Pandora sat down with a blushing Erf at her side and enjoyed a leisurely meal while being served by Anna.

After two bowls of fruit jelly for dessert, she headed to her workshop to meet her guests.

If they were angry at her for being so late, she planned to politely chase them away with a sprinkling of salt, asking them where they’d gotten the idea to show up unannounced.

But when she arrived, there was not a single ant in sight.

“No, this…….”

Instead, the paintings she had stacked on top of the bookshelves were spilled out onto the floor and strewn about, looking like a storm had swept through.

“Did they trash my studio and ran away……?”

Why the hell……?

Did they want to play an April Fool’s prank too?

Pandora’s once-white face grew feverishly red.

No way!

What kind of human being treats other people’s precious artwork like this?

It’s bad enough that she’s grieving for her lost painting of a white cat, but this is not the way to…….

“Anna. Call the guests’ houses and tell them that if they don’t come over right away, I’m going to burn their house down.”

Pandora’s eyes sparked as she realized she could reset anyway.

She gritted her teeth and picked up the pictures on the floor, one by one.

“……?”

This is weird.

As she cradled the paintings in her arms and stacked them, she looked back at the canvases she’d glimpsed.

The faces of the men were familiar.

As Pandora stood there dumbfounded, Erf, who had been helping her clean up, asked worriedly.

“Miss Pandora. What’s wrong, is something wrong with the painting?”

There is. A very big problem.

“I never drew these humans……?”

Crown Prince Eric, Archduke Frederick, Escort Knight Eugene, and Priest Noel.

They were Pandora’s guests today, the male protagonists of <Villain’s Way of Love>.

Pandora closed her eyes and rolled her pupils up and down, left and right, in all directions, before looking at the painting again.

Then she squinted and read the title and signature on the back of the painting.

<Deserted Island>, <Severe Cold>, <Moving Mansion>, <Maze>.

They were all very intuitive, with titles that matched the paintings.

They were painted when Pandora was at her lowest point, and she didn’t want anyone to see her negative paintings, so she stacked them on a bookshelf.

‘But why are these portraits of the male leads?’

The titles, signatures, and handwriting are the same, only the painting have changed.

Like a ghost.

Just then, Anna returned.

“Miss. I heard your guests haven’t left yet.”

“Huh?”

“The gatekeeper has been standing guard, but he says no one has left, and the carriage they came in is still there, so now, everyone is trying to find them.”

“…….”

Pandora swallowed hard at the ominousness.

The four missing people were the male leads.

Superior height and physique. Men whose presence could be felt anywhere and who would glisten in the light of day.

If such people have not yet been found, wandering around in a not-so-large mansion, it was certain that something serious must have happened.

Pandora looked down at the four canvas portraits in her hands.

A chill ran down her spine as her eyes locked with Eric’s subtly smiling face.

At that moment, she heard the pounding of hooves outside her window. Hee-hee-hee! The sound of hooves slowed to a whinny as they came to a stop at the front door of Pandora’s house.

“Who are you?”

“His Majesty, is he not here by any chance?”

“Who do you mean?”

“The Crown Prince, of course.”

Just as the gatekeeper was about to reply, a man rode up on horseback from the other side.

“I’m here to see His Highness the Archduke.”

Then a pure white temple carriage and an ornate carriage appeared simultaneously.

“Priest Noel hasn’t returned, so I’ve been sent to……!”

“I heard Sir Eugene was here!”

Goosebumps.

Pandora tugged at the apron hanging from her chair, wrapping it around the four canvases.

‘I must hide these.’

Any misunderstanding would be blamed on this. She has a hunch.

“Doctor. Doctor.”

At Pandora’s urgent call, Erf swept her up.

“To your room?”

“Yes.”

The workshop was far from tidy, but it was better to leave it as it was for now.

Just as Pandora reached her room and hid the painting under the bed, the butler greeted the new guests in the downstairs foyer.

Pandora met the rush of guests in the parlor.

“I’ve been at the art gallery all afternoon, and when I came home, all four of them weren’t there. I don’t know why they left their carriage, but perhaps they had some urgent business to attend to?”

Fortunately, the guests agreed with Pandora and went home.

