“I know this is sudden...”
“But you’re being reincarnated!”
“Excuse me?” Yuriina Tanaka stared back bewildered, floating in an otherwise empty white space. She had no memory of what had brought her there. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand what you mean.”
Even in a situation like this, she wouldn’t lose her composure. That wasn’t the way a high-class individual behaved. Of course, Yuriina Tanaka was no such thing, being the daughter of an ordinary office worker, but that was what she had set her heart on.
“Wanna hear how you died?”
“It’s a pretty boring question if you ask me, though.”
In front of her were two young girls with the same face and attire. The only real way to distinguish between the twins was a faint difference in hair color. They were honestly quite cute.
“If I’m already dead, I suppose there’s no sense in worrying about how.” Yuriina had no awareness of having died, but she couldn’t really remember much of what had happened. Her memories were extremely vague and fuzzy.
She remembered her childhood well enough, but had basically no memories of her time as a high school student. She was reasonably sure she had been a high school student, but whether that was still the case or she had eventually graduated, she had no clue.
“Anyway, we were just here picking up any souls we could find drifting around...”
“So if you don’t know how you died, we don’t really know either!”
“I do have plenty of questions,” Yuriina replied. “I suppose I should first ask who you two are?”
“I’m Malna!” the first girl said, spinning around.
“I’m Rilna!” The second did likewise.
“The two of us together are...Malnarilna! Yay!” They clapped their hands together as they finished what must have been a well-practiced routine.
“Umm, knowing your names is great and all, but I still don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here.”
“Don’t look too deep for any meaning in what we’re doing.”
“We’re just doing what looks fun!”
Malna and Rilna were gods. For some reason, Yuriina was sure of that. Gods didn’t really need to explain that they were gods, she supposed. Humans could naturally recognize them for what they were.
Yuriina sighed. “I see. So there’s no point in asking why you’re here. Then let me ask, what will happen to me now?”
“You’re gonna be a young villainess!”
“A wicked woman with no concept of love!”
“I suppose asking why would be pointless,” Yuriina said. “But what do you mean by ‘young villainess’?”
“Huh? You don’t get the idea of a young villainess?! Even when you act like that?!”
“They show up all the time in anime, right?”
“Don’t you read novels or manga?”
No matter how the twins protested, if she was unfamiliar with the term, there wasn’t much she could do about it. So Malnarilna gave her a simple explanation of the idea.
The “young villainess” was a character archetype that often appeared in games aimed at young women, whose role was to persecute the main character throughout the story. At the story’s conclusion, she would be defeated and typically either stripped of her position or executed. There was also a genre that followed people being reincarnated as such characters and attempting to steal the hero from the ostensible main character of the story.
“I see. So does that mean I’m going to be sent to some game world?” Yuriina asked.
“Yeah, that would be great...”
“But unfortunately, there aren’t any worlds like that.”
“How did it become such a major archetype if it doesn’t even exist in the real world?” Yuriina said.
“Yeah, weird, huh?”
“So we set things up a bit for you!”
There were a number of countries in the world ruled by Malnarilna. There were plenty of young nobles who could fit the bill of villainess, so their plan was to put Yuriina’s soul into one of their bodies.
“What’ll happen to the body’s original soul?” she asked.
“We’ll just erase it. Things get annoying when you start mixing souls together.”
“Besides, you’re the one who decided to play at being a young noblewoman.”
This was an act of the gods. There wasn’t really any room for Yuriina to complain. Trapped in this empty white space, she didn’t have much choice but to do what she was told.
“Okay, I understand. But what do you want me to do when I actually become this young villainess? Judging by your previous explanation, you expect me to do something evil enough that it leads to my own execution?”
“That’s where the cheats come in!” one of the twins replied.
“Cheats? You want me to deceive people?”
“No, cheat powers,” the other supplied. “Superpowers that are so strong, it feels like you’re cheating!”
“We’re gonna give you some and see how far you can make it!”
Of course, there was nothing Yuriina could do to refuse.
✦ ✦ ✦
Her arms twisted behind her back, Yuriina was pushed to the ground. It was very clearly behavior that would not be tolerated towards a young noblewoman, so quite a bit of groundwork had obviously been put in place.
✦ ✦ ✦
