My Goal Is a Breakup

If I cut those three off completely before then and lived quietly holed away, there might still be a chance I would survive…….

I was turning the thought over when I suddenly shot upright. My eyes flew wide.

That's it! Why hadn't I thought of this until now?!

If my ties to the male leads were what summoned the dead ending, then all I had to do was sever them. Jay, of course, would not let go easily, but a month might be enough.

A thin shaft of hope seemed to fall across a future that had felt utterly blank. I clenched both fists and kindled my resolve.

All right. From today, my goal is a breakup.

A safe parting, with not a single threat to my life left behind. Tomorrow I would start by cutting away the easiest of them—Asad. With that decided, I flopped onto my back again and closed my eyes.

Jay, or the other one, might be a problem. Asad would take it gladly.

A laugh slipped out of me. Maybe this would go more smoothly than I thought. Hoping tomorrow would hurry, I let sleep pull me under.

"I'm going to meet someone important. Take special care."

The moment I woke, I ate breakfast and immediately prepared to go out. At my words Rita bobbed her head. Yesterday's frightened look was gone.

Well. That must be why she's lasted this long as Aine's maid.

And she did not stop there. In the middle of doing my hair, she even asked a question.

"Which number are you visiting today?"

When the touch of the brush sweeping my eyelids vanished, I opened my eyes and asked back.

"What do you mean, which number?"

Rita smoothed my hair—black as a skein of thread soaked in ink—and said it again.

"You said you were going to meet someone important. If it's someone my lady is taking such pains to dress up for, it must be one of Lord Number One, Lord Number Two, or Lord Number Three, mustn't it?"

"……."

I was at a loss for words. Thinking about it now, Aine had found calling people by name a bother, so she numbered her collection and used those numbers in place of names. Number One was her fiancé, the Grand Duke. Number Two was her lover, the master of the assassin guild. And Number Three was that guy.

I remembered it being mentioned a few times in the novel, but I had never imagined she spoke that way even to Rita.

Or is it stranger that she wouldn't?

She was a woman who never cared what anyone thought. Why would she care about the gaze of a mere maid? More than that, Rita's composure astonished me. As Aine's closest attendant, she had to know perfectly well that the people behind those numbers were anything but ordinary, and yet she asked, as if it were nothing, which number my lady meant to see.

Like mistress, like servant, I suppose.

Come to think of it, even when I first possessed this body and was flailing in confusion, Rita had not minded, only asking whether I'd had a dream. Anyone else would have been well within their rights to suspect madness.

I stared at her. Rita only tilted her head, innocent orange eyes blinking.

"……Number One."

Ugh. I'm sorry, Grand Duke.

If I suddenly changed even a habit of speech, even Rita might find it strange, so I answered against my will.

"Oh my, you're going to see His Grace the Grand Duke after so long!"

"……Rita. You're talking too much."

"Eek! I-I'm sorry!"

Afraid she might wander into territory I knew nothing about, I deliberately put on an uncomfortable face. Only then did Rita hastily bow her head and return to her work.

Aine disliked many hands fussing over her, so Rita alone did her hair. Even so, her skill was more than rich enough to satisfy her mistress. It hardly seemed any time had passed before I heard her say it was already finished. I opened the eyes I had been holding half-shut, as if dozing, checked the mirror, and felt them go wide.

I really cannot get used to how beautiful this woman is.

Black hair swept up, with only a few strands let down to draw out the line of shoulder and neck; a smooth contour; skin so flawlessly white it was almost cold, without a single blemish; features sharp and refined. And the crowning glory—clear golden eyes. With the weather drawing toward winter, she wore a deep crimson off-the-shoulder dress that suited the season, together with a matching set of ruby earrings and necklace. Seen like this, she looked like a jewel that walked.

"I'm satisfied."

"Hehe."

When I offered the highest praise Aine ever gave, Rita smiled, shy and a little bashful. Watching her, I finally understood how she had remained at Aine's side for so long.

Rita was pure. Like a child, she was honest with her feelings and did not know how to hide them, and she rejoiced in earnest at even the smallest compliment. She was a little lacking in tact, but for someone as suspicious as Aine, there could be no more suitable person to keep close.

She's more three-dimensional than I expected.

Had the author actually kept this in mind when building the character? It was a fair question. At least in what I had read, Aine's maid Rita was mentioned only when her mistress was venting her temper or sending her on an errand. There was not a single word about her being pure, or about her lack of tact.

This feeling is strange…….

I was a reader born on the heroine's side, and I had never particularly liked Aine, nor Rita, the hands and feet that served her. Almost every time Rita appeared, it was to drop the heroine into trouble. I was not the only reader who disliked her.

