Jin’s head throbbed as he blinked against the harsh sunlight filtering through heavy curtains. His vision slowly adjusted to a lavish room — silk sheets, ornate furniture, and a large window overlooking a palace garden. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, but the faint scent of old parchment and rosewood told him otherwise.

He sat up, confusion twisting his mind. This wasn’t his dingy apartment where he spent countless nights struggling to finish his failing novel. No, this was something else entirely.

“Where am I?” Jin muttered, his voice rough from disuse.

A sudden memory hit him like a punch: the world he had created — the story he had poured his heart into, the tale of a prince obsessed with a young noblewoman. No, he gasped, I’m the prince…

He staggered to a mirror and stared. The reflection staring back wasn’t his usual disheveled self, but a young man with sharp features, regal bearing, and the unmistakable coldness that he had always given his story’s second male lead — the obsessive prince who followed the heroine everywhere.

“No way…” Jin’s breath caught. “I’m inside my own novel.”

Panic crept up his spine. In the original story, the prince’s obsession ended badly — the heroine ran from him, and he was forever cast as the villain, hated and alone. Jin had never imagined waking up as the very character he’d written to be a warning.

He tried to recall his last memories before this strange awakening: a late night spent crumpling another rejection letter, bitter coffee cooling beside his laptop. Then a vague sense of wishing he could rewrite his life.

Now, that wish had been granted — in the worst possible way.

Suddenly, footsteps echoed outside the door. Jin’s heart pounded. Was it the heroine? Had he already been caught spying on her?

The door opened, and a young servant stepped in with a tray of tea. “Your Highness, the princess requests your presence in the garden,” she said softly.

Jin blinked. The princess? The heroine?

This was it. His second chance — but would he screw it up again?

He took a deep breath, smoothing his princely clothes, and stepped out to meet his fate.