It took me a minute to realize I wasn’t dead. After opening and closing my hands several times, I cautiously opened my eyes. The sky was the same blue as it always was. My spirits buoyed, I sat up – and saw that everything else was different. Just a minute ago I had been in Seoul, too distracted by the webtoon I was reading (and it wasn’t even good, how embarrassing) to notice the speeding car until right before it crashed into me. But this…this place wasn’t Seoul.
No high-rises, cars, or electric lights. The buildings were made of wood and stone, not concrete. The roads, filled with pedestrians and the occasional horse-drawn carriage, were dirt paths. The distinctive scent of piss and shit wafted across my nose. Most of the people looked European, and I heard them talking in a language I didn’t understand.
As I looked around, the pounding pain in my head receded and a smile slowly spread across my face. I’d been hit by a car, then woke up in a place that was clearly some sort of medieval European town or city. knew exactly what this was. I had been transported to another world: isekai’d. I had been isekai’d!
Or well, come to think of it, maybe I was in a coma or something? I was hit by a car, after all…
Ah, whatever. Even if I had, it’s not like I would be able to tell. Better to assume this was all real; even if it was a coma dream, I’d have a great story once I woke up. Plus, if it were real…
Then I had actually been isekai’d! I laughed so hard my stomach started to hurt. I didn’t even care about the weird looks I was getting from passersby.
Okay, maybe I cared a little. But regardless!
Once I recovered, I decided first step of business was to find out what sort of person I had isekai’d into. Luckily, it seemed to have rained in this city recently; there were still puddles of water around. I approached one, excitement building with each step. When I reached the puddle, I saw –
Shoulder-length black hair. Brown, narrow eyes I had never been able to afford to enlarge. A face and body that screamed average, without even any particular ugliness or deformities I could blame my complete lack of dating life on.
I hadn’t transmigrated into anyone. I had just isekai’d with the same body I’d always had.
Of course I was disappointed, but I quickly rallied. After all, there were also isekais where the protagonist kept their original body. It was almost always male protagonists, so I had never cared to read or watch them…but still! And wait, when that happened, weren’t they usually given some super powerful magical ability or something? That’d be even better than having a beautiful body! …Or at least just as good!
I walked around for a few minutes until I found a small, deserted alley, figuring that it’d be best to test out any magic powers without other people around. I raised my hand to the wall of a building…and paused.
How were you supposed to actually use magic powers? Even in the isekais I had read with magic, they never really explained how people did it. They just…did. I tried shouting things while contorting my body into increasingly embarrassing poses, but I never got anything to happen.
While I rested with my back to a wall, other facets of my situation started gradually occurring to me. I hadn’t understood any of the voices I’d heard while on the main streets. That had made sense, considering it was clearly some sort of European city…except, wasn’t isekai’ing supposed to automatically let you understand the local language? Not for me, apparently. Did that mean I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone?
But I didn’t have anyone to communicate with anyway, did I? I didn’t transmigrate into a body that already had family or friends. I wasn’t (as far as I could tell) intentionally summoned by anyone who could explain what I was supposed to do. I didn’t immediately run into someone powerful and/or hot who I could charm into letting me stay at their place. I may not have had anyone I was remotely close to in Korea, but here, I had literally nobody. Nobody and nothing; the only things that had isekai’d with me were the clothes on my back.
My stomach rumbled.
…How was I supposed to eat?
In the end, I couldn’t figure out a way to get food that day. I did at least find a well nobody stopped me from drawing water from so I didn’t dehydrate. But my stomach was complaining very loudly by the time night fell, and I had to figure out a place to sleep. After an interminable amount of time looking, I got spooked by the setting sun and found refuge beneath a small bridge. It was dark, smelly, grimy, and miserable, and I couldn’t even get to sleep quickly due to my roaring stomach. As I finally, fitfully nodded off, I found myself hoping it was all a bad dream.
I woke up to the same bridge underside I had fallen asleep to.
