Am I a Saint? No, I’m the Villainess! - Chapter 1

Below, a sea of flames engulfed the royal city. The familiar royal castle, the academy, and the church had all been overrun by the scorching heat. All the major noble houses had been burned down. At this rate, even the faraway downtown area would be engulfed in a whirlpool of flames. I had to avoid that at all costs.

It was that person whom I loved who gazed at me in ecstasy. His dark blue hair reflected the flames and glowed darkly.

I fell in love which was forbidden. Yet, I still basked in that burning love.

I called out to him and he turned around. His eyes, which had fallen into darkness, smiled with satisfaction. Behind his back, a pillar of fire erupted like a dragon soaring through the sky. My sin, which made even that beautiful, created the red hell.

“There’s nothing standing in our way anymore.”

He extended his hand toward me.

An insane but dysphoric person.

No one could save this person but me, now. I couldn’t save that town.

I leaped towards him, and thrusted the trident, the mystic saint’s weapon, into his chest. The trident sunk into him.

“Are you interrupting me too?”

I embraced his crooked smile.

“No, I will not leave you alone.”

The tip of one side of the trident sunk deep into my chest. Our blood mingled. From there, a thread of light enveloped us like a cocoon.

“If it is not allowed in this world, let us go together to the world a thousand years from now.”

“…The saint’s secrets?”

“Yes, a deep sleep that will awaken you in a thousand years.”

“Just the two of us.”

The two embraced each other tightly and slept a thousand years in the sacred cocoon.

The world was now a prosperous place after the nobles had been swept away, and the two were enshrined forever as the two pillars of flame.

A thousand years later, they woke up on the same hill and looked at each other with full smiles.

～　Fin　～

What?! No one would be happy!!

Iris woke up. Her back was soggy with sweat and she was shaking all over. The dream she just had was sad and yet beautiful.

But it was strange that it was so dramatic and yet did not seem unreal at all. Iris was a little confused as to which was a dream and which was reality.

I embraced my shaking body and rubbed my arms. By doing so, I realized that I was not in a horrible dream, but in reality.

What’s so dramatic about it?! This is not violence! Not domestic violence, but truly dramatic violence!

I shouldn’t yell… I slipped. The game’s POP said, “This is the new generation of dramatic violence games,” Not that Iris was wrong.

Iris calmed down a bit and slowly looked around. Her luxurious bed with a canopy was incredibly large. The bedsheet was covered with luxurious lace and embroidery. Her smooth silk nightgown made a soft rustling sound as she leaned forward a little.

This was in…

My heart was pounding and my mind was racing. This was my room. I knew that. And yet, I felt strange. As I rushed to get off the bed, a bell rung around my neck. I was startled and reached for it.

The feel of velvet. The tinkling bell. And golden charms. You didn’t need to look to know. This was Iris’s family crest, the iris flower. Iris was horrified. Even at a time like this, it had not gone away.

I rushed to the mirror. Every time I moved, the bell chimed abominably. I was stunned in front of the person.

Her rich hair, shining in a mint green that was indeed a game colour scheme, was lightly gathered into a single strand under her chest. The ends of the hair were in gentle vertical rolls. Midora’s eyes were cloudy. The corner of her eyes was raised harshly, and her eyebrows were thin. The girl’s face was as beautiful as an ice sculpture, and she had the appearance of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Wait a minute, wasn’t this Iris from ‘Hanakoro’?

Iris was stunned. In the mirror, she saw the villainess Iris de Chevalley from ‘When White Flowers Bloom’ game for girls.

She hurriedly moved her left hand to check. From the back of her left hand to her elbow, there was an ugly pockmark. It was the mark of a disease called ‘Soil Pox.’

Soil pox was the epidemic of this world. It had a high mortality rate, and even those who survived were left with a large scar. Iris contracted the disease at the end of last summer, and although she survived, the scars left behind in conspicuous places.

This led her to be confined to her room. Winter had already passed, but she never went out of her house. Her parents did not blame her for that. Since she contracted soil pox, she had been treated like a tumour.

For aristocratic daughters, good looks were a major issue. Social presence was an overwhelming disadvantage. Even after marriage, if they wanted to be of their own status or better, they had to be more beautiful.

Moreover, although soil pox was an infectious disease, it was rarely prevalent, and people who contracted it were rare. That was why anyone who acquired such a disease was considered to have been sinners. The pockmarks of the pox were said to be a sign of abandonment by the gods, so they were hidden.

No doubt, it was Iris from that game. Iris was set up to live with this scar complex!

The nightmare she just saw was one of the endings of the otome game ‘When White Flowers Bloom.’ Because of that spectacular nightmare, Iris remembered her previous life.

She was twenty-eight years old. In her previous life, Iris was a normal and generous Alaskan girl, though a bit of a geek, who liked video games. A friend of hers said, “There is a difference between rough and generous,” but let’s put that to the side.

The game that hooked Iris was ‘Shiroi Hana ga Saku Koroni’ (When White Flowers Bloom), a school romance game that took place in a Western magical fantasy world. In a world where the magical powers of the saints were on the verge of being exhausted, the main character aimed to become the next saint with the help of the handsome men around her.

Since the game was made in Japan, the setting was Western-style, but Japanese customs were applied. Although there was royalty, there were no strict rules of etiquette, and the atmosphere was frank and extremely safe. This was why the commoner heroine could casually enjoy dating the son of an aristocrat.

‘Hanakoro,’ aka, ‘When White Flowers Bloom,’ was unique among otome games. It was a standard game with royal princes, knights, mages, etc., but the endings were bizarre. No matter which of the targets you chose, you would end up with a merry but bad ending.

In short, there was no ending that could be rejoiced as a happy ending without sacrificing something. Somewhat distorted love was fulfilled.

Incidentally, all the endings for those who are not tied to the target of the capture were genuine bad endings in which the heroine was stabbed to death, and friendship endings were also not possible. If you raised the likability of all the targets by the same amount, you would be stabbed by all the targets. It was one of two things; Meriva or Bad.

Too many dreamless otome games, right?

Iris looked at herself distantly.

However, the characters were divinely beautiful, and the core audience for Meriva was overwhelmingly supportive. Of course, before her reincarnation, Iris was one of them.

The beautifully sad ending and the agony of the villainess who got screwed over were horribly and beautifully depicted, and I honestly moaned, inappropriately.

None of the endings of the yandere imprisoning prince, the morally harassing trained dossier knight, and the psychopathic mage in forbidden love could be happy, and that part of the story stuck with Iris, who was tired of good and evil and tempestuous happiness.

The dream I just had was the ‘Thousand Year Sleep’ route, known as the True End, which I had been working on until my end. I remembered that I had a lot of trouble with it. And the end that I cleared was the dream I just had. “No one would be happy!!” I exclaimed at the time.

But that did not mean that I was dissatisfied. I was very happy with that scenario at the time.

True love was what lied at the merry but bad end. Her love was unrequited. So much so that she said so boldly.

No, I like Meriva, okay? I like it, but that’s because it’s fiction, right? It’s okay to cry that even though reality is hard and painful, some people don’t deserve more, right? I absolutely, positively hate it when reality is more painful!!

Iris tried to pull the green vertical design. Iris in the mirror also pulled on the vertical design. When she let go, it bounced back with elasticity.

Without a doubt, the reflection in the mirror was Iris herself. She had been reborn in that dramatic and violent world.