Well anyways, after that emotional reunion with my sister and my newfound conviction, not a whole lot that was exciting happened.

Gretchen and Daisy kept me company, discussing little things and other silliness until the physician finally arrived for his examination. After some poking and prodding and other examining, he gave me an okay as far as my physical health was concerned. Obviously my arm was still broken and I was going to have a scar on the back of my head, but I was expected to recover back to full health. I even checked out on a spiritual level (I’ll explain more on that in just a bit, okay?). My soul seemed to have gotten healthier, more vibrant, since the accident, something that really perplexed the doctor. All I could offer him was a shrug, but I suspected it had to do with my past memories becoming available to me. It was actually a little exciting to me for something that again, I’ll explain in a sec. But to summarize, I was probably not headed for another premature death. Probably.  Was still going to be confined to bedrest for a bit, which was going to be a bit of a pain, but there were worse things that could’ve happened to me, so I just had to suck it up.

Being as I had just woken up from a week-long coma, I was in no shape to get out of bed or do anything, and even if I were, Gretchen would put an end to that real quick. It turned out that she had been by my side pretty much round the clock while I was out, which again filled me with guilt about how cavalier I had been. I was definitely going to have to make that up to her at some point. Of course, Daisy also insisted on staying with me for the rest of the day, a request I was more than willing to oblige. While I was really anxious to get to trying and figuring out what I remembered down before I forgot, my sister’s happiness came first. Plus it would’ve been too suspicious to start writing in a foreign language when they were right there.

So, the rest of the day was spent in bed, smiling along at Daisy’s attempts to cheer me up, and Gretchen’s increasing exasperation at her antics. I later had to beg off when Gretchen tried feeding me dinner (bland porridge, of course). As night approached, Daisy valiantly tried to stay by my side, but that was where Gretchen put her foot down, and forced her back to her room, with the promise that she could come back first thing in morning. I also managed to get Gretchen out by insisting that it would do no good for her to collapse from overwork (seriously, I could see that it was taking everything she had to keep her stern demeanor and stay standing) and that I was perfectly capable of calling for assistance on my own. As she very reluctantly left, I let out a breath, as I was finally alone.

You’ll notice that I never mentioned that my parents came to check on me. Yeah, apparently they were out on business. As usual. They’d probably drop by when they got back. Not that they particularly cared if I lived or died, but they had to at least keep up appearances, and probably check if I ended up an invalid who’d be an embarrassment.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I don’t like Mom and Dad much. The Dahlia part of me still craved their approval, knew that if I just worked hard enough, they’d love me and I wouldn’t feel so empty. The Melissa part of me had had enough of this neglect-induced self-loathing crap for a lifetime (well, multiple lifetimes, but you know what I mean). There was definitely some stuff I could do to stand out thanks to my past memories, not least the fact that I did have that potential that attracts Rosalia’s interest in the manhwa, but I had no interest in their approval now. I’d still play the part of the belligerent but driven daughter, but I knew what my real goals were.  

Okay, enough about my parents. It’s time to roll up my sleeves and start noting down everything I can remember about this world. You guessed it, it’s exposition time!

So I explained a bit of this before, but to reiterate again: this is the Kingdom of Grandor, on the continent of Anszt. Grandor is a large country with a long history, most of which is irrelevant and boring. You’ve got your classic medieval set-up, with a royal family that rules the country, which is divided up into a whole bunch of noble estates. Dukes, marquesses, viscounts, barons, we’ve got ‘em all. As a daughter of a baron, I’m pretty much as low on the totem pole as one can be, while still being a noble. However, like I said before, despite being a low noble, my house wields outsized influence thanks to my father’s massive business and monetary worth, something that’ll cause a lot of friction for me down the line. Whoopee. As far as foreign affairs go, Grandor has been at relative peace for centuries, and I don’t recall any wars or anything fomenting in the manwha. It struck me as a little unrealistic that there were no tensions with anywhere else whatsoever, but I guess the writers of this world didn’t want to waste time on locations that weren’t going to come up. Whatever, I had enough to worry about with what was going to happen internally. 

