“I won’t forgive you… I’ll never forgive you! I’m going to kill you!”
A boy was crying, his tearful eyes ablaze with pure hatred. He stared straight ahead at a girl who cackled right back at him, a girl too young to soften her laugh to be more ladylike. She clutched her sides as she laughed down at the boy.
“Ah ha ha! How foolish can you be? You could never kill me. After all…”
I knew both of these people. No, it was more than that…
That girl was me.
Pride Royal Ivy. She…or rather, I was the girl who irreparably scarred the hearts of all the game’s love interests. My younger sister, Tiara, would sweep in to heal their wounds. After I received my punishment at the end of the game, Tiara would take my seat as the queen and set the kingdom back on the path to harmony alongside her love interest.
I remembered this scene from the game. From what I could recall, it was the memory of one of the love interests.
“Why did you trick me?!” the boy said. “I-I just… I wanted to see her, that’s all…”
The boy gritted his teeth, tears tracking down his cheeks while I pointed at him and howled with laughter. That laugh was too big, too cruel, too evil to fit inside one little girl, yet there I was. Meanwhile, the boy kept calling out for someone.
“I missed her. I missed her so much,” the boy said.
“Ah ha ha ha! Oh, that’s right. You’d better keep this a secret,” I said. “Not that anyone would listen to a dirty former commoner like you.”
I kept up my laughter, and the boy howled until his voice went hoarse. Over and over again, he cried out that he would kill me.
His name was…Stale. Stale Royal Ivy—Pride’s adopted younger brother-in-law.
Someone… Someone save him.
He hadn’t done anything wrong, but I couldn’t do anything for him. After all, I was the one who hurt him.
The one who could help him, the one who was his only salvation from the life he lived at the castle, was his adopted younger sister-in-law.
“Tiara…”
I opened my eyes with a gasp. Just a dream. But I recognized the events from the game.
The moment I awoke, my maids launched into my morning routine, starting with grooming. I glared back into my own dark eyes in the mirror, watching one of the women comb through my hair. Those eyes were so much like Father’s, just like the bright red of my hair, even if the waves came from Mother. Father beamed with pride to have a daughter who’d inherited so much of him, but I couldn’t help thinking the combination of purple eyes and bright red hair made me look like a witch—or a final boss. I struggled not to wince at the reflection of the wicked enemy of ORL staring right back at me. No one wanted to look at such a thing early in the morning.
In the game, Pride took the throne quickly thanks to her newly awakened precognition, seizing the opportunity after her father died in the accident and her mother followed after him from grief. Still, she was spiteful about her mother’s disproportionate attention toward her younger sister. Thus, Pride sent Tiara away to live in a distant castle, creating a life of luxury for herself as she ruled over the country with an iron fist. The surrounding countries grew increasingly worried as Pride turned into a dictator.
But all of that wouldn’t happen for ten more years, on the day of Tiara’s sixteenth birthday. In the meantime, Tiara met her many love interests, healed the trauma they carried in their hearts, and stood up to Pride, deepening the rift between them. Eventually, Tiara’s own powers of precognition emerged, bestowing upon her the same divine mark of leadership.
“Princess Pride… Your Highness?”
“Huh?”
The maid’s voice finally dragged me back to the present. It was the same woman who’d been so overcome with terror that she’d cried on the floor the other day. Now, she gently set my hair down, having finished brushing it. Remarkably, she didn’t seem to hate me for the incident. If anything, she’d become kinder, more tender as she chuckled and told me my hair was all combed through.
How did I never notice until now? I have such a wonderful maid working for me. She’s very… Wait…
I cocked my head in confusion. Now that I thought about it, I hardly knew anything about this woman.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The maid raised her eyebrows before she could compose herself and smiled sweetly. “Lotte.”
I made a point of asking the names of other servants as I made my way through the castle that morning. The older maid who’d defended Lotte was Mary. The guard who’d pulled me out of the window was Jack. I committed these three names to memory—Lotte, Mary, and Jack. Such a simple thing, yet it was like opening the curtains and letting the sun shine into this dreary castle. This was the first time anyone apart from Father had added vibrance to my world.
I spent much of the day that way. It wasn’t long before I noticed the staff looking at me a little differently. I was still the firstborn princess, of course, and the official heir to the throne, but that wasn’t the only change. Rumors swirled about how I’d saved my father from that carriage ride.
“That spoiled little princess finally learned how to behave?”
“The bratty princess must’ve been possessed by a goddess.”
Some people seemed to believe that developing precognition was the reason my personality changed so drastically. I bit my tongue and let them believe whatever they liked, even though I wanted nothing more than to tell them they were all wrong. I wasn’t possessed by a goddess or anything like that—I’d simply regained the memories of my past life. Certainly, in the game, precognition did little to improve Pride’s sinister personality. If anything, she became more vile. But now, I appeared to them much more competent to rule the kingdom in the future.
By afternoon, I couldn’t remember that morning’s dream anymore, even though something about it seemed so important. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the names of the love interests weren’t coming to me either. I knew there were five total in the series, including certain hidden characters. Also, I could still recall the plot of the game from replaying it over and over to get all the endings. However, I didn’t remember many details about the love interests themselves. My favorite was the third game in the series, which I’d replayed now and again, but I only ever fully cleared the first and second games. Once each at that. How could I forget games I’d played so obsessively in life? Even on the day I died, I’d been daydreaming about replaying the series all over again from the first game.
It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll remember the details when I meet everyone, since my life follows the same plot as the game.
Except that all depended on this life being the same as the plot of the game and, well, I’d already gone and changed that. The mere fact that both my parents were alive proved deviation was possible.
Can I actually change the story of the game?!
It was a little late for me to make that realization, but it struck me like a slap to the face. What else could I change? How much could I change?
I didn’t have much time to think it over. At dinner the next day, Father said my adopted brother-in-law, one of the game’s love interests, would be arriving at the castle in two weeks.