Tammy put her phone down and closed her eyes, she leaned against the back of the couch, her movements devoid of energy.
Her head hurt and her chest felt like it was about to burst.
For the past week, she had been receiving nothing but calls that told her the company she signed up for wasn't looking for anyone new and that she's better off finding work as an engineer elsewhere.
She could freelance but her portfolio and resume are nowhere near enough to even make that a viable option for her, let alone be lucrative enough for her to live off of.
She grabbed her jacket and stood up, well, whatever, she still had over a dozen more companies to wait the answer for, one of them should have an answer that she wanted to hear right?
Tammy certainly hoped so, her savings were starting to run out and she still needed to pay her student loans, if she doesn't get a job by next month, her situation would become quite bad...
But enough about that! Panicking while waiting wouldn't help things get better! She needed to cool off.
There was this cafe, it was comfortable and the ambience wasn't so bad, it was a block away from her apartment, just far enough that she didn't need to waste gas driving there.
Walking helped her calm down... Sometimes- most of the time it just makes her more irritated though.
Tammy looked up, god, why couldn't her world be as simple as Tainted Orchids?
If this world was an otome game, she's sure that she would fare better than she does now, what with the power of friendships and all that helping her out.
Unless she was a villain, the power of friendship didn't work for those guys, and what they had was probably something more sinister, like the power of sacrifice or something, where everything they do has a cost.
Tammy thought about how stupid of a drawback that was for the non good aligned characters to have as the sides of her vision started to go dark.
The world suddenly turned into a blur and before her mind could process what happened, she suddenly fell.
Tammy couldn't respond to the hazy words a concerned passerby asked her as they shook her back and forth.
Whu?-
What was going on?
Everything went dark.
...
Did she pass out from overworking herself again? This always happens, even back in college...
She opened her eyes and saw that she wasn't inside a hospital like she expected, it was in some kind of room.
She turned away from the wooden ceiling and sat up, her bed felt smooth and soft- what's that sweet smell?
She looked around the room and frowned.
This wasn't the hospital room she expected to wake up in. It was more similar to her old room if anything.
The place felt familiar too, somehow. But she couldn't explain why that is.
Something at the back of her head is telling her that it was familiar to her for all the wrong reasons but she couldn't put a finger as to what or why.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Regardless, this is not the hospital and this definitely wasn't her apartment.
Whoever owned this place must have been interested in plants, she wasn't. Never has been really. Okay maybe for a brief period of her life but that was just a phase.
Back to the room, the decor of the place definitely spoke of someone who loved nature; Leafy imagery, the silhouette of trees, and drawn vines were all over the walls.
And these weren't just designs that came with wallpapers either, they were personally hand drawn. Presumably by the owner themselves.
Looking up, she saw that the ceiling, some parts of it at least, also got the same treatment but for some reason, the person doing it stopped at the corners.
She raised a hand to try and touch the ceiling and found out that she couldn't reach it, hm? Weird.
She got out of bed and made her way to the mirror.
With each step, the sense of familiarity she felt increased, and when she got to the mirror, she understood why.
White hair, red eyes, and black nails that, with a flex of her fingers, elongated into claws.
She now had a doll-like face and it didn't look like the wisened alchemist she knew but she could still recognize who this was.
Who she is- was-
... Wait, w-who was she before coming here? Why couldn't she remember her own name? Why was the memory of her original face replaced by the one she was looking at in the mirror?
What was going on-
"Thariel?! Are you okay?!" A concerned voice came from the other side of the door. This must be... So she was still alive?
"I am!" Thariel replied, hiding her internal panic.
Did Damphirs even feel panic? Weren't they half vampires? Undead don't feel panic, those guys were immune to that type of debuff in the game-
... Wait, why was she so sure she's in that game already?
"I heard screaming, are you sure?" Another question, this time about something she didn't even notice she did.
"Yep!" Did she really scream just now? She must have, otherwise her- Thariel's mother wouldn't come to her like this, "don't worry, it was just a nightmare!"
