Joe waited, but this time silence gave away the answer she was looking for.

 

...It's not what you think. The voice grumbled like a petulant child.

 

"Yeah? Well lady, it's not about what I think, it's what I KNOW."

 

He's not like that! Prince Emmanuel is a good person at heart!

"Prince Emmanuel is an incorrigible arsehole who murdered his fiancée for another woman." Joe corrected unflinchingly. Her temper was rising.

The voice faltered. I-It might have been my own fault, it said miserably. The sound clashed horribly with the image of the haughty villainess that was Lady Joanna Winsten of Triciella.

"The hell are you passionately defending him for?!" Joe snapped. "He frigging killed you! There are a million ways to restrain a person, a million more to reason with them! Yet he just up and killed you!"

 

I KNOW THAT!

Lady Joanna let out a gut wrenching cry.

 

You think that I don’t know that after so many cycles? What do you think it feels like to be killed by your first love again and again and again?

 

Joe softened at the hurt in her voice, unable to keep clinging onto the righteous anger. It was a surreal situation, being aware of a villainess crying inside her head. The second prince was one lucky asshat for having such a loyal sweetheart, and the one he killed, no less. For a long agonizing minute, Joe felt like strangling someone, but then finally steeled herself.  

"Look lady Joanna" Joe began testily. "I’m aware that you have a history with the prince. And frankly I don't CARE. The bottom-line is: I don't intend to die in this world."

"And I will do whatever it takes to stay alive; all histories be damned."

Joanna sniffled, but listened to her counterpart silently.

"Whatever goes on in that head of yours" Joe continued, undeterred. "As long as I am in your body, I won't let you act like a sacrificial lamb anymore. Your dignity's as good as mine!"

But it is my body in the first place... the Lady grumbled; this time her words were without malice.

"Well too bad, I am the tenant right now." Joe raised a fine eyebrow. "And I don't really want to die in this body. Dying kinda hurts, I reckon."

Joanna said nothing at first, but Joe realized with a jolt that she could feel the villainess smiling inside her head. And for once, it was a genuine smile.

 

You’re a …. weird one, huh?

Joe smirked before she could stop herself. “Look who’s talking.”

 

The feeling wasn't too bad.

 

 

The two apprehensive Joannas chatted some more that night, with feigned apathy and stilted sentences. To an outsider, they would sound suspiciously like two awkward teenagers subtly trying look out for each other and still denying that they cared for the other one; but just between you and me, they were both idiots of the same kind.

 

The kind that would never betray the ones they’ve opened up their hearts to.

 

 

                                     -----------------------------------

The bad news was: Lady Joanna didn't remember too much about her previous lives. The details were obscure at best and irrelevant titbits at worst. There was, for some shitty reason, a glaring hole in her memories, and Joanna didn't know what to do about that.

"Useless." Joe muttered under her breath.

I heard that one, Joe!

Good news was: Joe's status was grudgingly elevated from 'woman' to a maybe- kind of- sort of friend. Lady Joanna was still moody every now and then, but for now Joe understood that in this world, there was a lot more to this Lady than being just a one-dimensional, cookie-cutter villainess.

"Ah yes, yes. Whatever you say, my lady."

Joe learnt to deal with her the same way she used to deal with every unpredictable thing back in her office days: with semi-infinite patience and a sprinkle of apathy. Semi-infinite; because you know, Joe Stuart was no saint. She was but a mere human after all.

Funnily enough, both the Joannas seemed to agree on one thing: They needed more information.

 

And information didn’t really fly in through the window and drop gracefully on your lap like an early Christmas present. Nothing would be changed if they sat back on their pretty little asses right inside the Winsten manor. The search for information to change their collective fates could very well be started from outside; the kingdom was Triciella was large and expansive, and somewhere in a remote corner of this kingdom should lie the precious hint that was needed to trigger the change.

 

In other words: Joanna needed to step outside the threshold of Winsten manor and find the information herself. This was easier said than done, what with all the babysitte--- ahem, bodyguards trying not so subtly, to drag her back whenever she walked out too far. Joe paced around in her room and planned; she needed to get her act together if she wanted those brute bastards to obey her. And she needed an excuse to go out into the capital city unhindered.

The opportunity presented itself three days later.

 

                                                 ------------------------------------------

 

 

“He--- umm, my lady Joanna,” Lucia began nervously as she discreetly peered out of the window of the moving carriage, “You needn’t have come with us for something like this. I --- uh, we could just get whatever it was that you’re looking for if you’d kindly give us a list….”

 

Joe leaned back on her seat. “There’s no need for something like that.” She said serenely, voice devoid of hints, lest the maid came to some weird conclusion with that incredibly imaginative mind of hers.

 

“I must personally go to the central library for this. You needn’t worry about it.”

 

“But my lady ---“

 

“It’s an order.”

 

Lucia clamped her mouth shut against her better judgement and sighed. There was no arguing with the stubborn young mistress. The maid thought that she was lucky that Lady Joanna was feeling quite merciful these days. The Lady from two weeks ago would have kicked her out of the carriage for even daring to argue with her.

 

In the opposite seat, Joe internally heaved a sigh of relief. After all that was said and done, her new trump card of ‘It’s an order.’ was certainly pretty convenient. She wasn’t someone who was fond of ordering people around, but if it was something that would keep peoples’ noses out from where they didn’t belong to, she was more than willing to use it. 

