For You 1

I liked you. I truly liked you.

Just being with you made me feel like I could fly with joy, and living each day seeing you was the pleasure of my life. I wanted you to be happy. I always wanted you to smile. I thought I could sacrifice anything for your happiness.

You probably don’t know how I feel.

Of course you don’t. There was a huge wall between you and me.

“Ana!”

A large door opened and I heard a voice with a lisp. When I turned my head, a gorgeously handsome boy was smiling at me while holding a teddy bear as big as himself. His bright face was truly beautiful.

The sight of him running over to me with small steps—tap tap tap—and standing in front of me was so cute that I almost clutched my chest without realizing it.

The child struggled to sit next to me on the sofa where I was sitting and reading a book. I didn’t help him and just stared at him intently. If I helped him with everything, he might never learn to do things on his own. I wanted him to become a kind and upright adult.

He needed to become someone that anyone would desire. The kind of person who, once you see them, you’d covet them so much you couldn’t just leave them alone. That was also the image of himself that his future self would want.

“Did you attend your lessons well?”

“Yeah. But why don’t you do it together with Ana?”

He’s clearly the same age as me, but how long is this kid going to keep talking with a lisp? Could there be some problem in his growth process? There were no adults around him who spoke with a similar way of talking, so I couldn’t understand why only he insisted on this way of speaking.

Surely he won’t still be like this when he gets older. The accumulating worries were making my stomach feel heavy.

Regardless of my concerns, the child smiled so happily. His beaming smile made him look like someone who possessed everything in the world. Actually, that wasn’t far from the truth. Even if not the whole world, this child would grow up to have this entire country.

He would shoulder this nation in the future. As an adult, he would be skilled in swordsmanship, magic, politics—there would be nothing he couldn’t handle expertly, and he would rise to the position of a great lord who watches over everything from afar and makes fair and just decisions.

An emperor whom everyone admired and respected. That’s what his future self would be like. The man I knew was definitely that kind of person, and yet…

“Ana.”

Why is the man in front of me making sounds with a lisp?

Looking at him, now seven years old, I held back the sigh that was about to escape. I could feel him wiggling his small bottom, wanting even just a little bit to sit next to me.

“Your Highness, it’s not Ana, it’s Andelion.”

“Ana!”

“No, Andeli…!! Haa.”

No matter what I said, the way he addressed me remained the same. I had tried teaching him several times, but those two syllables he used to call me never changed to four syllables. I had already half given up on the name anyway. Consoling myself like that, I focused on more important matters.

“Can you read letters now?”

“Yeah! Ana taught me so I know!”

He said something so casually that would make his private tutor gape and shed tears if they heard it. What I had taught him couldn’t have been that much.

I was just his playmate. The kind of relationship where we’d spend a brief time together in childhood and then grow apart. Yet this child listened to a few words from me, whom he’d known for only a month, more than his tutor who had been with him for a year.

I took out a book I had prepared and handed it to him. He received the book with his small hands and tilted his head.

“What’s this?”

“I chose an easy book to read. Please read it by the time we meet next.”

After saying this lightly, I got down from the sofa. I was still too short to get down easily on my own, but I could endure this much difficulty. As I was about to leave, he also hurriedly got down and grabbed my collar with his small hand.

“Already going? Eat food before you go.”

“I have to go back with Father when he returns. I’ll see you next week.”

“Ugh, but still. Hmph.”

It looked like tears might fall from his large eyes at any moment. Biting his plump lips tightly, the child fidgeted with his small fingers.

Was it because I was his first friend? The child seemed to like me quite a bit. Even though I hadn’t done anything particularly unusual, his gaze never left me. I was grateful but also worried that the flow might differ from the original story.

The body I had entered definitely remembered meeting him only very briefly.

Andelion Crusay. The only son of the Crusay Duke family and the heir to the villain role in this world I had entered. In some stories, that person would end up with him, but that wasn’t the ending I liked. Someone much better than this body should stand beside that person.

I had no doubt that this small child in front of me would become such a person.

“I’ll come again.”

