1. Quitting the Role of Tragic Female Lead
“Aaaaargh! This is so frustrating!”
The sound of my frantic footsteps echoed loudly through the corridor. I must have looked ridiculous running with the hem of my worn dress fluttering behind me, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Just leave her be. She’s probably lost it.”
Exactly! How could I possibly endure hearing such nonsense?! How can they treat a young lady they’re supposed to serve like that?!
Well, apparently, they can—in this damned fictional world, at least.
Bang! I roughly swung open the door and stepped into the back garden. Then, the sunny weather suddenly turned gloomy… Drip, drop. Raindrops began falling on me.
“Why is it only raining on me? Why only me!” I glared at the sky as if I wanted to devour it, then grabbed the back of my neck.
My name is Giselle Florette. All this dreadful mess started about two weeks ago.
* * *
I was working my part-time job, as usual, dealing with awful customers. After that, I got so irritated I impulsively started drinking. After suffering through a hangover, I opened my eyes to find myself right here, in the Florette mansion. The moment I threw off the moldy blanket in the shabby closet that was supposedly my room and opened my eyes wide, all the memories came flooding into my head.
Turns out, I’m now the female lead of a regret romance fantasy novel from my past life, called [Will You Regret It When I Die?]
The thought that flashed through my mind at that moment was… “I’m screwed.”
Let me tell you just how frustrating [Will You Regret It When I Die?] is.
I, the female lead, was adopted by Count Florette after my biological father, the archmage Count Sehera, and my mother died of unknown causes.
Count Florette, the only one who cherished me, left on a voyage, and during his absence, his sister, Madam Mariposa, was put in charge of me…
From then on, it was nothing but a series of terrible ordeals.
Madam Mariposa constantly tormented me, and then the trash regret male leads 1 and 2 appeared to ruin my life. Whether it was the guy who pretended to be my friend while using me or the guy who pretended to love me while using me. They’re all completely trash.
Meanwhile, in high society, I was given the nickname ‘everyone’s lover,’ gossiping about how I manipulated those two men.
You’d think it was too much for all these trials to be dumped on one person, but apparently, that’s the fate of a regret romance fantasy female lead.
I had once left a comment along with other readers, protesting that there were limits to how much you could mess up world-building.
[Giselle is so pitiful…ㅠㅠ The male leads are all crazy; she doesn’t even have a single personal maid, and even the servants speak to her rudely. She’s supposed to be nobility, but she just keeps getting oppressed without any believability and then dies ㅠㅠ]
[That’s exactly!!! Giselle’s female lead buff ^0^]
No matter how I thought about it, the author seemed to not understand Korean, so I couldn’t help but leave a rebuttal comment.
[Female lead’s buff is something you use when talking about good things, and what Giselle goes through is just unfair treatment, isn’t it???]
[Ah~ㅎㅎ Don’t worry! If Giselle acts differently, her ‘female lead buff’ will disappear too~!]
[…?? But Giselle already died, and the story’s finished;;]
[Ah, if you don’t like it, just drop it!! ^0^]
[But how can I drop it when it’s already finished;;]
That damn author b*stard…
I felt the cold rainwater soaking my body and was about to grit my teeth when I paused. Huh? I think there was something I can’t ignore in that author’s comment I just remembered…
My eyes flashed open.
Giselle, meaning me—if I act differently, this cursed female lead’s buff, no, this unfair treatment will disappear?
I turned around with gleaming eyes. Sure enough, several maids inside the mansion were laughing at my pathetic state. As I slowly walked toward them, a stone that definitely hadn’t been there just moments before suddenly jutted up from the ground.
“Ahhh! My, my knee!”
I fell flat onto the ground, and their mocking laughter poured down on me.
“Even falling down like that is a talent.”
“I’m so delicate that I fall down like this! I need gentlemen to help me up! Sob sob.”
“Ahaha. So that’s how you became everyone’s lover, Giselle?”
I clenched my fists as the falling rainwater soaked my entire body. Then I opened my mouth toward the maids. “Hey. Aren’t you the stupid ones here? It’s not like you’re talking to yourselves—you’re openly insulting me so I can hear it?”
“W-W-What are you suddenly saying?”
Maybe they were flustered that I, who had been quietly keeping my head down and taking their abuse, was now snapping back venomously. The maids could only stammer, unable to give a proper response.
“Ah, whatever. I’m done with this.”
Screw being a regret romance fantasy female lead!
“W-Why are you acting like this?”
“Why is everyone such a b*tch to only me? All of you get lost, I’m done!”
“Kyaaah!”
I threw a handful of dirt I’d grabbed from the ground at them. Then, after a moment. Pitter… pat. The rain began to subside. A ray of sunlight broke through the gray clouds that had been covering my head.
In that instant, I realized that the oppressive atmosphere weighing down on me had loosened slightly. The maids also just looked at me with somewhat confused expressions, no longer spouting the same nonsense as before. Only then did I let out a sigh of relief and emotion.
So, if I act differently from the story’s flow, does the female lead’s buff—no, the unfair treatment—disappear too?
I just need to act as differently as possible from the pitiful and pathetic ‘regret romance fantasy female lead’ type. In that case, it would be good to cause a ruckus in a completely outrageous way.
“I’ll legally screw over all these damn b*stards completely.”
I was smiling like a demon while thinking of ways to punish everyone in this household who had tormented me, along with all the male leads, when I heard someone calling me loudly.
“Giselle Florette!”
It was Madam Mariposa who had been oppressing me at the Florette estate all this time. As I stared at her bright red hair and green eyes, the suicide note I had written in my previous life came to mind.
[I think it was when I was very young. I had given Madam Mariposa a letter filled with affection as a gift. But do you know where that letter was found the next day—the one I had written so earnestly that my little hands were trembling? In the trash can.
When I asked with a shaking voice where the letter I had given her had gone, she casually said she had ‘thrown it away.’ After that, I never again gave anyone a gift filled with my deepest feelings. I was scared it would just be thrown away again.
Oh, shall I tell you another story? The truth is, I always wanted to be someone useful. Madam Mariposa told me this every single day.
“Giselle, don’t be a burden. You were adopted into our family, so you need to pull your weight.”
“…Yes, I’ll work hard. Um, I heard that my late father was an… archmage…”
“So what? You didn’t inherit even one percent of your father’s talent, did you?”
“…”
“Everyone laughs at you. But there is one thing you can do, isn’t there? Clean like the maids do.”
Her glare was so fierce that I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Yes, I was dumb and foolish, but I secretly thought I’d discovered magic talent. Moreover, I felt like I had quite a lot of mana.]
Oh, perfect revenge target number one found.
As I looked at her and lifted one corner of my mouth in a smirk, cold words came firing out like bullets from Madam Mariposa.
“Can’t you get that filthy body of yours up faster?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t I tell you today was the announcement of your engagement to Viscount Milpianne?”
Viscount Milpianne? Isn’t he thirty years older than me?
Come to think of it, it’s today, isn’t it? After the news of my engagement to that b*stard was announced, my life rapidly boarded the express train to hell.
I swept my hair back as if shaking off the moldy smell clinging to my body and grinned wickedly. “Ah, perfect. I’ll get ready right away. I’m so excited.”
A miserable punching bag life as a regret romance fantasy female lead? Doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll throw it all away too and just tear through the thorny path laid out before me.
