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My name is Kagenou Minoru.
I realised a kinda depressing pattern about the world. The dreams everyone kept in their hearts from the time they were kids would gradually fade into oblivion. I had one such dream, but it never went away.
[Heroes] and [Villains] were all nice and good (haha pun intended), but it was too... revealing. The characters—the people—who hid behind these and who basically controlled everything were more cooler. Who were in the background most of the time, so plain that it made their reveals super awesome. That was what I wanted to be.
A shadowbroker... An Eminence in Shadow.
A major part of my becoming one was knowledge. And power. And sadly though, I had limits, no matter how much I've learnt how to use tonfas or read very boring books on economics.
Oh yeah, speaking on books, I met my classmate for the first time, Hikari Cho... She's a mob character like me, even though her cousin is a named character, Nishimura something. She also likes staying in the library the same time as me. She was reading the book I really wanted, something about physics and probably super technical.
I was kinda sad she got to it first but she noticed me looking at her. It was awkward but she smiled and motioned me near her.
“Why are you here...?”
Oh yeah, we don't know each other.
“Kagenou Minoru, and you...?”
“Hikaru Cho. You want this book?”, she pointed to it.
“A-ah, don't worry, you can have it.”
<><><>
I was reading up on my daily reports and noticed a guy from my class I kinda forgot... Oh yeah, Kagenou Minoru.
He looked like he wanted the super duper technical physics book. Kinda out of character for a plain dude like him, but then again, I was the dirt in the ground compared to Akane-san.
Suddenly, I felt like babbling. I wanted to tell this obviously uninterested and uninteresting classmate I really don't know about my dream. It... it's kinda stupid in hindsight, but shoving effort and time to it made some days and nights bearable.
I... I want to be a villainess... Y'know, the ones who are in power, who have a sharp tongue behind impeccable manners, a killer sense of fashion and who is a detriment to any couple's love story. Like that!
Although privately, the trope where the ML (male lead) cheats with the FL (female lead) behind the villainess fiance's back is the bane of my existence. It's too icky and I hate cheating. There are better ways for a villainess's capability for conflict!
I was too in thought that Kageno simply nodded once and moved on. Haa, I'll fix that habit one of these days.
By the way, almost everytime I'm in the library he's here. I'm not delusional in believing he likes me, just look at me! Still respect the hustle tho.
He picked another book and went away. It was probably the last time I met with him.
Two weeks later, I was buzzing with happiness. My good ol' Joe, an old guy in his late forties with a—shall we say—checkered background who raised me when I was ten, finally let me in his truck, passenger seat.
It is very unladylike to giggle like a kid who discovered an awesome stick gun while walking the dog under Dad's orders, but hey, it's a dream of mine. I feel so powerful glaring down to random stuff, a modern equivalent to a lady looking down at the commoners outside her clean and polished carriage. And maybe the headpats from Joe were an influence.
We were in a mountainside road when a dude suddenly jumped in front of us. Joe immediately protected me, sheltering me from the brunt of the impact... His heartbeat was the last thing I felt before I died.
And then I woke up. A five year old girl with red hair and eyes was looking at me. My angle of sight was really wonky. Then two shapes I refused to acknowledge popped in.
“∅∅∅∅”
“∅∅∅?”
Okay. That sounded unfairly like gibberish. I tried to scowl or pout at them. The two made cooing noises instead.
Flash forward to seven years, I am finally old enough to learn manners. I'm so happy that I'm willingly suffering sword training with my big sister, Iris-nee-san. She's super cool and super strong and I would never make a rebellion against her... why does this sound so sarcastic?
If I can only be a mediocre swordswoman at best, then hey, I'll be the villainess to complement Iris-nee-san! Perfect!
Oh yeah, before I forget. My name's Alexia Midgar, second daughter of King Klaus Midgar and Queen Felicia Midgar née Reinhardt and younger sister of Iris Midgar. I got Mom's snowy white hair that dulled into gray for me and Father's eyes, his face smashed into mine in a feminine manner. Iris-nee-san got Father's ruby red hair and eyes and Mom's delicately beautiful face. Even now I'm still in the shadow of another relative, huh?
Before I digress, my homeland is Midgar. It's kinda mid in the continent's power scale, although we do have some of the best Dark Knights in the world. Probably.
