Chapter 1: Welcome Back, Slut-Blood
The thing about playing cursed, fetish-bait visual novels at 2:46 AM is that if you die afterward, no one's going to believe it was an accident. They'll say it was post-nut shame. They'll find you slumped in front of your monitor with some flushed twink on the screen moaning, "Yes, my liege," and no amount of forensic science will save your reputation.
Kaito Yukimura knew this.
He had this thought very clearly in the moment after the parasol hit him and before the darkness swallowed everything up.
But let's rewind.
The screen before him flickered with the final, glorious insult to his pride as a gamer:
[BAD END: Confined to the Rose Quarters – Broken in Body, Worshiped in Flesh.]
"What the fuck is this writing?" he muttered, leaning forward until his forehead nearly kissed the monitor.
There on screen, the protagonist lay in repose—naked, collared, magically bruised and blushing like an overheated toaster. His thighs glistened like someone had rubbed oil on the CG, and the Prince was leaning over him, whispering something profoundly horny and unskippable.
"God, what a trashfire of a route."
He clicked the mouse, but nothing advanced. The bad ending image remained. The music swelled, some orchestral sex lament titled "Crimson Submission" or whatever, playing at maximum drama. He winced.
This was all his sister's fault.
Two days ago, Saya had forced him at foam-swordpoint to install her favorite BL fantasy dating sim, Magical Courtship: Garden of Chains. According to her, it had "heart" and "themes of transformation" and "the best bottom progression arcs ever written."
Translation: soft boys crying in corsets.
And being the stubborn, petty sibling that he was, Kaito vowed to speedrun it and prove it was nothing but cheap porn with mana glitter.
He got invested.
Deeply.
Too deeply.
He'd mocked every male lead, refused all tender gestures, made every wrong choice on purpose to break the game—and somehow unlocked a hidden route no one warned him about. The Aurelian route. The "useless third son" who gets locked in a tower, magically overstimulated, and loved into oblivion.
It was objectively awful.
It was also kind of hot.
Which made everything worse.
"Ugh. I hate this game."
He stood, stretched, and kicked his chair back. His spine cracked like a gunshot. As he turned toward the door to grab something sugary and carbonated, his foot snagged on a lacy, frilly object.
His sister's parasol.
Still leaning there from her cosplay con last weekend. Pink. Ruffled. Dangerous.
It tilted.
He blinked.
The end popped open mid-fall, a spring-loaded blur of parasitic vengeance.
"Ah, shi—"
CRACK.
The last thing he heard was a violin swell from the game still playing.
---—
Pain.
Immediate, searing, and everywhere.
Like someone had taken a crowbar to his ribcage and then politely set him down on concrete just to twist the knife. His lungs felt like wet paper. His back throbbed. Something sticky clung to his side.
He groaned, blinking into the sun, and squinted at—
Marble?
Pillars?
Boots?
He was flat on his back, dirt and grass in his mouth, sun in his eyes, and every breath sending lightning down his spine.
He was blinded by the light after finally touching grass.
"Is that all it takes to break you?"
The voice was female. Young. Cruel.
He rolled to the side, blinking furiously. A girl stood above him. About his age—maybe younger. Platinum blonde bob, aristocratic nose, dueling uniform so crisp it looked enchanted. She had a blade at her hip and a glare like she wanted to carve him in half just to see if he bled anything worthwhile.
"You really are the family's stain," she said, lips curling. "Your mother should've died before she let a mongrel like you out of her."
Kaito stared at her.
What the hell kind of insult was that? Mongrel? That sound too mannered.
Living in earth as a young teen. What swearing didn't he know. He can even swear in different languages.
"Still not dead?" she sneered. "Father must've regretted sparing you. Even whores die with more dignity."
Okay. So. Definitely not Earth.
Possibly a Renaissance fair from hell.
He tried to sit up. Pain lanced through his torso like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his insides.
"Don't move," someone muttered behind him. "You're bleeding."
More voices. Hands on his shoulders. He flinched.
Soft fabric. Uniforms. The smell of incense. A man knelt beside him—older, dressed in gold-lined robes, calm-faced. A priest?
Kaito blinked rapidly, heart pounding.
"Stay still, my lord," the man said, pressing glowing fingers to Kaito's ribs.
Wait. What?
"Hold on," Kaito croaked. "Where am I?"
"You're in the south courtyard, Lord Aurelian," the priest said, tone gentle. "You took a direct hit during the duel. We're healing you now."
"…Pardon?"
The priest looked at him strangely. "You may be concussed."
No. Concussed was too kind.
He was hallucinating. He had to be. The sunlight was too bright, the uniforms too crisp, the magic too sparkly.
He looked down at his own hands—slim, pale, delicate.
Not his hands.
Not his fucking body.
His breathing quickened. Magic prickled in the air like static. The girl who'd insulted him—blonde, lethal, smirking—stood with her arms crossed, watching him like she'd just stepped on something revolting and was waiting to see if it could crawl away.
"You're dismissed from training," she said. "Father won't waste more spells on a failure."
She turned on her heel and walked off without waiting for a response.
Kaito sat there, blinking, while two uniformed servants gently helped him stand.
His body was trembling. Every movement wrong. His balance off. The air felt too sharp, like he was breathing in magic and humiliation at the same time.
"Wait, wait," he mumbled. "This is… is this a novel? Did I get hit into a fantasy novel?"
The servants looked at each other.
He scanned the surroundings again. Ornate stone archways. Golden banners. Everything expensive and impossibly clean. He was in a palace. Or a noble estate. Or some kind of elite magical school for emotionally unavailable sadists.
He'd read this plot before. A hundred times.
"Okay, okay, think," he muttered. "Useless son, bad sister and western fantasy setting."
Which one was it? It could be The Winter Duke's illegitimate son or Becoming the enemy prince or—
Too many options. His brain was scrambling through fantasy tropes like a deranged librarian.
"Do I get a system? Stats? An old grimoire under my pillow?" he whispered.
The priest cleared his throat awkwardly.
One of the servants tugged him along gently. "You should rest, young master."
"Young master," Kaito repeated, dazed. "This really is one of those stories…"
He had a bad habit of muttering things aloud. It have developed when he was in high school dreaming to be hidden master mind and yes it was cringe but its not as if he was denying that.
They led him through stone halls lit with enchanted crystals. Every inch screamed power and prestige. He caught his reflection in a polished window—soft-featured, silver-haired, wearing a duel-scorched uniform far too expensive for someone like him.
"Shit," he muttered. "This body is hot."
The servants pretended not to hear.
They stopped outside a lavish guest suite. One pushed the door open. The room inside was silk-draped, perfumed, and disturbingly large.
He stepped inside like a man walking into a trap. The furniture gleamed. The bed could fit four people. The mirror had gold inlay. The tub was steaming.
He slumped into a chair, staring at his shaking hands. Still not his. Still wrong.
I died. I actually fucking died.
And now he was in a fantasy novel. Or maybe a trash-tier isekai webcomic. Possibly an otome game. His brain was spinning with genre references.
"Wait…"
Something finally clicked. A single word, echoing back from earlier.
A name.
They called him—
Aurelian.
His mouth went dry.
No.
No no no no.
He remembered now. That name.
Aurelian.
The route he'd just finished in the game.
The useless third son. The bottom. The delicate boy, The one who becomes a living sex charm for the Prince's stress relief. That fucking shithole of a game !
He wasn't in a novel.
He was in the game.
He was Aurelian.
"…I'm fucked."