Brima Bickel, the second daughter of the Bickel baronial house, sat in Class 1-C with her head bowed.
When poison had been detected in the cups, the tea party was canceled. The students were sent back to their classrooms, the teachers vanished off to some meeting, and the now disorderly room buzzed with unrest. Everyone was shouting guesses about who the culprit might be. Brima could hardly bear the thought that her name might be spoken among them.
What am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do? She clenched her hands so hard as she tried to hide the sweat on her palms. All that crowded Brima’s mind was one single fear: What if everything were to come out? She hated herself for only worrying about saving her own skin, and yet, somehow, self-preservation won.
Her body trembled, though she wasn’t cold. The goose bumps wouldn’t stop spreading across her skin. Breathing shallowly, Brima bit down on her back teeth. I’ve done something terrible. Indeed, Brima Bickel was responsible for the incident.
With limited wits she had plotted it: smear poison on the rim of the cup, press her meager savings into the hands of a maid whose family nobody knew, and slip poison onto Milly Asteara’s table.
It was all Brima’s doing.
What am I going to do? What if the teachers are hunting for a culprit? If they discover it was me... There’d be no hope left. Brima would be finished. She would be expelled from the academy, whispered about with scorn in society, perhaps even disowned by her own parents. The thought alone made her shake all the harder. She had done it, yes, but imagining the punishment that awaited terrified her to no end.
The grand duke’s daughter looked so angry. Wh-What if they...execute me? Fear shot through her whole body. With it came the memory of her family, who had smiled and seen her off just that morning.
Brima carried memories from another life. She remembered being an ordinary nobody in a country called Japan, a child without parents, living a life of poverty. She had always been a lonely girl, and even in the final moments of her life, when she had been killed by accident, she remembered being hungry.
And then she was reborn into the world of the only otome game she had played—just once, all the way to the end—at a friend’s house. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize, as she remembered The Kingdom of Blossoms: Magi well. But what thrilled her most in this new life was that she had a family.
Her former life had been spent in an orphanage—she had neither parents nor siblings. Loneliness was all she had known. By contrast, the Bickel baronial family into which she was reborn was one of the largest broods in society. There were fourteen people in all: six sons and six daughters. The barony lived more in name than in wealth, though the house was always noisy and full of life, and Brima adored her family for it.
Since she was the second daughter, Brima’s dresses were always hand-me-downs from her elder sister, and the other noble girls her age would laugh at her for it. She could still remember how one had tugged at a loose thread until her favorite lace frayed to tatters. But she never truly felt sad or lonely, because she had family.
Even so, her mother must have pitied her. One day, when Brima was still shy of ten, her mother secretly gave her a hair ornament from the shop they ran. It was not cheap, the sort of thing that even now would fetch a fair price. Brima had polished it carefully every day and treasured it, until it was no longer hers to keep.
She thought back to the day it was broken, some two weeks ago. From that moment, it felt as though everything had begun to unravel. Ever since, misfortune had dogged her. With its shards she had accidentally wounded the so-called villainess. When ordered to cut the “heroine’s” hair, she had failed, only to be caught by the “final boss,” who was more terrifying than any demon.
She had entered the academy, the very stage upon which the game’s story was set, yet her time there had been miserable. She had thought she might befriend Angelina, another transmigrant, but instead the girl spoke endlessly of rewound time and grew ever more irritable. And Brima herself had become nothing more than Angelina’s lackey.
It was never supposed to be like this. She had believed that, having endured such loneliness in her former life, she might finally live happily in this one. She had even indulged in fantasies, of cheering on the heroine’s romance from afar, of perhaps being chosen by one of the eligible bachelors, and of maybe—just maybe—finding her own love. She had dreamed of such things, yet the reality before her eyes was nothing like the dream.
“Because you’re such a useless fool, the Bickel barony—scraping by on the trashy cotton it sells my family—will soon be ruined.”
The memory of Angelina’s cruel words sent Brima shaking all over again. She poisoned the cup only because Angelina had ordered her to. “Do it, or I’ll let your family rot,” she’d said, and what choice did Brima have?
The Bickel family’s livelihood depended almost entirely on selling cotton to the Grey house. Angelina had mocked her time and again, saying, “Your family only scrapes by on the scraps we toss you,” and because it was true, Brima had never been able to answer back.
If the truth of the incident came out, Brima would certainly be expelled. She might even be accused of trying to assassinate the grand duke’s daughter and be executed for it. Regardless, her parents and eleven siblings would keep their only steady source of income, and for Brima, that alone was enough. Even in this world of a game, she was willing to sacrifice her life if it meant protecting her beloved family.
“Is Lady Brima Bickel here?”
Her spiraling thoughts froze as she raised her head in fear. At the front of the room stood three figures known to everyone in the academy: Nicholas Einzdohr, Edgar Franster, and the grand duke’s daughter, Milly Asteara.
The moment her eyes took them in, Brima’s heart pounded so violently it hurt. Her lips trembled as if to speak, but Milly swept her gaze across the classroom and spoke first.
“Hmm? Lucius isn’t here? I’d meant to make him our escort.”
“I believe he went looking for you, Lady Milly. Anyway, why am I being dragged along for this? I don’t get it,” Edgar complained.
“Because you’re the son of the Count of Magic. That makes you the perfect bodyguard for me and the grand duke’s daughter,” Nicholas explained.
“Unbelievable, using people as it suits you... Wait, isn’t that her? The one with the blue hair?” Edgar said as his slender finger pointed straight toward Brima. She dropped her gaze in a panic, but that only served as admission.
The steady thump of polished loafers drew closer, step by step, until they stopped before her desk. Brima clenched her fists so tightly they hurt—pain born of resolve, of bracing herself to accept whatever came.
“You’re Brima, aren’t you? We’d like a word.”
Brima hesitated to respond.
“I want to hear your side of things.” Milly’s voice was quiet, yet heavy with finality.
Brima gave the smallest of nods. The moment had come sooner than she’d feared. Now it was only a question of how far she could go for the sake of her family.