Teaser from the future of the story:

No, no, I could fix this! I could still fix this!

My entire body was trembling. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to collapse and cry and beg the man to just calm down. To promise him that I would be okay. To promise that I wouldn’t do anything stupid or get hurt again.

I couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe? I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die and everything was going to go wrong and-and I needed to undo this. I needed to say something. Anything!

I could fix this. I could still fix this, right?

Right?

Oh god.

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Once upon a time, in a fantasy land full of magic and dragons and unicorns and happiness, there was a girl. Everyone in the kingdom loved the girl unconditionally. Not only was she the most beautiful person in the world, but she was also the kindest soul one could ever have met. Born a princess with all the power, wealth, and happiness she could ever want, she lived her life beautifully. Handsome men from all over the country would come just to be her husband, and everyone would wish to serve her should they have the chance. The girl wasn’t a happy one, though.

No, how could she be? She had everything she ever wanted. So the princess grew bored, and she turned down all kinds of beautiful men and expensive gifts. Even her slaves would do anything for her regardless if the kind-hearted princess released them. It was a curse to the princess, but she couldn’t complain.

Of course she couldn’t. If she so wished, she could own the entire world, and all the species within it. From Elven men to the Fae to intimidating dragons, everyone desired this princess.

Which wasn’t a good thing, to her. For while she was kind-hearted, a lot of her followers weren’t. A lot of her lovers and a lot of her followers were very dark, cruel, obsessive individuals. In their love for her, they killed, and they died, and they fought.

Wars were born as kings and princes of differing kingdoms abducted the princess, and soon all the beautiful princess had left was the burning ruins of a world that had destroyed itself. Everything she had loved had been taken from her.

Had she simply done as the world had asked, and become their leader, maybe the world wouldn’t have been destroyed. However, kind-hearted as she was, the princess had no intention of taking on the tough rule of leadership that her twin so desired.

It ended in her ruin, and the destruction of a world even the gods had withdrawn from.

The only thing left was the crying princess, and the cruel-hearted immortal lovers she had gained.

This world is called The Curse of Perfection, and it is seen in many different worlds as an erotica novel. Of course, the story is a true one, simply passed between the veil of worlds as a wonderful idea to spread.

Or that’s how it’s written in the note after the book. That wasn’t really an ending, though. Which made sense, it wasn’t fully finished.

I really, really regretted reading it. All of my favorite characters either died or ended up becoming yandere douchebags that were totally out of character! Sure, some started that way, but the demon king or lord or whatever had been hoping for peace! Why would he suddenly start a war for the princess’s hand in marriage?

This wasn’t The Curse of Perfection, this was The Curse of a Mary Sue Wish-Fulfillment Story! Which is why I started it, obviously, but the main character was so goddamned stupid.

If you see someone who’s crazy and would even kill to have you, you don’t just tell them not to hurt anyone! You tell them to bow down before you. You take control so the feral dogs don’t attack others!

And what even were these characters? All of my favorites were either logical, clever, or cunning, but the end was so biased by viewers! I bet there were even polls, because a lot of individuals that should have just died or vanished suddenly became immortal and made of cardboard to chase after the idiot princess.

I sighed, rereading a description of the princess. A fair maiden with straight mud brown hair down to her waist and eyes like charcoal, freckles covering her skin. She didn’t even sound cute. She sounded average. In the manhwa she looked average, despite her giant overdone proportions, though they’d given her pink hair in the manwha adaptation of the webnovel. She had no redeeming qualities outside of weak-hearted and useless.

Someone with such great power allowed so many people to die because she refused to assert dominance? I mean, sure, surrounded by guys so hot they were outside the realm of possibility, who wouldn’t want to be submissive, but seriously?

The dumb princess killed her own world because she couldn’t tell some dumb goblins, dragons, elves, and humans to calm the hell down and be her loyal subjects!

I sighed, staring at the book in my lap. Then I stood up, chucking it with all my might. It slammed into the wall, and I walked over, fury filling me as I continued abusing the book until it was hardly more than shreds of paper.

