I speed up a little after I realize that the sun had already started setting. I’ll worry her if I’m too late.
The street I hurry through was crowded just a little while ago. But perhaps because it’s dinnertime, right now there’s only a few people here and there.
The delicious smell of dinner wafts out from someone’s house as I pass it by.
I adjust the bag I hold in my hands. The bag holds commoner sweets and pastries that you can’t buy anywhere but the outskirts of town.
She’s had to be patient for a while, so I’m sure she’ll be overjoyed.
A smile naturally spreads across my face at the thought of the person I’m bringing these sweets to, the person who’ll surely be overjoyed.
I kept it a secret that I went out to buy sweets today.
Normally, I wouldn’t go buy sweets like this so suddenly… but recently, she’s had to deal with a lot of trouble, so I went all the way to the outskirts of town just to cheer her up even a little.
But the store had been busier than I expected, and so I ended up later than I expected. I speed up even more under the sky that’s gradually staining orange. That was when it happened.
Someone slipped out, likely from one of the alleyways lining the street, and stands right in front of me, blocking my way.
The hooded figure isn’t too large. The dress under the hood looks to be meant for women. Is she a woman? Just who is she?
She was acting too strangely for her to have just accidentally almost bumped into me. I look curiously at the person who stands in front of me purposefully.
“It’s been a while,” says the person in front of me.
Her voice was unmistakably a woman’s voice. However, I didn’t recognize it.
“… Who might you be?” I ask cautiously in a low voice.
The woman lets out a flirtatious sound and draws near.
“My, you’re acting so cold – as if you don’t know who I am.”
The woman puts down her hood, letting her long hair flow down her back. At the sight of her face, my eyes grow very wide in my surprise. Seeing my expression, the woman’s red lips quirk up.
“Hey, I have a request – you’ll listen to it, right?” the woman says flirtatiously again.
My expression grows severe.
************
“Please wake up already, young mistress. If you don’t hurry up, you’ll be late for class.”
At the slightly stern voice, I open my heavy eyelids from my bed. The curtains had been drawn back from the windows – sunlight is shining in.
I let out a groan as I stretch. I wake myself up, rubbing at my eyes that are threatening to close again. My maid Anne makes me presentable, swift as usual.
After thanking Anne, I begin preparing for school while still half-asleep.
It’s been almost two years since I, Katarina Claes, entered this magic academy. It feels like I just started yesterday, but in reality I’m going to be graduating soon. Time passes quickly.
Recalling last year’s graduation ceremony, I’m quietly reminded that when I first started school, I hadn’t even thought that I would be able to safely reach graduation…
I, Katarina Claes, am a normal run-of-the-mill Earl’s daughter. Well, it’s true that daughters of Earls can’t be found just anywhere, but even if I have a fairly high social standing, on the inside I’m just a normal girl.
If I had to point out one part of me that was unusual, I would have to pick the fact that I remembered my previous life when I hit my head on a rock when I was eight.
In my previous life, I grew up as the eldest daughter in a normal salaryman household. Eventually, I matured into a complete otaku of a high school girl.
Manga, anime, games… I mastered all of them. I was living a splendid life… but unfortunately, I lost my life thanks to an unlucky incident.
And so, I was safely reborn as an Earl’s daughter… but the noble girl I was reborn as turned out to be Katarina Claes, a villainess of an otome game I had been playing up until the day before I died!
The game was called Fortune Lover and I had been desperately playing it after my fellow otaku friends recommended it to me. I was a rival character who was engaged to a capture target, a villainess who got in the way of the capture target and the protagonist’s love for each other.
I was reincarnated as a character who I had considered pretty annoying in the game…\nTo make things worse, this noble girl villainess would be exiled from the country in a good ending and would be killed in a bad ending. She had nothing but destruction flags waiting for her – she was the absolute worst character to be.
When I realized this at age eight, I desperately worked hard until I entered the magic academy – where the game was set. I planned out numerous flawless plans to deal with my ruin.
Then last spring, I started school. I was all pumped up, thinking that there was no way that I would lose to some stupid destruction flags! However…
I hadn’t really expected everything to end with a friendship ending.
The game’s protagonist, Maria, is beautiful, kind, and even great at making sweets. She’s my number-one candidate to be my bride – she’s just that alluring.
And yet, last year at the graduation ceremony – where the game was meant to end – everything ended with everyone staying friends.
Thus, I wasn’t able to use even one of the many plans I thought up and was easily able to avoid ruin. I safely entered my second year. After that, there was a bit of trouble here and there, but right now I’m safely heading to graduation.
I’m really living a blessed life that I wouldn’t have even dreamed of during the entrance ceremony.
As we near gradation, even though I have class today, there’s many days when I don’t. My grades were dangerously bad at first, but now, thanks to my talented friends, I’m doing okay.
I’m going to be graduating soon – it’s almost like the days I panicked over being exiled or being killed were just a bad dream. But there is one new issue I have to deal with…
“Young mistress, you were sent flowers and a letter again,” says Anne, bringing over the bouquet and the letter.
The bouquet was mainly made of pink flowers and was very cute. However, I can’t help but sigh at the sight of it.
