The Villainess Who Returned Can't Live an Ordinary Life
The moment I opened my eyes, the first thing that greeted me was the sterile white ceiling of a hospital room.
The faint scent of disinfectant stung my nose. My body felt heavy, as if it had been submerged in thick mud. Every joint ached dully. It was the kind of exhaustion that came from lying still for far too long.
I tried to move my fingers. They twitched slightly. Good. At least my body still listened to me.
Only then did I slowly turn my head. A middle-aged woman was dozing off in the chair beside the bed, her face buried in her arms. Her shoulders rose and fell with each quiet breath.
…Mom?
The word rose instinctively in my throat, but I swallowed it back down. No. That wasn’t right. She wasn’t my mother. Not in the truest sense.
Because I wasn’t Yoo Sihyun anymore.
I was Anastasia von Ebersbach. The villainess who had tormented the heroine in that romance-fantasy novel I’d read in my previous life. The one who’d schemed, manipulated, and ultimately met a miserable end at the hands of the male leads.
I had returned. Or rather… I had been reborn.
A bitter laugh almost escaped me. Of all the people in that story, why did it have to be her? The character everyone loved to hate. The one who’d been written as irredeemable trash from beginning to end.
I closed my eyes again, trying to steady the whirlwind in my chest. Memories that didn’t belong to me flooded in like a breaking dam. The cold marble floors of the ducal estate. The suffocating etiquette lessons. The endless political intrigue. And the way I—no, she—had smiled sweetly while driving people to ruin.
But those memories were fading now, dissolving like sugar in water. What remained was me. Yoo Sihyun. The twenty-eight-year-old Korean office worker who had died in a car accident after pulling an all-nighter.
I let out a long, shaky breath.
Alright. Let’s think rationally.
I had returned to Earth. Not to the fantasy continent of Avelion, but to modern-day South Korea. The body I now inhabited belonged to a girl named Yoo Sihyun who had been in a coma for three years after a Gate incident. A Hunter’s daughter who had awakened as an F-rank with almost no combat ability.
Perfect. Just perfect.
In my previous life as Anastasia, I had been a high-ranking noble with powerful political influence and a talent for magic that could shake kingdoms. Now I was stuck in the body of a weakling who could barely lift a kitchen knife without straining something.
Still… it was better than dying again.
I had already experienced one miserable ending. I had no intention of repeating it.
This time, I would live quietly. Normally. Without getting involved with any main characters, without drawing attention, without stepping on anyone’s toes. I’d find a safe, boring job, maybe work at a convenience store or something, and live out the rest of my days in peaceful obscurity.
Yes. That was the plan.
…Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
I didn’t know it yet, but the moment I opened my eyes in this hospital bed, the gears of fate had already begun to turn once more.
And they were turning straight toward the very people I wanted to avoid.
Because the heroine of that novel?
She was my little sister now.
And the obsessive male leads who had once destroyed me?
They were already starting to notice that something about “Yoo Sihyun” had changed.
I clenched my fists beneath the thin hospital blanket.
I just want to live an ordinary life.
But the world, it seemed, had other plans.
Because the returning villainess…
…could never live normally.