I could not help but wonder why the prince would want to visit me again — after all, I hadn’t really been listening. I suppose I would just ask the servants later. With that thought in mind, I maintained my beaming smile.
With that, the prince’s sudden visit was over. Playing host to a visitor while unwell is really tiring. I guess I should sleep a little bit more. Goodnight...
“My lady!! Congratulations!!”
Although I had just lain back down, Anne, one of my maids, shook my body roughly back and forth, rousing me unceremoniously from my slumber. But I’m sleepy...
Seemingly having held herself in check earlier in Prince Jeord’s presence, Anne was now shaking me with unbridled joy. Her face was bright red. What is it, Anne? Have you lost your mind to Prince Jeord’s charm?
Anne, seemingly unaware of my annoyed gaze, continued gushing in elation. “Even if Prince Jeord is third in line to the throne, he is most capable, my lady! In fact, there is a chance that he could become King if his father deems it so! And you, my lady, could very possibly become Queen, being his fiancée! Congratulations on your engagement, my lady!”
Wait... what? What did she say? I felt like I heard her say something very strange. Who was I getting engaged to, again?
“Umm. Anne. What was that you said just now? Could you please repeat it for me?”
“Yes, my lady! Since you are now engaged to Prince Jeord, you could very well become Queen, too! Congratulations on your engagement, Lady Katarina!”
“...Who and... Who? What? Engagement?”
“What are you talking about, my lady! Of course I’m referring to your engagement to Prince Jeord!”
“W... WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT~?!”
My scream reverberated through the manor’s halls.
This scream, too, was eventually attributed to the toll that my fever had taken on my poor little head.
When I had finally calmed myself, I demanded to hear the specifics from Anne. To be specific, I asked her what precisely Prince Jeord had said as I was busy reminiscing about my past life.
Apparently the prince felt responsible for inflicting a scar upon my forehead, so he had taken it upon himself to make amends. By amends, the prince referred to his intentions to take me as his bride.
No, no. Wait a minute. Prince Jeord is still eight!
While I personally felt that this was all too soon, it seemed to be the norm in this new world, according to Katarina’s original eight years’ worth of memories. In fact, the engagements of Prince Jeord’s two older brothers had been announced less than half a year ago. In addition, I was now Katarina Claes, the first daughter of Duke Claes. A noble marrying into royalty was hardly much of a social issue.
I suppose there wasn’t anything necessarily bad about this... I would be marrying an angelic prince, and maybe eventually even become Queen. To the daughters of other nobles, this must be a dream come true scenario. Both my parents, too, were elated by this turn of events.
I, however, could not see it as anything but a hassle. I already disliked the idea of social debuts — and now I was engaged to a prince and could eventually become Queen? If that wasn’t a hassle, what was?
Of course, I could no longer turn the prince down. Saying “No, I don’t want to do it!” to my happy family and servants was impossible now. I sighed deeply.
Even so... to think that Prince Jeord would be this concerned over a small injury!
Even when it was my own fault that I fell over in the first place... did he have to go that far?
I sighed once more, raising a small hand-mirror to my face. Reflected in its surface was a suitably melancholic face of a young girl with a tiny series of stitches on her forehead. If I had to say, Katarina was more beautiful than most people — at least, she was considerably more beautiful than how I had looked in my previous life.
Katarina had a head full of wavy, smooth brown hair. Her aqua-blue eyes, slanted somewhat upwards, caused a certain memory of mine to rise up from the depths. All I had to do was curl up the edges of her thin lips... There! The very image of a stereotypical villainess.
On the inside, I remained a terrible, ape-like otaku girl. It didn’t take much thought to understand that I could never get along with anyone as wise and refined as Prince Jeord.
That day, I ended up letting out sigh after sigh.
Although I made many attempts to speak to my parents about this, they merely viewed my irksome behavior as a side effect of the fever and instructed me to rest until I was better. With that, I was confined to my room. On the bright side, I was now lying down on a bed that was three times larger than the one I had used in my past life.
