“What … what is this?”

  Mira flew up into a sitting position on the strange luxurious bed she was lying on. She couldn’t recognize where she was at all.

  This room was so enormous that it could fit a mini-living room and a bedroom inside it.

  The constant sensation of something wobbling on her head made her feel for it, and she pulled off a cute sleeping mask with a bear’s face on it. Mira looked around in confusion. The faint scent of rose and other types of flowers hit her nose when she opened the nightstand drawer. In it lay labeled jars of hand cream and moisturizer, alongside what looked like a singular rolled-up scroll tied with a thick pink ribbon, but that was it.

  Where was her phone? She was positive she’d fallen asleep with it in her hands last night. Then again, considering her surroundings, maybe the last thing she needed to worry about right now was her phone.

  The walls were pure white save for the accent wall which faced the bed and was painted in pastel pink. On that pink wall hung a giant portrait painting of a beautiful teenage couple—Mira did a double take.

  At second glance, the couple looked very familiar. In fact, they were the spitting images of a couple of characters in the otome game Waiting for Fireflies where the player character could romance various love interests depending on the choices that were made.

  The owner of this bedroom was obviously a huge fan of that game. Mira found it a little weird that the portrait was of Magnus, one of the love interests, and Blythe, the rival character to the heroine, though. Fan merch posters usually featured the heroine Daisy with the love interests.

  The glass coffee table sitting on the large pastel pink rug in front of the portrait held a bunch of embroidery tools, a few square fabric pieces, and what looked like a handkerchief in an embroidery hoop. To her right, a large aesthetically pleasing study desk with multiple drawers and a cozy-looking armchair sat at the other side of the room. There was a set of white double doors with golden handles on that wall.

  To her left, a white vanity dresser cluttered with what seemed to be makeup and skincare products stood beside a door made of frosted glass. The shadows cast from behind it indicating that it might be a bathroom. The single door, which Mira guessed was the exit, on the last wall stood out from the rest of the room for its dark wood color.

  The foreignness of this environment stirred up her heartbeat.

  She shouldn’t be here. But if she was in trouble, why was she lying on such a soft, comfortable bed and surrounded by all these fancy things?

  The morning urge to use the restroom couldn't be ignored any longer—she rose to her feet and went to what she assumed was the bathroom. She gaped at the large gilded clawfoot bathtub that greeted her when she opened the door. What kind of opulent place was this?

  After using the toilet, she padded over to the sink to wash her hands. She lifted her head for a cursory glance at the large mirror affixed to the wall atop the sink—and stared.

  A pretty girl with a heart-shaped face, emerald green eyes, and shining black hair stared back at her. Heartbeat loud in her ears now, Mira nearly choked on her own saliva. Her oval face, blonde hair, and brown eyes were gone.

  "Excuse me?!”

  She was too flabbergasted to care that no one was around to hear it.

  The girl's every movement paralleled hers, her eyes widening in shock and her mouth agape just as Mira was doing.

  Now that she thought about it, the voice that had just come out of her mouth didn't sound like hers.

  "Who is this?!" This clear, delicate voice definitely wasn’t hers. So why was it coming out of her mouth?

  Purple light flashed across her sight for a split second, and then a few translucent pink windows, akin to those of game menus that she could pull up while playing her beloved RPGs and otome games, appeared in front of her, suspended at her eye level.

  Blythe Ridge, the girl in the portrait hanging on the wall in the room.

  Blythe, the villainess in the otome game with stat-raising elements she'd recently completed 100 percent, having unlocked the secret character and gotten all of the game endings.

  In fact, she'd just finished that game yesterday.

  Obviously, this was a lucid dream fueled by the numerous isekai stories she used to consume obsessively until her latest preoccupation.

  ???

  The night before …

  “Why are all these transmigrated villainesses so dense?” Mira groaned to herself while holding her phone in bed.

  She’d been binge-reading yet another web novel about an office lady who’d transmigrated into an otome game as the villainess trying to escape death flags by being kind. These stories had an addictive quality to them, especially the parts where characters were stunned by the villainess’ sudden transformation.

  But a common trope in them drove her crazy—the heroine somehow kept thinking doom was around the corner. Even after becoming a literal saint and curing the trauma of the love interests and various other characters, she still fretted about getting executed or exiled like the original storyline would call for in the good ending of a route.

