ITMLWKM 1

Chapter 1.

I Was Just a Villain Extra in That Novel.

I knelt on the execution platform, staring out at the furious crowd.

They jeered and laughed at me without stopping. Someone hurled a rotten egg toward my head. It cracked open with a wet splat, and the stench was so foul I almost threw up.

“Kill her!”

“Just kill her already!”

The angry mob wanted me dead as fast as possible. Everyone gathered here had come for one reason only—to watch me die.

It was miserable. Sad. Terrifying. And it made me furious at the same time.

I was the daughter of a marquis. I was only ten years old. Why was this happening to me?

I was the eldest daughter of a respected marquis family. A young lady. So why?

“How dare you abuse Count—no, Young Master Raumdisell!”

“Those monsters deserve to die!”

More rocks and filth started flying onto the platform. I couldn’t even fight back. I just had to take it.

“Apologize to Young Master Raumdisell with your life!”

“Pay for your sins with death!”

The crowd raised their fists and kept screaming.

Ah, right. Raumdisell.

This whole mess started because of the boy they kept shouting about.

I quietly went over how it all began.

Until recently, the Raumdisell family had been so poor that calling them nobles felt like a joke. No matter how hard the count tried, he couldn’t escape poverty, so he finally looked outside the empire. The problem was that the empire didn’t even have a proper sea trade route back then.

Only three years ago, the oceans were swarming with pirates. Even the imperial navy couldn’t handle them. Then one man cleared them out, reformed them, and brought them into the navy. That man was the once-poor Count Raumdisell.

For that achievement, he was made a duke.

“A high traitor who abused the son of the empire’s hero!”

“How could anyone treat a friend’s child like that?”

And that was exactly why I was kneeling here waiting to die.

Count Raumdisell had a son three years younger than me. When he left on his trading voyage, he left the boy with our family.

My father and Count Raumdisell had been close friends for years, and the Gladellis family was known as refined, respected, and thoroughly respectable.

“Hypocrites!”

“They acted so kind on the surface, but behind the scenes they ran an illegal fighting ring!”

“They even sold slaves, which the emperor strictly banned!”

On the surface, anyway.

My father did every dirty thing imaginable in secret while carefully protecting the image of a “refined and respected noble house.” Taking in his friend’s son, Carsian, was part of that performance.

But Father was completely sure Count Raumdisell would die out there. He treated the boy he’d suddenly been stuck with like a burdensome extra mouth to feed.

‘You useless parasite! Do you even know how much money you cost us?’

So he treated Carsian like a servant, starved him, and never held back on the abuse. And it wasn’t just Father. Mother, my younger sister, and I all joined in.

‘Daddy says living like this suits you.’

‘Mommy says even if you run away, no one will take you in.’

But like they say, even a rat hole gets sunlight sometimes. Or maybe you just never know what life will throw at you. The duke, who had always been a smooth talker, managed to win over the pirates, reform them, and open the sea trade route the empire had wanted for so long.

And he did it in only three years!

“Booooo!”

“Kill her! Kill her!”

The crowd’s jeers yanked me back to reality.

We had abused the empire’s hero’s son, run an illegal fighting ring, and sold banned slaves. The entire family had been sentenced to death. Now we were just waiting to die.

It was pure good-triumphs-over-evil.

So I tried to swallow my resentment and accept it.

Until I heard my mother muttering.

“I told you we should’ve just pinned everything on Latia. Why didn’t you listen…”

I jerked my head up in shock. Mother was still grumbling when Father snapped at her in a low voice.

“Have you lost your mind? Do you really think that would work? We can maybe get away with the abuse, but how is a ten-year-old supposed to have run a fighting ring?”

“Why not? She’s the one who kept the books. The ledgers were the important part. Carsian only ever got bullied by Latia. We could say we were just training her as the future heir of the trading company and left the whole thing in her hands…”

The world spun.

Was I really hearing this right? Were my own parents trying to dump every single crime on me?

“We let that bastard child of some lowly maid live in luxury all this time. The least she could do is take the fall for us!”

