Chapter 1: A Clean Break
I, Cynthia Rhuddlan, was the only child in my family. I’d also managed to find myself something of a “pitiful” fiancé.
My father was a viscount, but due to the rapid expansion of his territory, I received many marriage offers from higher-ranking families than our own. One of them even came from the third son of a duke who wouldn’t inherit a title of his own.
In the end, my mother and father decided on the second son of an earl to be my future husband—Eddie Dorris.
I took a liking to his easygoing personality and his hair and eyes that were the color of a sunset. When I told Father I’d made my choice, he arranged for our engagement at once.
I truly intended for the two of us to build a positive relationship of mutual respect. But at some point, people started to look upon Eddie with pity in their hearts and actions.
His looks only improved as he aged, and at this point, the slightest hint of a smile on his face was enough to paint him as an ephemeral beauty. That made Eddie a target of adoration from every young noblewoman who laid eyes on him. Then the Dorris family underwent financial troubles and had to receive assistance from us Rhuddlans. People began to believe that we were engaged due to extortion.
Friends of the Rhuddlan family knew we would never do such a thing. But unfortunately, most of our relationships were with commoner merchants. We only interacted with nobles during social events and tea parties to keep up appearances.
There was also jealousy over my family’s business successes, so all in all, our relationships with high society were strained.
My constant rejection of marriage arrangements with other noble scions probably didn’t help.
If only Eddie had never grown up to be so beautiful…
Well, it wasn’t as if he chose to grow up into a breathtaking young man, so I won’t complain. But still.
The terrible rumors wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand if Eddie had set the record straight. He did no such thing.
“You poor thing, Lord Eddie! Sacrificing yourself for the sake of your family…”
“She bought you like a cheap toy, didn’t she? It’s terribly cruel!”
“Thank you for worrying about me, but really, I’m fine,” Eddie said. “It’s an honor to have so many adorable young ladies looking out for me.”
Why would you say that?! You’re supposed to tell them, “The Dorris family was the one who requested this engagement, so there was no coercion from the Rhuddlan side,” right?!
A group of pretty young ladies surrounded my pitiful fiancé, standing around in the school garden full of roses in bloom.
I’d once loved Eddie’s carefree personality. But that gentle demeanor had begun to take him in the wrong direction. He refused to reject the young ladies who flocked to him. Instead, he smiled at all of them and charmed them with his words.
In fact, he was essentially hinting that their fears about his well-being weren’t entirely unfounded.
Eddie had grown into someone completely indecisive.
Still, I showed him love and respect as my future husband and made sure to display jealousy whenever young women flocked to him. My parents, unable to bear the ridiculous situation any longer, suggested I call off the engagement altogether. But I couldn’t see myself with anyone other than Eddie.
At least, until yesterday.
“What was it that had me so smitten with that man?” I murmured under my breath as I left the school rose garden.
When I woke up that morning, my head was suddenly full of memories of a past life. I realized that I now lived in the world of a dating sim I played on my phone in my previous incarnation.
How was it even possible to be reborn into a video game world? I didn’t have an answer, but I knew this was real. My new reality. I had no choice but to accept it as fact.
I’d been reincarnated as one of the evil noblewomen in the game. I was an antagonist who appeared during Eddie Dorris’ route, constantly stopping the heroine from getting close to him.
In the game, Cynthia really did push the limits of a villainess. She’d paid for Eddie’s hand in marriage and everything. But my reality was different.
I’d merely accepted his proposal and done my best to love him as my fiancé. How could anyone call me a villainess because of that? Perhaps I was a bit overly attached, but strangely, the man named Eddie Dorris lost all appeal to me as soon as I regained my past life’s memories.
He was a wishy-washy person who had nothing going for him but his good looks. What possessed me to fight for a man like that?
The Rhuddlan family would be much better off if I married a man who knew how to manage our territory. Besides, a marriage could never be anything of substance when the man sat back and let people badmouth his fiancée. Everything about our engagement was a negative, both to me and my family.
“I need Father to end this engagement,” I said to myself. “Although, I feel bad that he’ll need to pay for it.”
As backwards as it seemed, my family would probably need to pay the breach of contract fee. It wasn’t as if Eddie had made any single decisive mistake. He escorted me to high society events as my fiancé and sent me cards and presents on special occasions.
Eddie never shirked those duties, and it wasn’t his fault that young noblewomen adored him. He wasn’t the source of the cruel rumors himself, nor did he ever outright affirm them. He was only thanking the young ladies who expressed concern for his well-being.
If the matter of the contract payment were to be taken to court, our family would almost certainly lose the case. My parents were likely to pay the fee without putting up a fight instead of wasting time, money, and energy. Then they would help me find a new fiancé.
“If only I’d remembered my past life a bit sooner…” I lamented. “Eddie would have never been my first choice for marriage.”
I’d have rejected Eddie’s proposal on the spot if I knew I would be treated like a villainess. What a sorry decision I made.
Well, perhaps I should focus on the positives. At least I remembered at all.
For now, I needed to quickly distance myself from my villainess role and find a man who could provide me with a stable future.
I pictured all the single noblemen I knew as I made my way toward the school gates. That was when I spotted the headmaster, a few adults, and an adorable young girl with pink hair passing by.
It seems the heroine has arrived.
The otome game I played was the type that depicted the heroine’s full face.
This girl had the same pink hair and eyes. Her hair looked like it would give off the scent of sugar, and her face spurred protective instincts in all who looked her way. There was no mistaking her identity as the game’s heroine.
According to her backstory, she lived as an orphan in the slums until she was adopted by a passing baron, who rescued her from that life and enrolled her in this academy. I was opposed to her choosing any of the characters’ routes. Every love interest in the game was already engaged to or dating one of the evil villainesses. No matter how wicked those women might be, it was still wrong to show up out of nowhere and steal someone else’s fiancé.
That much was only common sense—both as a noble and as a human being.
I never really thought about that part when I played the game in my past life, but living in this world brought about a change of heart. Your perspective changes when the story becomes your reality. That was when I realized something important.