MLAN 01

Chapter 01

My younger sister is a little… lacking.

“Unnie!”

She was certainly cute, chirping away with such an innocent face.

“I bought a pretty jewel outside today!”

But if you considered that the behavior of an adult woman, there was honestly no hope for her.

Lydia let out a sigh as she watched her younger sister, Sylvia Prestin, return after paying an exorbitant amount of money for some cheap imitation jewelry.

That made five times this month already.

Once again, Sylvia had fallen for some ridiculous scam and come home grinning like a complete sucker.

She was so innocently proud of herself, completely unaware of what she had done wrong.

It was enough to make anyone watching her tear their hair out.

“Here, this is a present for you, Unnie!”

But seeing how sweetly she always took care of her older sister, Lydia couldn’t bring herself to scold her outright.

Half resigned to her fate, Lydia accepted the object her younger sister held out to her with a complicated expression.

No matter how she looked at it, it was nothing more than an imitation jewel that only sparkled on the outside. Its actual value was about the same as a rock lying on the roadside.

……Fine. What could she do?

This world had been ‘set up’ this way from the very beginning.

I have to be the one who keeps a clear head, at least.

“Thank you, Sylvia.”

At Lydia’s words of thanks, Sylvia giggled.

“I’m glad you like it, Unnie.”

As expected of the heroine of a romance-fantasy novel, she had an exceptionally beautiful and lovable face.

That’s right.

The heroine.

Looking at her younger sister’s dazzling beauty, the kind that could steal anyone’s attention, Lydia smiled bitterly.

This world was inside a damn bleak reverse-harem romance-fantasy novel.

And Lydia’s younger sister was the novel’s naive heroine.

<The Lady in the Cage> had once been an enormously popular romance-fantasy novel.

Among the countless romance-fantasy novels out there, there was only one reason this seemingly ordinary title had become so popular.

Angst.

There really wasn’t much of a plot.

A beautiful heroine who was so pure she was practically naive, and a bunch of insane male leads who became obsessed with her.

In the novel, the male leads fell in love with the heroine at first sight and competed over her. Eventually, they came to an agreement among themselves.

They would kidnap and imprison the heroine and make her their shared possession.

So that’s why the title was “In the Cage”….

It was a story with absolutely no morals, but thanks to its intense and provocative content, it was extremely popular among a certain group of readers.

A so-called bleak reverse-harem romance-fantasy.

Naturally, Lydia wasn’t thrilled about being reincarnated into a novel like this.

Since I’ve already ended up here, what matters is how I survive from now on.

How could she survive in this world?

<The Lady in the Cage> was a hopelessly trashy novel, but it did have something resembling a world-building system.

In simple terms, it went like this.

There were Transcendents in this world.

Transcendents could use supernatural abilities that surpassed the limits of ordinary humans. However, the more they used their abilities, the more unstable they became, eventually reaching the point where they would lose control.

And to restore stability to those Transcendents, a Purifier was needed.

A Purifier was someone who possessed a special ability within the world’s setting. Through deep physical contact with a Purifier, Transcendents could regain their stability…

The heroine, Sylvia Prestin, possessed an overwhelmingly powerful ability even among the rare Purifiers.

Unfortunately, that was all Sylvia had.

Her family had fallen into ruin, she had no power with which to protect herself, and she herself was practically naive to the point of being a fool.

To make matters worse, the only blood relative she had left in the world was jealous and envious of her.

She had, in other words, the perfect conditions to be dragged through one tragedy after another as the heroine of a bleak romance.

And Lydia, in this damnable story…

was the wicked older sister who became jealous of Sylvia for being doted on by the male leads, all of whom were Transcendents, and tried to harm her.

In other words, she was the villainess.

Damn it.

As befitting a villainess, Lydia met a horrible end at the hands of the male leads in the original story.

Reincarnated Lydia had absolutely no intention of meeting such a bad ending.

She hadn’t even been jealous of her younger sister in the first place.

But thanks to the relentless lectures from a friend in her previous life, Lydia had a rough idea of how transmigration stories in romance-fantasy novels tended to go.

No matter how hard you tried to avoid it, you would inevitably get caught up in the original plot.

That was the fate of someone who had been reincarnated into a novel.

If I really want to escape the original storyline, I need to leave somewhere far away.

Having reached that conclusion, Lydia attempted to run away in the middle of the night on her tenth birthday.

It was a grand determination to escape the original story as quickly as possible.

But…

“Unnie… Where are you going?”

The moment Lydia saw her younger sister, who had woken up and was rubbing her sleepy eyes while clinging to her in her disheveled nightclothes, she felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her.