  “If I were her, I’d just be living my best life as the duke’s daughter,” she said to her phone screen, which did not respond. “It’s so obvious that all these guys have a thing for her. She’s long since changed the original storyline, and she’s still stressing out about avoiding death flags?”

  Sometimes, when Mira was enjoying a Saturday alone at home while her parents were out on a date, she would rant to herself about whichever story she was reading or otome game she was playing.

  Nobody could hear her anyway.

  These were what she liked to call her mini-vacation days. Invisible at school, she had only one friend to hang out with sometimes. Today, though, her friend was busy with her part-time job, so Mira was enjoying some quality time with herself and her otome games. She wasn’t up to leaving the house anyway; the headache that had been pestering her since morning hadn’t gone away. She’d been having frequent migraines recently.

  She’d just completed the last ending there was in Waiting for Fireflies and was celebrating the occasion with one of her favorite web novels that had just updated. Despite its cliche shortcomings, she really did enjoy how the female main character was able to subvert events that were originally supposed to happen in the game she'd been transported into.

  She rolled over to stick her hand in the giant bowl of buttered popcorn she'd left on the floor by her bed.

  As she ate her large mouthful of popcorn, Mira continued reading the chapter. The female main character had just expressed her confusion at the blatant confession of romantic feelings by one of the love interests.

  Mira groaned in frustration when she again read that the female main character tried to puzzle out why the event hadn't played out in the same way as it did in the game.

  "How often are you going to be confused?!"

  She rolled over onto her stomach, shaking her head.

  "Man, it must be nice to just wake up as the villainess in these stories. All they have to do is live a cushy life as the daughter of a duke and stop bullying the original heroine. Easy.”

  If it were her, she would never be caught whining about how bizarre it was that the game's love interests all seemed to be more keen on her than the original heroine. Clearly, these 'villainesses' had already changed the storyline by their actions. The way they kept wondering why the events hadn't panned out like in the original game was so absurd.

  Her headache intensified, and Mira let her phone drop onto her bed.

  It was time to sleep it off with an evening nap. Maybe she would wake up in a few hours for a midnight snack …

  ???

  All of this had to be a vivid dream. There was no other explanation for it.

  She pinched her forearm, but nothing happened aside from a sharp pain shooting up her arm. Did pain ring this sharply in lucid dreams?

  Mira squinted at the game interface-like menu again, frowning in thought at some of the values.

  What kind of skill was Villainy? She understood that Blythe was the villainess of this otome game, but she couldn’t imagine any kind of scenario where Villainy would be needed as a skill.

  She hadn’t known Blythe had a brother. And while it made sense that her favorability with her parents was infinite, the negative points in favorability she had with Magnus was alarming.

  Having played as Daisy Willoughby for the entire Waiting for Fireflies game, Mira tried to recall whatever details of Blythe that she could.

  Some of her backstory was revealed in Prince Magnus’ route. At age eleven, Blythe had fallen in love with Magnus at first sight upon attending a royal ball thrown for the children of nobility. Her doting father then brought it up to King Abel, who was delighted to hear that his beloved friend's daughter had taken such a great liking to his son.

  As a result, owing to her father's great influence and favor with the king, Blythe managed to secure her engagement to Prince Magnus.

  Due to his own indifference regarding the matter, although he didn't return the same romantic interest, Magnus hadn't objected to the engagement.

  He kept an open mind about Blythe, and everything seemed to go well until they entered the royal academy at age thirteen. There they met Daisy Willoughby, whom Blythe despised for managing to draw Magnus' attention despite being a mere daughter of a baron.

  Although Magnus was simply being friendly to a fellow studious classmate, Blythe's insecurity manifested in petty acts of bullying and egregious condescension towards Daisy. Her increasingly unbecoming behavior drove a wedge between them, destroying even the platonic affections Magnus had for her.

  That had to explain the dismal number of favorability points she had with him.

  Waiting for Fireflies began in their fourth year at the royal academy, by which point Magnus had already grown tired of Blythe’s unjustified antagonism towards someone he viewed merely as a friendly classmate, deeming her as someone unfit to be his future wife. Unfortunately for him, the king thought they were a great match—Blythe knew how to be respectful before him—and believed Magnus’ desire to break off the engagement stemmed from teenage capriciousness.