Food was definitely my most pressing problem at the moment. I spent the morning trying to look for some sort of job. The problem was, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had no idea how people got jobs back in medieval Europe; somehow all the isekai webtoons I read never covered that part. And I couldn’t ask anyone for help because I couldn’t speak their language. After hours spent going nowhere with desperate hand signals, my stomach hurting so much I almost didn’t even feel hungry anymore, I finally accepted the necessity of the current state of affairs.
I would have to steal some food.
As I walked through the streets of the city, surreptitiously looking around for any food that seemed unguarded, I couldn’t help but feel a certain irony. Back in an ethics course I took in college, “is it moral to steal to survive” was one of the topics we had discussed. I hadn’t participated in the discussion of course, I never did, but with a shock of clarity I remembered what my thoughts had been: I would never be foolish enough to get into a situation where I would have to steal to survive.
Hahaha. Haha. Hah.
A fruit seller was having an animated argument with a customer. With as much casual ease as I could muster, I swiped one of his apples into my pocket.
The next few days, I somehow managed to survive off of well water and whatever food I could manage to steal. But I wasn’t exactly a professional thief, so the amount of stuff I could steal that was actually edible was extremely limited. Whenever I felt like I was almost getting used to the hunger pangs, they always came back with a vengeance soon after. This type of survival was just a slow sort of death. So one day, I decided to take a risk: go inside a bakery during the day, find a dark, secluded corner to hide in, wait for the baker to close up shop, then steal as much as I could cram into my quickly-becoming-tattered clothes.
But just as the baker was about to leave, my stomach stabbed me in the back.
I scrunched up, hands over my mouth, praying to the God I never believed in that he would ignore my rumbling stomach, or that he’d give up after not being able to find me. But as I heard his footsteps steadily grew closer, the fear gripping my heart suddenly transformed into determination. If this was how it was going to be, I was going to fight with all I had. I stood up in a flash, darted around the corner, and aimed a sharp kick at the baker’s ankle.
It didn’t even phase him. I didn’t even have the time to plead for mercy before he grabbed my shoulders and slammed me against the shelf.
Colors blearing my vision, I could barely make out a mouth above a shaggy brown beard shouting something at me.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I slurred out.
Looking up, I saw a face scrunch up in contempt, before he slammed my head against the shelf a second time, and I blacked out.
When I woke up, it took me a while to get my bearings. I was moving, that much I could tell, but how? Looking around, blinking exhaustion and pain out of my eyes, I saw wooden walls all around me. It was like I was inside a small shed, just a moving one.
Ah, this was probably a horse-drawn carriage, right? But how was I in one? I tried to sit up, only to find it impossible. I glanced downward, and it took a few seconds for what I saw to register in my consciousness: My hands and ankles were bound with thick metal chains.
Oh right, I was caught by the man I was trying to steal bread from. So did that mean I was like, a criminal? Would I go to jail now?
That should probably have made me scared, or sad, but all I could actually think of was: at least I’ll get regular meals there.
After a few hours, though, all I could think of was how bored I was and how much my body hurt from the constant upward jolts and sidewards shoves I suffered riding inside this fucking thing. A car might have killed me but I never missed them more.
Eventually, blessedly, the carriage stopped, and shortly afterward the door in the side opened. My eyes hurt at the sudden torchlight, and before I could recover I was getting hauled up by the chain that fastened my wrists. The man said something, and I recognized him as the baker. I still had no idea what he was saying, of course, but in this situation it was kind of clear. He left the carriage, hand still wrapped around my chain, and all I could do was follow.
I didn’t have much time to wonder as to why the baker was escorting me personally before he brought me into a ramshackle warehouse. As my eyes got used to the low torchlight spread across a wide area, my heart started beating quicker and sweat dripped down my face.
About a dozen armed men were in the warehouse, and behind them, at least three times that number of men, women, and children bound in chains. But even as I knew what was going on instantly, even as I saw the baker engage in a heated discussion with one of the men before being handed a bag of coins, it was still so surreal I almost laughed.
