My head hurt. I was laying on something stiff, and my eyes were squeezed shut. I didn’t want to open them, just yet, for fear of what the light would do to my poor pupils. The last thing I remembered… There was a deer. No. A foot? Both things seemed true, somehow. 

I was five years old. My name was Maria Campbell. I was a perfectly normal little girl, born to perfectly normal parents. All that was definitely true, as far as the records of this world went. But what little girl thought like that, you might ask?

The answer was simple: my real name was Maria Danville. I was sixteen years old. I’d been driving to my girlfriend’s house. I had just gotten the recently released physical edition of my favorite light novel series, My Next Life as A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom. Jessica had promised she’d read the first book if I ever got her a physical copy, and I intended to hold her to it. Honestly, we’d been getting distant lately, and I thought having something to bond over would help. Only. I never made it to her house. Instead, I had driven into a tree while trying to avoid a deer, and died. Ah, I hoped the deer at least was fine… What about me, you ask? Well, I’d been reincarnated already, so there wasn’t really any point in worrying about that.

As for how I was recovered my past life memories - my last memories of this world were of wishing to heal an injured playmate’s foot. I remembered a light glowing in my hand - and then the boy had kicked out in surprise, knocking me back against the ground. When my head hit the earth, had it somehow led to me remembering my past life? ...It sounds ridiculous, but there was actually a similar story in my favorite light novel. In it, an eight year old girl named Katarina Claes banged her forehead, and recovered memories, realizing that she’d been reborn as the villainess of an otome game she was playing. More to the point, that villainess was doomed to death or exile, depending on the path the heroine took… Which was why, desperate to survive, Katarina started to try and conquer the doom flags before her! Unfortunately, she completely failed to realize that those doom flags were lifted the moment she changed  personalities. Everyone around her started to fall for her, both the potential suitors of the game and the heroine herself! It was great!

Actually, the idea of someone capturing the hearts of those around her by accident was amusing, but what really caught me was the way she saved people. The people around her had all lived dark lives, and she gave each and every one of them hope with her presence. Even the heroine ended up falling for her, thanks to that… Plus, the heroine and me had the same name. Maria. That definitely added to my attachment to the book! Even now,  I was grateful that I had been born as a Maria again. Though it was a bit strange to have three Marias? Wasn’t the heroine’s last name Campbell, too? And come to think of it, hadn’t she awoken her powers by healing a playmate’s foot with light magic!? 

Then… had I been reincarnated into the world of my favorite light novel!?

My eyes snapped open, and I blinked a few times as the light assaulted me. The hand that rose up to protect my eyes was so small, I could hardly believe it was mine. I really was five…? And the room. The room was familiar: it was the small bedroom I shared with my parents. The stiff thing under my back was the mattress, which I had always thought of as rather soft before awakening to memories of memory foam. It was at this moment that I remembered a large difference between myself and Katarina: I had reincarnated as a commoner… and the next ten years of my life were almost guaranteed to be rough. 

“Maria?”

My attention snapped to the side of the bed, where two people were kneeling, and wearing worried expressions. The exclamation came from a beautiful woman, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes: my moither. Looking at how gorgeous her face was did a lot to drive home just how beautiful a woman I would grow up to be. My father, by contrast, looked very plain, with brown hair and grey eyes. Those eyes were kind, though, and filled with worry as they looked at me. His daughter. The love and concern in his eyes was shocking. If I had to report on my own feelings… 

Well. There was no way five years of being a Campbell could compare with sixteen years of being a Danville, right? Yet in another way, the love I had felt for my family over these last five years was the simple adoration of a child. It was much purer than the complex emotions I held for my past parents. As such, even with the new memories in my head, I couldn’t help but feel happy to see the concern mother and father had for me. 

“I’m fine,” I promised them. “I simply banged my head…”

Mother and father exchanged glances, though, looking nervous for some reason. “...Maria,” my father whispered. “You’ve been unconscious for three days. We were very worried about you.”

“You had a terrible fever,” my mother confirmed, a frown on her face. “The doctor was really worried about you.”

A terrible fever…? Come to think of it, Katarina had gone through a similar fever after recovering her own memories in the books. Perhaps it was simply a side effect of so many memories getting crammed into such a young brain? I wasn’t particularly concerned. Rather, I was much more worried about the money my parents must have spent on a doctor for me. While I wasn’t entirely sure at our financial states, I was certain that we lacked the endless wealth of Katarina Claes.

Immediately, I sat up and bowed my head to my parents. “I’m very sorry for worrying you! As for the money spent on my doctor visit-”

“Don’t worry about that,” father said immediately, his eyes wide with surprise.”You’re our daughter. A little money is nothing compared to your safety.”

“Yes,” agreed mother, with a small smile.  “Why are you even worrying about such things?”

“Ah…” It was pretty strange for a five year old to be worrying about money, wasn’t it? And faced with the compassion of my parents, I couldn’t help but smile, and let it go. I’d find some way to refill the family coffers when I got a bit older.

My parents, however, had another concern. “Maria…” whispered my father, with a nervous glance towards my beautiful mother. “The boy who kicked you… He said that you used some sort of magic on him. Is that true?”

Here I had to hesitate. According to the light novels, the discovery of Maria’s light magic marked the beginning of a downward spiral in her life. The fact that I had magic at all, something that was usually reserved for nobles, would cause my father to believe that mother had had an affair… he would leave. In response to this, even the mother who expressed such concern for me would become distant and cold. Revealing that I did indeed have light magic could very well start me on a path to darkness.

At the same time, however, it was this light magic that would allow me to attend magic school. Magic school was where I would meet Katarina. And meeting Katarina… I couldn’t help but think that was the very reason I’d been reincarnated. Just as the original Maria was destined to fall for her, I myself had harbored a secret crush on the protagonist of those light novels I read. In fact, that was part of what had driven a wedge between my past self and her girlfriend. The idea of not meeting her… but at the same time, could I really take responsibility for my parents splitting up?

In the end, my silence answered for me, and my parents both let out a small sigh. “We’ll have to get her aptitude tested,” whispered my mother. “We should have the mayor send out a request to the academy, so that someone can confirm.”

My father nodded at this, gravely, and I imagined I could already see the doubt in his eyes as he considered whether a daughter of his could really be wielding magic. 

...If that’s how it was, it seemed to me that I had two missions ahead of me. First of all, I would have to find ways to increase the lovey-dovey meter of my parents, and keep them together. That would prevent my life from being hell, too, so it was a pretty high priority. The second mission, just as important, was finding ways to stand out to my dear Katarina when the time came. For that, I should learn about the things she enjoyed - farming, tree climbing, and of course I’d master baking the perfect sweets. If I could do all that, earning Katarina’s affection wouldn’t be at all impossible. And since the light novels positioned Maria as the heroine of an otome game, capable of capturing even a prince - surely I could marry a duke’s daughter…?

With those thoughts in mind, I decided to roll out of bed and take my first step as Maria Campbell. Unfortunately, my legs were much shorter than expected, and I ended up falling face first onto the floor instead… It was in such an inauspicious way that my new life began.