  Mira remembered that in all the good endings, Blythe would be sentenced to execution for attempted murder. With the favor Daisy earned from whichever boy whose route she was on, the attempts on her life were viewed as especially egregious and unbefitting of one elected as the crown prince’s fiancée. No matter which route the player chose, Blythe’s mental state would deteriorate throughout the game, especially once Daisy became popular among the love interests in the common route, until the end where she would try to get rid of Daisy once and for all.

  Shaking her head, Mira noticed that the game-like menu had vanished some time during her rumination. She left the bathroom and sat back down on the edge of the soft bed. The pink bedsheet and blanket were smooth and cool under her fingers. If this was a dream, why did the textures feel so real?

  She started at the sound of a knock on the single wooden door.

  "Lady Blythe, good morning," came a young feminine voice.

  In her panic, Mira called back, "Good morning."

  What was she supposed to do in a situation like this? What was she supposed to say in this situation?

  The ensuing silence from the unseen girl outside the room as Mira ransacked the room with her gaze for what to do next was deafening.

  Why hadn't she said anything back? Were they supposed to be having a conversation?

  It was just a dream, so it wouldn't be a problem if she went to open the door and see who was outside, right?

  Mira strode over and pulled the doors open. A brown-haired girl, dressed in a maid's uniform of a black long-sleeved dress and a white apron, who looked about the same age stood before her, carrying a tray with a teapot and teacup on it. Her shock was evident by how her large brown eyes widened.

  Mira shifted uncomfortably under the attention.

  “Lady Blythe … ?”

  “Yes?” she asked finally, realizing that this girl had in fact been posing a question as opposed to trailing off in a sentence.

  She didn’t think this girl’s eyes could have grown even wider than they already had.

  Slowly and cautiously, she said, “May I come in to help you get ready, my lady?”

  Mira froze. Get ready? What did she need to get ready for?

  Who is this person?

  The same purple light from earlier flashed across her eyes again.

  She blinked in surprise, and a window similar to what she’d seen before popped up just in front of the girl. The latter didn’t react in any way that indicated she could see the suspended window.

  This dream was becoming beyond bizarre.

  Well, that made things clearer. Suzy was obviously wary of Blythe, who was known to be hard on her servants and maids. It was a tidbit Mira had picked up from obsessively playing through Waiting for Fireflies for a whole month.

  She looked past the information window back at Suzy. The moment her gaze shifted away from focusing on it, it disappeared.

  Deciding to test out the limits of this dream, she said, “Get ready for what?”

  A strange expression flickered over Suzy’s face for a second. “To help you get ready for the day, my lady?”

  That made sense. As the daughter of a duke, Blythe would have assistance in preparing for the day ahead.

  “Come in, then,” she said, trying to affect the entitled air that she saw in Blythe while playing the game.

  Suzy followed her into the room, setting the wooden tray down on the coffee table before the giant portrait. Mira settled down on the armchair in front of the vanity and watched her pour out a light-colored liquid into the white teacup with a pink floral design.

  She brought it over with its saucer, placing it on the vanity in front of Mira.

  Pressured, Mira brought the teacup to her lips and inhaled the steam coming off the surface. The scent of chamomile hit her nose. She exhaled through her nose in relief before taking a sip. The warm tea relaxed her senses and eased the tension in her muscles.

  It was only when she had finished washing her face and was seated in front of her vanity, having skincare carefully applied to her face by Suzy that Mira realized how vivid the sensations of everything was. The refreshing feel of the water as she splashed it over her face, the gentleness of the linen towel against her skin as she dried herself, the rubbing of moisturizer in small circular motions over parts of her face …

  As Suzy moved on to brushing her hair, Mira’s stomach lurched.

  If this was truly a dream, why did everything feel so real?

  Suzy had just finished putting small braids and a few sparkly flower hair clips in her wavy black hair when another knock on the bedroom door came.

  “Lady Blythe, His Highness, Prince Magnus, has arrived and is waiting in the drawing room for you.”

  Mira nearly choked on her own saliva. Now? Was she about to meet the prince she had negative favorability points with right now?