Chapter 30.1

SIDE STORY – Gloria Lupinus (1)

(Trigger Warning: Detailed depiction of murder—go to *** to skip)

How important was ice cream that I’d left the house for it this late at night?

Those were my thoughts as I shuddered at the feel of the rough hand covering my mouth.

I was just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill college student, out to buy ice cream during the weekend. In other words, I had never done anything my entire life to be a cause for resentment from anyone.

“Urp…!”

When I heard footsteps behind me while I was passing through a dark alleyway, I did feel a bit nervous. It had been a rather dark night, after all.

So I was walking on while pointlessly fiddling with my phone when a man in a hood suddenly covered my mouth and overpowered me. I flailed around to throw him off, but the man had punched me hard in the stomach.

A groan seeped through my firmly closed mouth at the stinging pain. It felt like my whole body had turned into stone—I couldn’t move a single finger.

While I was groaning in pain, I suddenly remembered the news I’d seen on TV about the indiscriminate murders. Never in my life had I ever thought that I might be a victim of something like this.

Now that it was my reality, though, I couldn’t even manage the commonest plea for mercy.

“…!”

Cold iron pierced my stomach and ripped open my intestines. That was when I realized that if you were in too much pain, you couldn’t even scream.

Scary. Scared. I’m so scared. I’m so scared. I’m so scared.

Nausea overcame me like I would vomit at any time and tears welled up in my tightly closed eyes.

“Hic….”

Collapsing onto the cold asphalt floor, I let out a breath that reeked of blood.

I’d thought that you would see your life flash through your eyes, or feel some kind of great remorse when it was your time to go, but all I could think of was that I wanted to live.

Under the dim light of the street lamp, the blade flashed and the pain returned. It did not take long for blood to pool in my mouth.

The smell of blood that lingered in my nose only got stronger and at the same time, my eyes gradually closed.

In my blurring vision, I could see my cell phone on the floor with its shattered screen and a black plastic bag from the convenience store.

That was probably how I died.

***

The reason I spoke speculatively of what looked to be quite self-evident was because my consciousness returned not long after.

I was lying in a very soft bed. Though I didn’t know how much time had passed, I could breathe easily and I didn’t feel any pain. Thinking that I was in a very expensive hospital, I opened my eyes.

“…?”

Wallpaper of a peculiar pattern, anachronistic furniture placed here and there, and a bed with a canopy.

Now, it wasn’t like I’d been to many hospitals, but I could be pretty certain that this medieval, European-style space was not a hospital room at the very least.

As well as the fact that these tiny, chubby limbs and tiny body was not mine to start with, either.

Having died by being stabbed to death by some b*st*rd in a dark alleyway, I was surprisingly enough inside a random baby’s body.

“… Waaah!”

And so what I did was this: I cried. I cried a lot. I cried and screamed a tantrum until I exhausted myself.

After all, that was the only thing I could do with this baby’s body, which didn’t have any proper teeth or proper hair.

As a result, an entire horde of women in some kind of maid outfits ran up to me, waving circular toys that weren’t even funny-looking and appearing anxious. Not caring about them, I continued to cry.

WAAAAAAH.

Just like that, I cried until I could taste blood in my throat, then fell asleep from my own exhaustion.

I remembered how I’d closed my puffy eyes, desperately wishing that this was all a dream.

Come to think of it, all this had happened already eighteen years ago.

***

Flora and Noah Schnoah were good friends.

They dominated each other’s entire childhoods and even after they grew up, that didn’t change much.

Friends. The first one to cross that implicit line between friends was Noah Yurielle.

“How about me, instead of that guy, Flora?”

“But Noah… We’re friends.”

Friends.

Shockingly enough, at that one word, a fire was lit in his ever-calm, golden eyes.

“Even if we do this? Are we still friends after we do this? Tell me, Flora.”

“I…. I don’t know what you’re doing, urk!”

Her wrist caught in his hand, Flora groaned painfully.

“That d*mn notion of friends – friends. You don’t even know what I’m thinking about right now, do you?”

“…”

“Flora, the moment you bring up that blasted word again…”

In a sticky gesture, Noah grazed his thumb on Flora’s lips.

“I’ll block these pretty lips of yours myself.”

#academy #r-18 #childhood friends #obsession

***

… was what I was reincarnated in.

<The Mist Surrounding the Rose>

Yeah, I know what you’re about to say.

Though it was a bit embarrassing, truth be told I was half-crazed about this novel.

A romance-fantasy novel filled to the brim with clichés that told the story of two childhood friend protagonists who, after a couple of dramatic episodes, confirm each other’s feelings and ‘fall in love.’

It did not take long for me to recognize that this world I’d reincarnated into was inside that very novel.

The mansion I was living in was the residence of Marquis Lupinus and I was his eldest daughter, Gloria.

The problem with Gloria was that her over-the-top possessiveness toward the male lead made her harass the female lead so badly that, in the end, she played the role of the villain who’d be forcibly removed by the pissed off male protagonist. Not that she died, though.

I died and found out I was now the villain of the novel when I woke up. Huh.

It was quite the cliché story and there were times when I’d hoped to be reincarnated as a rich millionaire, but now that it was my story, I wasn’t all that happy about it.

Ah, but first of all, to have reincarnated. Reincarnation… I mean, I’m actually an atheist.

At first, I couldn’t accept the fact that I’d died so futilely.

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