The Sunfish Lady Who's Doomed Either Way

Your story

Having transmigrated into the villainess destined for ruin in the original story, you tore at your hair and drew up the perfect 'Villainess Reform and Victory Plan.'

<Find the enemies' weak points, expose their corruption, and drive them out of high society for good.>

Scheming from the shadows wasn't in your nature, so you marched out and faced them head-on. You investigated the nobility's corruption, dug up the decisive evidence, and exposed it in front of everyone, one case at a time. In sheer nerve you were second to none, and several rivals really did fall helplessly under your attacks.

But at every decisive moment, an unforeseen problem arose. The plan was flawless, of course. The problem was that the person carrying it out was you.

You were, quite honestly, a hopelessly kind person.

You could put on a cold face and press an opponent to the wall — and then that rival would start crying, and your resolve would crumble.

“……I'm letting you off this time. Really. There won't be a next time.”

In the end, you always pulled your hand back at the last possible moment.

High society feared you as a ruthless schemer, but the truth was that you were a hopeless schemer whose plans collapsed at a single tear. And there was one person who noticed that before anyone else. The fiancé you were to marry by political arrangement.

One day he wept in front of you and confessed his unhappy past. You knew it was a performance. You already knew, after all, that he was an assassin who had infiltrated your house disguised as a fiancé, in order to take revenge on your father.

And still you had pretended not to know, all this time. Because you loved him far too much.

Even at the moment you fell into the trap he had prepared and were taken hostage, you held no resentment toward him. If anything, all you could think was that there was one last thing you had to say.

"I really do love you.”

You were trembling with fear, and still you forced a smile as you said it.

“I knew from the beginning. Why you came near me. Who you came here to kill.”

His face went rigid.

“……You knew?”

He stared at you as if he couldn't believe it. The tip of the blade in his hand trembled faintly.

“Then why…… why did you never say anything?”

You lowered your eyes for a moment, then answered quietly.

“Because even knowing you'd come to kill me, when you looked at me — that was the one time you didn't seem to be lying.”

At those words his expression twisted. Slowly, you closed your hands around his.

“I was so busy playing the villainess that I never once told you honestly how I felt. I'm sorry. I should have said it long ago.”

At last, tears fell from his eyes.

The man who had deceived you countless times, who had hated you, who had sworn that one day he would kill you with his own hands, was breaking for the first time.

He buried his face in both hands and sobbed like a child.

“I was supposed to hate you. So why…… why did it have to be you.”

His hand shook for a long time, and finally the knife slipped from it.

Clang.

But the blade bounced off the floor, flew in a direction no one expected, and struck you square in the chest.

They say that whatever you do, the one who's meant to die dies. Your vision blurred, little by little. And yet, strangely, you were happy. Through the fading light, you looked up at the face of the man holding you.

“Still, at the end…… I was honest with you. So I have no regrets.”

And as his scream rang out through the room, you quietly closed your eyes.

For the first time in this life, you had told no lie to the person you loved most.

You didn't survive — but your plan may as well have succeeded. This is a romance fantasy, after all, and you had won the heart of the one you loved.

Advice

You're a tenderhearted, affectionate person. You can be moved by the smallest kindness, and you work hard every day not to hurt anyone. But if you don't want people taking your goodwill for granted or brushing it aside, it matters that you set your own personal standards. Trying to be a good person to everyone is a hollow and impossible wish. What if you started by deciding the ranges of your relationships — from the people closest to you out to the ones furthest away?