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The Villain’s Merit
0. Prologue
I sat down on the expensive tapestry that adorned the floor so that the hem of my dress swelled up like a round loaf of bread.
I also didn’t forget to cross one leg over the other, so that the shiny enamel shoes and lace socks could be seen slightly out of the skirt.
Then, I took out a white piece of paper in front of me, which had only 8 verses, and grabbed the crayons I brought.
’Shall we start?’
My cheekbones were barely visible when I looked at the paper on the floor with my head stiffened so that my golden hair, which had been curled up in perfect shape, didn’t fall too much.
‘Your face needs to be pretty.’
Looking at the blank white space, I sighed without realizing it. He told me not to stop smiling brightly, so I smiled roughly as I was told, and the wind suddenly blew at my open lips.
‘Good posture, perfect angle. Let’s see, what do 14-year-old girls usually draw?’
I’m not sure because I was 14 years old seven years ago.
I opened my eyes and drew a chicken leg with yellow crayons on a piece of paper.
‘Okay, it’s a chicken leg stuffed with gourds.’
(TL/N: Gourds- A plant family consisting of plants, such as squash, cucumber, and bitter melon)
With a positive attitude, I picked up orange crayons this time. I was thinking of drawing a pizza.
Draw a distorted circle and squeak four lines into 8 pieces⋯⋯.  Well, since there were 6 intersections of straight lines, 11 slices of pizza were unintentionally made with different shapes.
‘Pizza slices are more than enough!’
As I was trying to draw with crayons carelessly, flashes were fired here and there.
A large, antique-looking camera was taking pictures of the fat man sitting on the sofa in the parlor, with me sitting like a porcelain doll at his feet, and the director of the orphanage.
The man who sat me down like a studio prop and took several shots of the orphanage director having a conversation with a perfectly ideal composition, gestures, and expressions finally turned his head to me.
‘I think it’s going to end soon.’
Now it was the last act of the show.
My legs were numb, but I kept my perfect pose like a statue hoping this time would go by quickly.
Like a politician who came out of a campaign, a man came with an overly friendly smile.
“Did you say your name is Freddia?”
“Yes, Count.”
“Is there anything you lacked in the orphanage?”
“Thanks to the Count’s constant support, I am doing well without any shortcomings.”
As I recited the lines that the director had informed me beforehand, the man smiled in satisfaction and pointed at my drawing with his finger.
“Your drawing skills are really good!”
“⋯⋯.”
I glanced down at my drawing, which can’t be called wonderful even in empty words.
‘I guess I’m not the only one trying to end this quickly.’
“Freddia, what’s your dream?”
I looked at the picture I had drawn with uninterested eyes and smiled sweetly at the Count.
“My dream is to be an artist!”
The moment I said that the camera flashed once again toward us.
Tomorrow’s newspaper would have articles like〈An orphan girl, who wants to be an artist said, “I am happy to be able to dream with the support of Count.”〉.
‘I feel like an elephant painting with a nose.’
(TL/N: an Idiom for feeling like a fool)
I glanced at the orphanage director, smiling as kindly as the count. The director’s expression was bright. It was because I did a pretty good show in front of the sponsors.
‘Okay, I can have a full dinner tonight.’
I felt a little better knowing that I could put something into my empty stomach soon. I was very hungry because the director had been starving me since yesterday. After all, I had to look pretty in the picture.
‘Heuk-heuk, it’s my duty.’
How did it become like this?
‘I was an orphan even before coming into this novel, but I never went hungry in a real orphanage!’
Yes, this is a world of a romance fantasy novel called, “Suspicious Princess”, and it may sound absurd, but I possessed a character.
My role here is a punishment.
1. Possessing a Character of a Novel.
At first, I thought I was dreaming.
After reading the novel and sleeping, I thought I had a strange dream.
A new body, new scenery, new people.
I was excited as if I was traveling abroad. I went around diligently and said hi and hello to everyone I met, but I was treated like a crazy person.
Then the orphanage director found me and gave me a mop. He diligently commanded me to wipe the stairs, so I roughly sprayed water and stirred around.
“Because I work so hard cleaning, I developed chapped hands. What should I do in this dream?”
But, when I got hit with a stick because of an accident, where someone fell because I sprayed the stairs with water, I suddenly realized that this was not a dream.
“Did I go into a real novel⋯⋯?”
It hurt so much. How could I have such a genuine dream? From then on, things became a little confusing. It was easier to think of it as a dream rather than to believe it as a reality.
“If I’m not going crazy, this was a dream. When I wake up, I’ll buy a lottery ticket, since it’s an unusual dream.”
That evening, the director locked me in the room, saying he would not give me a meal as a punishment for laziness.
