The pink-haired girl shouted fiercely at the door.
Before long, the butler and a few servants rushed into the room, out of breath.
"Second Young Master! What's the matter!"
"Take this girl, drag her away and lock her up."
"Y-Young Master! I'm sorry! Young Master! Young Master!"
The maid, who had been in a bad mood all morning, was easily dragged away with a single nod.
I was too busy trying to calm my churning stomach and throat to intervene in the chaotic sequence of events.
Still covering my mouth with one hand, I slumped against the back of the chair, and the pink-haired girl reached out to me.
Her hand, gently shaking my thin shoulder, was very cautious.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
"……"
"Why did you eat that thing? You should have overturned the table and screamed as usual, you idiot."
Was she taunting me or trying to comfort me?
The pink-haired girl sneered in the same annoying way as the character in the game.
'If I hadn't eaten it, I would have been impaled by the fork you stuck in and died.'
I suddenly felt irritated.
I wanted to snap back at her, but without the damn choices, I couldn't make a sound.
'Hmm... Is it all over now?'
Thanks to the unexpected help, I was able to easily resolve the tug-of-war with the dedicated maid.
However, I didn't feel grateful at all.
While my arm was being pricked by needles, was the maid the only one tormenting the villain among the servants?
'No.'
The dedicated maid was probably just a small part of it. The entire Ecart family must have been united in trying to crush the villain.
And at the top of that, the tacit approval of the person standing in front of me must have existed. It was the basic setting for the villain.
I hadn't been awake for long, but a sudden, intense fatigue washed over me.
"Hey. You look really bad. Shouldn't we call a doctor?"
Perhaps my lack of response made her feel uneasy, so the pink-haired girl said something she didn't mean.
She leaned in, covering her face with her hand, as if she were genuinely worried.
At that moment, a white square window appeared in front of me again.
1. Mind your own business.
2. What's it to you? Get out of my room!
3. Don't pretend to be nice. It's annoying.
The reality of having to carefully choose options to avoid dying felt terrifying.
I chose the most neutral option among the insane choices prepared by the game developer.
"Mind your own business..."
I wanted to say it with as much sincerity as possible, as it matched my current feelings.
But I was too busy suppressing the urge to vomit, so my voice was weak.
"You..."
The pink-haired girl, who understood my words, distorted her face for a moment.
But it was only for a moment.
Her face was once again as cold as ice, sending shivers down my spine.
Maybe I was just seeing things because I was distracted.
"Whatever. If you die from eating whatever you find, it's none of my business."
The person who had bent over to check on me straightened up and spat out unpleasant words.
"There's no doctor in Ecart who would waste their precious time on someone like you."
Thud, thud, the steps heading towards the door were quite fierce.
Above the retreating pink-haired girl, white letters flashed.
[Goodwill -3%]
Goodwill increased.
When I saw the game yesterday, it was clearly -10%. A significant increase in hard mode, where even 1-2% was hard to achieve.
'If I had known the results would be this significant, I would have cleared this episode first when playing the game...'
But I wasn't particularly happy or concerned that the goodwill had increased.
After all, minus was still minus.
* * *
After vomiting, I lifted my bent upper body, staggering.
When I raised my head after rinsing my mouth at the sink, a pale, beautiful girl appeared in the mirror.
"Penelope."
The voice that wouldn't come out when I desperately wanted to speak flowed easily now that I was alone.
When I spoke, the girl in the mirror also opened her mouth.
Her large, turquoise eyes sparkled like emeralds.
A beautiful woman with rich, rosy hair that curled luxuriously whenever it moved.
It was clearly not my face.
"Penelope Ecart. Ecart... huh."
'Ecart' was the name of the only ducal family in the game world, the 'Inca Empire.'
I had died several times in the episode I experienced yesterday, which was essentially the start of hard mode, the first son of the duke giving me a punishment.
This was because I had chosen rash answers, considering the character's villainous nature.
If I had given up and gone to sleep without trying to overcome the initial deaths, it would have been a disaster.
