I’m A Villainess, Can I Die? - Chapter 18

People were confused by my sudden appearance. If this was a play, it would be accurate to say that the audience suddenly stormed in.

My lovely attention seeker Mia would have loved this situation. I closed my eyes shut for a moment, then opened them.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you to speak so lightly?”

Lucas, who was standing behind the man speaking informally, replied with an unusual stern face. A chill filled his voice.

Seeing that cold look, the man who had been wielding his cane proudly until just now, flinched. I grabbed the end of Lucas’s clothes as he approached the man in anger.

‘No, not you.’

Lucas, who was looking down at my hand holding his clothes, took a step back.

“Are you talking informally to me because we have never seen each other?”

In my words, the man wrinkled his eyebrows and blinked. I guess it was scary when Lucas spoke, but not when I spoke.

“Haa, looks like you’re a noble lady who doesn’t know anything about the world… I’m just giving this little boy a life lesson right now. Don’t get in the way and go your own way, my lady.”

The man pulled out his neck and squeezed his molars as if he was trying to threaten me.

He was probably not attention-seeker Mia’s father. Probably not. The Marquis wouldn’t make a fuss in the Duke’s territory. If not the father, this man deserved to be the godfather of our attention seeker Mia. I thought it would a good idea to learn his name and introduce him to her.

By the way… If Lucas didn’t know him, that meant that he was not a famous nobleman… was that why he was so confident treating me like this? If one used their image to step on the ones below them that much, they should do the same and bow deep in front of their superiors.

‘A person must earnestly follow one path only.’

However, looking at his face, he didn’t think I was a person with a higher status than him.

So I looked at the man and tilted my head, then moved my gaze to the man’s cane. Following my silent gaze to it, the man turned his eyes to the cane too. I trudged in front of him and grabbed the cane with my hand.
The man, helpless at my sudden action, winded his eyes, seeing he had lost the cane out of his wobbly hands.

As soon as he realized the situation, the man’s expression turned pale. I grabbed the cane with both hands and…

Pak!

I directed it to one knee. The wooden cane made a snapping sound and split in two.

‘Ah… My knee hurts so much. Aishh, it really hurts. Maybe my knee is broken. I should have asked Lucas to do it… I’m sure he’s good… ah… it really hurts…’

As I dwelled on my pain, the man, who snapped, shouted.

“This… What is this! Have you ever seen such rudeness and disrespect! Call the guards… call the guards right now!”

When a loud roar resounded, the coachman, who had been standing behind the man, hurriedly ran away. People were looking at me like I was a crazy b*tch.

‘Anyway, if you decide to create an accident, you have to be brazen.’

Meddling is annoying, but if you ever meddled in a situation, you had to at least create an accident worthy of your energy.

A familiar squeaky sound was heard amid the man’s screams. As I looked back, I saw the child’s eyes widen as he looked upwards. Following the little boy’s gaze… As expected, Lucas, the main culprit of that giggle, was covering his mouth to prevent his laughter from leaking out.

At such a familiar sight, I shook my head as if telling the boy, ‘Don’t mind him. That guy is just crazy.’ Of course, in the eyes of that kid, I may have seemed even crazier.

I calmly fixed my eyes on the man in front of me again. He was doing something like a tap dance, as if he was trying to gather all the anger of the universe.

‘What kind of nobleman who seeks elegance gets angry and moves around like that…’

In any case, it was clear that he was truly a person with no status. While appreciating this tedious unaccompanied dance, a skinny coachman with two armored guards rushed from behind.

“What’s going on?”

The two guards looked at the man jumping around, then fixed their eyes on me.

‘They might think I was the one who called them. Let’s just let them think like that.’
I answered the guard’s question on behalf of the very enraged man.

“That man’s cane smashed my knee.”

Then I pointed to the cane lying on the floor.

When I finished my words, people around me made different exclamations. The nobleman in front of me looked at me as if I was talking shit, and the guards looked at the man as if they were watching trash hitting a woman with a can. The child’s hiccups could be heard from behind me. Also, a louder giggle reached my ears. People around me were staring at me with question marks appearing in their eyes.

I groaned and rolled my eyes.

‘Such a colorful scene…’

“What the… Ha! Really!? You can find all sorts of weird ladies in this world! This woman took my cane and smashed it on her knee!”

The man, who had come to his senses, grunted with indignation and pointed his finger at me. The two guards followed the fingertips and looked at me, then turned their gaze back to the man.

“What nonsense are you talking about?!”

‘Yeah, what crap is that.’

