I’m A Villainess, Can I Die? - Chapter 11

“Miss Selena!”

“Oh my! Miss! Are you okay?”

‘Gosh, what’s going on?’

Blood rushed back to my dazed head, realizing that my hand had been covering Aiden’s mouth for too long.

‘I’m sorry, Aiden. But I washed my hands earlier, so…’

Servants flocked towards where I was, startled. I was sitting on the floor with Aiden supporting my back… I tapped his shoulder subtly to ask him to move away.

‘After all, other people don’t forget a suicide experience so easily.’

Aiden, recognizing my signal, took his hand from my back and lifted me up.

“It’s fine. I was dizzy for a moment and staggered. I didn’t get hurt because Aiden caught me. Aiden, thank you.”

“…It’s nothing. I just did what I had to do.”

Aiden replied with a stiff smile. No matter how I looked at it, his acting skills seemed to have dropped a lot compared to before.

Fortunately, no one seemed to have seen me trip and fall from the stairs. It was such a hectic day, thus most of the servants were in the banquet hall and concentrated on the preparations for the engagement ceremony.

I got up, saying there was nothing to make a fuss about, and sent all the servants to do their work again. But even after everyone left, Aiden still wrapped his arm around my shoulders and supported me.

Seeing him trying his best to help me even though there was no one around anymore, I guessed he tended to use his acting skill methodically.

‘I just said his acting skill has decreased… Okay, I’ll cancel what I said.’

As expected, a pro will always be a pro.

[tl/n: pro as in professional]

I arrived in front of the door while thinking that I should loosen my legs a bit to be more in line with Aiden’s acting.

“Then, Miss. I will send the maids to arrange your clothes again. Until then, rest a little.”

Aiden opened the door and bowed. He had an awkward smile earlier, but now he had a stiff face without even trying to smile.

“Aiden.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll cut off your tongue if you use magic.”

“Ah…” Aiden let out a soft groan and his stiff, pale face gradually turned blue.

‘As I predicted, his face seems to have hardened because of this.’

Feeling pleased to have confirmed my hunch, I took a step closer to Aiden, nodding.

“But I’ll let you slide. Instead of cutting off your tongue, I’ll ask that you also keep today’s accident moderately secret. Let’s just say I was slightly dizzy.”

“Pardon…?”

‘Life is like this. It’s been like this for a very long time. If your superior tells you to do it, you just do it. No matter what nonsense they tell you do to.’

Actually, I mean, wasn’t it like asking someone to give you another water bottle even though they already bought one for you? No, more than that. It’s like threatening someone with a gun, saying, ‘Give me your bottle, too.’

“Promise.”

I held out my pinky instead of a gun. Aiden, who was looking down at my finger blankly, soon erased his stiff face and smiled again, intertwining his finger with mine.

“I promise.”

‘Okay, if you don’t, I’m really going to cut off your tongue. Although, the truth is I can’t do it because I’m afraid…’

Anyway, after a brief silence, I nodded satisfactorily and told Aiden to go out. At my words, Aiden bowed his head and closed the door… then opened it again.

‘Huh? What is it?’

Aiden was standing outside the open door. There was a strange look of impatience and anxiety on his face.

‘Did any bugs come out? In the book, Aiden hated bugs.’

Looking around, wondering what to use to catch a bug if it came out, I heard footsteps ringing in the hallway beyond the door that Aiden had opened. Seeing that the footsteps were getting louder, it seemed to be coming this way.

“What are you doing?”

The person’s voice was very, very familiar.

‘Ah… I think I’m dizzy again.’

“No… it’s nothing. Then I’ll call the maids. Please wait.”

At the appearance of the uninvited guest, the worries and concerns that had showed on Aiden’s face disappeared. Contrary to my mood, which wasn’t calm at all, Aiden greeted the other person calmly and left as if he was being chased.

“Lady Selena.”

Aiden was leaving the bothersome man to me.

“Yes, Sir Lucas.”

“It’s a banquet… but why are you wearing a dress like that?”

‘Like that? That’s quite harsh. I wonder what I look like… Um, that’s… bad.’

My reflection in the mirror wasn’t as neat as it used to be. Dresses were obviously difficult to wear and difficult to manage after wearing. Perhaps it was the aftermath of the previous uprising, but the hem was dirty, and the shape was very strange. My well-groomed hair was also messed up.

‘…Sorry, maids.’

Looking at the time, there was less than an hour left until the engagement ceremony.

“That’s right. I don’t look good.”

“So I guess that’s why he said he would send the maids earlier.”

‘Oh, come to think of it, Aiden said he would send a maid.’

Even to Aiden, I looked like someone who needed a maid’s help.

I didn’t have to deliberately pull the rope and call someone, so I just stood still.

I was feeling guilty and I wasn’t confident about touching the dress, so the best thing to do was to just stand still and wait for help.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“Looking at the shape of the dress, I don’t have the confidence to sit down. Oh, please sit down, Sir.”

“Then I’ll sit down.”

After the answer, I saw the reflection in the mirror of Lucas quickly pulling the tea table chair behind me and sitting down. It was clear that Lucas was determined not to show any pretense in front of me.

‘No, aren’t you overdoing it? Why are you so extreme? I have never read in any novel that a knight goes and sits while his lady is standing still.’

