The Villainous Young Lady Would Even Risk Her Life for Her Beloved ～ Her Fiancé, the Prince? By All Means, Please Be Happy with the Heroine! - Chapter 1.6

“Lidi, what are you going to do now?”

Two weeks had passed since everyone in the Flores family had recovered.

Lately, it had become a routine for Luca to visit me before bed, pestering me for details about my previous world until I grew too sleepy to continue.

He was particularly fascinated by technology.

(Oh, right—he did have that magic tool geek trait in the original story.)

As I sipped my afternoon tea, I listened absentmindedly to Luca’s impassioned speech about how amazing cell phones were.

“The ability to talk to someone anywhere in the world instantly?! Even the greatest magic spells can’t do that!”

“Oh, really?”

“But maybe… maybe someone in another country is already developing it as a magic tool! If that technology existed, the world would change completely!”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I must have sounded uninterested because Luca suddenly pouted.

That’s when he hit me with his original question.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“The Ice Stone Disease situation wrapped up much faster than I expected.”

The cure had already been widely disseminated by the church and the kingdom.

The number of patients was rapidly decreasing, and at this point, the matter had more or less left my hands.

I had initially worried that places with fewer high-ranking magicians—particularly remote areas—would struggle.

But surprisingly, deworming medicine had stepped in to fill the gap.

I had just heard a report this morning that it was proving to be an effective stopgap until court magicians arrived.

“Well, I’ve prevented my family’s downfall, so next is Lord Finley!”

“But that’s still eight years away, right? What if that event never even happens anymore? Are you just going to sit around waiting until then?”

“Ugh…”

Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

When I first woke up in this world, my mind had been completely preoccupied with stopping two things:

1. 1. My family’s destruction caused by Ice Stone Disease.

1. 1. Lydiana murdering Finley.

Those had been my top priorities.

“Maybe I should just take down Aribara…”

“Hey! Don’t pick a fight with my teacher!”

Apparently, Luca had gotten along well with Aribara over the past two weeks.

According to him—

“He’s a bit twisted and has a sharp tongue, but he takes his job seriously.”

In other words, he wasn’t as bad as I had assumed.

Since I had been an absolute terror before my reincarnation, Aribara had probably assumed that Luca would be better off staying away from me.

And to be fair, he wasn’t wrong.

His teaching skills were solid—Luca’s already excellent magic control had further improved under his guidance.

Meanwhile, I still didn’t have a tutor.

My past reputation had made it impossible to assign me one, so I had been spending my days in blissful laziness.

Which, honestly, was ridiculous!

I was a duke’s daughter!

I was the First Prince’s fiancée!

Shouldn’t there be plenty of people fighting over the honor of teaching me?!

Was I that undesirable?!

This should be considered prestigious, damn it!

“I’ve met Finley Lias before, you know.”

“WHAT?! What did you just say?!”

I had been completely distracted by Aribara, but that name instantly snapped my focus back.

“When?! Where?! How?! Why?! And why not me?!”

I practically lunged at Luca, shaking him by the shoulders.

“Uh… It was at the royal-sponsored swordsmanship tournament in early June.”

“No way! Why didn’t you invite me?!”

“Father and I did invite you. But you turned us down because you had a meeting with a jeweler.”

“Uwaaaahhh! I’m such an idiot!!!”

What a disaster!!

That was before my engagement!

If I had gone, maybe—just maybe—I could have avoided being engaged to the First Prince!

“…I need to get this engagement annulled.”

“Huh?”

“I have to break this engagement!!”

How had I not thought of this before?

Even if I avoided becoming the “Calamity Lady” at eighteen, I’d still be the noblewoman who got dumped by the First Prince.

That alone would be more than enough to tarnish my reputation for life.

(People already think I’m difficult—imagine what they’ll say if I’m publicly humiliated like that…!)

I was starting to think about social reputation in a way the old Lydiana never would have.

(Ughhh! If only I had remembered my past life a little earlier!!)

But… I did remember.

And that alone was a blessing.

There was no need to wait until I was eighteen.

Ending an engagement with the royal family would be seen as absurd—who would willingly throw away such an opportunity?

But I was only ten years old.

I could come up with plenty of excuses.

