Chapter 3 – The Male Lead Is the Villain (2)
The first time she felt something was off was when she was nine.
Edelene had been spending a quiet afternoon with her fiancé.
‘A kid with a fiancé already. Unbelievable.’
It was normal in this world, but it still felt strange to her.
If she thought of him as just a childhood friend, it wasn’t weird. But when she remembered he was supposed to be the man she would eventually marry, it felt oddly surreal.
‘And he’s the young duke. Talk about being born with a gold spoon…’
In her previous life, there had been a duke who inherited his fortune at twenty-five and became one of the richest people in the world in his twenties. This duke probably wasn’t any less impressive.
Back then, Edelene didn’t know much about the world she had been reborn into.
She thought it was overly dramatic, almost fantasy-like, but she never imagined it was literally the setting of a novel. That kind of conclusion was hard to reach.
‘If this were my past life, he would’ve been a hugely successful model.’
Even standing still and blinking, his beauty was picture-perfect. He would have succeeded in any medium.
The angelically handsome boy’s name was Shane Blancard.
Glossy black hair, sharp eyes that curved into half-moons when he smiled, and jewel-like blue irises set within them. His skin was pale and flawless like porcelain. His long limbs were straight and elegant.
He was thirteen in international age and already had the air of a young man.
Edelene was nine, four years younger than him, yet he never showed any sign of boredom when spending time with her.
‘Mostly his face is kind.’
To Edelene, Shane was too perfect, too much of a model student.
A child forced to grow up too quickly because he was too smart.
‘Maybe because of his strict upbringing. He doesn’t cry like a normal kid. He’s not honest about his feelings either…’
Not long after their engagement, Edelene had been taken to Shane’s mother’s funeral.
She was shocked once when she realized the place the adults led her to was a funeral hall and shocked again when she saw the pale boy standing there quietly.
He had lost his mother, yet the adults treated him as if he were already grown and left him alone.
A child who had only learned how to suppress emotions, not how to release them.
She felt so sorry for him that she couldn’t help but hug him.
“I’ll stay by your side. Don’t worry. You can cry if you want. I’ll only look at you.”
“If I don’t have tears, how am I supposed to cry?”
“Then try anyway.”
“Do you want me to cry?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll try.”
***
Even without tears, he said he would cry just because his fiancée asked him to.
How kind was that?
She had thought she should look after him so he wouldn’t grow up to be a pushover.
After that, she visited him more often and played with him.
Maybe he sensed her concern, because he began coming to see her too, beyond their once-a-month official meetings.
Since he was older, it wasn’t exactly that he followed her. They simply grew closer.
“You came to play again? Are you that free?”
“What could be more important than spending time with my fiancée?”
“R-Really?”
Was he using her as an excuse to avoid studying?
She sometimes felt like she was a convenient excuse for slacking off, but watching his pretty face made time pass quickly, so she didn’t mind.
“I wonder when the saintess will finally appear.”
“Hm?”
“Aren’t you reading the newspaper?”
Edelene had been pretending to read the newspaper while actually admiring Shane’s face.
When she realized she had spoken out loud without thinking, her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.
She couldn’t exactly admit she had been staring at his face.
“Saintess?”
What saintess?
She lowered her eyes to the headline.
It said that 102 years had passed since the last saintess died, and it was becoming a problem that no new saintess had appeared.
‘That sounds like something straight out of a novel… Wait.’
A novel?
‘Huh?’
Come to think of it, her fiancé’s last name was Blancard…
A saintess who appears once every hundred years.
The eldest son of Duke Blancard, black hair and blue eyes…
Where had she heard that before?
‘Oh, shit! He’s the male lead!’
The moment the words “male lead” floated over his angelic face, the forgotten plot rushed back into her mind.
‘This isn’t just a fantasy world. It’s actually a novel!’
She grasped the situation in an instant.
‘No wonder he has everything!’
The devoted man who loves only the heroine. A genius in both academics and combat. Perfect status and perfect looks.