Well… Other novels are other novels… But this one… Wait, did Lucas do the same to the female lead? Obviously, Lucas had also stopped ‘pretending’ in front of the heroine, so…

“Can I ask what happened to your dress?”

“What if I say no?”

Lucas shrugged without answering. The raised corners of his lips made him look like a villain.

‘Ah… I’m tired…’

He didn’t act calculating towards the female lead. It meant he was ‘kind’ without pretense. Lucas whispered words of love to Ariel and acted affectionately without measuring anything and hoping for any profit.

Of course, I didn’t want that…

I told him to stop acting because I didn’t like having someone around who calculated every move, but now he stopped pretending and was directly showing his calculating side completely. Instead of wasting time with pretenses, he just did the calculations bare-faced.

‘Ah… Maybe… I got confused about the novel?’

I glanced at Lucas and he was still smiling at me with a relaxed expression on his face.

Yeah, I may have confused it with another novel. I had read more than ten similar novels to my younger brother… He was a kid who only got better after I read him the entire genre he was obsessed with until my throat was rough and dry. The only reason I remembered this book was because it was the last romance book I had read, and the story just flew by in one volume. In addition, it was a meaningless book full of useless rhetoric.

Well, thanks to this boring book, my brother declared it would be his last rofan, and he saved my poor throat…

[tl/n: rofan is Korean slang for romance fantasy novels]

‘No, that’s not what’s important now. What’s important is that I may have mistaken this person, who I told to stop acting, for another person.’

‘If that’s not the case… He’s a person whose honesty is very different in love and other relationships…’

For example, friendship…

‘Friendship?’

“Sir.”

“Yes.”

I turned my body while looking into the mirror and looked back. I made eye contact with the purple smiling eyes in the reflection of the mirror.

“Just asking, are we friends?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you friends with me?”

Speaking of friendship, it reminded me of a youth novel I read to my younger brother in the past. Their friendship was something beyond honesty… Yeah, maybe these days, brute force was a fact itself. The calculating personality that he showed me resembled that.

‘If that’s really what friendship looks like… does Lucas feel friendship with me?’ That was most likely. His unfamiliar frankness could not be explained in a way other than that.

At my question, Lucas shut his mouth as if thinking about something and gazed elsewhere. I could see him tapping his thigh with one hand while stroking his chin with the other. Soon after, as if he had finished his thinking, his eyes were back to looking at me.

“I think it’s similar.”

‘Similar?’

“Friends… I think it’s something like that. Of course, if the lady wants to be.”

Lucas reached out the hand holding his chin and grabbed mine.

My hand, which was held by his hand, slowly raised, and his eyes, which gradually lowered his gaze, made contact with mine; Lucas’s lips briefly touched the back of my hand and fell off.

I didn’t feel thrilled at all. And the biggest problem…

“I don’t want to be.”

I didn’t need to be friends with Lucas. I had no thoughts of a relationship beyond that.

It wasn’t that I had a long grudge. Definitely not. Anyway, it was a no.

‘First of all, I don’t intend to be friends with anyone. I’m going to die soon.’

There were two things I was going to do for Selena in the first place.

1. When I died of illness at the age of 23, I’d make people grieve for my death.

2. I choose to die before dying alone from a disease.

After a quick KO, I chose #2. That choice has not changed. For the second option, friends weren’t required.

“Are you taking revenge?”

Lucas let go of my hand and smiled softly.

Revenge.

‘That would make sense if it was big on my mind.’

“You can interpret it however you want.”

“Then I’ll give up on our friend–”

Knock, knock.

“Miss Selena, I’m here to arrange your outfit once more.”

The maid’s voice outside the door cut off Lucas’s words. He got up from his seat, arranged his tailcoat, and straightened his posture.

He had the appearance of a polite and kind gentleman.

‘Well, I can wait for him to take his position. Who could know how important it is to be respectful for this man?’

Though, it was kind of amusing to space out while waiting, so I walked slowly to the door. After reaching the door, I looked back to see if Lucas’s polite posture was back to normal with my hand on the doorknob. At the same time, a secret, joyful, whispering voice echoed in the room. So small that only Lucas and I could hear it.

“If so… as my dear brother’s dear friend… let’s do it.”

Tak.

It was so absurd that without realizing it, I put too much strength on my hand. Thus, the doorknob on which I was putting my hand turned.

Losing my center because of the sudden open door, my body leaned quickly. I felt like I was running at the fastest speed in my life. Fortunately, I didn’t fall, I stumbled and pressed my hand against the opposite wall…

‘Ah, I’d rather fall.’

A group of maids standing next to the door opened their eyes wide and looked at me, and all at once, made a ‘Hiik’ sound, rolling their lips inward, mumbling.

‘…I’ll say it once again…’

The good thing about power was that you could act recklessly and laugh out loud like the man who was cackling hard behind me…

On the other hand, people without power have to close their eyes and hold back their laughter like the poor maids in front of me.

It would’ve been better if they just laughed.

——

Hello! I’m Gina, you may already know me from other projects. I’ll be taking this series starting this chapter~ Good start I must say lol

I hope you like my work, please keep supporting our site as always, and thank you for reading!