
is the novel referenced in the story a real book?

All I could find from a german "Nele Schmidt" was a very short fragment of a novel from 2023 called Sisters of the Heart and it seems unrelated.
There's a french "Nelly Schmidt" who writes historical fiction; also completely unrelated.
I'm not sure but maybe Geumgi made the whole thing up as part of this story, which would be honestly amazing.
the seme is sooo pretty