He was undoubtedly the male lead of the healing romance fantasy novel The Saintess Who Was Thought to Be Fake Was Actually Real.
‘I only ever called him Shane, so I never dwelled on his last name. And I never thought to apply the “black-haired, blue-eyed handsome man” setting to a literal child… That’s why I didn’t realize.’
You don’t go around consciously recalling every character name from a novel every second of your life.
Until the keyword “saintess” clicked into place, he had just been her pretty fiancé with a complicated foreign name.
But he was the male lead.
And Edelene was not the heroine.
She had adored him as her fiancé because she didn’t know, but now that she did, she had to change her attitude.
“Edelene? What’s wrong?”
“Let’s break off the engagement.”
“What?”
At the sudden words from his nine-year-old fiancée, the gentle smile disappeared from Shane’s face.
Without expression, he looked less like an angel and more like a wax doll.
Ignoring the coldness in his blue eyes, Edelene continued rapidly.
“Let’s call it off, Shane. Yes, that’s better. We’re still young—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Edelene. But our engagement has already been officially approved by His Majesty the Emperor. It’s not something that can be broken over a childish whim. You understand that, right?”
“I’m not even ten! Getting engaged at this age is child abuse!”
“And you’re saying that now? We’ve been engaged for quite a while.”
“……”
That was true, but still.
“Br-break it off! Definitely! It’s better to cancel an engagement than to divorce later!”
“Would you like to tell me who taught you such nonsense? No—such inappropriate words?”
“……”
It sounded like he had been about to say something worse himself.
“And what would you do with that information?”
“So I can make sure they never teach you such words again.”
“……”
Could a thirteen-year-old boy sound this frightening?
There was nothing gentle in the phrase “make sure they never.”
It didn’t sound like persuasion.
“Edelene, who is it? Just tell me their name. Hm?”
He coaxed her like she was a child.
She wanted to protest that she wasn’t a child—but she was.
“Let’s just break it off, okay? If we both say we don’t want it, something can be done.”
“But I want to marry you, Edelene.”
“You’re still a kid. The future is unpredictable.”
“You do realize you’re younger than I am?”
“…I’d rather not think about that.”
“Did I upset you somehow? Tell me. I’ll fix it.”
“…No… you didn’t do anything wrong…”
Not yet.
For a moment, Edelene considered throwing herself onto the floor and throwing a tantrum.
Break it off right now!
She pictured herself rolling around while Shane watched and her parents looked horrified.
‘No… that’s not it.’
As he said, their engagement was a contract between families, recognized by the emperor.
It wasn’t something a child’s stubbornness could undo.
Even her doting parents would find it difficult. There would be losses involved.
She didn’t want to cause trouble for the parents who gave birth to and raised her.
‘Then there’s no choice. The best way is to let him initiate the breakup…’
If he wouldn’t break it off, she would have to find another method.
The male lead belonged to the heroine anyway.
Getting tangled up would only exhaust her. It would be better for both of them to cut ties early rather than grow attached and have him taken away later.
‘Though I’m already a bit attached…’
But he wasn’t hers.
She would slowly distance herself, remain friends instead of fiancés, and when the heroine appeared, she would let him go cleanly.
At that point, she was still relaxed.
‘But what exactly was the plot? I only remember the romance in the middle and later parts. There are so many saintess romance fantasies… I must’ve read dozens like it.’
She was even a little excited that her reborn world was a novel.
Being the male lead’s fiancée was inconvenient, but she could stand a step back and watch.
The nightmares began that night.
***
“Ah—shit!”
Edelene jolted awake with a scream, gasping for breath.
Her small body was drenched in cold sweat.
“I remember… my role in this novel…”
She wasn’t just the male lead’s fiancée.
The “Edelene” of the novel had everything—wealth, loving parents, and two older brothers who adored her.
When the fiancé she loved abandoned her and fell in love with another woman, she couldn’t endure it.
She tormented the heroine.
She used everything she had to try to kill her.
And in the end—
‘Who the hell killed me?’
She was murdered by someone who loved the heroine.
