Sophie Ember, the second daughter of the Ember Barony.
The second daughter of a family famous for having many daughters.
Being in a vague position—neither the eldest nor the youngest—she was forced to fend for herself from a young age.
She never really considered it a grievance.
Although she didn't receive bountiful support, she was still a noble lady who received all the basic education. Sophie, being bright, carved out her own path based on those teachings.
No, it would be more accurate to say she had to carve it out.
Because her family was a humble Barony, they weren't in a position to properly look after all their daughters and find them marriage partners. While the eldest was cared for as the eldest and the youngest as the youngest, the ones in the middle just had to figure out how to be independent.
Anyway, the path Sophie chose in that position was to become a private tutor.
She began teaching the liberal arts required of ladies to noble young misses like herself or daughters of wealthy families.
Her teaching methods were good, and with her smooth personality and social skills, Sophie quickly became a renowned instructor.
In the end, she came to teach Noel Grace, the elder of two daughters in the wealthy Grace Viscount family of the Southern Empire.
Being the liberal arts instructor for Noel Grace was, contrary to her initial worries, a very good job.
She had heard rumors that the Viscount's daughter, Noel Grace, was a bit of an eccentric, so she was nervous, but upon meeting her, she found her to be a good child.
'No... she certainly was a bit strange.'
It was hard to explain exactly, but her atmosphere and behavior were very different from typical young ladies.
It didn't mean her personality was bad.
Even if she couldn't hide her boredom, her attitude toward class itself was good, and her learning ability was excellent.
Then what was the problem?
It was due to an indescribable sense of dissonance.
'Is the person in front of me really a girl?'
From their first meeting, she had strongly felt that strange dissonance.
It felt less like looking at a noble lady and more like looking at a tomboyish lad.
That strangeness only grew stronger as time passed.
Still, it had improved a lot now.
Although she still didn't feel very lady-like and had an easy-going vibe, instead of creating dissonance like before, it had evolved into a peculiar charm.
Though, that charm was....
She was a young lady fitting the description of "a beauty that outshines the moon and shame flowers," yet oddly enough, her charm seemed to radiate only toward the same sex rather than the opposite sex, earning the pity of those around her.
"I actually prefer it."
The fact that the person in question not only didn't mind but actually liked it made it even more peculiar.
Meeting a good man and marrying into a good family was supposed to be the dream and success story of a noble lady in this era, yet Noel Grace was….
She had been tutoring her for nearly five years, but she couldn't understand her at all.
Even if she continued working as a tutor in the future, she carefully thought she might never meet a peculiar student like Lady Noel Grace again in her life.
And those thoughts of Sophie Ember,
"Is this… the composition homework?"
Were made even more certain by this recent incident.
When asked to write a poem as part of her liberal arts class, Noel Grace submitted a novel containing a poem.
And not just a short piece, but a volume hefty enough to be a whole book.
She knew Noel had an eccentric side, but this time she couldn't fathom what she was thinking.
Thinking she might understand her inner thoughts if she read the composition homework, Sophie began reading it for grading purposes—
"Th-this is?"
She couldn't help but be astonished.
It revealed raw, intense emotions that one couldn't imagine coming from the same person who always taught Noel to be modest and elegant and modeled such behavior herself.
She couldn't scold her for it, because the 'Romance Novel' Noel wrote, scratched by her sister Noah's not-quite-provocation, was just that terrifying.
It was a work that diverged from any existing love story.
Well, of course.
It was a romance novel written with the essence of stimulation extracted from various Makjang dramas that were responsible for South Korea's mornings.
That's right.
Noel wrote a romance novel, but a romance novel with the theme of 'Adultery'.
The title was 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」.
A title parodying a work famous as a world-class adultery novel, with content filled with spicy and stimulating Korean-style Makjang elements.
Was that all?
She even used the Art of Cutting (Cliffhanger) to the extreme, so one could easily guess how terrifying the power contained in the novel was.
In fact, faced with that power, Sophie Ember, who had started reading without much thought to grade homework, fell into the novel without even thinking about maintaining her dignity.
Sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes raging, and sometimes huffing, she looked as if she were about to crawl right into the novel.
Indeed, the more she read, the closer she unknowingly brought her face to the text.
That's how immersed she was, and then—
"Elise was Rina's daughter? Then the two are siblings?! S-so what's next?! What happens?! Why is there no next part—?!"
It was maddening to have that immersion forcibly snapped.
The nonexistent next page.
Looking as if she might crawl on the floor to search every nook and cranny, wondering if the wind had blown it away, she was completely hooked on the novel.
The elegant tutor Sophie Ember was nowhere to be found.
All that remained was a woman overly immersed in a Makjang romance novel.
This was… already too late.
She had become addicted to the taste of intense dopamine.
Sophie had read as many books as the culture she had built up over her life.
Naturally, that included not just liberal arts books but many novels, yet this was her reaction.
It was understandable.
In this world, a pretentious writing style was still the mainstream.
The trend was to express things softly and indirectly with various modifiers rather than direct expressions.
Having read a text written in a way that went directly against that, shoving information, knowledge, and dopamine straight into the brain with simple, almost crude directness….
They say he who has eaten meat knows how to eat it.
It's not strange for someone with low dopamine resistance to end up like this after tasting a lethal dose of it.
"It's not here…."
Sophie sighed with a tone that would make someone unaware of the situation think the country had fallen.
"No matter how much I look, it's not here…."
The window wasn't even open in the first place, so unless someone used magic, there was no way the wind blew the papers away indoors.
If it wasn't found after searching this much, it meant it wasn't there from the start.
