The Villainess in the Romance Fantasy Is Strange
1. The Villainess in the Romance Fantasy Is Strange.
I don’t know about other people, but when a novel I’ve been following goes completely off the rails in its later chapters, I usually just shrug and accept it.
There’s that saying, isn’t there? The mark of a masterpiece is how thoroughly it ruins its ending.
Even famous, big-name authors get flak because they can’t tie things off neatly, so I figured lesser writers were bound to stumble in the back half now and then.
I get it. Sure, I understand that the latter half is hard to write.
Even so, there has to be some kind of line, doesn’t there?
“What is this?”
Wondering if I’d really seen that right, I blinked a couple of times and looked back down at my phone.
Yep. I’d seen it right.
So, the male lead was dumping the heroine he’d been perfectly fine flirting with, and some random female supporting character had shown up to say she was carrying his child.
“Wow….”
Not just any genre, either. This was romance fantasy, a story that had mostly been about two people sweetly circling each other without any huge incidents.
The male lead cheating on the female lead? Was that even a possible development?
Fine. I’d go as far as to grant that the pregnancy of a female supporting character might, on some level, be tolerated.
But then there was the male lead’s line afterward—If a renowned physician says so, then it must be true. In that case, it can’t be helped. I’ll have no choice but to take you as my queen.
No, he impregnated a married woman and then said he’d make her his queen?
It was so absurd I nearly laughed out loud, and opened the comments section.
How to Tame the Obsessive Male Lead
Comments: 784
What had only ever been about a hundred comments per chapter had somehow ballooned to nearly eight hundred.
And most of them were, naturally, people just as unable as I was to accept this chapter’s development, spewing complaints all over the place.
Aside from the top five comments that had racked up the most likes, the rest were nothing but nonstop abuse aimed at the author.
Of course, some of them were attacking the author personally, and some were just flat-out swearing at them.
I was about to jump in and say something too, but since the author was already getting dragged, there was no real need for me to pile on. So I just left a single emoji that looked like a blank stare.
There. Good. I checked that it had posted properly and started skimming the newly refreshed comments. Then, right below the emoji I’d left, a much longer reply suddenly appeared.
“Wow….”
Not only was the author fighting back in the comments, but they were doing it in such a smug, twisted way too. This author was something else. At this rate, they were just pouring oil onto a house that was already on fire.
My prediction was dead-on. Not long after the author’s reply, the reader who’d left the original comment got even more vicious and started ripping into them harder.
It was a torrent of abuse—telling the author to stop writing altogether if they were going to make the story this bad, to never set foot in this industry again, that even if they changed their pen name and wrote a new novel, the reader would find them. The whole thing was just a cascade of vicious insults.
They were such brutal, cutting words that I felt bad just reading them, so I left an emoji.
[An emoji of a puppy shaking all over]
Uh-oh. That was a dangerous thing to say.
When you’re arguing with a novelist whose story is burning over its plot and ending, the moment you say, “I could do better than you,” the unwritten rule of this whole business is that you’ll really get dropped into the world of the novel.
──And just as that thought crossed my mind.
The author’s comment, loaded with unmistakable meaning, appeared.
“……Huh?”
Suddenly, my vision spun.
With the strange sensation that the ceiling and floor had flipped places, the world in front of me blurred little by little, and my consciousness slipped away.
- Thud.
“Wait, hold on…….”
I hadn’t even cursed…?
* * *
……That was how I ended up falling into the world of How to Tame the Obsessive Male Lead.
At first, I hadn’t even realized I was a modern-day person, but in the most ridiculous way possible, it hit me all at once when I got whacked on the back of the head by a wooden practice sword that had slipped wide during a sparring match.
“……This is seriously absurd.”
What kind of nonsense was this?
Using rest as an excuse, I returned to my room and let out a dry laugh as I looked around.
Maybe because all the memories of my life in the twenty-first century had come flooding back—though “past life memories” didn’t quite feel like the right way to put it—the ornate furniture and spacious room I’d always taken for granted suddenly looked incredibly luxurious.
Even the bed I was sitting on had to cost several million won at the very least. So how much was this entire mansion worth?
From what I’d seen walking through the halls, there were plenty of servants, lots of decorations, and the atmosphere of the place itself was ridiculously old-fashioned and grand.
“Maybe tens of billions…? Or more?”
I clicked my tongue before I even realized it.
For someone who wasn’t the original protagonist, nor even one of his close retainers, to end up living in a mansion this extravagant.
After the memory came back, I’d only felt stunned. But thinking it over slowly, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just pretend I didn’t know anything and live like this.
The moment I truly thought that, a smile slipped onto my face in secret.
Creak. The door opened without a sound of warning.
A tall man with a pale face and sharply defined jawline walked toward me.
“I’m sorry. I misjudged my strength. It hurt badly, didn’t it?”
I almost asked, Who are you? but shut my mouth.
If I said something like that to my older brother, he’d probably call me rude and hit me again.
“No, it was my own lack of skill that caused this. You didn’t do anything wrong, hyung.”
“The fact that you’re calling me hyung means it hurt after all.”
My ridiculously handsome brother gave me a faint smile. Then he held something out to me, and when I took it, it was a bottle filled with red liquid.
“It’s a medicine that enhances the body’s natural healing ability. Drink it while you listen.”
So it was something good for the body. I carefully twisted off the cap.
“Cain, you know our family’s educational policy, don’t you?”
He was talking about the Reinhardt family’s doctrine—that once the sons turned ten, they were to go out into the world and prove themselves, a policy that bordered on child abuse.
I nodded readily.
“Yes, I know. I’m prepared too. What’s my first assignment? Monster extermination, or rooting out a cult?”
“Now hold on, Cain. Your swordsmanship may have grown enough to impress me, but I wouldn’t send a child who’s only just turned ten on such a dangerous mission.”
“Then what is it?”
“Your official assignment is to serve as the bodyguard of a noble young lady.”
“Then the unofficial assignment is surveillance and intelligence gathering… I take it.”
At my immediate reply, my brother only smiled without confirming or denying it.
“Cain, as you know, the most important thing is—”
“Not getting caught as a spy.”
“And the second most important thing is—”
“Winning the target’s trust. And the third is perfect close-range surveillance.”
I’d lived as the third son of the Reinhardt family for ten whole years now.
I’d heard the educational policy so many times my ears were probably callused from it, so the words came out of my mouth almost by reflex.
“Mm, excellent. As expected of my little brother.”
“Yes, well. So, hyung, who exactly am I supposed to escort?”
“The daughter of a count. I’m sure you’ve heard her name before.”
A daughter I’d heard of before? Who could it be? Was she a character from the original story?
Without thinking much of it, I took a sip of the medicine.
“She’s called Lia von Elleves, the legitimate daughter of one of the Empire’s most famous wealthy families….”
“……Hah—!”