The guards began to receive testimonies from the surrounding spectators at the sight of the man whining as if it was unjust.

Eventually, the two returned after hearing the testimonies of several people, looking at me as if they were looking at a strange person and stuttering.

“Wh-why did you break that… cane?”

At the guard’s words, the man folded his arms and looked at me with equal momentum. It was quite pleasant to win the trust of the guard, so the man smiled with his eyes shining.

“It’s not that I broke it, it’s that that man’s cane smashed my knee.”

“No… that’s… there are other people’s testimonies over there… Even if you insist like that…”

Then, after examining me, the other guard’s eyes widened and whispered into the guard’s ear while he was speaking.

‘I guess you already know who I am. As a guard of the Duke’s estate, didn’t you recognize the Duchy’s Princess a bit late? And that nobleman too… In fact, sky-blue hair and eyes aren’t very common, haven’t you heard the rumors? I’m quite sad.’

In fact, my plan was not to break the cane in two at the expense of my knee, but to quietly make that nobleman run away after recognizing me… Apparently, this nobleman was lucky enough to get the invitation and not even see my face once.

As the plan went wrong, I chose the next best option.

“Selen-”

‘Shh.’ I put one finger on my lips to tell them to be quiet.

“Since this noble mam blamed the child even though he almost hit him while driving at a fierce speed in a crowded area, I thought it was okay to express my distaste like that…”

I slowly stopped talking and looked around. Soon, people began to whisper, inserting various “oh my”s, “goodness”es, and so on. Perhaps they realized something in common between my and that man’s behavior. Whether it was a broken cane or a child who was almost hit by a wagon… In the end, the fault fell on the weak who could not speak.

In conclusion, that man’s eccentricity and mine were on the same level.

“I must have made a mistake.”

In front of the mad princess, the two guards stood still, not knowing what to do.

‘Talk about extreme jobs, huh?’

However, unlike the two people who had to deal with extreme jobs, our peacock, who lived a comfortable life with no worries on his mind, came to me while flapping his wings.

“Ha! As a nobleman, I was only educating this commoner child!”

‘Are you really that clueless?’

Even in a situation where my identity was suspicious to anyone who could see me, he kept repeating the same words over and over again.

‘It seems that this peacock wasn’t lucky enough to succeed because he’s so slow-witted…’

“Yes, I was impressed by that and acted the same way. Right, Sir Lucas?”

“Yes, that’s right, my lady.”

Maybe other people around would pick up the important fact that this man was missing… Someone like Lucas. Sir Lucas, who was usually cheeky and called me by my name, was also quick-witted. He deliberately called me ‘Lady’ and took a step closer to me.

Lord Peacock stopped fluttering his wings at the name ‘Lucas’ and lifted a finger as if realizing something.

“Sir Lucas…?”

The man’s face gradually became paler at the name he briefly repeated in his mouth. He didn’t recognize my or Sir Lucas’s face, but he seemed to have recognized his name.

‘Of course, he’s a genius knight who swept the academy attended by nobles, so you must have heard his name.’

Hearing the name, the story about its appearance must have come to mind. Well, it was already too late anyway.

“Sir Lucas, please ask him what my name is. I’ll reward him after.”

The man was now trembling and at a loss. He looked down at the broken cane, then looked up at me, at Lucas next to me, and looked at the kid in the back, frowning… huh? looking at his quick movements within a short period, he resembled a chicken, not a peacock.

“Th- that’s… So Young–”

“Here, the reward.”

Before this ignorant man called my name, I interrupted him and pulled out a pocket. The small pocket contained a few gold coins. It was enough money to buy a cane.

The man waved his hand, but Lucas smiled and placed the pocket in his hand. The nobleman looked at the bag of gold coins in his hand as if it was not just money, but a bunch of poison.

“It was nice to meet you. I hope to see you again later. Please give me those world lessons as well. Because I am a lady who doesn’t know much about the world, after all.”

Without waiting for an answer, I turned back and walked towards the child. He wouldn’t have had anything to say, anyway.

The child, who had been hiccuping, flinched and knelt again as I approached. He seemed to be scared, thinking that I might’ve been of a higher status than that man. He must have thought that all nobles were like poisonous snakes.

‘Well, I just caught a nobleman like a mouse…’

Sir Lucas stepped back to talk with the guards. It was clear that he was trying to find out the identity of Lord Peacock for splendid compensation.

I bent my knees in front of the trembling child and whispered,

“You were lucky today. There are a lot of strange people in the world, so be careful.”