Milene's Ally? # Milene
Ever since I started living as Milene—no, as K—I’ve begun exercising every morning. For one thing, I needed to get used to this body, this woman’s body. For another, I’d been far too scared of that Schwald bastard and Sophia bitch lately. Exercising gave me an excuse to go out in disguise, and I could change my hairstyle too.
I tied my hair back for easy movement and trimmed my bangs a little. They used to lie too neatly and almost cover my eyebrows. The new style felt more open, like I’d shifted the whole vibe. On top of that, I was wearing plain commoner clothes instead of a noble dress—who would possibly recognize me as Duchess Milene?
My morning routine began with a lap around the royal capital. “A lap” just meant following a set route. I avoided the area near the academy and the streets where nobles liked to stroll. It was simply the start of an ordinary daily schedule.
“Good morning.”
I greeted the woman who ran the shop I passed while jogging. Having been condemned and reduced from Duchess Milene to plain old commoner K, my personal connections had essentially dropped to zero. That meant I had to build a new image from the ground up. At the very least, in this neighborhood I needed to be seen as “cheerful royal-capital citizen number one.”
“Oh my, Miss K. Out bright and early again today?”
“They say a healthy body houses a healthy mind, so I figured I should do my best.”
It was the best I could manage. Because of the original cast, I’d been cooping myself up and only writing, so the least I could do was get some minimal exercise.
“What a diligent, well-spoken young lady. If I had a son, I’d have tried to set you up with him.”
“Hahaha.”
Who in their right mind would marry a man? A few of the local merchants had already tried to sound me out about their sons or grandsons, but I’d shot them all down. How dare they set their sights on this body of mine? Absolutely not happening.
After a proper jog and some morning exercise, I headed to an empty lot near the slums to practice magic. Yes. That was what I was supposed to do. It was what I always did, and what I should have been doing today as well—
“M-Miss?”
A woman who called me “miss” suddenly appeared. Who the hell was she? That damn author never bothered to describe the maids’ appearances properly. Maybe because she didn’t have much weight in the story, but still.
Without hearing her name, I had no idea who she was. Actually, wasn’t this dangerous? She had recognized me even after I’d been condemned and demoted to commoner status—and even though I’d changed my looks. That meant someone was actively looking for me. Or could she be another one of Milene’s allies?
No matter how I thought about it, there couldn’t be only idiots who swallowed Sophia’s story whole. Surely a small number of people still believed in Milene’s innocence. They simply hadn’t been able to overcome the Holpert family’s influence and that Sophia bitch. It was possible… but I wasn’t sure. The Holpert family and Sophia would have kept the maids on a tight leash. Would one of them really come looking? If they got caught searching for me, there was no telling what that shallow Sophia might do.
The rift between Milene and her family had been long-standing. The servants who worked under them lived by reading the room. They knew perfectly well they couldn’t afford to get on Sophia’s bad side.
I couldn’t pretend to be Milene.
“Um… who are you?”
I played dumb. Who the hell are you? I don’t know anyone like you. As K, I genuinely didn’t. That was only natural.
At my words the woman’s face crumpled. Tears welled up in her eyes.
Wait, I seriously don’t know who you are. If the author had given even a basic description, I might have had some clue.
“It’s me, Marie! Marie!”
Marie? Ah, Marie. Right—the personal maid who had insisted on Milene’s innocence until the very end when Milene was condemned and exiled. Like Rion, she was a maid Milene had personally hired. The author hadn’t given her enough weight to bother describing her appearance. That was probably why. Milene exited the story in the Part 1 condemnation chapter, so there was no reason to keep bringing Marie up.
According to the story, Marie had been fired. From Sophia’s point of view the line had read something like: “Marie, who followed Milene to the end, appealed her innocence, and searched for evidence to prove it, was dismissed by Sophia.” She had probably already been let go. At least they hadn’t taken her life; that was something to be grateful for. Maybe the family had shown mercy out of consideration for appearances.
“M-Marie? What brings you all the way out here?”
“M-Miss… how did things turn out like this? Sob… I should have stopped that Sophia woman from coming in. Or grabbed her from behind. Sob sob…”
“M-Marie? I-I’m fine, really.”
This Marie was getting way too worked up. She didn’t look well. Had she been that devoted to Milene? Because Milene hadn’t died, the character had suddenly gained more presence.
“How can you possibly be fine? That beautiful young lady, now walking around in commoner clothes… Your face is so pale, like you haven’t been eating. Sob sob…”
I wasn’t that pale. More importantly, Marie threw her arms around me. Our chests pressed together. Chests. Oh. This felt… extremely strange. If I were still a man it might have been different, but since I had breasts now too, the sensation was just weird. What was the point of two soft things bumping into each other?
“Miss. I was driven out as well.”