What’s the point of creating wonderful characters with intricate backstories if you just remove their free will? You know what half the characters would have done had they had their own free will and could think outside of I love this 2D plain bitch?

They would have made the story interesting! They would have given the story plot! They would have lived and breathed and been as human as any author could make them!

It was such a shame the author was a piece of shit who wanted to write stupid porn instead of a beautiful story.

Shifting, I slumped against my wall, sitting next to the remains of the book I’d destroyed, curling around myself.

But the story would never have been as popular as it was unless they massacred their characters to do it.

Tears filled my eyes, and I curled around myself tighter.

The next book and the book after and the whole goddamned series just sucked. They put so much effort into really diving deep into each main character’s backstory. Even some of the side-characters had in-depth backstories! They put so much effort into the setting, they described the magic and how to use it so intricately…

The world felt as alive as I was.

So why did all the characters have to be cardboard in the face of that stupid princess?

“I wish I could go there, if only to punch them all in the goddamned face. What a disgrace to themselves,” I muttered.

Closing my eyes, I imagined it.

The princess right in front of me. So beautiful, and kind, and goddamned stupid. I imagined myself reaching out, tearing her stupid tear-shaped necklace off her stupid neck, and punching her right in the face.

I opened my eyes, standing up and throwing the punch at her illusory appearance. The necklace snapped off in my hands, and my fist hurt more than it should. I was breathing heavily, staring down at the surprised princess.

I tried crushing the cyan-colored crystal in my palm, but I wasn’t strong enough to, the necklace cutting into my skin and causing blood to drip out of my palm, staining the gemstone. I stared at the plain girl for a long moment, breathing heavily.

The wind blew, and I glanced to the side.

A large garden spread out before me, tall trees with beautifully delicate flowers of every shade in the spectrum of human sight rose high above. A rainbow of petals flowed down, each individual petal seeming almost iridescent and mesmerizing.

All around us, cute men stood. Actually, a lot of people were around. Did I imagine myself punching her so hard that I manifested a hallucination? This area… was it the palace gardens? Didn’t it get destroyed in the first actually interesting scene of the erotica due to a giant fight over the princess’s hand in marriage or something?

The midpoint of the first book… Damn. That means everyone in the story was still alive. What a utopia, I mused.

“U-um, wh-who are—I mean, are y-you okay, sister?” The princess asked.

I looked back to her, rage building up at the sight of her stupid face, which looked nothing like her manwha counterpoint. Despite her poor description, she was actually very beautiful.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Her hair wasn’t the color of mud but of chocolate, silken strands gracefully caressing down her form. Her skin wasn’t “ivory”, but a gentle deep sand color that made the gemstone freckles all over her seem all the more beautiful. Her figure wasn’t too big, a perfect hourglass shape with curves in all the right places and soft smooth skin in all the flat or delicate places. Her face was ethereal, and her entire appearance made her look like a goddess.

Which pissed me off.

“You fucking loser,” I drawled flatly, “If you have a bajillion hot guys coming after you, you could just fucking have all of them, you twit. Do you know how dumb it is to let stupidly obsessive people take control over you? No, no, you know what you should do, you sack of donkey crap? You should either choose one of them and tell the rest to fuck off or you should just take control! Is that so hard? What are you, brain-dead? You’re the most powerful individual in the kingdom with literally every boon you could possibly receive, beyond what most people could even conceive of within their wildest of dreams, and you decide to not use any of it and become a damsel in distress when some assholes decide to take you as theirs?”

I shook my head, flipping my crimson red hair over my shoulder, my elegant Gothic red dress sparkling in the light.

“You should be using your abilities for yourself! Stop being a selfless cunt and be selfish for once! Do you know how satisfying it would be to have a hot bastard kneeling at your feet, sweaty and scraped up because you kicked his ass for being so impudent as to—“ Wait what? I had brown hair, why was my hair red, “As to…”

I glanced around again, pain in my palm causing me to look at the gemstone. The ethereal glow it held was dyed red by my blood.

