The next time Lady Joanna woke up, she was still in that damned, luxurious bedroom. She sprang up straight and eyed the decorated furniture in disbelief, before plopping back down in the bed with a resigned sigh. This was infuriating, and this was going nowhere.

Lazily, her eyes drifted over to one of the excessively large windows of the room that overlooked the rose garden of the Winsten manor.

The scenery outside the window was dark and quiet, but one could already see the slowly reddening sky in the eastern horizon, where the clouds parted wistfully in the cusp of breaking dawn. The red roses of the garden sparkled in full bloom, and the bubblebirds were returning to their nests after a night full of foraging. Against the backdrop of Mt. Casterwing in the north, and the ever autumnal forest of Sandora in the west, the Winsten manor of Triciella stood in a picturesque landscape that would drive most people green with envy.

The young lady Joanna was currently one of those people.

You cannot blame her, really. Until yesterday, she was a ‘Joanna Stuart’, a mere office lady in a vastly different world, where there were no luxurious manors, gaudy gowns or diligent maids around, and certainly not some ugly-looking, pink feathered abomination called “bubblebird”. She would go to work in a nine-to-five job, get her unhealthy meals from the office cafeteria and look for new excuses to avoid the drinking parties with colleagues. Come late evening, she would stumble back into her three room apartment, clean up the day’s mess and then watch the news while having whatever cheap, packed food she could find for dinner.

A very ordinary life of an ordinary person, if you will.

All was well. Not exactly the most ambitious life, but a comfortable routine that needed no change.

Until she landed in this thrice damned world of fiction.

Joanna wasn’t exactly the smartest cookie in the jar, but even she could instantly recognize the word ‘Winsten manor’ when she heard it. The name had stuck to her when she had played that ridiculous romantic game called “Gliding magic, United hearts…” or some such shit. Courtesy of Gracie, Joanna’s childhood friend and an avid lover of all things lovey-dovey, who had brought over the shitty game in their last sleepover and then shoved the pink-laden disk forcefully into her hands. “Look Joe, I know that this isn’t your cup of tea, but trust me when I say that this game is amaaaazing!” Gracie had said with hearts in her eyes, drawing out the last word as much as possible. Joanna had taken one look at the title of the game and cringed for a solid minute out of second hand embarrassment.

There was no negotiating with Gracie. The woman’s persuasive skills would put the most seasoned salesman to shame, and Joanna was a mere human being. So they had played the stupid game all night in various degrees of enthusiasm (and horror) and ended up sleeping through the morning next day. The game was as corny as it had sounded, with little to no difference from all other similar games of the same genre. Unfortunately, Gracie was a fan of such genres, and so Joanna was forced to play it a few more times through sheer boredom.

The game was set in a fantasy world, and revolved around the kingdom of Triciella. There was a king and a queen, a handful of fancily named noble houses, an order of knights, convenient magic spells and evil powers. Like all its predecessors, the game had a chosen one, the one who would battle the evil powers and emerge as a savior of the kingdom. The chosen one was the heroine, a beautiful (obviously) golden-haired girl with a kind heart (obviously), who was the illegitimate child (again, obviously) of a noble and a commoner, complete with a rare form of magic that could, very conveniently, dispel the evil powers that no one else could. She was supposed to be this sweet, innocent maiden, with a touch of naiveté that would apparently be more popular in the market (Gracie’s words, not hers). And she would go on a journey to discover her fate, make allies, hone her magic skills, fall in love with one of the endless supplies of mysterious, handsome boys who turn out to be princes, save the kingdom, yada yada.

Stolen story; please report.

Of course, not everything could be smooth sailing for the destined heroine, so the game had introduced the ever clichéd obstacles in the form of social stigma and jealous nobles. There was also a villainess created for the sole purpose of getting in the way of her slowly blossoming love-life --- a very one-dimensional and vain villainess, fiancée of the country’s prince, whose world revolved around raising hell for the heroine in every way imaginable. She was, very predictably, a distasteful woman with noble birth, and carried around a ‘bewitching sort of beauty’ that was somehow supposed to make the (waaay more beautiful) heroine insecure about herself.

Joanna had put down the controller and given Gracie a deadpan stare, after the latter was finished recounting the synopsis of the game. It was hilarious how someone could come up with a plot like this, but then daydreaming girls that actually bought this crap were way more gullible. Either that, or perhaps they were too obsessive with lovey-dovey like Gracie.

She had actually felt sorry for the villainess who had to watch her fiancé be taken away by such a dumb heroine. But then again, the villainess wasn’t the most redeemable character in the first place, either.

And now, the former office worker was currently hogging the body of the same villainess she had been pitying before --- the infamous Lady Joanna Winsten, the eldest daughter of Lord Winsten of Triciella.

Fate sure was having too much fun at her expense.

“The game is like, soooo addicting, isn’t it Joe?” Gracie had gushed after their excruciating sixth play, swooning like a maiden in love, “It totally gets you sucked in!”

It just literally sucked me in, Grace. Joanna thought miserably.

There was literally no preamble. She had gone to bed normally the night before, and woken up smack dab in the bedroom of Lady Joanna, the villainess. W hen she’d opened her bleary eyes, an unfamiliar sight had greeted her. The ceiling was carved with all sorts of gem-studded, gilded designs, and had almost given the poor woman a heart attack. She had thrown away the fluffy blankets and sprung up from bed, almost tripping over her feet before finding herself in front of the lavishly decorated silver mirror. The freckled, pre-pubescent face that was staring back at her was not her own, but that of a strangely familiar one.

Even the horrified, strangled scream that had torn out from her mouth sounded whiny and childish to the ears.

She hadn’t even noticed the maids that had come running into the bedroom until they spoke up behind her.

It is the Winsten manor, one of the maids had answered her blankly. And then it had suddenly dawned upon her like a lightning strike, why the face in the mirror was looking so uncomfortably familiar. It was the same pathetic face of that video game villainess who wore a perpetual sneer as her default expression. She had gone to sleep as Joanna Stuart, and had woken up as the villainess Joanna Winsten. If it weren’t her own problem, she would have probably laughed out hysterically. But the problem was hers, and she was sweating buckets. It was a special kind of nightmare that she wouldn’t even wish upon her worst enemy.

In the present, Lady Joanna the villainess was squirming nervously in her soft, fluffy bed. Last evening, she had hoped, rather foolishly in hindsight, that she would probably wake up from this dream if she just went to sleep again. This morning, the reality had slapped her back in the face again --- this was no mere dream. This was as real as the freckles on her face and the satin silk of the bed sheets.

The sun had risen completely by now, and the morning mist was clearing into a crisp, summer sparkle. Joanna was busy biting her nails in contemplation when her stomach gave out a loud rumble. Belatedly, she realized that she had gone to bed without dinner last night. Hunger jolted her awake into awareness as soon as she realized this. The girl shook her head and stood up from bed.

Now this was a dilemma. Technically, she was not the real Joanna Winsten. At this point, she was just an intruder in the manor, a victim if you will, having woken up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But such technicalities aside, currently she was also Joanna Winsten, at least in the same body. So it would, maybe, probably, undoubtedly, not be very unethical to call one of the maids and ask for some breakfast. Surely, they wouldn’t want their skinny little Lady to starve first thing in the morning?

Her stomach rumbled again. This time, the pang of hunger came in thousand folds.

Screw ethics, she thought at last, I’mma do what I want.

Lady Joanna, the former office worker and hater of all stupid lovey-dovey games that dragged unprepared players into their world willy-nilly, slipped into the most normal looking dress she could find from the closet and stepped out of the room with a determined look on her face.

And almost crashed head-first into a maid standing outside her door.