I Got Reincarnated as a Villainous Noble, and When I Tried to Create an All-Male Academy to Avoid a Bad Ending, for Some Reason the Gender Ratio Reversed?

Chapter 33: The Root Cause of the Doom Flags

The crown prince’s fiancée—Marilyn Lily Crystal.

The girl who’s basically my fated partner in this world just tried to jump off the roof right in front of me.

In the end I managed to catch her, so her life was saved, but that doesn’t mean everything’s suddenly okay.

There’s no telling when she might try jumping again.

Because, look—she’s glaring at me with these really sharp eyes.

“Why did you get in the way?”

Her voice was terrifyingly cold.

It felt like she was blaming me, like what I did was completely unnecessary. Her tone was harsh.

But the weird one here is definitely her.

“Of course I got in the way! Jumping off in the first place—”

“Shut up. I don’t care about your ‘common sense’ lecture. I was trying to die, okay? I want to die.”

She spat the words out, then turned this icy stare on me. Her long, narrow eyes looked even more intense and piercing.

Even so, I couldn’t help but think—damn, she’s beautiful. Like, unfairly beautiful.

Her face was just perfect.

That’s who Marilyn Lily Crystal was.

“…I want to die.”

“Why?”

When I asked, she gave a faint smile.

“…Because I’m already completely hopeless about this life. Because there’s nothing I can do. Because hoping for anything is pointless. Simple, right?”

Her tone was so flat. No crying, no screaming—just this voice that sounded like she’d already given up on everything.

“…”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wrap my head around this situation.

First off, why was she cross-dressing?

Why would the crown prince’s fiancée try to end her own life?

Why was she so hopeless about everything?

In the original story, nothing at all was ever said about what was really going on with her. All I knew was that Olufusen slept with her, the crown prince lost it, and then he had Olufusen executed.

That’s literally all I know.

I had no idea what was true and what was fake. Not a single thing.

When the person in front of me was this broken and hopeless, all that original-story knowledge felt completely useless.

“What happened?”

“It’s none of your business.”

She looked away, then put her hands back on the rooftop railing. And in that same cold voice she said,

“A guy like you who’s always surrounded by girls and grinning like an idiot—it has nothing to do with you.”

“…”

Okay, yeah, it’s true I’m always surrounded by girls. When she pointed that out, I couldn’t really argue back.

But even so, there was no way I could just stand there and watch someone try to kill themselves right in front of me.

So I grabbed her hand again and said once more,

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Let go. Don’t touch me.”

“But if I let go, you’re just gonna jump again, right?”

“Obviously.”

“Then I’m definitely not letting go.”

“Oh? Do you even understand what that means? If the crown prince finds out, it’ll be a huge problem, you know.”

While she said that, she shook my hand off.

“See? You can’t do anything anyway.”

She snorted through her nose.

Because the reason I let go so easily was because I was thinking about protecting myself.

That was one of the absolute unwritten rules in this country.

Royal family, dukes, marquesses. Contact with the fiancée of a high-ranking noble was strictly forbidden unless there was an unavoidable reason.

Same gender might be overlooked, but opposite gender? Instant violation. No excuses accepted.

In other words, just touching Marilyn Lily Crystal—the crown prince’s fiancée—was taboo.

Except in cases like earlier where there was a clear reason (saving her life), even holding her hand wasn’t allowed.

Trying to stop her was way beyond that.

“In the end you’re the same as everyone else. Nobles, men—they’re all the same.”

“That’s not—”

“The reason I gave up on life is because of the crown prince.”

That one sentence made my brain freeze.

“The crown prince?”

“Yeah. My fiancé.”

She let her shoulders drop like she’d completely given up.

“See? Even someone from a marquis house like you can’t do anything about him, right? In the end you can’t go against power.”

“…”

“Unless you leave the country or something.”

She knew it was impossible, so she just gave this dry laugh.

I didn’t know the details of what happened, but it clearly wasn’t just some normal relationship problem.

In the original story they never really explained their relationship—no, forget about the original story for now. What matters is the situation she’s in right now.

The crown prince being involved was confirmed, but what exactly happened?

The possibilities that came to mind were cheating, or maybe she was being treated really badly.

Either way, if the crown prince was the cause, it wasn’t gonna be something simple. Getting involved would probably just bring me closer to a doom ending.

But even knowing that, I couldn’t just abandon her here.

“Tell me. Maybe there’s something I can do.”

So I held my hand out to her.

“I already told you it’s impossible.”

But she didn’t take my hand.

She just kept staring off into the distance, and it felt like she might jump again any second.

“No matter how hard I tried, it was pointless.”

“Even if it’s impossible alone, if I’m with you—”

“It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible.”

Her rejection was so strong I was at a loss for words, and then Marilyn turned around.

“…No, actually there is one thing.”

Then she took a step toward me.