“Wow, the attic! It’s like the kind of place you’d only find in a wealthy foreigner’s house. It was my dream to live in a place like this.”
The room was littered with blankets, a pair of clothes, and all sorts of things that I didn’t know were trash. I found the name ‘Freddia’ inside the ragged clothes.
“Isn’t that the name of the main character inside the novel I read before sleeping?”
Often, the contents of a book I read before going to bed appeared in my dreams, so it wasn’t a big deal.
“It’s interesting. Even in the novel, the story begins when the modern protagonist possessed Freddia’s body.”
〈The Suspicious Princess〉 was the story of a modern protagonist, who possessed an orphan girl, Freddia, and gradually changes the contents of the original novel.
I had to go to my part-time job early in the morning, so I read it quickly, and it was a good book to read without much thinking needed.
“I skipped most of the description, but the dream is so vivid. I’m very imaginative, haha.”
I lay down on the bed feeling comfortable in the low ceiling and narrow space. I felt pleasant by the smell of the wooden frames from the walls that were not painted.
“When I wake up, a beggar-like reality awaits me. It would be better if I never wake up.”
I left my regrets behind and went to sleep.
Until then, I never dreamed that my last words would come true.
The next day, contrary to what I thought, I slept and woke up, but I did not wake up from the dream.
I was wondering if I still looked like Freddia, a 14-year-old blonde girl who looked surprisingly pretty.
“What? Why won’t I wake up? Am I sleeping too deeply? Or has time not passed much in real life?”
Or maybe I went crazy overnight and thought that reality looked like a fictional world. In reality, I might be wandering around like an insane patient.
If so, someone who finds me walking around will report me whether it’s the police or 119, and since I don’t have any family, a social worker or someone will collect me on their own. I decided to think about the future when I become sane again.
But after a few days, my mind didn’t get saner, and I had to accept the reality.
“So⋯⋯. This is a fictional world, and I am in the novel just like the main character of the novel? So, did I become the main character?”
At that moment, a thought I once had came back and resounded in my mind.
‘I now have a new life as Freddia⋯⋯!’
Yes!
Life was becoming burdensome, but now I got a chance to live a new life.
In reality, I was born an orphan and went through child care and orphanage. After leaving the orphanage, I was thrown into a harsh society from place to place without being able to settle down.
After leaving the orphanage, I was getting paid like a passionate dog for working at a factory, but I stopped to find a new job because I didn’t want to do that for a living. I haven’t had a part-time job since then.
I was twenty-one years old with a part-time job that paid me once a day so I could eat once a day. Recently, my rent was pushed back because I already used my last paycheck, making my landlord uncomfortable.
It was truly a life without tomorrow. Wanting to escape from reality, I started a part-time job at a manga cafe and read novels and comic books whenever I could. That was my only way out.
“But I can’t believe I’m pretending to be in a novel! Isn’t that a successful escape? Okay, I’ll just start anew in this fantasy world. I think it’d be better to live here.”
Until then, colorful flower fields were spread out in my mind.
(Idiom for happy thoughts in her head)
“What should I do now?”
What does the main character inside the novels usually do? Trying to survive? Make a loyal male lead by purifying the villain? Abandoning the villainess family?
“I’m confident in everything!”
This is definitely the flower road life that God has given me. So, I wasn’t an extra, I’ll pretend to be the main character.
That’s what I thought ⋯⋯.
“Freddia, I’ve been watching you for a few days and I can’t stand it anymore.”
The forgotten orphanage director summoned me with a very angry face. It was the result of me acting like a free spirit for several days without realizing that I was inside a novel.
“You know that you are already too old to stay here, right? Up until now, I was going to leave you as a maid because you helped out with the orphanage, but looking at your behavior these days, I think it would be a good idea to send you somewhere else as soon as possible.”
“Somewhere else?”
“When you turn 14, you can work as a maid, so go to Hamel’s house as a maid.”
“If by Hamel⋯⋯.”
The owner of the farm who supplies food to the kitchen! He was a middle-aged man who I avoided every day because he asked me to kiss him on the cheek with him saying, “I have a daughter like you” and “It’s because I’m like his child.”
Seeing my face turn white, the director smiled cruelly.
“They said they need someone to live and work on their farm. Moreover, it’s perfect for you. So, be polite to Mr. Hamel.”
‘You knew everything and try to push me there!’
Unable to bear it, I jumped up from my seat and shouted.
“Master!”
Then I fell flat on the floor.
“From now on, I will work twice as hard as I did before. Please give me another chance. Heuk heuk.”
Fredia’s current main job is as an orphanage maid and a donor.
The protagonists in novels usually try to change the future, but as soon as I became Freddia, I started working as a punishment.