I was getting sold into slavery. By a man whose name I didn’t even know.
The next few days – weeks? months? – passed in a blur. Occasionally, in my more lucid moments, I wondered if my life had turned to such shit my brain was shutting itself down to avoid drowning in misery. But on the other hand, at least I was getting food now. Not, you know, a lot of it, but more than I had ever managed to steal for myself. That was kind of funny, in a certain sense.
I had no idea how much time passed. At a certain point, I was packed into the back of a small carriage with a bunch of other slaves, barely giving us the room to breathe, much less move. Occasionally I heard the other slaves whisper to each other, but of course I could never understand a word. The carriage traveled for some amount of time, stopping to give us barely enough food and water to survive, and probably also to let the slavers take some breaks, I didn’t fucking know. I focused my energies on sleeping as much as I could.
Eventually we stopped in a place that appeared to be our destination, if them dragging us all out of the carriage was any indication. I just stared at the dirt ground as I walked, barely noticing when we stopped. Then I felt a hard shove on my back, and I stumbled down and fell into a cage with thick metal bars on all sides. The door behind me shut with a loud smash.
Belatedly, I realized they had taken off my chains before pushing me inside the cage. Small mercy. I sat up –
As I saw who was in the cage with me, I could almost hear the clock hands of my life start turning again, rattling from disuse only briefly.
I blinked. I rubbed my eyes, heedless of how they were covered in mud and grime. I approached him cautiously, looking for a reason I was wrong, that I was gaslighting myself with hope.
But I hadn’t had any hope anymore, until this very moment. It was real. It was real.
I was in the presence of my favorite character from my favorite webtoon. And my sheer joy from getting isekai’d, so long dormant, returned stronger than it had ever been.
Then Let Me Be a Villainess was what’s called an “otome isekai” webtoon. The female lead was a Korean office lady who dies from overwork and isekai’s into a dating sim video game, “Nobility of the Heart,” as the villainess character, Duchess Veronica Whitney. “Nobility of the Heart” was apparently a pretty cliched dating sim (even Veronica admits it was a guilty pleasure for her) where the commoner heroine happens to run across a minor noble when he’s critically injured, saves his life, and is adopted by his parents and made into a noble herself in gratitude. There were of course plenty of hot guys you could date, ranging from the crown prince of the kingdom, the slave she rescues from his evil master, the noble she saved at the start, and even the villainess’s brother. The heroine herself was your typical useless female protagonist who constantly had to be rescued by the male characters. Veronica in the game was a one-dimensional villain pretty much everyone hated, and the crown prince breaks his engagement with her in every route after she tries to murder the heroine.
As for the webtoon, Veronica at first tries to avoid her death flags by asking her father to break off her engagement and staying out of the heroine’s way. Of course the crown prince, craven cheater that he is, decides he loves her after all, and the heroine is revealed to actually be a manipulative white lotus bitch (which, let’s be real, is way more realistic than the perfect innocent little angel who just so happens to fall ass-first into a reverse harem) who tries to ruin Veronica’s reputation by pretending to be bullied. But Veronica is so cool and awesome that she ends up winning over a bunch of people to her side, including most of the heroine’s original harem – well, her brother doesn’t fall in love with her of course, he just dotes on her massively. Even the crown prince ends up trying to win her back, though she rejects his bitch ass like the queen she is.
Veronica’s real love interest is the “main villain” of the original game, Duke Damian Nomador, the illegitimate son of the king who starts a coup to depose him (and also marry the heroine who he has a yandere obsession with natch). Through the course of the webtoon Veronica comes to understand that Damian, just like Veronica herself, is far more than the one-note villain he appeared to be in the game, and with Veronica and her allies’ help Damian’s coup ends up largely bloodless, the only casualties being the white lotus heroine and her supporters (the king included, who also turns out to be a giant dick). Even the crown prince voluntarily agrees to step aside after apologizing to Veronica for everything he did to her. I guess even he realized Damian is far more of a man than he could ever hope to be.
