Daniel Park

In a bestselling romance novel, the villain dies exactly as he is meant to—defeated by the righteous protagonist, erased so the hero and heroine can claim their happy ending. His wife appears only briefly: a contract bride who grieves politely before fading from relevance. A side character. A necessary casualty of narrative closure. That is how the story ends. In the real world, however, there are no dramatic finales—only rent deadlines, grocery lists, and exhaustion that settles quietly into the bones. In a small, one-room apartment, a twenty-two-year-old man lives carefully and deliberately. Orphaned young, raised on scholarships and part-time jobs, he has learned to measure everything—money, electricity, even food portions. His life is stable but narrow, structured around survival and the hope of securing a full-time job after graduation. He reads novels at night to fill the silence. He does not believe in their romance. He reads because fiction is simpler than reality. Until one night, the boundary between the two collapses. The story he was reading does not stay on the page. And the widow who was never meant to matter wakes up in his bedroom—grieving, confused, and entirely unaware that her entire life was once confined to ink.

When a bullied student awakens with a perfectly handsome second body, he uses it to rule the halls of J-High—but balancing two lives risks exposing a dangerous secret that could destroy both.