gave up quickly. The stench of blood hanging thick in the air was too overpowering.

Would a dream really need to make the smell of blood this vivid? Could this actually have been real?

I couldn’t have actually ended up inside The Poison Apple, right?