While I loved Then Let Me Be a Villainess for many reasons – the art was amazing, the plot was fast-paced and exciting, the female lead’s father and brother were adorably doting and overprotective, the villains were totally hateable and their comeuppances extremely satisfying – the top two were Veronica herself and the second male lead. Veronica wasn’t just some damsel in distress who constantly got in trouble and needed the men to save her. Yes, the men did save her sometimes, you gotta get your cute scenes after all, but she also did a shitton in her own right. I could absolutely understand why all these hot men fell for her, why Damian would literally burn down the world to put a smile on her face.
As for the second male lead…yeah, not gonna lie, while I loved Damian too, I had serious second male lead syndrome in this one. Xavier is the slave the heroine rescues from his abusive master in the original game; he’s the best fighter in the kingdom and is actually the one who kills Veronica in every route. Luckily, in the webtoon, Veronica isekai’s to the time right before Xavier was bought by his original master, and she manages to buy him instead. (A lot of fucking dumbasses who can’t read accused the author of supporting slavery, even though Veronica frees Xavier immediately and he voluntarily stays with her as a paid servant out of gratitude and love. If anything the webtoon opposes slavery. Assholes.) Xavier is a cool, sweet, extremely hot badass who knows from the start he has no chance with Veronica but can’t help falling in love with her anyway. I was far from the only fan who coped by telling herself “the male lead is for the female lead, the second male lead is for us.”
And there was no doubt about it. The more I looked around my cell and the larger cavern it inhabited, the more I recognized it as the scene where Veronica buys Xavier before his abusive master could. Everything looked exactly the same, including the emaciated man himself. Long, dark red hair, a toned body that displayed strength despite his incredibly weakened state, and shining blue eyes that still gazed at the world with innocence even after everything he had been through…god I loved him.
…Wait, hold on a second. I had joked about how “the second male lead is for us,” but…now that I was here…wasn’t that actually, literally true!? If I convinced Veronica to buy me as well when she showed up, I could not only stan her from a front-row seat, I could give Xavier the true happy ending he always deserved! My life had been complete and utter shit since I came to this world, but if it was all leading up to this? I would do it a thousand times over.
I strode up to him, then stopped. What should I say to him? What was I even capable of saying to him? I scrunched my eyes closed and concentrated. With nothing better to do this past…however long amount of time…I had listened to the slavers and other slaves talk and tried my best to determine what the words of their language meant. I hadn’t gotten very far, of course, but I had figured out a few things at least. I hoped. I hadn’t actually tried to speak it yet.
And my first attempt was going to be in front of the man I was trying to make fall in love with me. Great, just great.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, scrounged up every ounce of courage I’d ever had in my entire life, and said: “I can’t speak Lornish.” Or, well, what I dearly hoped meant something close to that.
Xavier flinched, then looked up at me, eyes wide. Was that…a good sign?
“I can’t speak Lornish,” I said again.
Seconds passed in silence. Then Xavier opened his mouth, and a flood of words I couldn’t understand tumbled out.
“Stop! Stop!” I cried, and he stopped so I must have gotten that one right at least. I searched for a way to get across what I wanted to say, and settled on: “Again, slower!” It made me feel like a 5-year-old; I almost blushed from embarrassment despite the situation.
Then Xavier smiled, and this time I did blush. He spoke again, slower this time, and I grasped each word like my life depended on it. The first half I still didn’t get, but the second half I recognized as what I’d first told him…followed by the same words in a different order.
Ah, so I had screwed up the grammar. My blush deepened, and I gazed at the ground in shame.
Xavier said something else. My eyes snapped back to him; he spoke again, slower this time. It was “I” followed by a word I didn’t know followed by “you.” My heart surged with hope, and his friendly smile confirmed it. He was going to help teach me the language.
I knew it! I knew he was the best! It might’ve taken a while, but finally, finally my isekai life was about to start!
In high spirits, I started keeping track of the days with tally marks on the cell wall. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted Veronica to arrive sooner or later. Sure, being a slave sucked, but I would never say no to more time with Xavier.