Mother spoke like she couldn’t understand why Father had admitted to everything and dragged the whole family onto the execution platform. Then she pulled my little sister, Elene, tightly into her arms.

“My poor Elene, my one and only precious daughter…”

Elene quickly buried herself against Mother. It looked so tender. But to me, the whole noisy world suddenly felt dead silent.

I couldn’t think at all.

They were trying to put every crime of Father and the family onto me alone. They would’ve done it long ago if they could.

I wasn’t even their real daughter.

Learning the truth right before dying was just too cruel. I sat there blankly, waiting for my turn. Now I finally understood why my family had always treated me like a stranger, and why they never scolded the servants for mocking and ignoring me.

I was an illegitimate child. I was never really part of their family.

I felt like my head was going to split open.

I had taken the blame for being insane and covered for every one of Elene’s crimes just to protect the family. That was how a ten-year-old ended up being called the worst villainess and wicked witch of the century.

Then the blade that would take my head flashed in the light, and I saw the so-called life flashing before my eyes.

Could you even call it that?

In those memories I wasn’t Marquis Gladellis’s daughter Latia. And yet she was still “me,” and “I” was reading a romance fantasy novel in a world completely different from the one I lived in now.

I couldn’t remember the title, but somehow the story itself was crystal clear. The moment the whole plot came back to me, it hit like a bolt of lightning.

That was my previous life. And this place was the novel I had read back then!

I snapped my head up. A boy was standing right in front of me.

His jet-black hair looked even darker against his pale face. The red eyes staring at me were so cold they made me shiver just looking at them. But there was no doubt—he was the male lead of this world, Carsian Raumdisell.

Carsian watched me with unreadable, deep eyes. The brief moment our gazes met felt endless to me. His lips moved like he was about to say something, but the executioner raised the sword high again.

My eyes went to the blade on their own. Watching the edge glitter in the sunlight, I thought:

What an idiot I had been, leading the bullying of Carsian just to earn love without understanding anything.

What a pathetic villain extra, thinking the praise I got for hurting him was real.

That was me. Latia Gladellis.

With a sharp whistle, the blade came down.

* * *

“Young lady! Young lady!”

“Ugh…”

A violent wave of dizziness hit me. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them again, my nanny was right there.

Huh? Nanny?

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. No matter how hard I rubbed or blinked, the worried face of my nanny didn’t disappear.

“…Nanny!”

I beamed and called out to her.

How was Susan here?

My nanny Susan had been kicked out three years ago for refusing to join in bullying Carsian!

I had no idea why she was on an execution platform, but I was so scared of dying that I threw my arms around her.

…Wait. Rubbed my eyes? Hugged Susan? Weren’t my arms supposed to be tied?

I jerked back in shock and looked down at myself. I wasn’t wearing filthy prison clothes. I had on a pretty dress, and my arms weren’t bound at all.

And this place was…

“My… room?”

What on earth was going on?

My eyes went wide. Susan leaned in closer, looking even more worried, and whispered,

“Please stop, young lady.”

“Huh?”

“You’re not really a bad person like this.”

A soft wave of dizziness washed over me, and the memory came back. I had heard something similar from Susan once before.

When was that again?

“Young lady. Please stop. The love you get from doing things like this isn’t real love.”

Ah. Right. That was it.

It was back when I realized Mother was happy whenever I bullied Carsian, so I pushed even harder. Susan had held my hands, crying, and tried to stop me.

She told me not to hurt Carsian, that this wasn’t who I was, that I wasn’t a bad person. She even said we should run away together.

And I had driven a spike right into her heart by saying a marquis’s daughter could never run away with a mere nanny…

Everything from the past had come back around as karma.

I wanted to apologize for the cruel things I’d said to her, but… wait.

The past had come back to me?

…Come back?

I turned my head away from Susan, half-afraid to look, and checked what was right in front of me.

And there he was.

“…No way.”

Carsian.

Not the version who had returned in triumph holding his father’s hand.

“How is this even possible…”

He was the same boy who had been getting abused in our marquis household. The exact same as he was three years ago!

This couldn’t be real!

I had gone back to the past!