By then, Lydia had already recovered the memories of her previous life, so she had deliberately acted distant toward her younger sister in an attempt to sever their emotional attachment.

But her younger sister, completely oblivious to such things, had always followed Lydia around, foolishly grinning as though she loved her no matter how cold Lydia acted.

Sylvia was six years old.

If I leave her behind now… what will happen to her?

The life of the original ‘Sylvia’ could be summed up in one word:

Tragedy.

A life spent being manipulated by others and being forced to do things she never wanted to do.

Sure, the male leads would love her…

But was that really a good thing for the heroine of a bleak romance?

“I’m coming with you…”

Sylvia’s tiny fist tightly gripped Lydia’s clothes.

She squeezed as hard as she could, as though terrified that Lydia might slip away.

Even though she wouldn’t have been able to hold on if Lydia had simply shaken her off.

Is it really right to leave her behind?

Lydia had always thought of herself as cold-blooded.

She had never considered something as sentimental as family affection.

But…

As Lydia’s silence stretched on, Sylvia’s eyes began to fill with tears.

Perhaps she had instinctively realized that she was about to be abandoned.

I can’t let my heart weaken. Think about your future.

Lydia repeated those words to herself, desperately trying to steel her resolve.

“Unnie…”

But at the sound of her little sister’s voice, Lydia’s resolve completely crumbled.

That day, Lydia ultimately failed to leave home.

It was the fateful night when Lydia’s life plan, which she had spent years preparing, changed in a single moment.

Back to the present.

“How can you possibly do this?!”

Bang!

A red-faced man slammed his fist down on the desk.

“Look at this! You have to keep your promise!”

Lydia looked down at the desk with an indifferent expression.

There was a document lying on it.

<Marriage Contract>

“Here! Can’t you see that your sister signed it? We promised to get married! That’s what this means!”

“So?”

When Lydia asked the question so casually, the man shouted as though he were about to explode.

“What do you mean, ‘so’?! Keep your promise! Where is Miss Sylvia? My beautiful fiancée…!”

At that moment, Lydia picked up the contract.

And without hesitating for even a moment, she tore it apart.

Riiip.

“W-Wait! What are you doing…?!”

Having witnessed the contract being torn apart right before his eyes, the man thrust his face toward Lydia.

He looked as though he was about to grab her by the collar.

“Lady Prestin! No matter who you are, you can’t do this! This is a sacred marriage contract…”

“Baron Allen.”

Lydia glared coldly at the man.

“Don’t push your luck.”

“W-What did you say…?!”

“Do you really think you’re the first person like you I’ve dealt with?”

Rip. Riiip.

Lydia tore the contract into even smaller pieces.

“You obviously tricked Sylvia. You probably gave her some food or a pretty little rock or something. Getting her to sign first and then making up whatever you wanted the document to say afterward isn’t exactly difficult, is it?”

“H-How dare you make such absurd accusations! Why would I ever do something like that?! Don’t falsely accuse me!”

The man stammered in confusion.

“It’s not as though Miss Sylvia is mentally deficient. There’s no way she would fall for such a trivial trick…”

“Yeah, you said it yourself.”

Lydia had now dropped the formal speech entirely.

“Honestly, Sylvia is a little too innocent for her own good. You knew that and took advantage of it. But did you really think I wouldn’t have prepared for something like this?”

Lydia pulled out a sheet of paper that she always carried with her.

“Look. This document proves that I’m Sylvia’s legal guardian. Sylvia can’t sign documents that cause changes to her personal status, like a marriage contract. More precisely, it doesn’t matter how many times she signs it. It has no legal effect. Any document her guardian hasn’t reviewed is invalid.”

Lydia pointed at the marriage contract she had torn to shreds.

“So this is invalid. If you understand, then get out.”

The man opened his mouth in shock, apparently never expecting such a proper counterattack.

Lydia sneered at him.

If you don’t like it, then why don’t you become Sylvia’s sister yourself?

“Grrr…! Grr!”

Eventually, the man came to his senses and huffed furiously.

Lydia casually ordered him out.

“What are you staring at? Never seen a bad person before?”

“Aaaagh!”

The man looked furious enough to explode, but ultimately couldn’t find anything to say in response. He simply shouted,

“Just you wait! I’ll definitely come back someday!”

With that, he stomped his way out.

Of course, Lydia didn’t care in the slightest.

Something this insignificant has a lot of nerve.

That’s right.

It had been twelve years since Lydia had given up on escaping the original story.

Lydia had made a spectacular career change into a villainess.