Regardless, it happened on the 13th day. I heard footsteps approaching my cell, looked back, and could almost feel electricity surge through my brain and every one of my nerves: Veronica Whitney, my favorite female character of all time, was there in the flesh.
Long, luscious, straight blonde hair that cascaded down to her shoulders. Clear blue eyes in a face that could shift from angelic love for her friends to a death sentence for her enemies in a split second. A body any woman would kill for, with the fashion sense to boot; even clad in a dark shirt and pants she had picked out specifically to be unassuming, she still shone like a crystal oasis in an endless desert.
Walking next to her was her father, Duke Nickolas Whitney. To be honest I was never really into middle-aged men, so while I appreciated him as an ultra-supportive father to Veronica, I never salivated over him or called him “daddy” like a lot of other fans did. Still, I could certainly appreciate him on an objective level: short-cropped dark brown hair over gray eyes and a tastefully maintained beard that was just starting to grow some white hairs.
I had made a lot of progress with Lornish, but I could still mostly just manage simple, easy sentences. That said, I had reread the webtoon so many times I could recite their dialogue here in my sleep. …Which meant I could also use this as an opportunity to learn more Lornish! That in mind, I listened intently.
“Remember, Victoria,” Nickolas said, “we can’t save every slave here.”
“I know,” Victoria said. “I told you, father, this isn’t a charity case; I’m looking for a bodyguard.”
Nickolas shook his head. “And as I’ve told you countless times, a trained knight would –”
“Trust me, father, I know what I’m looking for.” At that, Nickolas just sighed.
I tensed up. This was it. I had spent many an hour going over this moment in my head, planning out what I would say to her. I had less than a minute to convince her to buy me too. But I was sure I could do it. Veronica was kind to anyone who proved themselves loyal. I would just need to show her how much I loved her. I grabbed the cage bars and yelled, in Korean, “I’m Korean too!”
Veronica’s head snapped around to stare at me, her eyes wide. I pushed on, still in Korean. “I was isekai’d to this world just like you were, but I couldn’t understand the language so I ended up here. Please, buy me! I’ll do whatever I can to support you!”
She stared at me for a long time, her expression unchanging. My heart was beating so hard and fast I felt like it was about to explode into a volcano of blood and flesh. Veronica opened her mouth –
But Nickolas spoke first. I could make out “know” and “saying.” Was he asking if Veronica understood what I was saying?
Veronica looked at me again. Time stood still. She opened her mouth and said:
“No.”
With that one word, all the despair, pain, and hopelessness that I had been holding back since meeting Xavier filled my body all at once. I collapsed back onto the dirt floor and barely registered Veronica picking out Xavier, the slavers opening the cage door to bring him to her and Nickolas, and the three of them walking away into the light, leaving me behind.
I did catch Xavier glancing back at me. I didn’t have the energy to read his face, to determine if that was pity or guilt in his expression. I hoped he didn’t feel too bad. It wasn’t his fault after all.
Veronica didn’t look back once.
After that, I stopped counting the days. It didn’t matter anymore. Some time later, I was finally bought…by someone who made me wish I had just stayed in that cell until I died: Count Karamasque, a minor villain in Then Let Me Be a Villainess whose main role was bankrolling the white lotus heroine’s various conspiracies, but who also – as I now vividly recalled Nickolas mentioning in one scene – was known to keep sex slaves. It wasn’t hard to guess why he had bought me.
I tried to keep myself from vomiting on the long carriage ride to his mansion. I didn’t succeed.
When we arrived, I was immediately grabbed and shuffled off by two young women in maid outfits. Before I could get my bearings they had brought me to a small room with a washbasin, then quickly stripped me, splashed freezing cold water onto me, and scrubbed me hard with rough sponges. But I didn’t have it in me to complain.
When they finished, one of them handed me a bundle of clothes. I stared at it blankly. The other one sighed, and they dressed me. I didn’t resist.