This bouquet is the one issue I have to deal with now that I’ve safely avoided ruin.
“We’re going to see each other soon enough… he doesn’t need to send me flowers and a letter…”
Anne neatly places the flowers in a vase as she smiles wryly.
Isn’t he sending them every day now…? My room is overflowing with flowers thanks to the bouquets that are sent so often.
I take the letter that had been delivered along with the bouquet and sigh even more deeply than before.
I’m sure that this letter is filled with seductive lines that make me blush despite myself, since I have almost no experience with romance.
… Just why in the world did Jared become like this…?
I think about Jared Stuart, the sender of this bouquet and letter.
Jared Stuart was originally a capture target in the world of the otome game. He was the third prince of the country and incredibly talented – so talented that he found the whole world boring and lived every day sick of everything.
The story was that after he enters the magic academy, he meets the bright, innocent protagonist and is slowly drawn to her.
That’s when I, Katarina Claes, make my first appearance as a rival to the protagonist for Jared’s love.
When Katarina was young, she was engaged with Jared by using the scar on her forehead, and basically followed him around everywhere as his fiancée ever since. When she realizes that Jared is growing interested in the protagonist, she bullies the protagonist mercilessly and gets in the way of their relationship.
As a result, the only endings waiting for her were being exiled from the country after her crimes were revealed, or being cut down by Jared after attacking the protagonist…
But well, in reality I haven’t bullied the protagonist at all (rather, I even severely threatened people who tried to do something to the incredibly cute, sweet Maria) and I haven’t stalked Jared (rather, I’ve told him I’d break off the engagement again and again).
Despite this, I still made proper preparations for my potential ruin. I kept a set of my farming tools ready so I would be prepared to leave the country at any moment and I kept a toy snake in my pocket so I’d be ready if I was attacked…
But despite no one getting in their way, Maria and Jared didn’t get together during the ending.
And in the end, my engagement with Jared wasn’t annulled and even after we entered second year, I remained his fiancée.
But as I knew the otome game’s storyline, I believed that Jared didn’t think of me as anything but a shield to ward off other girls that approached him. I believed without doubt that if Jared fell for Maria or some other girl I would no longer be any use to him and he would throw me away.
I had mused casually that I just wanted him to hurry up and find someone, like it had nothing to do with me.
However, something that destroyed my assumptions happened a little while back. It happened during the school festival.
I was over the moon after successfully avoiding ruin and was enjoying my first school festival in this life. That’s when I got wrapped up in a bit of trouble and was kind of sort of kidnapped.
Well, I say kidnapped, but it’s not like anything bad happened to me.
Since I had been on cloud nine, I hadn’t been careful at all – and so, I apparently had been put to sleep with drugs. After I woke up, I was served by an excellent, attentive maid. I had a lovely time – I was given three meals a day and was allowed to take afternoon naps.\nThis isn’t something I can admit to everyone who was worried about me, but honestly I felt it was a lot more pleasant than being at the academy or home.
Well, even if I felt like that, kidnapping is a crime. After a while, everyone saved me from the mansion where I had been trapped inside…
But when I had been safely saved, Jared kissed me for some reason. It was my first kiss in both this life and my last, as I had never been kissed in my previous life.
Since I fell unconscious due to the sudden situation, when I came to, I decided that incident was just a dream.
After all, there was no way that Jared would do something like that to someone he considered nothing more than a shield… that’s what I had thought…
And yet when I met him again at the academy, Jared stole a kiss from my lips again with a sentimental expression.
“So you thought it was a dream? It’s not a dream – both this time and last time,” he said, smiling.
“W – why…”
“Why kiss you? Why, because I love you, of course,” he said, dropping another bombshell while I was still shaken. It was unbelievably shocking.
To think that I, who had zero experience with romance in both this life and my last, would be confessed to… and to think that the one confessing to me would be a capture target from an otome game, a handsome prince.
When he was 2D, I was able to look at him even while smirking… but when that handsome face of his comes in close in 3D…
Ah…
I blush at my memories of that moment.
Ugh, what should I do?
If I were a super popular girl like an otome game protagonist, I may have been able to deal with a confession or two, no matter how they confessed… but I’m just a girl with zero romantic experience after all, even taking my previous life in account.
In turmoil at my first confession in this life – no, in my last life too – I haven’t been able to do anything but stammer. And since the confessor is a handsome, popular prince, I’m feeling even more shaken than I would’ve been otherwise.
I let out another deep sigh.
************
“But really, I wonder why me?”
“What’s the matter all of a sudden, big sis?” says Keith, sighing.
After I finish my preparations to head to school, my kind younger stepbrother Keith comes to my dorm room to walk with me. So I ask him a question that’s been bothering me for a while.
“I’m talking about Jared-sama. I’m wondering why me.”
“Ah, about that,” Keith says, looking somewhat stiff. At his expression, I think that ah, Keith thinks that it’s love as well.
“After all, Jared-sama’s so popular he has no shortage of admirers.”
Not only is he a handsome prince, but he’s also intelligent and athletic, and even good at magic on top of all that. He’s truly a perfect man – no wonder he has to beat women off with a stick.
