Afternoon sunlight filters through the silk curtains and pools softly on the desk in the study. Chloe sits in that light, her jewel-blue eyes fixed on a single sheet of paper.
It’s a full account of the girl from the city—the one her fiancé, Leonardo, has been meeting in secret.
A small photograph is clipped to the page. A girl in plain clothes is smiling brilliantly at someone just outside the frame, and although he’s mostly cut off, that someone looks an awful lot like Leonardo.
[This face…… it’s uncanny. She’s the spitting image of the heroine. So that settles it. She’s Sherry, the heroine’s mother……] (C)
There’s a note of resignation in her voice. Chloe’s mouth twists ever so slightly, and she lets out a sigh. Erich has been thorough; the report covers Sherry in detail.
[Seventeen…… Hmm, so we’re the same age. She left her farming village for the royal capital and works as a shop girl at a bakery in the city. ……Oh my. And here I assumed she was the baker’s daughter. Apparently not.] (C)
The further she reads, the more something dark and murky spreads through her chest.
‘I wanted to believe this world only looked like that otome game. But it’s tracing the same path so faithfully it’s almost funny. Funny enough that I’m starting to think something genuinely deranged: that Leonardo and Sherry aren’t an accident. That this world needs them together, because that’s how it gets its “heroine.”’
[And if that’s true, then I’m no different…… am I.] (C)
‘My existence is nothing but a mechanism. A device for producing the ‘villainess’ who’ll stand in the heroine’s way.
Put it like that, and the rage is enough to drive me out of my mind.’
[……You’ve got to be joking. I am the heir to the proud House of Calendula. I carry the blood of the imperial family. Even if this world exists for the heroine’s sake, I refuse to dance to its tune. ……I’ll fight it. Right up to my last breath.] (C)
‘Enough weeping over my fiancé’s betrayal like some tragic maiden in a play. I don’t have time to grieve. Hand my life over to those worthless people? Over my dead body—no, not even then.’
[Well then. If that’s decided, the first thing I need is a plan. ……The cleanest option would be breaking off the engagement with Leonardo-sama, but Father would never allow it……] (C)
Strangely enough, the moment her anger caught fire, her sorrow slipped quietly away, and something like fighting spirit rose to fill the space. She’s heard it said that anger can be the fuel that keeps a person alive, and it seems that’s true. And her love for him is cooling too, silently and steadily, like the tide going out.
Breaking the engagement would be the obvious answer. He’s a man she no longer loves, and one who may well kill her someday. But this is a political match, and political matches don’t come undone that easily.
The engagement is her father’s decision, as head of the house, and without a reason he’ll accept, breaking it off is next to impossible. Suppose she told him, “My fiancé has a lover.” That lover is a commoner. Her father is a noble to the bone, for better and for worse, and in his eyes commoners aren’t even the same species. She could make all the fuss she liked about Leonardo’s commoner sweetheart, and he’d wave it off without a second thought.
“Commoners are no different from livestock. It’s like doting on a cat or a dog. The absurd thing is to grieve over it.”
‘It’s only my imagination, but Father wouldn’t even be wrong.
He’d be right on one condition, though: that the man understands blood and duty. That he puts his lawful wife first, keeps the girl as a pet to be fond of, and never lets her cross the line. Take that away and the whole argument falls apart. If Leonardo only wanted to spoil her like a kitten, I’d come to no harm. But he wants to spend his life with Sherry. And of all the places to do it—here. In House Calendula.’
Her father has no idea that Leonardo means to murder her one day, move his lover and their daughter into the mansion, and take the house for himself. And she can’t tell him, because she has no proof; it’s still nothing but a prediction. Say it the wrong way and she’ll be thought mad and locked away.
[Wait…… hold on a moment. This…… whichever way I look at it, isn’t this a crisis for the whole house?] (C)
Between her fiancé’s betrayal and the sheer, mind-bending horror of living inside an otome game, she’d forgotten. In the game, Chloe’s daughter—the rightful heir of House Calendula—ends up in a convent.
It’s the usual fare. The prince packs Chloe’s daughter off to a convent for the crime of bullying the heroine, with a line something like:
“Become a nun, devote your life to God, and face your sins.”
[No, no, no…… who gave you permission to ship our family’s heir off to a convent? Royal or not, you have no right to do as you please with the next head of our house…… And a mere prince has no authority to pass judgement on a member of another house in the first place. Are you kidding me? And “the crime of bullying the heroine”—what is that? If that’s a crime, why does Leonardo walk free after abusing his own daughter? None of this makes sense……] (C)
‘The plot holes are bottomless, but I’ll set those aside for now. There’d be no end to it.
The real problem is the rightful heir of House Calendula being sent to a convent. That leaves no one to carry on the house. Come to think of it, I’m fairly sure a line scrolled past at the ending—’
“House Calendula was dissolved, and its lands returned to the Crown.”
[The house, dissolved? Our lands, seized by the Crown? What is this…… don’t you dare.] (C)
Game or not, the sheer injustice of it sends her rage boiling up all over again. An invented crime. An heir punished on a whim. A house that has stood since the founding of the kingdom, wiped out, and lands the family has protected side by side with its people, snatched away.
‘I will not let that barbarity stand.’
This is no longer just about her own life. If she doesn’t change the future somehow, some idiot prince wrapped around the heroine’s little finger may crush House Calendula for good. She’d love to brush it off as absurd, but with Leonardo already involved with Sherry, the woman who’ll become the heroine’s mother, it’s starting to feel all too real.
[I will not let this house be dissolved…… And to stop that, I have to survive. Whatever it takes……] (C)
‘Even if that future comes true—some prince picks a fight and ships my daughter off to a convent—as long as I’m alive, I can handle it. If it came to that, I could borrow the Empire’s strength through Mother’s family and crush the royal house outright. A wet-behind-the-ears prince playing at justice, and a royal family that would shield him? They’re no match for House Calendula.’
Chloe lowers her eyes to the report and turns the page, ready to plan in earnest now. Her expression shifts, just slightly, with every line she reads.
Outside, the gardener is pruning the autumn roses. The first frost isn’t far off. The seasons turn as they always do, carrying everything toward the future, and there’s no time for grieving. Chloe keeps searching, desperately, for a way out.
Simplyrical 
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