“Ah, I see. Makes sense, since you worked for me.”
“But you don’t seem angry at all, Miss.”
“Well, I’m a commoner now.”
The more I spoke, the more Marie looked as if she were witnessing something unbelievable.
“It’s all because of false charges, isn’t it? It’s so unfair…”
“The head of the Holpert family hated me. You knew that. Even without the Sophia incident, that father of mine would have found a way to throw me out.”
If the Duke of Holpert—the family head—had decided to expel his daughter, then from that moment Milene was finished. She would simply be Milene, not Milene Holpert. According to the setting, her mother had given her that name, so becoming plain Milene was only natural. I called myself K to draw a clear line between us.
Anyway, how had Marie managed to find me? I recalled that the character Marie had a sick younger sister.
“Even so… it’s all right now. We already have all the evidence of what Sophia did.”
“You found all of it?”
Was she really such a proactive maid? Most people, once fired, only looked out for themselves. To think she’d gone this far for her former mistress—honestly, it was a little touching.
“No. That traitor—Rion, that bastard I’d happily drink down without a chaser—he’s the one who gathered it. I only found you because he saw you buying a slave. After that I searched the area every single day.”
“Ah, Rion.”
If that guy had done all this, it seemed he knew I was innocent too. If he knew, did that mean he was belatedly feeling guilty and trying to help Milene?
But honestly, I hated him. Well, it was a novel. He was a character built according to the author’s plot, but right now I was Milene, and I was K. I had been betrayed by him. He was the trash who had forgotten every ounce of gratitude for the time I picked him up as a slave and saved his life, all so he could shack up with Sophia. Even when I was dragged off to prison, the bastard had tried to teabag me. If he was going to play the role of Sophia’s follower, he should have stuck with it to the end. Even if he was now spreading the truth about my innocence, it only left a bad taste in my mouth.
“That man, about Miss’s unjust treatment—”
“No. Forget it.”
“Pardon?”
“Like I said, even if everything gets resolved now, the Duke of Holpert’s will is set in stone. One way or another, I’ll be cast out again.”
The man who had already abandoned his own daughter was the Duke of Holpert. Even if Sophia had framed her, it wouldn’t matter. He clearly intended to discard his daughter. After all, I was the child of the wife he hated, while Sophia was the child of the woman he loved from outside the marriage. Of course, our dear author had amusingly set Sophia’s mother up as a prostitute. Probably to give the villainess a suitably sordid background.
In any case, Marie seemed genuinely kind. But I preferred to keep living like this. If I blew this whole thing open, the original story would be ruined. Fuck. Regret stories and revenge are all well and good, but those two bitches and that bastard are the protagonists—they have to survive to reach the ending. Don’t mess with the original work for no reason. I’ll handle the revenge myself, thank you very much. If I caused an uproar here, everything would explode together. I’d have to quit being the author, and Schwald and Sophia would plummet straight into the abyss.
“Ah… I see.”
“Tell that Rion bastard not to do anything strange. Since he chose to cling to Sophia, tell him to stay there.”
“That means…”
“I simply don’t want to get involved anymore. From now on I want to live as the commoner K. So you could say I have zero interest in any of it.”
If you people start fracturing, you’ll only ruin the precious atmosphere of this gem of an original story. Marie had already left the story in the original, so that was fine. But if Rion started making a fuss and caused that side to collapse, twisting the original plot, it would be a problem. There were substitutes, of course, but it was better not to gamble.
“K…?”
“That’s my name now. And both His Majesty the King and the Queen already know, so it’s fine.”
“Miss…”
Tears welled up in Marie’s eyes again. It wasn’t because I was merciful. It was entirely for the sake of the original work. That was why I was pushing the original story forward instead of taking revenge myself. When I thought about it, I wasn’t actually Milene, so there was no reason for me to. If anyone deserved revenge, it was that damn author bitch. At this point, this life was more comfortable. The only real difference was that thanks to that precious author I was now living as a woman. I wonder if she understood the feeling of having nothing between your legs. Of course she didn’t. From her voice, she was a woman too.
Marie didn’t seem willing to let go; she kept holding me tightly.
“By the way, is your sister’s illness all right?”
“Ah, I’m managing to earn money somehow.”
Her face said “I’m fine, don’t worry,” but her expression made it painfully obvious how hard things were.
Hmm. Maybe I should do her a favor. Since I needed to stay on good terms with Marie just in case, I pulled a money pouch from my pocket.
“It’s not much, but use it for your sister’s medicine.”
“M-Miss? Where did you get this kind of money? Even if you had set some aside, it couldn’t have been much…”
“It’s fine. You were fired because of me, so I should at least do this much.”
More money was coming in anyway. Yet once again, tears welled up in Marie’s eyes.