Oh. Did I hallucinate myself as the petty villainess? The second most beautiful woman in the world, or whatever? Looking at my skin, I saw the darker gemstone colors appearing on my nails and occasionally appearing in spots on my skin.

With how plain and uncolored the main character was, the villainess was a pretty vibrant individual. Really they were mostly just the same, except instead of wearing only whites and blues the villainess wore only blacks and reds. Looking up, I saw the princess giving me a dazed look, still holding her cheek and collapsed on the floor.

Wasn’t I just projecting my own insecurities on her? I shouldn’t take it out on my poor hallucinations.

I sighed, crouching as I held out the cyan gemstone.

“Okay, fine, I’m sorry, princess. I’m really sorry. I just… you can’t let people use and abuse you like that, you know? You can say no, you know? So stop… stop acting helpless when you’re not. I know what being helpless really is like, and you really need to stop taking your enormous power for granted. So here. Take the gem, go back to your life, and maybe step on some throats instead of letting them be stupid and hold you by yours.”

The beautiful goddess flushed, eyes without pupils staring down at the silver gemstone. Carefully, she took it from my hands, putting it back around her neck. I sighed, staring at my own blood covering her. It slowly dripped off the crystal, its cyan nature revealing itself as my blood was slowly absorbed into it.

Jester was right.

“You really do look beautiful covered in blood. Of course, you look beautiful no matter what you do,” I mused.

The author hadn’t mentioned her freckles had the appearance of gemstones. She and I looked like we’d fallen into a void of rainbows and came out with specks of our internal glass-like rainbows still showing through our skin.

Hers were all bright and cool-colored, and mine were all dark and warm-colored. That meant my eyes were my favorite color, right? Eyes as green as emeralds and pupils a dark forest color that was almost black.

It was the only reflection between her and I that we didn’t share. She had black eyes, not whatever the opposite of green was. Purple? I mean maybe she just had really dark purple eyes. I really couldn’t tell just staring at her as I was. Neither she nor I had gotten up, yet. No, wait.

If I was the villainess of the first three books, didn’t that mean I was her twin sister?

A heartbroken fate that her sister only older by a few seconds grew wretched as she was overshadowed by the kind-hearted princess. As time went on, word spread that the kind-hearted princess was the most beautiful woman in the world, her mean-spirited twin an evil snake in disguise.

The author had an issue with run-on sentences. It was an erotica, though, so who cared? Most were just there for the sex scenes, which were actually pretty good.

So the main character’s name was obviously Aphrodite, but what was her sister’s name again? The series had five books, and her twin didn’t appear very often, despite being the main villainess in the story. Most of the conflict in the story came more from men than her sister.

Wasn’t her sister killed or something? Sold off? … Married off to her uncle? I think she kind of just vanished, didn’t she? Off-screen death?

“Princess Persephone!” Someone snapped.

Oh! Right! Her name was Persephone. Didn’t the Demon Lord have an attraction to her before he saw Aphrodite?

It was at this garden party that he’d lost interest in Persephone and started gaining an interest in Aphrodite, right?

Looking up, I saw a man with hair that looked like glass, each strand a rainbow. On his head was a golden crown, royal purple robes with gray fluff thrown over his shoulder.

Wasn’t the current king the offspring of an elemental of light or something?

Well, if I was Persephone, that meant this dude was… Uhh… What was his name again?

“Well hello there, father,” I said, standing up as I wiped my hand off on my dress. The moment he got close enough, my fist lashed out.

The silence that had only just broken reoccurred as I stared down at the most incompetent father on the planet.