Again, it’s the classics. A few princes competing for the right to succeed the throne, factions among the nobles, nouveau vs. old, poisonings, illegitimate children, the works. Rosalia’s the one who’s going to be in the middle of all this, but it’d do me no good to be complacent. I’d have to keep my ear to the ground, especially if I was planning on keeping with the part of the plot where we meet and become friends, which I was currently fine with. I was definitely going to avoid the trap of assuming stuff is going to go exactly like the manhwa, since that’s what ensnares so many protagonists in this genre, but at least making her acquaintance would be genuinely useful to me. Who else would understand all the weirdness and nonsense of being reincarnated into a fictional work? Although she’d probably be a bit more skeptical about the meta-reincarnation thing I had going on.

To explain a bit more about Rosalia, she’s soon to be engaged to the second prince of Grandor, Florian Steinmetz. She falls in love with him, he doesn’t care for the arrogant, pompous, cruel, but not terribly bright villainess, she makes advances that are dismissed, but fail to stop her pursuit, yadda yadda yadda. This continues until they both enter the nobles’ academy, where the commoner heroine is also enrolled. Yep, this is one of those stories. Bonus points: it’s a magic academy too. That’s right. Motherfucking magic.

Honestly I was on the verge of forgiving whoever reincarnated me here when I remembered that this was a fantasy world with magic. Because like, come on.

It’s magic! Maaaaaaaaagic!

Unfortunately, it was the lame kind of magic setting where it was passed down through the bloodlines, so basically only nobles get to use it. Sneha’s the one who’d go into a lengthy tirade about fantasy uncritically adopting medieval stuff like monarchism and trying to justify it, but I was content with just calling it bullshit. Although for me personally, it turned out okay because although father was of commoner birth, mother was from a relatively older viscount family, and so both Daisy and I inherited her water magic (yeah it’s the 4 elements you’re thinking of. Again, not a whole lot of effort in the worldbuilding). It didn’t really compare to the heroine and villainess’s super cheat light and dark magic, but I wasn’t going to complain.

Anyways, by the point in the manhwa where I had reached, Rosalia had just entered the academy. Having successfully turned around her reputation as a total villain, navigating her own crappy family, out-gambitting other nobles’ maneuvering, stealing her fiance’s heart, she of course breathed a sigh of relief that she had made a better path for herself, and could finally rest easier now that-Pftahahahahahahahaha, I’m sorry, I couldn’t continue saying that with a straight face. Nah, she was totally oblivious and unaware of all the changes she had wrought, and was still comically paranoid about getting executed by her cold fiancé (read: incapable of expressing his affections). I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on her, considering the circumstances she’s in, but if you read the manhwa, trust me that you’d rip out your hair at her denseness sometimes. Good luck, Florian, you’ll need it. Obtaining the crown’ll be child’s play compared to getting that through her thick skull.

Of course another major player would be the heroine, buuuuuuuut… I didn’t really know anything about her. I remembered that her name was Azalea something-or-other, and that Rosalia seemed to actually have been a huge fan of her when reading the novel. She was the classic commoner protagonist who somehow turns out to have the rare and coveted light magic, but she hadn’t actually appeared in the manhwa up to the point I had read (the last thing I remember was Rosalia cozying up to Dahlia). A classic of this genre was to make the heroine the new villain, often by making her another reincarnator who expects a cushy life and to just have someone else’s fiancé without trying, but I couldn’t be sure. I was hoping not, because that always seemed like a lazy way to make a villain for these kinds of stories, but this manhwa was already on the clichéd end to begin with, so I might as well prepare for the worst.

Okay, that should be most of the major plot beats and characters. I’ve noted down stuff in more detail for myself, but I shan’t bore you with it. Yawn… I really was getting tired. I’ll have to save more planning for tomorrow. I had plenty of free time anyways. And I was hoping to recover quickly so I could get started with that magic. Ooh hoo hoo, was I looking forward to that.