My first life ended abruptly, and without much meaning, which fit the rest of my life entirely. There's absolutely nothing worth noting that happened in my childhood - the most extraordinary part of my childhood is how ordinary and boring it was. Everything I did was expected, normal. And that was fine. I didn't look longingly into the windows hoping for anything better or different. I was content to be a boring and average person.
In my highschool years I met my first love. He was beautiful, at least to my eyes. Clever, strong, and confident. He wasn't quite as average and normal as I was, because I was the kind of person you might forget as soon as you looked away from me, but he also wasn't incredibly popular and successful. He never let that get him down, he seemed just as content with life as I was, and when he looked at me I thought 'this is how it feels to be special'.
We married after we graduated, and while he went to university I started a career to support us. And everything was fine.
Except that it wasn't, because 'normal' isn't 'perfect', and marrying a man slightly more interesting than me didn't make me special after all. A part of 'a normal life' is walking in on your significant other in the middle of an affair at some point, isn't it?
When I came home I wasn't early, and I'd even stopped for groceries on the way. When I entered the room, what I remember most about it was how absolutely cold his eyes were when he looked up at me. He didn't try to cover himself, he didn't offer excuses. He didn't bother to say anything at all. When he looked at me, I realized I was never special to him in the first place.
I don't know how long I'd been forcing the relationship with the thought that I was special to him, but he never objected to the divorce, never said a word of protest, and never made an attempt to defend himself. I don't know what her name was, the woman he was with, but perhaps she was someone special.
It's normal to experience grief and loneliness after a break up, to feel unwanted in the wake of rejection, and so it's only normal that I felt that after the proceedings. But I continued to work, to live, because it's what normal people did, so of course it's what I did.
I don't remember who first suggested the popular otome game "Magical School Romance" to me. It's possible I simply overheard a conversation about it at work and looked into it myself, but it was something magical to experience.
The protagonist of the game was named 'Eileen Weiss'. I could rename her, but the first time I played the game I didn't. I didn't think to do so until much later. Eileen wasn't anything like me: a poor orphan girl raised in a terribly harsh orphanage until she literally fell into the arms of a nobleman when she slipped while trying to climb a tree. The protagonist, Eileen, was adopted by that very nobleman into a loving family and a position of minor nobility herself. She stood out in life because she simply didn't fit in: a girl that those with noble blood saw as a jumped-up street rat, a woman with almost unearthly beauty, a constant pure aura, and an indomitable will. No matter how much she was bullied, no matter how much she struggled, she always remained so cheerful and happy that every single one of the highly attractive and rich men in the game easily fell in love with her. Even more than that, by the end of the game it turns out that she had ancient royal blood of the emperor all that time anyway, and was rightful heir to the throne after a succession crisis.
Eileen was all the special I could never be, and even though I'd never really cared about having anything more than I already did before, in the wake of losing the man I loved, I loved the feeling of getting to play the special kind of woman whose lover would be too enamored by her to ever consider an affair. A woman who wouldn't be wrong if she thought she were special to her husband.
In particular, though, there was one route - one man - with whom I fell in love completely. My second love was fictional, and yet I was obsessive. Viktor Schulte was just a side character, his route had barely anything to do with the main grand plot, but he was beautiful and gentle, quiet and lonely, a sweet doctor who slowly gave up on his dreams of a loving family as all those around him misunderstood his quiet nature for being cruel and cold. He'd become known as the unfeeling monster of medicine when in truth he was the softest and most emotionally vulnerable of all the routes.
The moment when he finally confessed to Eileen, he spoke with absolute certainty: that he'd rather die on the spot than spend another moment without her love.
I replayed that route at least a hundred times, eventually renaming Eileen to 'Adelaide', and pretending that he was speaking to me through the screen, that he might be as enamored with me if he'd met me. It was a fantasy, but a harmless one, and with Viktor I could imagine it without forcing it on another person and expecting them to go along with it.
On the way home from work one day, I crossed a bridge that I always had. Midway across the bridge, it simply collapsed. Perhaps it was too old of a bridge. Perhaps the storm the night before had weakened it too much. Probably it would have collapsed even if someone hadn't been walking across it right that moment. No one was nearby when it happened, and no one came looking as I fell, meaningless paperwork fluttering in the air above me higher than my phone, Viktor's face on the lockscreen smiling faintly down at my falling form.
Of course no one came to save me, because no one noticed me. I don't remember drowning, but I know that's how I must have died.
There is darkness.
I wake up in an incredibly comfortable bed and a body I don't recognize, much younger than I should be. Aches and pains I'd gotten so used to that I forgot I had them vanish in an instant. I feel light. Different. Even the air I breathe feels different somehow.
I fall out of bed like a baby deer who's never learned to walk. It takes a few moments to learn how to control a body entirely not my own.
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When I look into the mirror, the face that looks back is shockingly beautiful, elegant, and impossible to ignore. Lovely long red hair curls down the sides of my face and spills down my shoulders and back, somehow looking artfully tousled instead of the rightfully messy bed-head I should have. Brilliant blue eyes go wide in surprise and confusion, matching the expression I make as I stare at the familiar-unfamiliar face in the mirror.
I know this face. This face comes from the game Magical School Romance.
This is the face of the incidental villainess character, Ophelia Weideman.
She wasn't the usual token villainess character, no. Actually - that wasn't right. She was in fact the very essence, the very height of 'token villainess character'. As if even the writer of the game knew it was a long-dead trope in modern otome games, and simply wrote her to make fun of her. There was no route or possibility, even in bad ends, where Ophelia could get a happy ending with a route partner. At best she could stop Eileen from getting her own happy ending. The game also featured a strange system wherein the protagonist could bait Ophelia into pursuing a different character. She'd not succeed, no matter what, but it was the 'peaceful' option to get the villainess out of the way, since any route where Ophelia and Eileen shared the same romantic target, Ophelia would die.
