Chapter One
I CAN’T BELIEVE I’VE BEEN REINCARNATED AS THE villainess in an otome game. I could just cry!
Why would someone like me be reincarnated as a villainess? Me, an ordinary college girl who went to school, worked part-time, and never stuck her nose in anyone’s business. What did the gods want from me, anyway? I played this otome game obsessively, yet they stuck me here, at the end of it, without even a chance to show off my knowledge. I guess that meant my role in the game was over. Like I said, I could just cry.
But crying wouldn’t change the fact that my engagement was broken off and my family disowned me. And what was the point in me regaining memories of my past life if they only returned right on the eve of the graduation party?
All right, it was true that I harassed the heroine, excluded her from tea parties, abused my influence as the prince’s fiancée to create the academy’s largest clique just to have it ostracize her, and, well, I could go on.
In my defense, the heroine had committed a major faux pas making a pass at an engaged man, and since the academy was like a mini society of its own, I couldn’t just let her actions go unpunished. I mean, it would’ve damaged my reputation to not put her in her place.
Unfortunately, that caused my now ex-fiancé, the second prince, who apparently adored the heroine, to hate my guts. I had a sinking feeling he was going to publicly condemn me at the graduation party, and I was right.
Even more unfortunate was that what I’d thought would be the worst-case scenario—being sent off to the nunnery—wasn’t remotely close to the worst thing ever.
After all, even if he disgraced me, he still had to keep up appearances in this corrupt, convoluted society. He was a prince; I was a marquis’s daughter. He’d come up with some pretext to break things off, I’d be considered damaged goods, and my prospects for marriage would take a nosedive—but I figured that would be the extent of it.
But, as it turned out, the second prince was a total sleaze. Having removed me from the running for princess consort, he schemed to exploit my disinheritance and my lack of marriage prospects to coerce me into being his mistress. What an absolute slime.
Sure, I had a body that far outclassed the heroine’s childish figure, but to make your ex-fiancée your mistress? Had the blood completely drained from his head? Or did he enjoy the thought of being in the middle of some messy love triangle?
Before he could act on his little scheme, though, the heroine caught wind of it and went crying to her groupies, and I ended up carted off to a brothel. Since the whole plan was orchestrated without the prince or my family finding out, I suspect she turned to the prime minister’s son, who was quite experienced in such underhanded matters.
And so that was how I was on track to becoming a nun…but ended up a prostitute instead!
The heroine really had the absolute worst personality.
I mean, who cares if I was the villainess? She could’ve been a little bit nicer to me.
So anyway, here I was, a prostitute, with my first—and I mean very first—customer standing in front of me.
He had deep blue hair, the color of daybreak, and golden, honey-colored eyes. His charcoal grey suit had a tight collar and fit him like a glove. A slight, serene smile adorned the face of this exquisite beauty—er, I mean—handsome man. And in his hand, quite out of place in a brothel, was a gigantic sword.
I hope my smile looks welcoming enough right now… But why, oh why did my first customer have to be this brute of a secret unlockable character who’s absolutely merciless toward all of the heroine’s enemies?!
The man in question was Lucas Herbst, the second son of a duke and vice-captain of the Imperial Order, which guarded the royal family. And since he was a secret unlockable character, he was so super elite that his mere existence in and of itself was practically cheating.
His mother was the king’s younger sister. Although he was in the line of succession, he was but a second-born son, and so he decided to become a knight. He entered the academy and joined the knights when he was fifteen, which was absolutely unheard of. The entrance exam was purely based on merit, but he passed it faster than anyone would’ve thought possible, and from there just kept racking up achievements. At eighteen, he joined the Imperial Order, an ultra-elite group charged with the protection of the royal family. I’d also heard from ladies who gushed over him at tea parties that he was a genius who rose to the position of vice-captain within a year. He must’ve done something amazing to earn that achievement, since promotions within the Imperial Order were also merit-based.
There were a few times, before I regained my past life’s memories, that he was assigned to guard me, seeing as I was the second prince’s fiancée. I’d appreciated his calm demeanor and the gentle smile he always wore back then.
But now I saw the truth: his constant smile never reached his eyes. Those cold, glinting eyes, whose narrow gaze hid the truth.
At the graduation party, I noticed him standing behind the second prince and the heroine with a troubled expression on his face. But when his gaze turned toward me, it was so dark I could only describe it as murderous. His eyes, dilated in the darkness, fixed me with a stare so intense that all light seemed to vanish into it, and my legs trembled within my dress. The prince, thinking it was his castigation that had me shaken, gave me a smug look. But it was Lucas’s gaze that terrified me, and if our eyes had met, I just might have collapsed.
As if my life weren’t bad enough already, they had to throw this brute into the mix.
In the normal course of the game, Lucas acted as a romantic rival. He played the role for all five main love interests, no doubt so the developers could spare themselves the effort of designing another character. Because of that, once the heroine chose which character to pursue and made enough headway with him, Lucas would appear.
The heroine was the daughter of a count, which was a higher status than most otome game protagonists had. Thanks to her status, she and Lucas had been playmates since childhood. There were no sparks between them, but since they’d grown up like siblings, he cared for her and protected her, sometimes to the point of practically stalking her. He showed up so much that I had to wonder if he was actually a romanceable character.
I mean, when you think about it, he was just as smart and handsome as any of the love interests. Put a sword in his hand, and he was in a whole other league from them. That’s why I thought, “Hey, why isn’t he romanceable?!” but it turned out he was a secret character.