Reincarnated As A Villainess' Stepmother, And I Promise I Will Make My Daughter Happy. Whether They Be A Prince, A Knight, Or A Chancellor? I Won't Hand Over My Daughter To Any Of Them - 01 - Becoming the Stepmother of a Villainess
Chapter 1: Becoming the stepmother of a villainess.
It was only after the marriage that I became fully convinced.
I was reincarnated in the world of an Otome game.
And that the pretty, little girl in front of me – the daughter of the man I married —was a villainess who was destined to meet an ignominious end in the Otome game.
And that I became the stepmother of that said villainess.
***
To be honest, I didn’t remember my name before my reincarnation.
I mean, I didn’t remember my past life itself that clearly.
My name in this life was Selene.
Just Selene.
I was married and I didn’t have a last name to go by anymore, no matter how attached I might have been to it. On the other hand, I was not familiar with my new last name either.
Ever since I could remember, I have often felt a kind of déjà vu.
“I must have a psychic ability to see the future. Maybe I’m the chosen one!”
And, although I used to get intoxicated by situations that seemed strange to me when I was a teenager, I would think of other imaginary settings.
There wasn’t anything like that.
Everything felt familiar to me, Damn it.
What I remembered about myself in my past life was that I wanted to have children, but I couldn’t have them, even though I got married and tried everything. I had a lot of bad experiences because of it.
And the only thing that healed my broken heart was an Otome game.
Why did I remember Otome games so clearly when I have a hazy recollection of my own? Because I had always been immersed in that world when my heart was broken, and I was so immersed in it with the vigor of swimming an individual medley in its swamp.
(ED/N: Medley is a combination of four different swimming styles—backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle—into one race. This race is either swum by one swimmer as individual medley (IM) or by four swimmers as a medley relay.)
Thank you Otome Game. I love you. I couldn’t thank you enough for giving comfort to the heart of this old woman.
Speaking of my current life.
Born into a poor aristocracy, I was blessed with a healthy body and a delusional brain. And discipline and education.
Thanks to my current appearance, which was not too bad to some extent, I was able to get married, even though I was called a tomboy, a jabbering horse, a runaway horse, and a fearless horse —
Why did they all have to compare me with a horse?
As a poor aristocrat, the only way for us to get big cash and make it easy for our people was to marry off our daughters who couldn’t take over the family.
I had no objection to that. My sisters were crying that they were being married off to a man they had never seen before, but I didn’t care.
Because, unlike the world of the previous life, the only way to live as a woman with no rights was to get married. This was true even for the children of noble families. So, just the promise of food, clothing, and shelter through marriage was a lucrative thing, wasn’t it?
When I was still at home, the whole family would go hunting before winter to prepare for the winter retreat. When I met a bear alone, I thought I would be dead.
Well. No matter what, I was not disappointed in my appearance to some extent.
I got married… but then I got divorced once and came back!
Well, that couldn’t be helped. Everyone had a personality mismatch. Yes, it was a personality mismatch. That couldn’t be helped.
Don’t believe the rumours. It’s not because of the nickname “The Rampaging Horse of the North.” It’s definitely not because of that.
When my sickly twin brother died, my younger brother, who was to be the next in line in our family, had just been born.
So I took my brother’s place and helped my father with his work. I also remember that I sometimes dressed as a man because I was sometimes underestimated when I went to Royal Capital as a woman.
And while I was at it, I might have pretended to be my brother in a sword fighting tournament against the sons of noblemen instead of my brother. But that had nothing to do with it. Definitely not.
I was an older, poor countess with a history of failed marriage, and I was discovered by a marquis whose wife had died a few years earlier. I didn’t know where he found me, but when he told me he wanted to marry me, it was as if he had stirred up a hornet’s nest in my house.
People were saying all kinds of things about Marquis, that he had a strange taste, or he was a MILFs, ghetto eater, or a Masochist.
[TLN: Lmao]
—I mean, that’s indirectly disrespectful to me too. Maybe my family hated me? I was not even old yet. I was still young and beautiful, you know? [TLN: I understand, young lady]
Though I could roughly predict what Marquis had in his mind.
