Walking aimlessly around the palace while fleeing from the knights led me to an infamous event venue - the palace gardens. Lined by hedges of white roses, vines of wisteria add plentiful touches of purple and lilac to the garden. I frown at the overwhelming smell of flowers attacking my nostrils and my olfactory nerves.

As much as I don’t want to end up in the garden, the palaces are structured in such a way that people inevitably end up here. All roads lead to Rome? No, all roads lead to palace gardens in shoujo stories.

Otherwise, how will the FLs and MLs encounter each other behind everyone’s backs?

If there's an advantage to this situation that I am in, the palace garden is a wide area with many corners, trees, and vines behind where the couples can flirt with each other. Even now, the escort knights are eagerly searching high and low for “mystery designer - or thief”, whichever title is a more convenient excuse when they manage to catch me.

The small hamster morphs into a black bird with brilliantly golden eyes, flapping its wings to perch on my shoulders.

“I’m hungry.” Jin complains as he nudges my hair. His small fuzzy head nuzzles into my neck and his tiny beak pecks my cheeks.

Stop ruining my hair.

I shoo him away because I could see my image overlapping with Jafar and his noisy henchman parrot. What if some nonsense character sees me talking to animals and “sparks interest” in me... That can’t happen.

As I noiselessly stroll through the massive maze inside the garden, I find myself witnessing an interesting situation.

Familiar shade of red hair, the sharp bewitching eyes, and that fake method of pretending to be ‘oh-holy-as-thou’. 

Rosette. The reincarnated gender bender villainess. 

In her arms was a small feminine golden-haired beauty with bountiful curls and amazing clear blue eyes.

Standing opposite the two was an ugly bastard… 

A tub of lard, rolls of fat greasily hanging down from his belly behind the stretched shirt and buttons barely holding together. The triple -no, quadruple chin, the sleazy smile, the overly narrowed eyes accompanied by a massive mole on his left cheek, his hair oily enough to deep fry under sun.

“Hand the princess over.”

Oh wow, how can a person’s voice sound this disgusting?

His scratchy voice makes you want to physically go rip his larynx out with bare hands. 

“I will not hand over the delicate princess to someone who obviously intends to harm her.” Rosette speaks with much grace, projecting an image of any girl's dream - a dashing knight in shining armour saving the day.

If only I can overlap the person in front of me with the same asshole who comes over to annoy me whenever they're bored.

“Do you know who I am? I am the princess’s uncle! The fifth concubine’s brother!” The fat man lunged - or rather, rolled towards the princess in attempt to grab her out of Rosette’s hands. Instead of achieving this, he hilariously lands on his face and rolls a few more times on the ground from inertia.

What is this gag character…

“You. Annoying. Bitch!” he growls in fury.

Rosette frowned at the man wobbly trying to stand up, only to fall back square on his butt from imbalance.

“Princess Alexa, please escape while I deal with your heinous uncle." Her intense crimson eyes stare deep into the abyss of Alexa’s clear blue eyes.

The teary doe-eyed Alexa timidly shook her head... Despite fear wrecking her whole body from confronting her abusive uncle.

"Do you trust me?" Rosette brushed the princess's hair, and tucked the stray hair behind her ear. 

Reluctantly, the princess nodded.

“I'll be right behind you." Rosette smiled refreshingly, I could almost see the sparkles in the background. "In return, will you allow me to accompany you to a dance once I return?”

Rosette gently lands a kiss on Alexa’s hand.

“Y-yes. Of course.” Alexa stutters as she retreats, cusping her flaming cheeks with her palms.

Well, at least someone’s making progress with their life goals.

“Where do you think you ar-" the fat man resumes his antics, only to be kicked in his shins by Rosette after making sure the princess was out of sight.

“Ah really, you should shut up.” Rosette pulled an annoyed face, scratching her ears. “My ears are reallyyy bleeding.” 

She looks down at her pencil heels and grinds his right hand with the pointed tip. The man screams from pain.

I think my ears are bleeding too.

“I mean, I tried being civil with you, didn’t I? You should’ve stopped while I was being nice. It wasn’t like I wanted to do this either, you know.”

Rosette does a yankee squat as she pull the obese man’s hair to meet the man’s eyes.

“I want to look good in front of my potential harem member, I can’t let Alexa see me roughing you up now, can I?” She drag the man’s head around by pulling his hair. 

“Y-you! This is violence- I will make sure you are heavily punished!” the man screams, his enthusiastic roar releasing spit towards Rosette's face. He was efficiently washing Rosette’s face with his saliva. Her face must smell refreshing right now.

“Shut up.” Rosette slaps the man, her long nails scratched his cheeks as she did. 

“AHHHHHHHHHH YOU DARE!”

“You keep asking if I knew who you were.” 

Slap

“But you never asked who I was.”

Slap

“You’re not in touch with high society so you wouldn’t know, but I’m Rosette Yttrea.”

Slap

When Rosette got satisfied with the burning red hand marks, she blew on her nails with a smirk. “The only daughter and heir of the Dukedom Yttrea.”

“You’re the marquis of the small neighbouring country near us? So what? It can be crushed under my father’s army in a single day. Your whole life you’ve been rolling around abusing people… if you’re going to abuse them, you should at least aim to reach my level.” Rosette’s lips raised into an evil grin.

“You thought that everything should be under your feet? No. You were birthed from your mother’s womb just so you can grow up a fat bastard and people can laugh at your misery. Your whole purpose in existence is so you can being a one-line, one-panel joke in an otome game...”

She wipe her hands stained with the man’s hair-grease using a silk handkerchief.

Fat humour. That one overweight, morbidly obese character whose sole purpose is for other people to make fun of the person's excessive figure drawn out of proportion.

If such character is a main character, they can't stay fat - they transform into a miraculous thin MC who's actually beautiful. Such stories are not common in recent years when people raised awareness about eating disorders, but they used to be hot stuff when body positivity wasn't a thing.

However, it's a different story when they're side characters or villains. Character? Uniqueness? Nah, their obesity is their personality. That's how things are.

“I’ve heard people say ‘my life is a joke’ several times, but this might be the case where it would really apply to someone.” She cackled.

“This is a declaration of war." Rosette haughtily spat on the man still blankly sitting on the ground. "Yttrea Duchy will soon crush Solen region.”