The Villain’s Ending

Chapter 2

The First (2)

The acrid smoke of a cheap cigarette deeply stung my lungs.

The wisps of smoke mixed with my exhaled breath brushed past a faint ray of light in the room, then scattered into the air as if they had never existed.

Everything was like that.

It flickered before my eyes, then disappeared.

Or I believed it had vanished, only to find it back where it started.

Neither was a pleasant experience.

Because everything I had done, living as Lavin for the past three years, now seemed like a futile endeavor, a mere mirage.

My temples throbbed.

The cold sensation just before pulling the trigger, and the deafening roar that erupted, still felt like they lingered in my ears.In this room, the sense of time didn't seem to function very clearly.

I died. Clearly.

Because my consciousness had gone black along with the sensation of my head bursting.

But why was I still, continuously, sitting in this creaking chair in this dammed room?

Whether hell or heaven, or even purgatory, I should have been cast into some other place.

Before my eyes, the system message, which now made me nauseous, was still vividly displayed.

[Collect the Ending. 1/?]

[Reward: Return to your original world.]

They must have found the sight of me dying, splattering blood right before their eyes, disgusting, even after treating me as if they wanted to kill me.

Of course, the noble and elegant Lady Edelgard would feel that way.

There was no improvement to be gained from dwelling on useless thoughts.

I rummaged through the crumpled cigarette pack in my pocket and pulled out the last remaining cigarette, putting it to my lips.

The one already in my hand had burned down to the filter, hot enough to warm my fingers.

With a 'click,' a new spark ignited.

No matter how much I inhaled and exhaled the smoke, my confused mind simply wouldn't calm down.

Just then, my eyes fell upon a familiar envelope on the table.

High-quality parchment that I had personally chosen, exuding a subtle fragrance.

A small lilac pattern, which Seraphina, that child, had said she uniquely liked, was engraved on the top right corner of the envelope.

A letter I had written at least once a week, sometimes as often as every three days.

It must have been one of those that she had burned to ashes right before my eyes just a few days ago.

Along with her icy voice, saying, 'Now, anything you give me is just repulsive.'

The memory was vivid.

The burning flames, and my expressionless face as I watched them.

And her voice.

Everything was as clear as if it had happened just moments ago, yet the letter lay perfectly intact before me, as if nothing had ever happened.

I crushed the cigarette butt I held in my mouth directly onto the lilac pattern on the envelope to extinguish it.

Wisps of smoke rose from the cherished letter.

Black soot stained the purple petals.

Expulsion from the family, a broken engagement notice from my fiancée, and an impulsive suicide.

That was the ending I had achieved through my efforts.

Perhaps my efforts were insufficient.

Or it might be my fault for overlooking the fact that this world was more unkind than any other place I had ever seen.

Wishing for everything to go smoothly by utilizing my supposedly superior knowledge of the original story was, after all, a naive thought.

This world didn't seem to want me to become a decent and good person.

The more I struggled to raise my head above the surface, the more an invisible hand would grab my hair and pull me deeper into the mire.

What was my original role again?

Right, I was supposed to cause every possible trouble, then pick a fight with the original protagonist whom I'd never met before, be publicly disgraced, and harbor a petty grudge.

And as a price for the clumsy mischief caused by that grudge, my fiancée, who was just one of the heroines in the original story, would abandon me and fall into the arms of the esteemed protagonist, while I would be simultaneously expelled from my family and the academy, wander the streets, and ultimately die from a knife wound inflicted by an unknown robber.

It was probably an assassin sent by the family, not a robber, but what difference did that make now?

I had lived diligently because I disliked such an end.

But all I realized was that even if a disgrace reformed overnight and lived a decent life, people's perceptions wouldn't change.

Should I once again bare my belly like a dog to Seraphina, begging her to love me, please not to abandon me?

With a foolish hope like 'I'm back, so this time it'll be different'?

Impossible. If that were the case, my situation should have improved, even just a little, long ago.

As one thought led to another, strangely, my mind calmly settled.

It was a tranquility closer to resignation than to anger or sadness.

I stared blankly at the system message floating in the air, which might have been a hallucination created by my own brain.

[Collect the Ending. 1/?]

[Reward: Return to your original world.]

Even a suicide, more akin to a performance, committed drunkenly in front of my sister, must be an ending of sorts.

Or perhaps after my death, everything in the world smoothly resolved into a happy ending where everyone became happy.

Either way, it was a story that had nothing to do with me.

Far from returning, I was still stuck in this goddamn world.

I stared blankly at the ash-stained letter, then rose from my seat.

I approached the old lamp tucked away in the corner of the room, shook it to see if there was any oil left, and lit the wick.

The small, flickering flame dimly illuminated the dark room.

Without hesitation, I held the sooty letter over the flame.

The edge of the parchment turned yellow, then quickly caught fire, beginning to burn with a small blaze.

Crackle, crackle...

The distinctive smell of parchment mixed with the scent of ash, rising repellently.

I quietly looked down at the burning letter.