Sophie had to admit the fact that there was either a mistake in the submission process or the next part wasn't written at all.
"Ah…."
Sophie agonized over the shock of 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」 cutting off right after a major birth secret was revealed.
She was going crazy wondering what came next.
The side effects of being hit by the Art of Cutting were already appearing.
'To think Elise was Rina's daughter! Ah, come to think of it, there was a description that seemed to hint at it.'
Her heart pounded.
Eventually, unable to suppress the impulse, Sophie pushed aside the voice of reason asking, 'Isn't this a bit much?' and went to find Noel, who wrote this problematic novel.
She intended to ask Noel about the next part of the story.
"The Young Miss is having tea in the garden with the Little Miss."
With the help of a passing servant, she found her whereabouts easily.
Sophie headed to the garden, almost running.
There, Sophie found Noel telling a story with her sister Noah sitting on her lap.
Except, that story was—
Excerpt: The Bridges of Imperium Town "And so, enjoying her first-ever deviation, Elise fell into the affair, losing track of time. Because of that, she didn't realize the unfavorable gazes directed at her. In the end, Elise was caught by a bad crowd, and the heat of the enjoyable festival vanished in an instant. Elise was terrified…."
It was the adultery romance novel she had written herself.
A Makjang-structured story filled with enough dopamine and stimulation to make the brain of a full-grown adult like Sophie Ember go haywire.
And she was telling that to a 12-year-old girl?
While that bizarre eccentricity might be Noel's charm, Sophie was horrified, thinking it was a big problem as it wasn't 'ladylike'.
"Miss Noel!"
Eventually, thinking it would have a negative influence on Noah's emotional development, Sophie shouted and called Noel.
Noel stopped talking and turned her gaze at the voice calling her.
Just as the atmosphere was heating up, an uninvited guest appeared to break the flow, so Noah also looked at Sophie with a dissatisfied gaze.
"Teacher? What is the matter?"
"What is the matter, well—."
For a moment, Sophie felt perplexed about what to say.
She felt it would be unladylike or beneath her dignity as a teacher to honestly say she came because she was so curious about the next part of 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」.
In the end, she chose an excuse instead of honesty.
Actually, it couldn't be called just an excuse.
"That story is… I think it is still too early for the Little Miss."
Because that was actually true.
However, although it was a remark befitting an educator, perhaps because it was ultimately an excuse, it didn't carry much weight.
'Hmm, is it that bad?'
Moreover, in Noel's case, she had lived a life on Earth where she was exposed to things far worse than this without issue.
Things like social media or YouTube Shorts.
Contents that were beyond stimulating—they were stimulation itself.
So Noel, whose baseline was completely shattered, thought this level of intensity didn't really matter.
'There's nothing lewd in it anyway, right?'
She lacked the awareness to recognize the problem as a problem.
This place was different from Earth.
Mild flavor was the standard here.
It wasn't an era with Colosseums and execution stands instead of YouTube, or gladiators and public execution prisoners instead of streamers.
Thanks to the church's efforts, such things had long become relics of the past, symbols of barbarism, and disappeared into history.
Considering the naturally low dopamine resistance here, Sophie was right to stop her out of concern for Noah's emotions.
"Understood."
Isn't this level fine?
While thinking that, Noel nodded.
At the words of Sophie, her elder and teacher, Noel stopped telling her sister the stimulation-filled adultery romance novel made with ingredients from Earth.
Naturally, Noah, whose fun was ruined just as it was getting interesting, was dissatisfied, but,
"I'll write you two other stories instead."
"Wow!"
Excited as if she had never been sulking, she cheered at her sister's promise.
Considering that 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」 was originally written to counter her sister's provocation, she had to write something else to replace it anyway.
It was a waste of what she had already written, but,
'Yeah~ I can just write it again.'
Scrapping a story after writing two books' worth because it didn't seem profitable was the life of a web novel author.
Since her mindset was different from the typical novelists of this era, Noel took zero damage.
Rather, it was fun to write something that smelled of Earth after so long.
Everything in this world was fine, but the lack of entertainment—no games, no movies, no manga—was the problem.
Even the card games that existed had too strong of a gambling image, so they weren't something a noble lady could play.
Other young ladies seemed to live happily enough just going to poetry readings like her sister Noah, watching performances, and going to social gatherings, but not Noel.
Because she had memories of Earth, which was full of entertainment that could be called the king of stimulation and fun, whatever she did here felt boring and made her sigh.
That boredom was relieved and she felt joy writing after such a long time.
So writing something new was no big deal.
Or so she thought….
"Miss Noel, I read the composition homework you submitted well. I do wonder why it was a novel containing a poem rather than just a poem, but anyway, it was unique. So, by any chance, is there a next part to 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」?"
Not for any other reason, but because the story felt unnaturally cut off in the middle, she felt she had to read the whole thing to grade it properly.
Because Sophie demanded the next part with that excuse, Noel ended up having to finish writing 「The Bridges of Imperium Town」.
It felt a bit strange… but since she said it was for homework grading.
Since writing again after a long time was fun, writing more wasn't a problem itself.
However,
'Strange…? Why do I smell the familiar scent of being Canned in this unfamiliar world?'
Sophie Ember asking her to write the next manuscript quickly overlapped with her editor from her previous life, giving her a weird feeling.
She shouldn't have ignored that strange feeling.
If she hadn't,
"Did you really write this novel, Lady Grace? How did you think to write such a novel?! This, this is truly—an innovation."
She might not have suddenly met the Imperial Princess, one of the popular heroines of the original dating sim, like this.
She hadn't even entered the Academy yet!