It turned out to be a maid outfit of my own, identical to the two of theirs’. (Wait, did they count as outfits if they were, lille, regular clothing in this world?) I looked at the other women with renewed interest. “Are you slaves too?” I did my best to ask.
One of them rolled her eyes; the other spit into the corner and said something I didn’t understand. Fantastic. Well, whatever.
After that, they dragged me to what seemed to be a dining room. Some guy wearing an expensive-looking suit was shouting things I mostly didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to be whipped or whatever other punishment they had for slaves, so I busied myself copying what the other maids slash slaves were doing: setting the plates and silverware, cleaning the room, et cetera. After a while the expensive suit man shouted something else, and the maids all started filing out of the room; I copied them as closely as I could.
The procession ended at the front doors to the mansion, with seemingly every servant and slave in the mansion lined up on either side. The doors were opened, and they all bowed as one, with me following close behind. When the others stood back up, I mimicked them – and my blood froze in my veins.
Accompanying Count Karamasque was the white lotus heroine and main antagonist of Then Let Me Be a Villainess, Aura.
There was one thing nobody could deny: Aura was strikingly beautiful. She had to be, to get so many dumb men wrapped around her finger. She had bright silver hair, the kind you only ever saw in comics and anime back in my old world, that flowed almost to her waist. She had a tiny nose, pale and blemishless skin, and a perfect hourglass figure with a low-cut black dress that hid precisely none of it. Most of all, her large eyes were shining yellow, almost golden; with her hair, they made her look like a fairy.
Unfortunately, Aura was a fairy in all the wrong ways as well. She was one of the most manipulative, conniving, annoying as all hell bitches I had ever seen. She attempted to seduce, or succeeding at seducing, nearly every man in the story, despite already being in a relationship with the crown prince. She lied and spread false rumors to try to destroy Victoria’s reputation, and when that didn’t work kept escalating all the way to attempted murder. Even that one time Aura saved the minor noble’s life, the entire basis of the “original game’s” plot, turned out to be just another lie; she was the one who put his life at risk in the first place, specifically and intentionally to pretend to “save his life” so she could put him in her debt. Everything about her was part of her deception, her sociopathic ambition to be the center of everyone’s attention. When she was finally killed by the male lead in the webtoon’s climax the comments exploded in celebration, and you’d better believe I was one of the most elated.
As Aura started ascending the stairs in the main hall, the servants and slaves dispersed. I followed a crowd, wanting to get as far away as I possibly could, before a middle-aged woman grabbed my arm and told me something I mostly didn’t understand, so I stared at her blankly until she sighed and pulled me along for a few minutes until we reached a small door. The woman opened it, and I almost screamed: Aura was there, along with a half-dozen other maids/slaves who were working on her nails, hair, and dress. I was too shocked to react before the woman pushed me inside and closed the door behind me.
Aura looked at me disinterestedly, and said something I was in no mood to try to translate. She then muttered something that included “Karamasque,” then put her naked feet on a footrest and gestured at it. I could understand that, at least. I found a washbasin and a rag and set to work cleaning her feet.
The mechanical and mindless work of freshening Aura up steadily calmed my nerves. That was almost worse, though, because it meant my brain started thinking about what was in store for me as Count Karamasque’s slave again. I bit my lip, hoping the pain would stop me from shuddering. It didn’t. I looked up at Aura, hoping she hadn’t noticed my break in composure; thankfully she was staring off into space, not looking at anything in particular.
And then, all of a sudden, I realized something. Literally anything was better than being Karamasque’s slave. I had been dumb with Victoria, but maybe, just maybe…
My mouth started speaking before I could stop it. “You’re going to die.”
The room was blanketed by a heavy silence. All the other slaves had stopped working to stare at me. Aura’s attention was locked onto me now, her mouth hanging open.
I pressed on, bringing all my meager knowledge of Lornish to bear, hoping against hope I was making sense. “You tried to steal from Baron Maxbury. You pretended to save him. You want to be queen. But you will fail, and die…” My voice died as Aura’s gaze turned positively murderous.
