The Way to Protect the Female Lead's Older Brother

❤Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - The Original Novel's Ending

I was in a bad mood when I left the dungeons. The young man trapped in the prison cell had confirmed with his own mouth that he was Cassis Pedelian. Although I had dimly hoped otherwise, I could no longer deny who I was and what sort of villainous family and story I had been thrust into. I raised my fingers to my lips.

D*#m, I had to figure out my next move. 

The book. I remembered most of it clearly. It told the story of how the heroine led the demise of the Agriche family…

FLASHBACK

I was in Korea and was stressed about my senior thesis. During one of the lowest points of my college student life, a classmate recommended a popular novel to me. 

I was busy and sleep-deprived. Normally, I had too much dignity to believe that a romance novel would cheer me up, but when my classmate shoved the book in my hands, I automatically read the title:

Hell’s Flower. 

It was a nauseating book title. As I flipped the book to read the summary on the back, I had to resist the urge to chuck it. If the 19+ age sticker did not turn me off, the advert that it was a reverse harem novel did. The story revolved around Sylvia who picked a lover among many male candidates during a harrowing adventure. 

The heroine and male protagonists came from five noble families who ruled over a realm and were recognizable by their house colours: blue, white, red, gold, and black. Sylvia was descended from the “blue crest” Pedelians. 

Without preamble, I turned to the first page. 

In the first chapter, Sylvia was described as a beautiful and charming girl that had dazzling azure hair and bright golden eyes that resembled sunshine. She was born into a wealthy family who loved her and grew up without any hardship. Among all of her siblings, she had a special bond with one of her older brothers.

Could the novel already be so unrealistic? I thought. Normally, siblings are mean to each other, aren’t they? 

The novel went into detail about Sylvia’s warm brother-sister relationship. She and her older brother gave affectionate hugs, declared ‘I-love-you’ to each other often, and were otherwise the perfect siblings to their parents. There was enough garbage to make you spit your liver out. 

“This is fiction alright,” I laughed quietly. 

Sylvia’s quest began after her fifteenth birthday when her precious brother disappeared. 

Cassis had been sent to recon disturbing movements along the Pedelian’s border before he broke contact. Naturally, his family frantically tried to find him, but their search was in vain. 

The obvious culprit were the “black crests”: the House of Agriche. 

A fitting description for the villains, I had thought. My eyes turned to see a book illustration of the Agriche family crest.  

There was no love lost between the “blue crest” Pedalians, who fought for justice, and the “black crest” Agriche, who committed atrocities. The families had never gotten along. Moreover, right before Cassis Pedelian’s disappearance, there had been a huge fight between the Agriche and Pedelian Heads..  

The noble houses had equal status. In the end, the Pedelians could not initiate an investigation against the Agriche family; there was no evidence that the black crests had been involved at all. Cassis’s father could only burn in shame for failing to find his son. 

As a reader, I was aware of Cassis Pedelian’s fate from the beginning. Nonchalantly, the author mentioned that a corpse had been disposed of on the Agriche estate.

And so, three years passed….

Sylvia did not give up on her brother’s whereabouts. When she became an adult at eighteen years old, she decided to find Cassis herself. Thus began the Rated 19+ scenes…

On her quest, Sylvia encountered her family’s enemies, allies, and.–at some point I closed my eyes while reading– the male lords and heirs. Ah, Sylvia’s interactions with the men. At the time, I thought those scenes were insane. I began to stan the female lead and relished the romance and NSFW moments, particularly the kidnapping and confinement parts…. 

After finishing the book, I concluded that all of the characters in the novel were freaks. Surprisingly, even an Agriche had fallen in love with Sylvia.

During her journey, Sylvia had been captured by an Agriche. In a way, she couldn’t have had better luck. With minimal effort, she was able to enter the enemy den that she had yearned to infiltrate for years. There, she learned that her brother Cassis had been tortured to death by order of Lant Agriche. She then took her revenge on the entire family by allying with the other male protagonists that had fallen in love with her: the lords and masters of the white, red, and gold houses. Together, they destroyed the Agriche family, and the novel has an open-ending where Sylvia is still choosing her love. 

END FLASHBACK

The plot was neither rich nor feminist. To put it succinctly, most of the novel was about Sylvia’s–err, submissive encounters–with the male protagonists and her life while she had been locked in a cage.

D*@n it. 

I was glad that Sylvia had a happy ending in the novel, but the House of Agriche was completely ruined. Once Sylvia returned and told her family of Cassis’s fate, the Pedelians’ anger was so great, they rounded up their allies and killed everyone associated with the black crest. There was no sympathy for any servant, woman, or child. The Agriche family line was wiped out. 

As for the character Roxana, who I now felt sympathy for, she had only been a minor character in the novel. Her end had been sort of cliché. She had been ordered by her father to seduce one of the male protagonists but failed and fell into disgrace. She died during the Agriche massacre when the Pedelians and their allies stormed the castle.