Please go, she was getting really tired of screaming her lungs out like this, she didn't want to confront anymore of what she's currently dealing with, if that woman goes in here right now, she's going to literally confess about everything. Including her game knowledge.
"... If you say so, come down in a little bit okay? Food is ready,"
"Thanks... mom, I'll do that," Thariel found herself smiling despite everything.
She focused on her hearing for the next few moments and when the footsteps from the other side of the door disappeared, she ran back to her bed and screamed at her pillow.
The muffled sound attracted no one this time around and she was safe to wallow in her misery by squirming around her bed.
Panting, she stopped and stared dazedly at the ceiling.
She knew what this was- reincarnation, a popular trope, and one that she didn't expect she herself would experience.
She had reincarnated into the body of the original Thariel, her so called "main" back in Tainted Orchids, an otome game that, just like any other of its kind, was good to the protagonist but ruthless to the villains.
And Thariel Venrose, someone with the title of "Crimson Alchemist", was part of the latter group, having acted as the apothecary of the main villainess during canon.
If let be, Thariel would end up becoming one of the most deadliest war criminals this world has seen
But as always, when it comes to playable characters, Thariel had a backstory, and one that she personally sympathized with while playing the game.
No sane person would willingly use biological warfare and utilize plagues to win a war, and no rational mind poisons rivers and water supplies but Thariel wasn't sane or rational.
Not after what happened to this place.
She was half vampire, and Thariel wasn't ridiculed for it but that didn't mean she was safe.
Vampires were... Complicated, especially when it comes to who they choose to join their ranks as immortal superhumans.
It was only natural that the Concubines of the vampire lord who fathered Thariel hated the progeny of their husband and as luck would have it, she just so happens to fall under that category.
Thariel looked away from the window and gazed at the walls, there were no eyes on the drawing, which meant they haven't announced themselves yet.
They were still out there however, watching, waiting, and planning with malicious intent.
She wasn't sure when she is in the timeline itself but she's played Tainted Orchids for long enough that she'd know immediately after she confirms Thariel's current age.
Thariel was the only character who has never left her party while playing Tainted Orchids, not even once. She always made sure to grab this girl at the start of the game and then continue to have Thariel in her party until the end of it.
She's tried multiple builds with this character, messed around with her original skill tree to the point that she's grabbed random traits from unconnected branches.
And what else... Oh, and she's also skimmed through her entire wiki, talked to people about the character's backgrounds, read devlogs and WOGs about Thariel and... uhm- bought pillows and...
... Well, it was safe to say that calling her original like for Thariel as an obsession would be an understatement.
She had an entire shelf of figurines of the character, some are official, a lot are either commissioned or bought because they looked pretty cool even though they're a rip off.
She has a figurine of a rip off of this character as an elf.
Had. Mostly. She's probably not going to go back to her original world and retrieve those...
She hoped her apartment burns down- wait, did she leave her computer unlocked?
That was unimportant-
She knew how Thariel's life- her life would play out from here on out, thankfully, she became Thariel way before the character's backstory kicked into gear which meant she had what? Years before canon starts?
She should be able to prevent a lot of bad things from happening.
She couldn't influence the world on a wider scope but the Tenlor territory (also known as the lands under the Villainess's family,) could easily be travelled.
Before that though, she should probably go and see when she popped into the timeline so she went downstairs and faced her mother. With a smile. And without an ounce of guilt.
Whatever happened to the original happened, and it's not like she could have done something about it...
"Mom, how old am I?" Thariel didn't waste time and bluntly asked her mother.
Small talk? What's the point? It'll be weird no matter what so she should just be blunt.
"Hm? Weird question-" Clyra, Thariel's mother, said with a smile, "- but you're 13, why?"
Ah, so 1 year before the start of the game. That was a lot less time than she expected but it wasn't bad either. It was more than enough.
With her knowledge, she could gather Lost Grade items and other important materials in a year.
"Nothing, just thought I'd ask," Thariel just smiled.
She sat down on one of the chairs and with her elbows resting against the table and her chin prepped up on her palm, turned to her mother and said, "can I go to the village?"
As expected, her mother froze up.
Well, then, time to convince her mother to let her out of this place.