The Yandere Villainess’s Past Life Was That of a Lonely Woman. After Reflecting and Stopping Her Stalking of Her Fiancé, He Somehow Started Approaching Her Instead. - Chapter 11

The carriage I had summoned arrived at the academy in about thirty minutes.

Given the distance to the estate, it couldn’t be helped, but waiting that long kept me on edge.

The constant fear that Lucius might spot me at any moment—it felt less like being in an otome game and more like being a character in a horror game.

And yet, if it came down to appearance alone, I looked far more like the monster who jumps out to terrify the protagonist.

I was personally grateful that the Radiata family servant who came for me didn’t pepper me with endless questions.

Still, a pitch-black carriage pulled by pitch-black horses, driven by a coachman in equally pitch-black attire—it was a sight that carried its own kind of intimidation.

The Radiata family’s heavy use of black in all things was proof of our lineage as a house of dark magic. Even my academy uniform was a special black version.

I didn’t hate the color black, but now that my mentality had reverted to that of an ordinary person, being surrounded by nothing but black was starting to wear me down.

It almost made me think of a hearse as I sank into my seat.

The carriage jolted roughly as it began to move. If I stayed in it too long, my backside would probably hurt more than my head.

There were cell-phone–like devices here, and magic too, yet things like this remained inconvenient. This really was a slapdash world design.

If I hadn’t regained the memories of my previous life, perhaps such complaints would never have crossed my mind.

I had left my bag and everything else in the classroom, but that couldn’t be helped this time.

It was an academy filled entirely with children of nobles, and besides, no one in their right mind would dare steal the belongings of the dreaded “ghostly villainess.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of the sandwich I had offered Lucius just before he shoved me away.

If I was lucky, perhaps only the contents had ended up in the trash.

If I wasn’t, maybe it had been left sitting on my desk, filling the air with its smell—or worse, dumped on the floor and left there.

“How harsh…”

I muttered the thought aloud at the imagined scene, feeling the same way I had when I saw bullying scenarios in manga or games.

To be honest, right now the seventeen years I had lived as Lycoris felt terribly faint.

I had the memories, but the personality and the mindset were so different it hardly felt like my own life.

I could barely relate to that part of her that felt satisfied just by gazing at the one she loved.

But the nerve—the sheer audacity—to knowingly marry someone who despised her and then cling to him regardless… that was something I could never do.

In a way, Lycoris had been confident.

With her noble birth and her talent for magic, she had believed she could ignore Lucius’s feelings and bind him to herself through the power of status alone.

In reality, all she had was the title of fiancée, while his heart was already turned toward another girl.

And Lycoris knew that all too well—she had watched, after all. That was why she prepared the exact same lunch as the heroine’s, trying to compete.

I wondered what would have happened had Lucius accepted Lycoris’s gesture today and taken her sandwich.

Would things have played out just like in the game—a strange love triangle dragging on, only to collapse once he formally requested to dissolve the engagement?

And if it had, Lycoris would have unleashed her dark magic and ended her own life, scarring the hearts of them both.

If she had truly hated the thought of losing her fiancé, she should have just interfered with his relationship with the heroine from the very beginning.

“…As for me, I could never stand a man who cheats.”

So I whispered to myself in the privacy of the carriage.

In the end, Lycoris and I were not the same person at all.