“Get out,” she said, her voice low. I flinched and stood up, but she grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back down, my ass landing hard on the floor tile. She said something else that was probably “everybody else,” because at that all the other slaves glanced at each other, then quickly ran out of the room.
Once the door closed, Aura’s hands tightened on my shoulders, and I cried out in pain. She spoke so quickly I couldn’t understand. “I can’t speak Lornish well,” I stammered.
Aura paused, then resumed speaking, slower this time. I could make out “Who are you?” among a couple other words.
“A slave,” I answered.
“How did you know…” some other words I couldn’t parse.
“I can see the past,” I said, “and the future.”
Silence for a time. Aura’s eyes roamed over me like she was studying a test subject, or a piece of meat. I flushed and stared at the wall.
Finally, Aura said, “How will I die?”
I forced myself to meet those golden eyes. “Buy me from Karamasque, and I’ll tell you.”
She glared at me. In the webtoon, those glares always preceded some new manipulation and/or murder attempt. I couldn’t stop myself from shuddering again. But Aura didn’t move.
Finally, she said…well, I couldn’t understand what she said. “Yes or no?” I dared to ask. She gave me another glare, then said:
“Yes.”
After that Aura called the rest of the slaves back in, and after we freshened her up to her satisfaction we went down to the dining room together. Nothing much of note happened during the dinner. We servants slash slaves got nothing, of course, and since Karamasque apparently had way more of us than he actually needed I didn’t even have much to do. I mostly just stood around and tried to look inconspicuous while eavesdropping on Aura and Karamasque’s conversation. I couldn’t make out much, though.
Finally the interminable dinner ended. The other slaves who had freshened Aura up moved toward her, so I followed. Aura stood up, then turned to Karamasque. “Something walk with me something,” she said. Karamasque raised his eyebrow, but he followed as the entourage started walking through the mansion.
Suddenly, Aura stopped. She turned to Karamasque, then pointed at me. Amid the flood of words that followed, I could clearly make out “want to buy this slave.” My heart leapt into my throat.
Karamasque gave her, then me, a calculating look. He was an old man, in his 50s at least, with a balding head and jowls and frankly even if he’d been the hottest man in the world the sheer coldness of his gaze would’ve sent me screaming in terror. He turned back to Aura, and said, after a lot of words I didn’t recognize, “...do you have the money?”
Oh. Fuck. I forgot. Slaves were expensive, and the one thing Aura lacked, as the adopted daughter of a minor Barony, was money. That was in fact the entire reason she was working with Karamasque in the first place. How was she going to –
Aura smiled sultrily, sidled up to him, pressed her boobs into his chest, then kissed him on the mouth.
My eyes bugged out.
After way too fucking long the kiss ended, and Karamasque looked like the cat that caught the fucking canary. The two of them had a conversation I couldn’t follow, She held his hand and led him into a nearby room. Karamasque turned around and shouted something at us slaves before the door closed.
I looked around at the other slaves. They were all staring at me wide-eyed. But they weren’t moving, so – extremely unfortunately – I didn’t either.
The next length of time was, perhaps, even more torturous than my time in the slave cell had been. The room Aura and Karamasque had entered was far from soundproof, and the mental images those sounds created almost made me throw up again.
But that wasn’t even all. While most of the other slaves eventually stopped staring at me and started whispering amongst each other, one of them glared at me the entire time, and with a start, I realized I knew who she was: Lucia, an extremely minor antagonist in Then Let Me Be a Villainess.
During one of Aura’s visits to Veronica and the male lead Damian’s home in her endless quest to destroy Veronica’s reputation and/or life, she had brought along Lucia as a slave. Lucia was an extremely attractive woman in her own right, with bright, silky red hair and beautiful emerald eyes. She used her beauty in an attempt to seduce Damian, but it was really to distract him while – she thought – Veronica was dying of a poison she had put in her drink. But Veronica noticed the poison, and brought it to Damian’s bedroom. She had expected to see him and Lucia going at it, since their marriage was still a fake, contractual one at that point, but instead she witnessed Damian harshly rejecting Lucia. Then, when he learned she had tried to poison Veronica, he got so enraged he killed Lucia on the spot.