Better to cut ties now while the damage was minimal.

“You do realize it won’t be that simple, right?”

Luca looked unimpressed as he sipped his tea.

Easy for him to say.

He wasn’t the one engaged to an unfaithful prince!

…Well, actually, once I went through with this, he would be the brother of a “disgraced” noblewoman.

“I’m doing it anyway! I told you why, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, yeah. You think he’s a cheater, right?”

“Exactly!”

“Well, I don’t want you to marry a cheater, but…”

Luca frowned thoughtfully.

Unlike me, he had met Leonhart several times.

He was frequently invited to the palace along with other noble boys of his age.

“I just don’t think he’d do something like that.”

“Their love was written in the stars!”

“Ehh…”

“It’s fated love!”

I launched into my own passionate speech, just as Luca had done about technology earlier.

“He ignores me completely, spends all his time with Iris, partners with her in every school event, goes on multiple monster-hunting ‘trips’ with her, and—basically—he uses me as a convenient obstacle while he falls madly in love with Iris!”

It wouldn’t even be wrong to say that Lydiana helped them get together.

Every cute and romantic moment between them?

For Lydiana, it was just her fiancé blatantly flirting with another woman.

No wonder she snapped.

“It’s funny how different the story looks from this perspective.”

“Yeah… that’s true.”

It was selfish of me.

In my past life, I had thrived on their heartwarming, love-filled moments.

I had rooted for their forbidden romance, moved by how they struggled against the obstacles that kept them apart—Lydiana being one of them.

“A loveless marriage is just—!”

“Well, love is preferable, of course.”

We were still nobles, after all.

We understood that political marriages were the norm.

“I want something like what Mother and Father have!”

“You mean the whole ‘Mother overthrew Grandfather just so she could marry Father’ story? You really think that’s true?”

Mid-conversation, there was a knock at the door.

Eliza stepped in.

“The First Prince will be arriving shortly.”

“Huh?! Right now?!”

“Wow… speak of the devil…”

Normally, visits like this would be scheduled well in advance.

This was outright disrespectful.

“What does he want?”

“He’s coming to pay you a visit.”

“Oh, now he decides to visit me?”

Seriously—why now?

If he wanted to visit, he could have come much earlier.

Or, better yet, he could have never come at all.

This was a political engagement.

I had known even before regaining my memories that Leonhart had zero interest in me.

I still remembered how I had felt when I first met him—so excited, so nervous, expecting to meet the dashing, ideal prince I had heard about.

Instead, I had been greeted with a cold, bureaucratic response and a prince who barely even looked at me.

It had been crushing.

(Wait—wasn’t it him who was so eager to marry me?!)

Only now did I understand the truth.

It hadn’t been him—it had been his mother, Lady Lione, who had pushed hard for the engagement.

Back then, I had thought I was the one being earnestly pursued, that I had caught the eye of the kingdom’s most handsome prince.

(Turns out it was just my future mother-in-law scheming for political gain!)

The original story hadn’t explored this much, but in reality, there was a massive power imbalance between the First Prince and the Second and Third Princes.

No matter how talented Leonhart was, his mother’s commoner origins meant he had virtually no allies at court.

Without political backing, he had no chance at the throne.

The Flores Duchy was the only thing that made him a viable heir.

“We must prepare at once.”

I could hear the chaos erupting in the hall as servants scrambled to get everything in order.

“Even if he’s a pain, he is royalty, after all.”

I clicked my tongue, remembering how devastated I had once been.

“Hey! Watch your mouth! You’ve been talking way too casually lately—you need to be more careful!”

“That’s because someone keeps barging into my room and chatting my ear off all day.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but Luca was the reason I had been speaking so casually.

Still, I had been enjoying my relaxed days.

Father and Mother had been so busy with the Ice Stone Disease crisis that I rarely saw them.

Luca was practically my only daily conversation partner.

“Ugh, I really don’t want to do this.”

“What happened to all that enthusiasm?”

“I wanted time to plan a strategy!”

This was the last thing I wanted to do while still recovering.

Why did I have to waste my time on someone I didn’t even want to see?

“Please hurry.”

Eliza’s tone left no room for argument.

Grumbling, I reluctantly obeyed.