The Marquis was in a position that was central to the country. If he had tried to get a new wife from a noble family, he would have had to deal with power and interest disputes, and all sorts of other problems. But a wife was a status. There was no way for him not to have a wife. And since he only had a daughter, he needed an heir.
Therefore, it would have been convenient to marry the daughter of a count who belonged to nowhere (we were poor and had no power) and had nothing to boast of but their old history and title, having been removed from the power struggle a long time ago.
I came to be a wife without knowing what the other person looked like.
I wasn’t interested in whoever the other party was.
To be honest, maybe I was in a slightly rotten and resigned mode in my dead-end life.
So, of course, I didn’t know the face or name of the forgotten daughter of his former wife from his first marriage.
Athy Eularia Karamanlis.
When I heard this full name of hers, it immediately hit me.
It was the same as the name of the villainess in an Otome game I was playing…
— How could she come up with such a variety of ideas to bully the main character of the Otome game? I think she should open a class to teach that to make money, and after harassing the main character in every way possible, no matter what the ending was, she would die a violent death.
***
When I was playing the Otome game, the villainess was just plain annoying. I played them for weeks so I knew all her tricks. It was a real pain to deal with.
She was proud and had a strong desire for self-approval, and was self-loving, mean, and obsessive. She was short-sighted and ephemeral, even though she could do well in school. She was emotionally unstable and dependent on her fiancée.
She was really an empty woman with nothing to offer but her status and appearance.
But..
The kid in front of me had platinum blonde hair that was soft and fluffy yet silky and shiny, clear violet eyes so large they almost spilled out, and bushy eyelashes that framed them. Her skin was white and her cheeks were pink with a hint of color.
The way she clung to the Marquis’ leg and glanced up at me made her look like a true angel. Angel. Angelo. Engel. Thiên Thần. And so on.
“You are my… new mama?”
Oh no. Even her voice was so cute.
This place was heaven.
Not only was there food, clothing, and secured shelter.
It’s paradise. Utopia. Arcadia. Paradise. Paraiso. [TLN: Forgive me if I’m wrong]
Eh. What! I could be the mother of such an angel? What’s this blessing?
My angel gently extended her fingertips, which were stained pink at the tips and had tiny, cute fingernails like cherry shells, to me.
The moment I saw those hands, a word came back to my mind.
—No one loved me! My father rejected me, my stepmother rejected me! My stepmother would brush my still young body saying, “Don’t touch me with your filthy hands!”
What ending was that?
The abandonment of the villainess who was condemned.
I grabbed my angel’s hands stiffly and pulled her close, inserting my hands into her surprised sides. Once I lifted her feather-light body high in the air, I hugged her tightly and rubbed my cheeks against her pink, fluffy cheeks.
“Yes! I am your new mother! Sweet Athy! My angelic Athy! I want you to stay with me from now on! Let’s play a lot, read books, and sleep together!”
That’s right.
This child became the worst of the worst villainess in the future because her stepmother and her own father were cold to her. Even though she was this cute, this lovely.
I certainly didn’t like the villainess until the end, and I didn’t have much sympathy for her, but this kid’s different.
She was not a villain yet. There was still time.
That’s right. Since she was so cute, if she was raised honestly, she would become a beautiful girl. She was perfect on the outside, so why not make her perfect on the inside, too?
Besides,
She was simply cute.
So adorable.
A true angel.
How could I be cold to a girl like this?
No I won’t!!!!
In my previous life I wanted a child. When I heard about the hardships of raising a child, it sounded difficult but they were happy, and I envied them. I wanted to smile and talk about my hardships too.
So that’s why!
In this world! I will raise an immensely beautiful girl!
I felt like I was in some kind of a different world than that of the Otome game, but I didn’t care!
Because I loved those nurturing simulations too!
I was enjoying her cheeks which were like a squishy rice cake that suckled my skin, and the sound of her cackling in my ear was truly a dreamy experience.
TLN- I’m new to the Shoujo Genres, but it was my long time wish to work on a Villainess novel. Not exactly what I hoped for, but still it’s funny.
We haven’t decided to pick this novel yet! But I’ll do as many as chapters as possible!
Stay tuned to the 3rd Shibe. Hahaha, actually don’t mind shibe, that’s just for fun.
Have fun you all.