Although I hadn't done it myself, the system was open to a particularly sadistic option of baiting Ophelia into a certain route and then switching over to that route afterward, given that as the protagonist you could switch routes freely, but Ophelia couldn't. Perhaps rather than a loophole, it was an intended mechanic to bully the unfortunate comically ineffective Ophelia Weideman and the entire concept of a villainess plot.
As for why I'm staring back at the face of Ophelia and not Eileen, I don't understand. If this is the afterlife, or if this is what reincarnation is like, then to find myself in some version of the world I felt most connected to in my past life makes sense enough for me to accept this. But why would I be Ophelia and not Eileen, the one I'd played so many times?
My expression screws up in confusion. Wrinkled nose, squinting eyes, pouty lips. It's prettier than any expression Adelaide ever had on her face. I reach up to touch my own face, just to confirm that the face I see in the mirror is really my own.
The bare skin of my forearm catches my attention. Rather than the skin, it's something missing there that was prominently shown in most of Ophelia's sprites: a scar left on her arm from an accident that takes place long before the plot of the game, relevant only to the Prince's route. I'm familiar with it mostly because I did every route before I finally tried Viktor's the first time.
If I recall properly, the injury that caused the scar was somewhere around two and a half years before Ophelia enrolled in the academy. Eileen joined six months after Ophelia. Other than the scar, I look much like Ophelia did in the game, which means…it's most likely that at this moment, I stand at least three years before the plot of the game begins and Eileen arrives on the scene to choose a lover.
Perhaps…this is why I'm in the body of Ophelia and not Eileen. At 16 (or for Eileen, 15 and a half) Eileen's life is far too rigidly controlled, still learning the ways of nobility and trying not to cause problems with her family. There's no good way for Eileen to meet any of the love targets before the Academy.
As Ophelia, I am free, and privileged enough to do as I please without being held back by anyone. My family is powerful enough that even the Emperor can't stop me if I decide I wish to marry the prince. That is, after all, why Ophelia Weideman is slotted into the generic villainess role in the game.
I don't care to marry Prince Hedrin, and it's a lost cause to even try, but right this moment I know where Viktor is in the city. I know what he's doing, and how he's struggling, looked down upon and misunderstood by everyone.
Before I know it, I'm dressed in clothes that I surmised were easy enough to put on without help, and marching through the front doors of the Weideman mansion over the concerned cries of the servants attempting to follow after me. It's not as if any of them can stop me, and Ophelia's parents won't stop her, so I don't bear it any mind.
My mind is racing, whirling so fast I almost feel dizzy and sick. I'm about to see Viktor for real. To hear his voice for real. He won't love me at first, of course, I understand that. But…no one will interfere, no one will interrupt or object if Ophelia Weideman were to fall in love with the kindly doctor Viktor, and for three long years, Eileen won't even be able to meet him, much less compete. By the time the game begins, I won't need to worry about who Eileen chooses, because Viktor won't be an option any longer, as I'll have finished my own route with him.
I make it nearly to his small doctor's office before I finally stop in place.
I don't know what to say to him.
I can't just copy Eileen's route with Viktor. We're not in the Academy, the situation isn't the same. And walking into a doctor's office to ask where they keep their coffee won't make sense in the way it does on Eileen's first day in a new academy.
More than that, though I don't care about my body or the power and wealth that comes with it beyond what it does for my freedom, everyone around me will. Viktor will care, at least at first. Ophelia Weideman can't simply walk into a poor doctor's office, who's yet to realize his magical potential, for no reason at all.
I shift back and forth on my feet, biting my lip, glancing around for some hint of what to do.
My gaze falls upon the unblemished arm once more.
It's surprising how little it hurts to dig a bit of scrap metal into my arm, to drag a jagged path of blood and dirt into it. It looks terrible, but it doesn't hurt much. I know Viktor well enough to know a wound like this is easy for him to fix, that there's no risk of long term harm from it. So it will explain why Ophelia might stumble into a random doctor's office, and give me what to say to Viktor first.
My hand clutches over the wounded arm as I toss the bloodied scrap into the alleyway, and I stumble into the office just as the pain starts to rush into my consciousness. The young doctor at the desk startles when I burst in so suddenly, nearly spilling his coffee on himself. He's confused only for a few moments, before his gaze settles on the obvious wound on my arm.
I've seen many CGs of him applying medicine, healing Eileen and others. Somehow, it's even more mesmerizing to experience it than to simply watch it in flattering framed images.
"Keep it bandaged like this and it should heal up soon." He smiles kindly at me, voice gentle and full of concern, and I can't help but wonder if when he looks into my eyes, he feels special. His long, silvery-white hair looks even softer in reality, features both beautiful and handsome at once, and his soft green eyes seem to search mine for answers to questions he probably doesn't even know.
"You're amazing…" I nearly startle myself with my own voice. I haven't used it since waking up. It's much more beautiful than Adelaide's ever was.
His smile is small, and to the untrained eye almost flippant. "Well, the wound really wasn't that bad. How did you end up with it?"
"I…" blink, mouth hanging open a moment. I hadn't planned things out this far. "I tripped and fell."
"Lucky to have tripped in front of a doctor's office, at least."
"My…my name is…Ophelia." I've never said that before. But it's true now.
He hesitates a moment, before he smiles once more, and I think…there's a hint more of his true warmth beneath it. "Viktor."
My heart swells with warmth as I look up at him. "You have no idea how happy I am to meet you."