And so, despite having a fiancée – Katarina Claes – he’s popular enough that he’s still approached by numerous women.
“He could have his pick of any number of splendid people.”
And in the original game, he was drawn to a bright, innocent girl like the protagonist because he was bored with life…
“And yet, why did he choose someone with no redeeming features like me?”
I do have my social standing as an Earl’s daughter, but thanks to my villainous face I’m not particularly beautiful, I’m not very intelligent, and I barely have any magic. I suck at dancing too – the only thing I’m really good at is tree climbing and fishing. I’m a completely normal girl.
“What could be so good about a normal, uninteresting girl like me?”
I hang my head, really having no clue why he would be interested in me.
“I think you should look up the definition of ‘normal’ in the dictionary again,” says my brother, looking at me with a faraway look.
Not understanding what he means, I look at him in confusion.
“Good morning, Katarina,” says a smooth voice from behind me as I’m still gazing at Keith in confusion.
\n“But recently, I’ve really received much more work than usual. I wonder why that could be.”
“It’s nearly graduation. Could the cause not be that?”
“Is that so? I myself am thinking that someone is purposefully pushing work on me to take up my time.”
“My, Jared-sama, are you becoming delusional in your exhaustion? I do believe it may be best for you to rest alone today.”
“Well, let’s leave things at that for now. However, no matter how much my workload increases, it won’t be much trouble for me.”
“Ha ha ha, as expected from you. It’s easy for you.”
Their smiles are bright and lovely but the atmosphere is terrible.
“Good morning. Everyone, I do believe we all need to head to the school building. We will be late,” interrupts Sophia, ending their conversation. Sophia looks flustered, as if she slept in a little.
And so, we all headed together to the school building as always.
On a side note, Sophia had apparently slept in just like I had thought. Apparently she had stayed up late reading novels. Since the novel had supposedly been very interesting, I had her agree to lend me it sometime.
When we reach to the school building, Maria, who lives in a different dorm, was waiting for us. We head to the classroom together and attend our lectures, which dwindle by the day.
************
“When I went to the Ministry of Magic yesterday, Lahna-sama said that she wanted me to bring you as well next time, Katarina-sama,” says Maria during our break, after our lectures are over.
Maria Campbell. She’s the protagonist of the original otome game and one of the few light magic users in the country.
It had already been decided that she would be joining the Ministry of Magic after graduation, and now that our lectures at the magic academy have lessened, she’s visited the ministry a number of times.
I met the woman who’s going to be her direct supervisor, Lahna Smith, during the incident that occurred a little while back.
I spent a short while with Lahna, unaware of her true identity. She had been incredibly easy to talk to and seemed very openhearted, but in reality she was a higher-up in the Ministry of Magic. And apparently she was very high up in the ministry.
This Lahna has taken a liking to me for some reason and so she’s been encouraging me to join the Ministry of Magic after graduation. She’s even said that she’d recommend me.
If I graduate like this, it’s very possible that I’d end up Jared’s wife.
Well, it’s not like I dislike Jared himself, but since he’s a prince if I marry him I’d become royalty.
To be honest, I’m barely managing as an Earl’s daughter… even when I think I’m doing okay I end up getting lectured by my mother.
I feel like I’m not really suited to be a noble lady in the first place since my memories of my past life returned to me. I’m more suited to be a farmer or a townsperson.
Someone like me becoming royalty… the highest standing in this country…
A little while back, I thought that my engagement was just until Jared found someone he really liked, and mused about what I should do once the engagement was annulled.
In a normal noble family, I would probably be told to hurry up and marry myself off… but my father dotes on me and says stuff like “You can do what you’d like, Katarina.” And my mother is like “If you’re going to bring shame down on the family by marrying someone then you’re better off at home.” So both of them didn’t really bother me about getting married.
So I hadn’t really been worrying about graduating… but to think that Jared would seriously approach me romantically…
At this rate, I’ll really become royalty. I can join the Ministry of Magic to avoid that. My friend Rafael who’s currently working at the Ministry of Magic was the one to tell me that.
The Ministry of Magic has the second-most power after the king. And so, if I join the Ministry of Magic, even if a prince requests it, I apparently can’t be married off immediately and dragged off to the castle.
This is really helpful for me in my current situation… but I don’t really have much confidence in it.
After all, my magic is the absolute worst in the academy. If I was good at academics, then I could’ve become a researcher, but my academics aren’t that great either.
Is it really okay for a normal girl with no redeeming qualities to join a ministry filled with elites so easily?
From my previous life on, my parents always scolded me for being too insolent sometimes… I don’t really want to enter this country’s number one organization through nothing but connections when I don’t have anything to show for myself.
And so, even though Lahna’s inviting me, I haven’t given her a proper response yet.
It’s too late to hope to be as skilled as Maria, but if I could only gain some kind of special power, I’d join the ministry with no hesitation…
I muse about things like that as I give a vague response to Maria, who’s desperately inviting me to go to the Ministry of Magic with her.
There’s only a few months left until graduation – I still don’t know what I want to do.