I had always loved otome games.

There was something so satisfying about a make-believe world where as long as you did everything right, you would be rewarded.

It was sad in a lot of ways that such a notation could only exist in fantasies for people like me- the ones who worked diligently, did everything they were told to be 'successful' and looked towards the future while everyone else got to goof off.

When I was young, I had always held to the belief that every bit of effort I put in would pay off in the end. In highschool, I wasn't 'popular'. I didn't get invited to karaoke by boys or to go check out new cake shops by the girls. No secret admirer anxiously put a love letter in my shoe box in the early morning before anyone else had arrived.

I resigned myself to believing that those sorts of experiences were limited to the popular and the pretty. I got through without being too bitter because I knew that some day, it would be my time instead. Someday, those who were just coasting by on looks and sunny dispositions would hit a pothole that I would have already done the groundwork to pave over on my own life's path.

I focused on studying- mostly. Studying and gaming. It was cathartic on certain days to go home and enter a simulation where any man's heart could be captured from what you say and do alone and every mean girl who wanted to put you down got her just-desserts. (Okay, maybe I was a little bitter)

I got into a decent university.

I went to a few mixers, tried out a few parties- they ended up not being my thing. I found it ultimately hard to relate to 3D men. They just weren't... interested. They were hardly as breath-taking as the men from my games yet they were stubbornly so much harder to impress, even when I'd say all the right things, the same things the girl beside me would say and have them drooling at her feet.

I continued to play otome games, and I got into reading about reincarnation manga. I loved the stories where girls like me got reborn into a beautiful body where suddenly everything she said would hold weight. Where she would be finally seen for her exceptional work-ethic and brain. Some medieval world where she could impart all of her modern knowledge that she had so diligently studied and be regarded as a genius.

I got through university and got a good office job, something with ample room for advancement.

The years that followed were where the cruel truth of the world was finally revealed. The stupid hierarchy of highschool popularity never ended. I would be passed over time and time again for promotion while the bright-eyed, beautiful faced newbies I literally trained myself would rise above me. It didn't matter how good I was, all that mattered in the world was 'likability', professionally rephrased as 'networking skills'. Although most of the people who were 'likable' were so fake it made me sick. I don't know why I was the only one to see it.

I gave up on reality and dove into my games.

My pay checks let me pay my rent, order take out and buy new games when they came out. Really, that's all I needed in life.

It was unsatisfying but I'd never admit it.

Then I died, hit by a truck, and honestly, whatever.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Things finally paid off.

I was to be reborn into the last otome game I had played, a game I had obsessed over for many sleepless nights, only pausing my console now and again to moderate the 'Doki Doki with your love I'll save the Kingdom!' forums. I had even written the official fan guide. I had studied and stared at every single panel of the game as if there'd be an exam- and there was!

It was my time, finally. I just had to do everything right, and everything would work out. I was the full package now - an intelligent but overlooked mind now inside a beautiful exterior no one could ignore.

The game was to officially start when I was sixteen and invited to the castle for the year-long flower ceremony.

As I waited for that, I got to live my best isekai life.

Few of the adults that surrounded me as I grew up could deny that I was exceptional.

I started talking at a few months old.

I was causing tutors to fall to their knees claiming they had 'nothing left to teach me' by the time I was two.

I introduced Japanese cuisine to my household, warranting Shokugeki no Soma-level reactions from these poor people who had never tasted real good food in their lives.

I had my family wrapped around my tiny little finger and I could get away with nearly anything as long as I put on a cute voice. They respected me in ways my Earth parents never did.

In these otome reincarnation stories, there always does end up being one big plot twist. I found out my story's twist when I was five.

There was another girl who had reincarnated into this world with me. She wasn't an otaku, she almost acted like she'd never even heard of anime. Which was obviously a lie. No matter how 'cool' she was, there was no way she could live in Japan and not know at least know what an otome was.

I hated how she looked at me. Like she was doing me a favour for just talking to me. It was subtle but I'd seen those eyes a thousand times before in my last life. She was pretending to smile at me but deep down she was judging me.

There were girls like her in school. They were the kind every girl wanted to be and every guy wanted to date. They were most two-faced of all. They'd skip up to me every once and a while and pretend to be taking pity on my poor unpopular self. They'd ask me questions about myself and no matter how I answered they'd keep this forced smile on their lips to remind me how 'kind and friendly they were'. It wasn't hard to see though in the way their eyebrows would scrunch together that they thought our conversation was literal torture.

They wouldn't look at me again for the rest of the year.

I ignored her for as long as I could, anxious to live as the reborn daughter of the Earl, Viola Doyle and not be reminded of who I used to be.

Then came the flower ceremony.

I was livid when I found out how carelessly she had been interacting with title characters. Was I the only one taking this seriously?! I had TOLD her Gwendoline was the villainess the day they had met so WHY had she then went and pursued a friendship? What was her game?

There I was trying to SAVE THE WORLD and she was just frolicking around ignorantly with the most volatile elements of the plan! This is why I hated people like her.

When Clara Winters approached us, I was absolutely floored. The secondary villainess too?

I say secondary but in reality, she was the number one most hated character in the game, rated by fans. At least Gwendoline only really became a thorn in your side if you approached her fiancé, but Clara was likely introduced to the story for friction in the secodary capture target's routes.

She clearly looked down on all of the girls attending the flower ceremony, thinking she was 'so much more important' because she was a knight. If characters in teenaged-geared video games were reflections of the types of people you'd meet in school, she was that 'sporty' kind of girl who would fall in with all of the guys and then think that they all belonged to her. She'd get in your way for 'distracting' the targets from their 'more important duties' no matter which route you went down. 'Probably just mad because none of them would ever consider marrying her' was the prevailing theory on the forums.

A lot of people's favourite moment in each of the subroutes (besides the steamy romance scenes) was when the capture target finally stands up for the heroine and put her in her place.

I shouldn't have been that surprised that the three of them found each other. Those kinds of girls always manage to sniff each other out.

It was then when I saw the three of them together that it all clicked.

Briar was the third and ultimate villaness. The 'will smile in your face and then stab you in the back' character. The living embodyment of all that I couldn't win against in my last life.

When the princes went to approach them, I immediately made my exit. I couldn't risk messing up our first meetings that were supposed to happen in the their first flag events.

From there I got back on track. I had spent years compiling notes of what I remembered in the game and created a detailed chronology that I would have to follow to not miss anything.

But something was off.

No matter how much I scanned the party, I could not find the Prince's aide, Ailwin Wharton, anywhere. I spent much longer than I should have standing alone in the crowd, waiting for the handsome. black-haired, glasses character to come up and charm me.

It was a little rattling that the scene never played out but I couldn't afford to miss all of the other flags so I had to move on.

I pulled out my little notebook. Next was.... Eden it looked like.

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Author's Notes

It's 4AM, I'll edit in the morning (maybe)

In Viola's defense. Briar WAS faking being friendly, and she was DEFINITLY judging her each time they met.

It was a weird chapter to write. Originally it was just going to be in Briar's POV still but I had typed it up and it just seemed so bad I couldn't publish it since it was mostly Viola just being uncharacteristically chatty and thoroughly explaining at every turn just how messed up the plot had become and I was like, "eh just let her tell it."

Can we call out manga for a sec though for literally always just having the female lead being an 'office worker', like what does that mean? XD (and every old guy being a salary worker) I guess that adulthood is purposely written as the blandest thing ever so that their death doesn't seem sad but it makes it hard to connect to them.

...y'all I started writting this chapter like, I'mma give Viola DEPTH and make her likabe. That didn't happen. Oh well, this story is, after all, a satire.