I absolutely suck at magic, a love of H*rry P*tter and L*TR made things... less than passable for me. But I persevered, and soon, I controlled my magic into being capable of sensing people or unwelcome stuff in a two-feet radius while I make poor attempts at conducting magic to the stupidly inductive wooden sword. It's basically a motion sensor with living people.
It's not the best thing I did, but hey, the likelihood of my family being killed by poison or stabbings dropped. Still can't do anything about snipers and nukes, but I figured out Midgar as a whole was very obsessed with honour and was very technologically inferior to Earth.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆
It was obvious that Crown Princess Alexia was the better sister than Second Princess Iris. The redheaded beauty pursued the work of a swordswoman and a scholar whilst being generous to her subjects and firm in politics.
Meanwhile, her silver-haired sister was prone to publicly decimating anyone who bothered her with mindless flattery, utilising insults instead of bullying through her power as a royal. She treated those who managed to insult her better, if people could manage to speak after her intimidatingly perfect manners and her generally coldly aloof or murderously hot aura.
It didn't help that she had a correspondence with Princess Rose, Kingdom of Oriana the arts. She used this connection to wear the most beautiful dresses since she debuted, paying it with an exclusive scholarship for the Princess to study at the Academy of Dark Knights and Spellswords.
Or that her personal butler, Hansel, was a therianthrope, beastkin in cruder terms. He had ears from his black hair and green eyes, they didn't know if he was wolf or fox. The number of his tails famously caused confusion, it was generally seen with five, although rumours sworn on the Church made it wildly different each time.
Whatever the case was, Alexia Midgar was the darkness of Iris Midgar's light.
⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆
Hansel knew of the moronic rumours directed at his mistress. How she was a cold and beautiful bitch. Anytime he tried to say anything about it, Alexia simply glared to shut him up and scratched that sweet spot behind his ears.
It sometimes felt unfair, how easily he quickly forgot about his beloved cousin Ria who may as well be his little sister, her brothers were bastards to her.
Their village burned down because she was possessed and that a cult came in to collect her. He begged Ria to run, his fur burnt. She didn't want to go.
“N-no, it's all my fault...”
“No, it's not,” he coughed, “Run Ria... I'm too weak to protect you,” he gripped her shoulders harder and looked at her dead in eye, praying that someone knew how to cure her, “Someone will save you, and it can never be me... Forget everything!”
She whimpered then fled. He couldn't stop the laughing humans who kicked him in his wounds and dragged him to the edge of his village. Only a spiteful will to live made him crawl pathetically until he coincidentally fell asleep near the visiting entourage of Princess Alexia Midgar when she was nine.
Quietly rambling about the trauma in the nights he couldn't sleep became his balm. Princess Alexia encouraged him to speak, softly rubbing circles on his back but never speaking anything.
He was so busy remembering that he barely saw the shadowy figure in the corner of his eye. He swiftly threw a dagger at them. They revealed themselves in the light, a therianthrope like him.
She had black hair, ears and tail. Her eyes were brown. She was probably pretty if he didn't know her before.
“Ria...?”
“Am not Ria. Am Delta now!” she thumped her chest happily.
He was happy. She looked cured. Someone saved her. His prayers worked. Unshed tears somewhere blurred his vision.
“Well, I hope that I can meet your saviour and thank him. You deserve it Delta,” he said as he visibly relaxed.
She only grinned at him.
“Bossman—”
She was interrupted by another therianthrope. This one had blonde hair, panther ears and tail, and an absolutely cold glare directed at him. Only the memory of crawling on the ground and begging for help had given him the spine to glare at her back.
“Delta, we need to go.”
“But I need to hug him! He bit me, so I ran and ran and ran until I saw Bossman!”
The blonde panther therianthrope looked at him again, her cold stare melting into something that was reluctant respect.
“You willingly saved a possessed from the cult? I'm impressed.”
“Her only blood remaining were bastard brothers, there was a cult burning everything down. To see her survive is the best thing to happen to me after meeting my mistress.”
She stiffly nodded her approval before dragging Delta back to their master. When Alexia asked what happened to him, Hansel showed a hunted rabbit.
Kivuntappaja Wed 02 Apr 2025 05:39PM UTC
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