But perhaps it wasn't just any high-quality parchment.

The flames lazily burned about half of the letter before dying out, as if they had lost interest.

In the end, nothing went right.

Seraphina's scornful face, Levina's disgusted expression, the cold gazes of the family members.

No matter what I did, they would only see me as 'Edelgard's disgrace.'

In truth, they probably toned it down to 'disgrace' out of fear of the Edelgard family's prestige, rather than calling me a disgusting bastard. But that was none of my concern.

It seems I don't really like the regression genre.

Perhaps it's because I feel branded as a failure who couldn't change anything even with a second chance.

"When I called you, you were just smoking those cigarettes you claimed to have quit?"

A cold voice came from behind me.

It was Seraphina.

I didn't know when she had entered, but she was leaning against the door, arms crossed, glaring at me.

Instead of answering, I extinguished the cigarette in my mouth by crushing it into the pile of butts in the ashtray.

"The wall is bare."

She said, looking around the room.

Previously, a landscape painting by an unknown artist, which she had thrown at me as a birthday present, hung there.

I quite liked that painting, but she wouldn't know that.

Now, only a nail mark remained there, like a scar.

"There's nothing really to hang."

At my words, Seraphina bit her lower lip slightly.

It was a habit she always displayed when suppressing her displeasure.

"Didn't you… say you quit those?"

Seraphina pointed with her chin at the mountain of cigarette butts piled on the table.

Her gaze paused for a moment on the half-burned letter I had just failed to incinerate.

"Ah, well. It just feels like nothing changes."

I replied with a shrug.

She probably wouldn't understand what I meant.

I must have truly returned.

Seeing as her words were exactly the same as that day, not a single one changed.

Seraphina let out a sigh.

That sigh carried many things: disappointment, weariness, and a touch of resignation.

"You said we'd meet today. Lavin."

"I did, but I wonder if it matters now."

I nudged the piece of letter on the floor with the tip of my foot.

"Well, it doesn't matter. I have something to say today too.

Lavin, I heard the story.

You caused trouble in the restricted library this time, didn't you?"

"Then you must have heard the outcome too. That it ended cleanly with no charges."

"On that day, monsters sealed in the restricted library were released, and by coincidence, you, who went into the restricted library even invoking the family's name, have no charges against you? Do you think that makes sense?"

It certainly doesn't make sense.

I even wonder if my situation itself makes any sense at all.

Perhaps it's my fault for not memorizing every detailed setting of a game I didn't even find that enjoyable.

The fact that no one would believe a word I said no longer hurt my feelings after a certain point. It just was.

Whether I did something or not, sometimes I even wondered if, at some point, people just needed someone to point fingers at and blame.

"You might not care, but someone died. One of your classmates died."

"I know."

"Is that all?"

"Enough. How much do I have to care? It's not something I did, nor is it my problem."

Even after I said this, her eyes didn't waver in the slightest.

It was as if she was saying, 'You really are that kind of guy.'

Because no matter what happened, in the mind of this esteemed fiancée, the premise for every incident began with 'Lavin did it.'

Seraphina ground her teeth, saying in a low voice.

"......It's a problem related to you, Lavin."

She sighed, approached me, then roughly pulled back the curtains and threw open the window.

The afternoon sunlight streamed into the dusty room.

As if it were her own room, she familiar kicked a rolling alcohol bottle aside with her foot, and began to roughly fold the scattered clothes draped over the chair.

"I probably thought it might have been like this from the beginning."

"Of course you did, you always act like you know everything."

"Yes. We always grew up together since we were children."

Seraphina replied, biting her lip slightly.

Her hands were folding clothes, but her gaze was fixed somewhere in the empty air.

She picked up the half-burned letter from the floor.

After staring blankly at it for a long time, she finally spoke.

Her voice was strangely calm.

And the words she spoke were exactly the same as that day.

"I told Father that we really should break off the engagement.

He readily accepted, and the families will probably coordinate a suitable date soon."

She neatly placed the sooty letter she held in her hand on top of the other intact letters on the table.

It was a detached, business-like motion, as if she were organizing an obituary.

A few days ago, when Seraphina and I had the exact same conversation, I had involuntarily become emotional and we'd gotten into an argument.

What came back was the sight of the letter burning brightly before my eyes, but today, perhaps because I had burned it first, Seraphina did not burn the letter.

"Alright, then. Goodbye, Seraphina.

I'm not sure if I'll see your face again."

I replied with a shrug.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

"...Is that all?"

"Or would you prefer I kneel at your feet and beg right now? Saying I won't do it again, please just give me one more chance?"

"No! At least... at least say something! Try to explain yourself!"

Even if I did, you wouldn't listen anyway.

"Alright, a story. Since you asked for it, I'll give it to you."

I looked her straight in the eye.

For a very long time, perhaps three minutes, a suffocating silence fell between us, where only our breathing could be heard.

We simply exchanged glances without a word.

I was the first to speak.

"But I don't know how to start. You've already decided everything, haven't you?"