She's only a character in a book. Why am I getting sentimental?

What did it matter now if she was actually pure, or childlike? What mattered most was surviving, by breaking up with the male leads one way or another. Then I would shut myself in a corner of my room and grow old in comfort, as if finally spending every grievance I had never been able to vent.

If that time ever comes.

Then, around then, it would be all right to soak in the sentiment I was pushing into a corner now. It would be all right to look a little more carefully at those shadow-like parts the book never described, the ones even the readers never knew.

"My lady? What's wrong?"

"It's nothing. Is the carriage ready?"

"Yes!"

I set the reverie aside and asked, and Rita nodded with vigor. I rose with a firm expression, then walked out with my resolve gathered anew. My heels clicked, and Rita trailed after me.

Wait for me, Grand Duke. I'm on my way to take you out of the collection!

Jolt— jolt—

The carriage shook each time it crossed a rise. Unlike the rocking, the seat itself was steady—steady enough that it would not have suffered beside a modern car. The fortune of a ducal house, indeed.

I propped my chin on the window and watched the streets slide past. Dress, language, culture, architecture: this place was nothing like where I had lived. If fear and strangeness were the measure, a world I had only just stepped into ought to have been the more frightening. Somehow it felt more peaceful than the place I came from.

No one chasing me with a promissory note. No starving because I can't pay the rent. No dragging a wretchedly sick body off to a part-time job.

I cracked the window and held out my hand. Unlike that murky place, a cool, clear wind touched my fingertips. For me, this was nothing short of paradise on earth. If I had to enter a body, it should have been some passing extra—a noble young lady. Why did I have to land in a villainess already prepared for a gruesome death?

"……I want to live."

Unlike my last life, hounded simply by the need to survive and starved by poverty itself, the world here was leisurely and peaceful. If I—just I—stayed quiet, the surroundings themselves offered me comfort. In the week since I had arrived, I had already tasted a little of it. Had I never known, perhaps it would not have mattered. Now that I did, I could not let this happiness go.

"Grand Duke Asad lu Reinhardt."

I called to mind what I knew of the male lead about to be taken out of Aine's collection. There was no need to think long. He was a hero of this novel, and the information poured out in a flood.

Grand Duke Asad lu Reinhardt carried a past as dark as the heroine's, as befit a protagonist. In childhood he lost his birth mother to the mistress of his father, the grand duke, and grew up enduring every kind of abuse while watching the back of a father lost to women and indifferent to his own child. A male Cinderella, more or less.

The difference was that Cinderella met a prince and turned her life around, while he volunteered for the vanguard of a war and turned his around himself. More precisely, he was reclaiming what was his. He led a war whose defeat had been certain to victory, succeeded to the title after his father was murdered by the mistress in the meantime, and sent the stepmother—who had killed his parents and coveted the grand ducal fortune—to the frozen extremity of the far north.

In this he differed from Jay. Jay would have made her taste the outermost pain a human can be made to feel, and cut off her breath by inches. Asad could not. Sending her somewhere she could never return from, somewhere she could not survive, was the greatest revenge he was capable of.

A tender man, unlike the way he looks.

That was what I had felt about Asad while reading Fairy's Garden. Because of that past, he despised Aine, who tormented the heroine with every vile trick. She reminded him of his stepmother. Again and again he tried to leave her side, and again and again Aine clung to him with obsession. Not love. She simply hated having what was hers taken by the heroine. And so Aine could never have Asad.

Now was different. I had no intention of possessing him. I did not even want him. Of course he was a splendid, perfect man, as a male lead ought to be, but keep a man like that beside you and you are inevitably dragged into every kind of trouble. For someone who wanted a peaceful life, I declined.

Just then the coachman announced that we had reached the grand ducal estate. I wiped the thought away and straightened my back. From here on, I had to be careful about everything. Nothing less than my life was at stake.

With the coachman's help I stepped down, and a butler who had come out ahead of us after receiving word offered his greeting. I looked around. The only person who had come to meet me was a single butler. I had not expected a warm welcome, but wasn't this too cold a reception for the daughter of a ducal house? Then again, every time Aine visited she needled the master and left. Who would be glad to see her? That much I could understand.

"Welcome, Lady Foregreen."

"Num— Where is Asad?"

I nearly called him by number, the way I had with Rita, and hastily detoured to his name. When I addressed him so familiarly, a very brief look of dismay crossed the butler's face. There it was. There it was.

"His Grace is taking a brief rest in the rear garden."

"Even though he was told I was coming?"

"……."

The butler lost his words. I looked at him with pity. Yes, yes. Caught between the Grand Duke and Aine, you have suffered more than anyone.