CH 1

Prologue. An Effort to be Loved

The villainess shouted bitterly at the poor woman.

[“I’m going to kill you!”

“Can’t you stop, Theresa Squire-!”]

However, there was no way the heroine could be defeated.

Because this was the scene of killing her half-sister, the villainess.

[“Oh, Father.”

“Trying to kill your sister, you’re going too far! I can’t stand you anymore even if you’re my child.”]

Tak!

I stopped the game and checked the playtime.

“Hmm… I’m dying too fast this time too.”

Hair that was cut and tied roughly because it was long and messy.

A black hoodie and jeans that I’d worn for days.

Pale skin from not seeing sunlight, and narrow eyes from looking at the monitor all day.

Though I look like this, I am a game developer.

All the team members had left work, and I was the only one that stayed up all night in a studio that was too big to be called a game company.

The name of the game currently in production was <God’s Play>. It was a reverse harem game.

It was a simple story in which the main character, the Duke’s long-lost daughter, found her family again, was loved and built a good relationship with handsome male characters.

The game wasn’t all that bad since it was made by investing all of our passion for a long time, but there was a problem.

That is, the villainess died too quickly.

I made the villainess simple.

Adding a jealous half-sister was the easiest way to maximize the position of the beloved protagonist.

Unlike the main character who suffered in the slum, she was a born noble, so her ideology and authoritarianism were deeply embedded in her bones.

If things didn’t go her way, she got violent quickly. Selfishness, rudeness, arrogance…

It was safe to say that all the bad things were added in.

Perhaps that’s why she became a villainess who was handled too easily during the gameplay.

This couldn’t give any tension at all.

The number of male main characters had become insufficient.

“Even if I am bad at this, I have to balance it to get to the middle of the story…”

I rubbed my tired eyes and stared at [Theresa], the villainess on the monitor.

A beautiful woman with black hair and silver-gray eyes, like a masterpiece.

The villainess who seemed to have everything but love.

I laughed out loud.

In order for one to be loved, does the other have to be unloved?

So, I wondered if love really is special.

Naturally, my gaze reached [Libby].

The heroine who was loved by everyone I made, but not loving anyone else.

For that reason, it was a character that I found difficult to sympathize with.

Rather, the narrative of the villainess was more convincing.

“…Ah, I must be tired. I’m drenched in useless emotions.”

I am the eldest daughter of a remarried family.

My mother who had an eight-year-old daughter married a man from a good family.

My stepfather also had two children. One daughter and one son.

They acknowledged the existence of a stepmother but eventually refused to accept me.

The more I tried to prove that I was a useful daughter to my stepfather so that I wouldn’t be abandoned, the more my siblings hated me.

It was very difficult to understand.

I yielded anything to my siblings, looked after them when necessary, tolerated their demands, and was treated unfairly.

I was willing to be a convenient daughter and a useful sister.

No. That position was inevitable.

Because nobody wanted me and nobody loved me.

I had felt many times that I wished I was gone.

So I was more desperate not to be abandoned.

Those were disgusting days.

Eventually, I became nothing more than a daughter who listened to my stepfather as well as my mother.

One day, I asked myself.

‘Are you tired?’

…….

There was simply no right answer.

In my faded memory, I had been exhausted since childhood and I had learned to give up after the third year my birthday was passed as nothing.

In the meantime, I had repeatedly bitten my lips several times just to say that I also want to be loved.

When I saw the broken old dolls and old game consoles that kept the memories of my half-siblings in the closet, I was instantly speechless.

My toys were not there.

That’s when I realized.

I was the only one who felt sorry and I was the only one who tried.

By the time I turned 20 years old, I took revenge on the humans I didn’t want to call family and left the house.

Nevertheless, painful memories were rarely forgotten.

I grew older as ‘Shin Jiwoo’, a child who was not loved.

I felt like a defective product that was branded as indelible.

Tak!

I brought the game back to the starting point to get rid of the thoughts that had been cluttering my mind.

It was to check the villainess who was destined to eventually die through any route.

[…Loading..]

The opening song, which I’d heard so much, came through the headset.

It was then.

“Uh… Why am I so dizzy…?”

Even before I finished speaking,

Boom!

The sound of my head crashing down echoed in my ears.

It was the last thing I heard on Earth.

* * *

“Wake her up.”

It was a solemn voice.

The man’s language was unfamiliar, but I strangely understood it.

Splash!

“Ah!”

I frantically raised my upper body at the sudden flood.

“Wh-what?!”

“Did you wake up?”

My eyes turned aside to the voice that woke me up.

A middle-aged man with black hair and silver eyes looked down at me coldly.

I opened my lips weakly and murmured the name of the familiar man.

“Raul…?”

Duke Raul Squire.

