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 46

Chapter 46: Engagement Broken Off

Two weeks had passed since the church released their statement.

The crown prince finally gave in.

Apparently the king himself put out a declaration.

――The engagement with Marilyn Lily Crystal has been officially dissolved.

With that, Marilyn was finally a free woman.

In the classrooms, in the hallways, that was all anyone could talk about.

“Finally the crown prince is free, huh.”

“They were mismatched from the very start anyway.”

“Now Marilyn-sama is done for.”

Some people were even openly celebrating the broken engagement.

Probably because she had that villainess reputation, pretty much everyone accepted this outcome without question.

“The plan worked, didn’t it.”

“Yeah.”

“Wowww, so this is how you peel a mikan? First time I’ve ever done it… but what’s this white stuff?”

“Oi.”

“What?”

Even though the engagement was broken off, Marilyn was still acting like it was the most normal thing in the world to be hanging out at my house.

Right now she was in my room, elegantly peeling a mikan.

While Fran and I were quietly happy about the plan succeeding, she was being way too chill about everything.

“What is this part?”

“It’s the white skin of the mikan.”

“That’s why I’m asking what it is.”

“Dunno.”

“It’s called albedo. It’s full of nutrients, you know.”

“Ohhh.”

Marilyn seemed satisfied with Fran’s answer and popped the mikan segment into her mouth.

“Huh, it’s actually pretty tasty. First time eating one.”

“Huh?”

“The ducal family only has oranges.”

For real? Growing up without ever eating a mikan sounded insane to me.

In my previous life, sitting under the kotatsu eating mikans was just normal everyday life, so this hit me pretty hard.

“Mikans mostly come from imports, you see. Hardly any are grown in this country.”

“I see.”

As expected of Fran. She knows everything.

And the fact that she noticed I was shocked and casually explained it anyway? She’s way too capable.

No wonder the strategy she came up with actually worked.

But anyway.

“Oi, Marilyn.”

“What?”

“Why are you still here? Aren’t you going back to the ducal family mansion?”

I asked the obvious question, and she just tilted her head.

“No way I can go back. The ducal family is desperate for royal power. The second I return they’ll come up with some excuse to turn me into the crown prince’s offering again. What’s the point of breaking the engagement if I still end up belonging to that guy?”

“Even so, you can’t just keep living at the marquis house forever.”

“Oh? Isn’t this mansion a place I’m allowed to stay freely?”

While saying that, Marilyn glanced over at Fran.

“Well… Fran has been living here since we realized it, but…”

“Because she’s my fiancée.”

“That’s very much an exception among exceptions…”

“Because she’s my fiancée.”

Fran kept smiling sweetly the whole time.

“…Haah… I’m finally getting used to how you two relate to each other. Anyway, I’m gonna keep staying here for a while longer. Please continue treating me like a special guest, okay?”

Talk about selfish.

But strangely enough, the way she was eating the mikan made her look her actual age for once.

“Oh, right. There’s just one thing I wanna say.”

After finishing the first mikan, Marilyn started peeling a second one and muttered casually, like it was no big deal.

“Thanks for this time.”

It wasn’t exactly the most straightforward way of saying thanks.

If you only heard it once, you might not even be sure whether she was actually grateful or not.

Still, her voice definitely carried real relief.

No matter how you look at it, she was probably just relieved the engagement was finally over.

“Now I can finally think about my next life.”

“…Yeah.”

“So until I decide what to do, I’m gonna keep freeloading here. Obviously you don’t get to say no, right?”

“…Yeah.”

Anyway, the plan succeeded.

From now on, a ton of choices should open up for her.

There’s no doubt her once-closed-off future had suddenly become wide open.

Speaking of futures…

Thanks to this incident, I could pretty much say I’d avoided most of the doom flags.

Which meant it was about time I started thinking about what comes next for me too.

Of course I’m gonna support the protagonist to take down the witch, but maybe I should also start thinking more seriously about my own path.

Because we actually have a future ahead of us now.

Whether my path and Marilyn’s cross again or not, I’m sure a bright future is waiting for her.

At least that’s what I thought back then.

※

Marilyn and the crown prince’s engagement was broken off.

If everything could just end nicely like that, great.

But if you think about it calmly, the crown prince was the guy who drove me to ruin in the original story.

No way he’s just gonna quietly accept having his fiancée stolen from him.

So we stayed on guard. We figured he might pull something at any moment.

But maybe we were too naive. Or you could say we let our guard down.

It happened three days after the engagement was dissolved.

Classes were over, and the three of us were getting ready to head home like usual when

“Ol-sama, there’s a problem.”

Fran came over with a rare serious look on her face.

“What is it?”

“I just received word from the spy. It seems the crown prince has made a move. He said he was going to ‘put an end to things properly’ and headed toward Marilyn-sama’s classroom.”

“!?”

That’s bad.

There’s no way the crown prince’s idea of “putting an end to things properly” is gonna be peaceful.

He’s definitely gonna throw his weight around and do whatever he wants.

In other words, if we don’t do something, Marilyn could be in serious danger.