“Yeah.”

I firmly grasped the dejected child’s hand and shook it several times. Even so, the child’s sadness wouldn’t disappear. Only after I committed the irreverent act of patting his head did the child let go of my hand.

In my original life, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say my life was completed through a certain person. All my unhappiness disappeared through that person, and all my happiness was achieved through that person. And now I had been given the opportunity to help that person.

I had been reborn in a dating simulation game where the character I treasured most in the world lived and breathed.

## 1.

A princess is born in a crumbling nation. Born with an outstanding mind, she was clearly meant to be a ruler in anyone’s eyes. Everyone expected great things from her actions. They believed she would lead this nation even with a woman’s body, and that she could rebuild this declining country.

People placed all the burden on the young her. She had to decide her future from childhood without even finding what she wanted to do.

Whether she wanted it or not, her future self would become the ruler of that country. Such a person, for some unavoidable reason, ended up studying abroad in another country. It was almost like being taken as a hostage to the neighboring empire, but to her it felt like a brief escape.

This is how the game ‘Luper’ begins.

It was a game a friend had recommended. Insisting it was fun and that I absolutely had to play it, the game they put in my hands was a romance simulation game for women that most men wouldn’t be interested in.

At first, I started with the mindset of wondering why I had to play this. However, as days passed, I became more and more absorbed in the story. I played as if I had become that person myself, crying with the protagonist, feeling heartbroken and happy together.

What I liked most was the story with Persis Keinan, the imperial prince. In that story, the protagonist throws off all the shackles and pressure surrounding her. The sight of her standing before Persis simply as one person in love looked truly happy.

I don’t know how much I cried watching the illustration of her holding hands with Persis at the end. To me, it felt like the happiest ending of all.

Even though all I had done was press dialogue choices, I felt proud thinking I had made her happy. That’s how deeply her life had embedded itself in my heart.

But somehow I don’t know how I ended up entering the world where she exists.

I think I died in the original world, but I can’t remember how I died. I remember living an unremarkable life, but that ending wouldn’t come back to me. Actually, there was no need to try hard to remember it. I was too busy adapting to the new environment, so my previous life became secondary.

I was reborn in the world where she lived. ‘Luper’ was the name of the empire. I realized this fact when my brain matured little by little and became able to accept past memories.

My name is Andelion Crusay.

One of the capturable characters in ‘Luper’ and the son of the duke who plays the villain role in this story.

I don’t know how shocked I was when I first realized that fact. The game ‘Luper’ is one where you can easily fall into bad endings if you’re not careful. And the person who plays the biggest role at that branching point is precisely my father, Duke Zahar Crusay.

Even in this world I’ve entered, would she be able to grasp her own happiness? Of course she would. Because it’s her, not someone else. I had no doubt she could accomplish it with her own strength.

Even so, I was worried. Because I cherished her so much, I thought it would be good if she didn’t have to struggle as hard. Ultimately, from the moment I became aware that I myself was Andelion Crusay, my entire life began revolving around her happy ending.

Even if it was an insignificant action, if I could help her, I could put forth all my effort.

When morning came, my eyes opened brightly. Young bodies seem to know well how to rest deeply—when I closed my eyes to sleep, I would sleep so deeply that it would be morning as soon as I opened them.

When I raised my body from the large bed, I could see the dark room. I could see faint light coming in between the windows blocked by blackout curtains. It seemed I had woken up before the servants came again today. After struggling to get down from the high bed, I reached out to pull the heavy curtains.

If I had been even a little older, I could have easily pulled them, but right now everything was difficult. As I struggled to pull the curtains to the side, I could see the large window that occupied one wall. The moment bright light streamed in strongly, my eyes hurt and I automatically frowned.

This had become a familiar daily routine. Pulling the curtains had become exercise in its own way. Since I’m young, all sorts of actions help with development. The human body was truly amazing.

Then I heard the sound of the door opening. A servant briefly gasped “Huh,” then quickly approached me and finished pulling the curtains. It was incomparably cleaner movement than what I was doing.