They couldn’t imagine that this petite woman in front of them could do anything against the four male leads.

However, the knight who had come to look for the crown prince did not return until he had visited every room of the manor, opened every cellar, and found that Eric was not there.

Pandora spied them from the window as they exited the front door and sighed.

She knew that in another 11:59:59, time would reverse and all of this would never have happened, but it was polite to overindulge in a new and interesting situation that hadn’t happened in a long time.

“Wow. All of a sudden I was nervous at what’s going on. I thought I was going to die of nerves.”

Pandora hopped up and down, clinging to Erf’s neck.

“But where did the four of them really go?”

Had they all gone up into the sky or down into the earth? It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, given that Prince Eric was a brilliant wizard.

???????? ?? ???

That time,

“Hahhh. The weather’s crazy.”

Eric was wandering around in the frozen city in the face of a fierce blizzard.

“Shit. Where the hell am I?”

Frederic, the Northern Archduke, wandered through a maze of traps,

“…….”

Knight Eugene woke up in front of a mansion with an eerie aura.

“Ah, is anyone here……?”

Noel the Priest landed on a deserted island in the Great Sea of Doom.

???????? ?? ???

“It’s late, you should go to sleep.”

“You’ll go if I fall asleep.”

Pandora squeezed her tired eyes shut slowly, but held onto Erf’s hand tightly and refused to let go.

By 11:59:59, the clock would be back to 8 a.m. anyway, and she’d find Erf back to work…….

‘I’m lonely.’

She didn’t want to be alone for even a minute.

Pandora sat on the floor at the foot of her bed and regaled Erf with stories of her day at the museum.

She told him about people’s reactions to the newly decorated exhibit as an April Fool’s prank.

But holding hands, chatting, and occasionally playing with Erf’s hair and kissing him didn’t fill the void.

‘He’ll forget all this anyway.’

No matter what she says, no matter what she does, it will all be like it never happened.

Her mood would rise for a moment, then plummet back down like a roller coaster. Her mind was a mess, as was her workshop.

“Doctor. Where do I go to kill god?”

“A cathedral or a church……?”

For the record, the entire development team of The Villain’s Way of Love were atheists.

“What about becoming a god?”

“Do you want to become a ……god?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To kill gods.”

Pandora laughed eerily, making a throat-slitting gesture with her thumb.

‘If I could kill god and restore my frozen time.’

She could try any number of crazy things.

“Maybe if I sold my soul to the devil, I’d be able to touch the toes of a god?”

Or should she sell it to an angel?

She peeked into the world of the gods through a search bar and a typewriter that came out of a jar, and found that they had something called a “second-hand trading site.”

‘My soul is a used item, maybe I can sell it there.’

But Pandora could only spy, she couldn’t write, upload, or join any sites.

“……Don’t do that.”

Erf said quietly to Pandora, who was letting her crazy thoughts run wild.

“As your doctor, I’m not going to stand by and let you do something dangerous.”

Lies.

Vicious lies.

Erf’s kind words had deceived Pandora countless times before.

‘You’ll forget me.’

Pandora was as curious about tomorrow with Erf as she was about the gods.

If tomorrow came, if he remembered her today, if they could plan for the future, what would he see her as?

As these fantasies took hold, she hated Erf as much as she hated the gods.

There is nothing more cruel than false hope.

Besides, it wasn’t fair that Pandora’s mind grew bigger and bigger and crazier with each iteration, and Erf’s mind began anew each time.

When Pandora tried to tip the scales of her ever-tipping heart by forcibly breaking it in her imagination, she felt like crying.

If only the world would end.

‘Let it all be ruined. Be gone!’

The needle of the clock was approaching midnight. But that needle will never touch midnight.

“If I can’t sell it, not even to the devil, not even secondhand, then you can buy it. My soul.”

Pandora swept up Erf’s arm and whispered in his ear.

“How much can you give me?”

Her tone was playful, but her voice was precarious.

“I don’t think a goodnight kiss will be enough.”

Pandora tugged at Erf’s neatly pressed tie and led him to the bed.

Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him close and lay back.

She felt a firm hand on the back of her head, almost bumping into the head of the bed, and pressed her lips to his.