Who are “popadanki”? Poor girls who “got lucky” enough to land in another world, get every imaginable perk, save that very world, pick up a prince on a white dragon (and even better—a prince-dragon)… and live happily ever after with him. That’s how it’s written in all those books.
Nonsense—plain lies!
I’m also one of those “popadanki”! I went to the bathhouse, and ended up in another world. Instead of a rundown castle—an ugly cave. And the prince turned out to be defective: in the form of a monster banished by its own kind. Only now, from this point on, life apart is impossible—we completed the marriage rite. And we don’t share a common language; we can’t understand each other. Enemies are everywhere, seemingly invisible in number. And somehow both of us have to survive.
All that’s left is to hope the fate that chose me as the destined one of the exile didn’t choose me by accident.