“You are a fucking idiot, you piece of shit father!” I snapped out, heeled foot snapping out and my father collapsing next to my twin sister as he got kicked in the side, “You have a beautiful daughter that literally everyone desires and you just leave her be? Even if you don’t want to marry her off and want her to make her own decisions, do you know how fucking depraved half the people here are? They’re all already thinking of fucking her brains out, what’s with you? Do you think she just doesn’t need protection or something? Do you want your daughter to be raped or fucking abused by some asshole just because our precious princess—my younger sister—is too fucking good to keep herself safe? At least teach her some fucking self-defense you lunatic. You act like you love her, but I think you don’t! I think you actually hate her, and only care for-for Pe—me, because why else would you only protect me when she’s the one needing protection!? She’s innocent, and naive, and a genuinely good person, and you’re not having her learn anything about how shitty people in general are! She’s going to be used as a whore to whoever wants her if you don’t step up and do your job as her father and protect her! Seriously, are you brain-dead too?” I snapped, stepping lightly on my father’s stomach with each point I made.

I didn’t want to actually hurt him. But he deserved to be punched in the face. And kicked a little.

“And to you all!” I snapped, turning to the crowd.

Everyone except one took a step back, some growing pale as I pointed at them.

“If any of you get anywhere near this stupid fucking bastard, I’ll fucking kill you. You do not deserve her, you are not worthy of her, you are miserable pieces of shit that have to go through this entire planet before you can fucking touch her. Get those depraved thoughts out of your stupid heads, and kneel before the future empress before I cut off all of your fucking legs and force you to.”

My rant wasn’t finished, but everyone suddenly was on the ground, their foreheads pressed to the ground.

“All hail the Silver Empire!” Someone called, the others mimicking them.

The surprise of the sudden actions made me lose steam in my rant.

I looked at all of the characters, recognizing a few that weren’t kneeling quite as deeply. That one with red hair and glasses was Jester. The one with white hair and blue eyes and darker blue clothes was Star. The dark-haired man that was kneeling the least with hair flowing down his back and eyes like crimson was the Demon Lord. The guy with short golden hair and golden eyes was her pet knight, Logan. The guy not kneeling with long golden hair and eyes that shone like sunlight was the Fae King. The—

“Oh, you think you’re exempt?” I said, crossing my arms as I stared at the Fae King, “If you have any depraved thoughts of my sister I will remove your legs to force you to kneel at her feet.”

The Fae King smiled as he swirled the white wine in his glass around, “Do we need to kneel if we have no intentions to pursue your sister, your highness?”

I tilted my head, thinking. Right. The Fae King wasn’t actually interested in the princess until after the Demon Lord showed interest, right?

“Nah. Not unless you’re part of the kingdom, anyway,” I agreed, gaze moving on.

The guy with long light blue hair and sky blue eyes kneeling at “my sister”’s side was her servant, Sora.

Looking around, I found myself disappointed at the lack of short and long green hair, as well as the lack of “cold duke to the north” types, no short black hair in sight of the rainbow-haired people kneeling.

After a long moment, I nodded, reaching out and dragging the princess to her feet and gesturing.

“This is what you should be doing, instead of being a stupid fucking pushover who lets men and women alike walk all over you, Aph,” I glanced at the main character, nudging her as she stared, face extremely red, at the people kneeling before her, “See? Otherwise you’ll have a bunch of idiots fighting to have you when you don’t want any of them. The best way to tame an asshole is to step on their throats.”

Nodding, I sighed out. Wow, that was cathartic. Okay. This hallucination can end, now.

… …

I glanced around, rubbing at my shoulder. Uh… Shit. Did I need to be hospitalized? Why wasn’t the scenery fading?

Turning, I walked a few steps back, reaching out for a wall. There wasn’t one, and I tripped on my own expectations.

Arms wrapped around me. Looking up, I met crimson eyes.

“Careful, princess,” The Demon Lord murmured to me from way too close.

His arms were warm and tight around me, and the way his breath ghosted over my face as he spoke was very realistic.

…

Why…

No, wait.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Oh,” I realized, taking a step away, turning to face the king, who was standing, looking dumbfounded, “Shit, I just punched you in the face, huh?”