Thinking about it, a deep sigh escaped me.
"Ha... She's terrifyingly beautiful..."
Even when I saw Penelope's face in the illustrations, I thought she was beautiful, but the real Penelope's face was beyond beautiful.
Before I became independent, I would have been thrilled to praise Penelope's appearance and might have willingly accepted this absurd situation.
'Thinking that the gods had given me a new life...'
But I had held on and finally escaped from that damn house.
I had been accepted into a prestigious university despite the poor environment.
I had a small, dirty but completely my own home.
I had a bright future ahead of me, free from the two bastards.
Compared to my future, Penelope's situation, where any choice led to a dead end, was far worse.
If I were the protagonist of the normal mode, who only walked the path of roses, it might be different.
"…But why?"
Why, of all times, right after I had just escaped from that hellish house.
"Exactly why!"
Bang!
I slammed the sink and screamed. The beautiful face in the mirror was horribly distorted.
Even though I was screaming, it looked more vicious than sad, fitting the game's ultimate villain.
"Ha..."
I sighed deeply, brushing my long hair back. I thought about Penelope.
Penelope Ecart. The villain in the game and the protagonist of hard mode.
Originally, Penelope was a commoner with no surname.
[A Penelope who had wandered from place to place under a poor, widowed mother was noticed by the duke, who was desperately searching for his lost youngest daughter.
And when her widowed mother, who had a chronic illness, died, Penelope was adopted into the Ecart family.]
The only reason Penelope could become the only duchess of Ecart was one.
Because she looked similar to the duke's lost youngest daughter.
The pink hair inherited from the late duchess and the blue eyes, a symbol of the Ecart bloodline.
I thought about the duke's second son I had seen in the earlier commotion.
His hair was a lovely pink.
But the rosy hair of the woman in the mirror was closer to red than pink.
Moreover, her turquoise eyes were subtly different from the Ecart's bright blue eyes.
"Why not find the real daughter instead of bringing in a random child?"
As Penelope grew, she became less and less like the duke's real daughter, and the duke quickly lost interest and neglected her.
What was left for the neglected Penelope was only the abuse from her two older brothers and the servants.
"Feels uncomfortably familiar..."
Penelope's experiences before and after being adopted were strangely similar to mine.
It was a sense of déjà vu I hadn't realized while playing the game.
My mood sank instantly.
'Fake duchess.'
All the servants in the Ecart family called Penelope a fake.
Penelope was breathtakingly beautiful, but to others, she was just a poorly made imitation.
If she had been at least cute, it might have been different, but the stone that rolled in happened to have a terrible personality.
The game's prologue described her as, "Threatening everyone like a porcupine, causing mischief without regard for time or place."
"No wonder all the choices were so brash."
I nodded, recalling the insane choices I had seen so far.
In fact, Penelope was an incredibly fierce villain from the start, with a name that matched.
Unlike the innocent and pure normal mode heroine, she looked fierce.
But I somehow understood Penelope.
In just a few hours today, I had a clear idea of how she had been treated in the Ecart family.
'Even if she's a fake, still...'
How could the duke, who had brought her in and officially adopted her, wake her up by pricking her with a needle?
Even among the same maids, no one would wake someone up in such an unreasonable way.
Penelope was adopted into the Ecart family at the age of 12.
If this kind of abuse had continued from then on...
There wouldn't have been many options for a child to take when the adults wouldn't listen to her no matter how much she screamed.
"Is this a made-up villain?"
Of course, that doesn't justify the mischief she has caused so far.
But all the characters in the game were particularly merciless to Penelope, and the hands that killed her were merciless.
"Poor thing."
I raised my hand and caressed Penelope's delicate cheek.
The beautiful rosy hair in the mirror looked truly pitiful.
But I quickly dismissed the fleeting sympathy.
"Now isn't the time to indulge in such sentiments."
Now, Penelope was me.
In other words, I could die at the hands of the male leads just like the Penelope in the game, who had died countless times.