 

Three days after the passive-aggressive confrontation with the original Lady Joanna, Joe had found an excuse to go to outside the Winsten manor. From what Lucia had told her, Mr Rowell, the grumpy-looking gardener, needed to take a trip all the way to the royal capital in order to find some special seeds and fertilisers. Lucia tended to chatter about everything and anything under the sun, and for some bizarre reason, she seemed to be warming up to Joe for the past few days, much to the latter’s eternal nervousness.

 

 

Joe dropped all pretenses decided to ‘tag along’ with him.

 

 

Despite Lucia’s constant pleas of ‘I will fetch it for you, my lady!’, Joe had put her foot down and declared that she needed to browse the Central Library for new books, and that she needed to do some ‘window shopping’ from the capital. The latter phrase earned her a few confused looks before she could hastily correct herself.

 

At the eleventh hour, Joe had finally managed to convince both Lucia and a harried-looking Mirian, that she was going to be okay and that ‘it is an order’. Miraculously, she even decided to appoint a personal bodyguard from the Winsten manor staff; he was an ex-soldier, a giant, muscular man who did odd jobs around the manor, and called himself Nero. Nobody knew his full name, but everyone agreed that he was a man of gentle temperament and peculiar habits.

 

“Nero will keep my lady safe. My lady can fully count on Nero for anything that she wants. Nero wants to be useful!” The man thumped his broad chest and gushed with a smile. If he was a bumbling schoolgirl and not a burly man in his late thirties, Joe suspected that his third-person speech might come off as cute. Now it sounded plain weird.

 

Joe had shrugged it off. She wasn’t one to judge people on their peculiarities. So long as he did his job of pretended to keep her safe, she was game. Appointing Nero as a personal guard could keep the constant stream of babysit – ahem, escorts at bay, and this was exactly what she wanted. Lucia insisted that she came along as well, Joe had reluctantly agreed. She didn’t care as long as she finally got to step outside to the city.

 

                          

                                         ------------------------------------------

 

 

Riseindel, the royal capital of Triciella lived up to its reputation; it was a lively old place with a bustling crowd and thriving shops lining the streets. Joe watched the city in awe and a sliver of envy; she badly wanted to get off the carriage and explore. That was a pipe dream, however, so she contented herself by eyeing the colourful roadside stalls selling delicious-smelling fried food and filed away all the information in her memory.

Don’t get her wrong, the food in the Winsten manor was as luxurious as ever, but Joe Stuart, being a true commoner at heart, honestly missed the fast food of her original world. She couldn’t wait to try out the samples that this world had to offer.

 

The mere thought was enough to make her drool.

 

Focus! Barked the shrill voice inside her head. You didn’t come here for a picnic, Joe!

 

 

‘Yes, yes, my Lady Joanna’, Joe thought with practised patience. There were more important things to work on, like finding a way to escape the cycle of 1,054,891 deaths, before she went ahead and died herself. Quite a gamble, especially when one was stuck in the said cycle in the body of a thirteen years old villainess-to-be.

 

The carriage jumped a little as it sped through a particularly bumpy stretch of road, and Lucia let slip an accidental ‘Hey!’ somewhere in between. Joe sighed, torn between amusement and exasperation as she saw the maid’s eyes darting towards her for a split second. It seemed like Lucia was under the constant impression that her verbal tics were terribly inconvenient, when in reality Joe couldn’t care less. She considered telling the maid exactly that, but wisely kept her mouth shut.

 

‘Hey Lucia! I don’t mind how you keep Hey-ing here and there, so you needn’t worry about it so much,’ `or 'I don't mind if you say your Hey..!' seemed like a terrible way to comfort someone, and Joe’s comforting words were passive at best and sarcastic at worst. At times like these she really envied the nobles and their graceful way of speaking. This touchy-feely thing was not really her cup of tea.

 

Joe resolutely promised herself to bring up this matter later, when she was feeling less like an idiot and more like a matured, grown up woman in her early twenties.

 

The carriage took a sharp turn, and the Central Senate of Triciella loomed in the horizon. The Senate was just a fancy name for a building that was often used by the royal family as a private suite (although nobody in their right mind had the balls to point that out). Quite a ways from it stood the most glamorous piece of architecture in the entire kingdom, the grand castle of the Royal Family of Triciella.

 

The royal family of Triciella was a curious case of lukewarm political figure. From what she remembered of the game, Joe knew that the current king was neither a cruel dictator, nor a liberal minded fellow. The royal family was neither too luxurious, nor too philanthropic. And it never dived too deep into the administration of the kingdom. It was just kind of … there. The castle stood witness to everything that went down within its sturdy walls: from the regular tea-parties and ball dances for nobles that were held every year, to all your typical scandals involving the said nobles, which peeked out in the headlines every now and then.

 

The current noble lady-cum-outsider Joe Stuart decided to reserve her final judgement until she found more details about the royal family.

 

Joe frowned at the important looking castle, and finally spotted the Central Library far across the King’s Highway. The King's Highway was the road that connected the Royal castle to the Central Senate and the Library, and then went right through the heart of Riseindel towards the neighbouring kingdoms.

 

Joe mentally patted herself for actually remembering the tedious map of Triciella; the days of intense memorisation were worth it. 

 

The central Library was a huge structure of white marble pillars and rose-tinted glass windows, and despite being smaller than both the Senate and the royal castle, it invoked a sense of utmost respect.

Admirably, it was open to all of the general public of Triciella, regardless of lineage and social status. The carriage bearing the crest of Winsten family came to a stop in front of its steps, and Nero jumped out of his seat to open the door.

 

Joe stepped out purposefully from the carriage and squared her shoulders.

 

She had a video game script to outwit, after all.