Chapter 1
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a group of people I had never seen before, all staring at me.
“Shiona.”
That was what they called me.
Before I could even ask Who is Shiona?, I lost the chance—too distracted by the sight of a beautiful woman gazing at me as if she were possessed, tears welling up in her eyes, clearly overwhelmed with joy that I had woken up.
I only learned later that the lovely woman was Shiona’s mother.
Despite being in a completely unfamiliar place, I was surprisingly calm. It was clearly somewhere I had never been before, surrounded by strangers, yet for some reason it felt comfortable.
Maybe I thought it was just a strange but interesting dream. But then, the moment I looked into a mirror, I couldn’t help but be shocked.
Reflected back at me was a girl who looked to be about twelve years old, with silver hair and deep violet eyes.
“…That’s me?”
Unable to believe it, I pinched my cheek hard. A sharp pain shot through me, and a red mark bloomed on my pale skin.
This isn’t a dream…
I slumped down, clutching my head to calm my racing thoughts.
Calm down. First, calm down!
I needed to observe my surroundings carefully. I needed information about this place.
I imagined the worst-case scenario if I were to blurt out, “I don’t remember anything!”
They might lock me up in a mental institution. Or accuse me of being possessed by a demon and throw me out of the house.
Of course, Shiona’s family didn’t seem like such heartless people—but there was no harm in being cautious.
Besides, I—no, this girl named Shiona—had recently been hit by a carriage and fallen into a coma, only just waking up now. Pretending to be sick while observing the situation was perfect.
For several days, I stayed in bed, claiming I was still unwell and speaking as little as possible.
Even today, I was lying in bed as usual, wondering how long I could keep this up.
Knock, knock.
There was a gentle knock on the door, followed by a soft voice.
“Shiona, may I come in?”
It was Shiona’s mother.
I deliberately replied in a weak, crawling voice.
“Yeees…”
The door opened wide immediately. Shiona’s mother entered the room with the attending physician.
Her eyes were filled with love and worry for her daughter.
“How is your head now? Does it still hurt? Is it still difficult to speak?”
Her warm gaze felt like it could melt ice, and my heart ached with guilt. But since I still didn’t fully understand the situation, I couldn’t abandon my sickly act yet.
I whispered softly.
“My head hurts.”
As her mother gently stroked my hair, she signaled to the physician.
The doctor began examining me, checking various parts of my body. Every time he tilted his head in confusion, my palms grew sweaty.
“That’s strange… Physically, you seem completely healed. Hmm…”
I wanted to sew his mouth shut, but a frail young girl couldn’t do such things.
I furrowed my brow and groaned, pretending to be in pain.
“Ugh…”
Thankfully, Shiona’s mother was the kind of person who trusted her daughter more than the doctor. After examining me a few more times, the physician concluded that it was an illness caused by psychological shock.
After that, my days became a simple cycle of eating and sleeping in bed.
For the first day or two, it was blissful. Being waited on was unbelievably comfortable.
Food prepared with a nod, being bathed and dressed by others—living like a doll suited me surprisingly well.
And yet, a suffocating sense of confinement slowly crept in.
Despite the spacious and comfortable room, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped.
The anxiety of being thrown into an unfamiliar world, along with vague unease about my own existence, made me restless.
Fortunately, that anxiety began to ease as Shiona’s memories slowly surfaced.
Shiona Rodriz.
Starting with that name, memories of the Rodriz family she belonged to, her family members, and even the incident where she was struck by a carriage belonging to Duke Berg’s household and lost consciousness all came back.
The injuries Shiona sustained weren’t severe—but the problem was where she fell.
She had struck her head hard against a stone, falling into a coma. And originally, she would have died without ever waking up.
How do I know that?
At first, I didn’t.
Pavel.
When I first heard my younger brother’s name, it sounded oddly familiar, but I brushed it off, thinking it might be the name of someone’s dog.
But when I heard that the carriage belonged to Duke Berg’s household, a name from a novel I had read in my original world flashed through my mind.
Ricardo Berg.
That name belonged to the male lead of a romance novel that made me wonder if my heart had a condition while reading it.
And Shiona Rodriz was the dead older sister of the villain Pavel Rodriz—a character who turned evil after his sister’s death.
According to the novel, Shiona dies in this carriage accident. And later, Pavel Rodriz grows into a villain who kills indiscriminately.
The thrilling romance between the male and female leads unfolds as they get tangled up in Pavel’s murders… or at least, I think that was the main plot.
“…Wait. But Shiona, who was supposed to die, is alive?”
No—rather, because I entered Shiona’s body, she appears alive to everyone else.
If that’s the case, doesn’t the trigger for Pavel becoming a villain disappear? Of course, there were probably other contributing factors… but since I skimmed anything that wasn’t romance, I couldn’t remember the details clearly.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure whether the memories I had were from this novel at all.
I mean, how many novels have I read?
My head was a chaotic mix of stories, making it hard to distinguish which plot belonged to which book.
I barely remembered the protagonist’s name—there was no way I could recall detailed settings or side characters’ circumstances.
I only remembered people well enough to think, Oh right, that person.
