Chapter 1: Piecing Together Reality
OH my god!
“I’ve been reincarnated…into an otome game?!” Amy wondered aloud.
She had awoken lying on the canopy bed in her room. She covered her face with both hands.
Her previous life had come back to her.
When Amy had entered high school, she’d finally been allowed to get a smartphone, and she wasted no time downloading a few games onto it. Amy—or the version of herself in that life, at least—enjoyed unwinding by playing the ones where you had to stack and clear colorful little jelly-like spheres, or farming simulator games.
She downloaded just one dating sim, which had come recommended by a friend, and she’d done it only to help her friend fill up her in-game friend slots. Amy didn’t have any interest in dating sims herself. She played very sporadically, only logging in during events to do the free prize raffles and send her friend gifts.
The Amy of this world couldn’t remember the game’s title, much less what it was about. But there was one thing she could remember: an image used everywhere on the app, one that was incredibly beautiful and excessively sparkly. In it was a tall figure with dark-blond hair and silver eyes, an elegant smile tinged with sorrow on his face… Yes, she could very clearly remember that, on the opening screen, surrounded by several other handsome men, there was a character that was the spitting image of what the Third Prince would look like as an adult, flashing a fleeting yet breathtaking smile.
Oh my god!
Speaking of being reincarnated into the world of an otome game…
Amy’s mother in her past life had been obsessed with reading web novels, and she had saved many stories that followed that trope to her online book log. They had read a few together, and there were a few standard clichés that cropped up.
The main character of the story was usually reincarnated as either the heroine of the game or the heroine’s rival, but it had become much more popular for the main character to be reborn as the rival, also called the “villainess.”
If the main character followed the progression of the game as the villainess, typically the “bad ending” awaited her. She would be convicted of harming the game’s heroine in some way and would then face banishment from the kingdom, the dissolution of her family, or—in the worst-case scenario—execution. This trope had become so popular, in fact, that the “villainess’s journey” had become established as a genre of its own, where the villainess struggles alone to avoid this fate.
I guess I wouldn’t mind being a background character, like the heroine’s random Friend A or something, Amy pondered. But I’d hate being a main character or having dialogue! I can’t stand doing things in front of people…
The thought flitted across her mind, but it sounded like something she’d think in her previous life. Although her manner of speaking was different now, it seemed her shy nature was just as strong as it had been then.
She had gotten through the game’s tutorial but hadn’t played the storyline. She had been able to choose the heroine’s hair color and length, so Amy didn’t know how it changed the main story.
But she didn’t even know what the main story was in the first place! A bad feeling started to well up in her chest.
“Could I be…? No… That’s not possible…”
She slowly got up and took the handheld mirror from her bedside table. Her reflection stared back.
She had shiny, straight black hair flowing down to the middle of her back. Her large round eyes were bright gold, almost like a cat’s. Her lips were full and pink, her skin as white and smooth as a porcelain doll. With slightly angular facial features, she was more pretty than cute.
“I’m doomed with a face like this…”