I loved that scene, and I was far from the only one. Not only was it tense and dramatic and gave both Veronica and Damian chances to shine in their own rights, but it was also the first real sign that Damian had fallen in love with Veronica for real. As for Lucia, to be honest, I had never given her any real thought. She was a one-off villain, after all, basically a plot device. We were never told her backstory or motivation, beyond that she was acting on Aura’s orders. Aura had stated she was a slave, sure, but we didn’t even know she was Karamasque’s slave – though in retrospect it made sense, since Aura never owned any other slaves throughout the entire webtoon. Anyway, the point was, I didn’t care about her at all.
Or I hadn’t cared. But now, seeing her here, as a real, actual person…as an actual person in just about the worst possible situation…
Sorry, Lucia. She probably hated me right now for getting away from Karamasque the day I arrived, her glare demonstrated that much, but still. I promised internally to do what I could to save her from her fate.
And not just her. I looked around at the other slave girls. Karamasque was executed along with the rest of Aura’s collaborators at the end of the webtoon, sure, but it was never stated what happened to any of his slaves. I could hope they were freed, but…I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.
Aura’s face flashed across my mind, and I shuddered. What was I doing, worrying about other people? I might’ve escaped the fire, but I was still in the frying pan. I knew very well just how heartless Aura was. She was only helping me because she thought she could get something out of me. The moment I stopped being useful to her, she would throw me to the curb.
These thoughts were what accompanied me until finally, mercifully, the door opened again. Aura was there, clothed thank god, and she gestured at me before walking away briskly. I hurried to catch up. Neither of us said anything as she led me out of the mansion to a waiting horse-drawn carriage outside. She pulled me up into the carriage after her, said something to the driver outside, and we were off.
As soon as we left, I almost surprised myself by collapsing onto the cushioned bench, a relieved sigh escaping my lips. I may have only left the fire for the frying pan, but good god was the frying pan so much better.
“Slave.” I looked up at Aura’s word. Her face was hard as concrete, reminding me that maybe the frying pan wasn’t that much better. “How will I die?”
I stared at her. My breathing quickened. I had spent so long doing whatever the people of this world told me, ever since I was first sold into slavery, I almost started answering her question on instinct. But I stopped myself just in time, and said instead, “I won’t tell you yet.”
Before I realized it she had grabbed me by the collar of the maid outfit I was still wearing and slammed me against the wall of the carriage. “Tell me.”
“Tell you,” I forced out through the pain, “and I won’t be useful to you. You’ll give me back to Karamasque. Or kill me.”
Her face was totally blank, emotionless. I drained the emotion from my face as well. We stared at each other. And then –
And then, Aura laughed. No, she guffawed.
I was dumbstruck. In the webtoon Aura hardly ever smiled, or laughed, unless she was giggling as part of her “sweet naive peasant girl” persona. The only times she ever seemed close to happy was when she was enacting one of her manipulative ploys, and that was a malicious, sadistic sort of happiness. But here I was, watching her clutch her stomach with tears in her eyes as she laughed with what was, to all appearances, genuine joy.
After her laughter faded, with a smile still on her face, Aura said something to me. I cocked my head in confusion. She pointed at me, said “You,” pointed at my head, said a Lornish word I didn’t know, then said, “good.”
My head is good…was she saying I’m smart? Despite everything, my heart started beating faster, just a little bit. Nobody had ever complimented my intelligence before.
“What’s your [something]?” Aura asked.
“...I do not understand,” I said.
Aura pointed at herself. “Aura,” she said. Then she pointed at me.
Ah. My name. Come to think of it, she was the first person in this world who’d asked me that. Even Xavier hadn’t. “Mi-rae,” I said.
Aura smiled again. “First,” she said, “I’ll teach you Lornish.”
She wasn’t a very kind teacher.