He was the head of the Duke of Squire and the father of the protagonist of <God’s Play>.

“Seeing that you call your father by his first name, it seems you’re still half-drunk. Pour another glass of water on the Princess.”

Then a man next to Duke Raul who appeared to be a henchman tried to pour me a cup of cold water.

“Wait!”

I called out to Raul with a puzzled look.

“Fa-Father…?”

Raul is my father?

‘Then who am I?’

Raul looked down at me with cold eyes and asked in a voice full of disappointment.

“Are you sober now?”

I looked around in amazement.

There was a strong smell of alcohol, and bottles of alcohol were lying around in the room.

I felt like my head was going to break if I really drank all of this.

That’s all I could understand.

I couldn’t guess more than that.

‘What the hell is going on here?!’

The moment I screamed in silence.

Ring!

[If you set the channel name, the broadcast will start.]

※Recommended: BJ Villainess [▹Confirm]

‘…System window?’

I rubbed my eyes.

Still, the system window didn’t disappear.

‘This is too cliché.’

When I opened my eyes, I found a strange ceiling and a familiar-looking foreigner.

And my body seemed to have changed somehow.

It was a familiar development to me as a game producer who was proficient in subculture.

‘No way… Game possession? Does that make sense?’

I had imagined something like this.

I wondered what it would be like to escape from the beggar-like reality and possess a game or a novel.

But it was literally just an imagination.

It was something that would never happen, so it was something I could do comfortably.

‘But this is… It’s not imaginary at all.’

The sensation of water droplets flowing along the jawline.

Headache from a bloody hangover.

A strong smell of alcohol at the tip of my nose

On the day I tried to deny reality, all of my senses sharply awakened my whole body as if to sneer at me coldly.

I pressed OK for now.

It was also a long-standing cliché that not following the instructions of the system window in such a situation would immediately lead to death.

[Let’s start the broadcast.]

…But what does it mean to broadcast?

In terms of circumstances, I possessed the game I was producing, <God’s Play>.

There was no setting for this game to be broadcasted like the YouTube channel.

So this is really…

[The Constellations enter.]

Seriously, it’s like a game of ‘God’.

[The Constellation ‘Face Inspector’ applauds BJ’s appearance.]

My face turned blank.

Something was happening, but nothing made sense.

‘Oh, come to think of it.’

I opened my eyes wide.

It was because I remembered that I hadn’t checked the most important thing now.

‘So who am I?’

My heart thumped violently.

My father was Duke Raul Squire, and the channel’s name was BJ Villainess.

That means, don’t tell me, don’t tell me…

I staggered towards the full-length mirror.

“Come here and stand up straight now! How far are you going to disappoint me with your broken marriage?”

[The Constellation ‘Dramania’ is satisfied with the bean powder family.]

T/L notes: bean powder = dysfunction.

Raul shouted, perhaps because all my actions seemed to be strange, but I couldn’t hear him.

“No way.”

I stroked my cheeks and hair with trembling hands.

The face, like a God’s masterpiece, was somewhat worn out by a hangover.

However, it was still so perfect that it felt like a decadent beauty.

Raul had two beautiful daughters and one youngest son.

[Theresa], the eldest daughter and villainess, came from a wife that he was married to through political marriage and died during childbirth.

[Libby], the protagonist of this world, came from his wife who he was remarried to through love marriage.

And the youngest son [Giuseppe].

The important thing here was the ‘daughters’ side.

Raul strode up to me with an angry face.

As I continued rubbing my skin, Raul was furious and grabbed my hand.

“Can’t you stop, Theresa!”

I am Theresa Squire.

Not the protagonist, Libby, but the villainess who is not loved and will die in every route. It’s me.

“Theresa Squire. You are prohibited from going out until the vacation is over.”

Raoul’s voice was barely audible as if it was just a sound of humming from a distance.

My head was so dazed from the shock, my ears were far away, and I couldn’t recognize anything properly.

It’s a lie, right? It’s a dream, right? Yeah, it has to be a dream.

Otherwise, there’s no way the terrible thing of being the unloved eldest daughter is happening again.

“Ha. Hahaha. Haha…”

The laughter soon subsided.

Instead, there was a hot and unpleasant feeling that was hard to describe.

“Ah, uh… uhh…”

I crumpled, gripping the chest of the crumpled dress as if to tear it apart.

I was swallowed up as if beaten by the rushing emotions, and I shed tears so hard that I couldn’t see.

I was embarrassed because I had never felt such intense emotions in my life.

It was inevitable.

“Why… why…”

‘Why am I possessing the villainess-?’

Second, boom!

My vision turned black, the last thing I saw was Raul’s bewildered face.

Author's Thoughts

BJ=Broadcast jockey, the Korean term for a streame