In addition to having a fever for the past week, I had just hosted the prince immediately after recovering — I hardly had the time to do anything, much less review memories of my past life. Now, I was finally left alone with my own thoughts.
In my previous life, I was the third child of a salaryman and a housewife who worked part-time. I was the only girl in the family — and my family was good to me, raising me with love and care. I spent most of my grade school days running around the nearby hills with my two brothers. And then, when I met some otaku friends in middle school, I ran straight into the whole otaku lifestyle. Most of my days were spent purchasing and consuming manga, doujinshi, anime DVDs, and games. In fact, this continued all the way up to high school, where I started playing otome games on my friends’ recommendations.
Come to think of it, I never did manage to clear that one game I was playing... To be precise, it was an otome game that I had bought a few days prior to my unfortunate bicycle incident.
Hmm... Yes. It was a game with a mid-century European atmosphere — an otome game set in an academy of magic. Of course, how could I forget? I liked this game so much that I had played it daily, barring mealtimes and showers. That very night before, I had saved and reloaded my game multiple times, desperately trying to get a good ending with that one terrible, black-hearted, sadistic prince character. Not having much luck, I kept reloading my save, and before I knew it, the sun had begun to rise.
Ugh, if only I had gone to sleep sooner... Why was I so fixated on getting the ending right? But the old adage was right; there was no use crying over spilled milk.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, I had finally conquered the route of the prince with the fake smile. Although he looked like the very image of a fairy-tale prince, he was in truth a sadistic and wicked character. At least, that was how he was written.
Being more perfect than anyone else, the prince’s days were filled with boredom. The protagonist then appears before this prince, blowing away his melancholic days with her bright and energetic personality. Soon after, the prince takes a fancy to her, and the situation eventually evolves into a love story.
Due to the prince being such a twisted character, however, it was extremely difficult to curry favor with him. To make things worse, the rival character in the prince’s route was quite the handful. The rival character was the daughter of a rich duke, and had been engaged to the prince since her childhood.
This was due to an event in which the prince had bumped into her, and she had tripped, fell, and hurt her head. She then used the resulting scar as leverage for marriage, claiming that the prince had scarred her. She binds him into an unreasonable engagement, bullying the protagonist and attempting to force the two apart.
The scar, in reality, had long disappeared. While the wicked prince himself knew this, he had intended to use the scar-less rival character as a means of defense against an endless stream of female suitors.
In any case, that rival character was truly quite the piece of work — even I was annoyed while playing the game.
Hmm... Why does all this seem so familiar?
Using a scar accidentally inflicted by the young prince to secure a beneficial marriage... The oldest daughter of a duke... Keeping the prince unwillingly bound to an engagement...
The sadistic prince character in this game was... his name was... Prince Jeord.
And the... the rival character’s name was... Katarina Claes...?!
Panicking as the realization hit me, I sat up in my bed, raising the mirror to my face once more. Reflected within was, without any doubt, the face of the game’s rival character — the villainess.
Yes... This was the face of the villainess I had been reminiscing about. That was her role, after all. How...?
“IT CAN’T BE~~~~?!”
For the second time in a day, my screams reverberated throughout the manor.
Gossip in the manor that day, in turn, largely centered around if the young lady would need another visit from the good doctor.
In any case, I had to confirm if this was indeed the world portrayed in that otome game I had played. This could be a coincidence — just because I had the same name didn’t necessarily mean I was in that world! That would be rushing to conclusions.
The first thing I had to do was record everything I remembered about that game on paper. The name of the game I had been playing up until the point where I so unfortunately died was called Fortune Lover, and was set in a mid-century European-style kingdom, where both swordplay and magic were practiced in equal measure. Mainly set in an academy dedicated to the study of the magic arts, it was a classic, romance-centric otome game.
Amongst the nobles in this world, some were born with the gift of magic. Occasionally commoners were blessed with it too, but such cases were exceedingly rare. When the wielder turned fifteen, they would enroll in this magic academy to learn how to better control their powers.