Still, I remembered the ending. Like most romance novels, after overcoming countless hardships, the two leads fall in love.
The problem was that those hardships were personally created by Shiona’s younger brother.
In a story where the villain dies and the protagonists win, what happens to the villain’s sister? It didn’t seem like a hopeful future.
I sat at my desk, took out a pen and paper, and concentrated, trying to recall anything useful.
Come on, memory! Please! Anything—no, something important!
I screamed internally for a long time, but nothing surfaced. Still, my mind felt calmer.
Straightening my posture, I organized the main flow of the story as I remembered it.
The novel is told from the female protagonist’s point of view. The core themes are regression and revenge. The story begins after the female lead dies and regresses.
Her ultimate goal is to find the one who killed her… but since it’s a romance novel, the central focus is her entanglements with the male lead and other characters.
In any case, the villain dies in the end. Stabbed to death, maybe…?
Pavel serves as excellent fertilizer for the beautiful love between the two protagonists.
If that was the role given to Pavel, then what could the villain’s sister do?
As I pondered this, a thought suddenly sparkled in my mind.
Wait…! If Pavel never becomes a villain, doesn’t that solve everything?
Below the messy notes I’d scribbled down, I carefully wrote a single line.
[Eliminate all possibilities of my brother becoming a villain!]
Knowing the novel’s ending, I felt obligated to guide my brother down the right path.
You could call it a sense of responsibility. Even in my previous life—which wasn’t long—I knew how heavy a single human life could be.
Even if this wasn’t what I wanted, since I was living Shiona’s life now, I intended to take responsibility for it.
My little brother becomes a villain? Then I’ll simply crush the seeds of evil before they ever sprout.
***
No matter how much I stared into the mirror, I couldn’t get used to this face.
Bright silver hair cascading past my shoulders, and deep purple eyes.
Now that I thought about it, my brother also had silver hair—but his eyes were a shining yellow.
I first saw my brother while I was still pretending to be sick in bed.
I woke up to the feeling of someone watching me, only to find a beautiful young boy looking down at me. At first, I thought he was an angel who had descended to take me away.
Did I die again?
I thought I had died once more. Memories from my previous life resurfaced—slipping, hitting my head, bleeding heavily as my consciousness faded. The angelic face I saw back then overlapped with this child’s.
As I lay there in shock, unable to speak, the boy grabbed my hand tightly, his face crumpling into tears. In a voice overflowing with kindness, he called me “sister.”
“…Sister? This kid is my brother?”
The child I mistook for an angel was my younger brother, Pavel Rodriz.
But what shocked me even more was realizing—once Shiona’s memories returned—that this child would later become a villain.
This angelic kid becomes a murderer…?
If this were my old world, I would’ve agonized over it for ages.
But this was a novel. The better-looking a character was, the more important their role tended to be.
I accepted it quickly.
From then on, I began closely supervising Pavel to make sure he never developed bad intentions. It had only been a week, but well—starting is half the battle, so that was already half a success.
All I had to do now was manage my brother properly and live comfortably as the eldest daughter of a marquis’s household.
Eldest daughter of the Rodriz Marquisate.
That was the role given to me now—and I was very satisfied with it.
On top of that, I was ridiculously rich!
When I first woke up, I vaguely suspected it from the impossibly high ceiling, but I never imagined this family was among the wealthiest in the empire!
It was like fortune had rolled straight into my lap—and I was more than ready to accept it.
For a while, life continued peacefully, just as I’d expected.
Shiona’s parents cherished their daughter, and my brother was so kind it was hard to believe he’d become a villain someday.
He did cling to me excessively, probably out of worry over my injury—but it wasn’t unbearable.
Since Shiona had once saved Pavel from being hit by a carriage, it was easy to imagine how deep the siblings’ trust and affection ran.
Still, it was a bit much.
“Pavel, could you bring me some water?”
“Here you go. Sister, is there anything else you need?”
“The sunlight is a bit—”
“Butler! Double the curtains! No—triple them! My sister is extremely sensitive to light. Not a single ray must be allowed in!”
One day, I saw him jump awake at the sound of my sneeze, and honestly wondered whether he was my brother or my personal servant.
Well, as long as he stayed kind. As long as he didn’t become a villain, my life would be smooth sailing.
Just as I was imagining that rosy future, a thought suddenly struck me.
Wait. This is a romance novel, isn’t it?
I carefully traced my reflection in the mirror.
Wavy silver hair. Amethyst-like purple eyes. Well-defined features despite my young age. No matter how closely I looked, there wasn’t a single unattractive part.
“…At this level, isn’t it reasonable to expect some romance with the male lead?”
Even if not the male lead, this was a romance novel—endless possibilities lay wide open.
“Let’s see. The male lead, side characters…”
Why not choose one carefully and date them? As for the female lead… who cares!
Hahaha!
……
That foolish train of thought was from ten years ago.
So what happened to me now?
A body tougher than stone, hearing sharp enough to pick up sounds outside the village, swordsmanship capable of slicing most monsters in two.
I had become one of the empire’s finest—
No. The strongest knight in the empire.
…How did this happen?
It all started ten years ago—when thirteen-year-old me went to the Berg ducal estate to meet the male lead.
