The estate grounds spanned a large area—from what Mira could see, the distance between the palace doors she’d just come out from to the palace gates at the very edge of the grounds was at least nine miles away.

  The carriage bearing the imperial family’s crest on its glossy white door was waiting for them a short distance outside the palace’s main doors. One horseman was standing on the grassy ground next to the sleek black horse, stroking its mane and speaking softly to it. The other horseman remained seated on his horse while appearing to be talking to his coworker.

  Mira had seen this carriage in a CG on Magnus’ route, when he’d offered Daisy a ride home during summer vacation after her father’s mental decline had left her scrambling for last minute transportation options.

  Once the horseman noticed them approaching, he bowed to them and hurried to open the carriage door for them.

  “Thank you, John,” Magnus said to him.

  Mira nodded at him and said her thanks, drawing a strange glance from Magnus. She tensed, but there were no notification light flashes.

  Magnus held out an expectant hand as he stood at the side of the carriage door. For a second, Mira stared down at his hand and wondered what he wanted. Then she realized, with growing horror, that he was offering her support to climb up into the carriage.

  She recoiled at the thought of touching the hand of a guy who clearly despised her. Drop in favorability points or not, it wasn’t something she could stomach.

  “Thank you, but I can manage,” she said politely to him before heaving herself up onto the floor of the carriage.

  Blythe’s body was apparently pathetically weak—she stumbled at once, nearly falling down. She launched forward to grab onto the plush seats for the passengers to steady herself. She hobbled closer to sit down, flushing at the clumsiness she’d just displayed. Her earlier words to Magnus echoed around in her head with a sadistic viciousness.

  Evidently, she could not manage it by herself.

  Mira’s own original body wasn’t exactly the peak of physical strength either, but she at least participated in PE classes.

  A flash of blue light, and the table of stats she’d seen earlier was presented before her.

  Her jaw dropped. This was a joke.

  This had to be a joke, right?

  Her actions could actually cause her stats to decrease?

  She waited for the inevitable flash of red light that would come in the wake of her rejection of Magnus’ help. It didn’t come.

  Maybe he despised Blythe so much that he was pleased she didn’t take his hand. She wondered if she would’ve lost favorability points if she’d taken it. Was the maintenance of his favorability worth the drop in charm?

  Magnus came up by himself, carrying himself with such grace that Mira cringed at herself once again. He looked at her strangely, as if she were an undiscovered life form he'd found crawling about in a bush. Mira pretended not to see his weirded out expression, choosing to look out the window instead.

  John closed the door for them.

  Thus began an incredibly awkward and quiet carriage ride to school. As she stared out the window at the scenery they were riding past, Mira folded her hands in her lap.

  Ladies in shows and movies did that, right?

  Well-maintained gardens filled with trees, animal-shaped topiaries and colorful flowering plants framed a large pond with various waterfowl swimming about on the surface. In the distance, there were palaces even larger than Blythe’s.

  She could feel Magnus' eyes on her, but she resolutely kept her eyes on the scenery outside the window. With every word that came out of her mouth, she ran the risk of losing favorability points with him. She needed to get away from him and have some space and time to think about everything that was going on.

  Subtly, she pinched the back of her hand. Nope. Still not a dream.

  Of course, the way she'd almost twisted her ankle on her way into the carriage was a pretty good indicator that this was somehow her new reality.

  At least she wouldn't have to worry about the precalculus test that she was supposed to be taking on Monday. A cold chill ran down her spine. What had been a passing thought stewed in her mind as she considered the possibility of being stuck here in this life like the other protagonists of the isekai web novels she’d been obsessively reading.

  No way …

  Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her seat and tried to mentally retrace her steps yesterday. She hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. She’d slept in, cleaned her room after her mother reminded her, then happily bid her parents goodbye as they left the house. After that, she’d parked herself in front of her laptop and played Waiting for Fireflies until she’d completed the very last route and unlocked all the CGs.

  Upon reaching 100 percent completion, she’d made some stovetop popcorn to eat while reading web novels on her phone. She still recalled closing her eyes after complaining aloud about the heroine’s silly paranoia.

  Her eyes flew open.

  Magnus was staring at her with that hard look in his eye.

  A chill rolled down her spine.

  ???

  They made it to the school gates without exchanging a single word with each other.

  Magnus had finally seemed to accept that she wasn’t in the mood to talk, because she felt his burning gaze leave her face halfway through their journey.

  As they pulled up to their destination, Mira's eyes widened at the sheer size and splendor of the royal academy. They were in front of a huge courtyard partially surrounded by three enormous buildings that towered over the tallest trees in the vicinity. The middle building was navy blue, the color contrasting nicely with its row of widely spaced out white Tuscan pillars. A few wide but short steps led up to the open entrance without doors in the middle.

  Students milled about, sitting on the stone benches or by the large fountain at the center of it all. The other two buildings were much the same, except for a difference in color for their main body—the building on the left was purple, and the one on the right was white.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  When the carriage came to a stop, John opened the door for them and Magnus gracefully hopped down to the ground. Extending a hand to her, he waited by the door.

  She could read the challenge in his eyes.

  Not wanting another drop in charm should she stumble again, Mira inhaled a deep breath before reaching out to take his hand.

  She'd have to see if this cost her any favorability points.

  With his assistance, she alighted much more smoothly than she'd boarded earlier. She blinked as her feet touched the ground and no notifications popped up.

  John wished them a good day at the academy before driving off with his coworker.

  "Thank you for giving me a ride," she said to Magnus, giving him a quick bow of the head.

  “Of course,” he said, but his eyes were cold.

  Bits of game trivia were coming back to her now. In his route, Magnus revealed to Daisy that Blythe had insisted on being escorted to school by him every day on account of her relationship to him as his fiancée. Under pressure from his father and Blythe’s father, he was unable to say no.

  If his negative points in favorability was any reliable indicator of his feelings, he absolutely detested her. She certainly wasn’t going to cling to him and ask him to walk her to class.

  Also, she needed a breather after being railroaded from location to location the moment she woke up in the morning.

  He was still standing there, albeit keeping a slight distance from her. Mira made the logical assumption that Blythe made Magnus escort her directly to class as well, or wherever else she needed to be first thing in the morning at school.

  “I’ll go by myself,” she said politely. “You don’t have to walk me.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he smiled back. “Sure.”

  Holding back a sigh of relief, Mira turned around and began walking. In truth, she didn’t know where she was going.

  She just wanted to get away from him breathing down her neck and have a few minutes to herself. With him standing here hovering over her, she couldn’t dig into her bag and search for her class schedule or for a clue of what to do next.

  Most of the students were striding up the steps into the navy blue building’s entrance, so she followed the crowd.

  Past the open entrance was a spacious hallway with its walls lined with full-length lockers. Light streaming in from the glass block windows on the top section of the walls showed off the shimmery aspect of the aqua glass mosaic flooring.

  People stood before their own lockers, putting stuff in them and grabbing stuff from them. Some of them had a friend or two beside them, chatting while they organized their things.

  Mira walked straight ahead until she reached the end, where she could go down the connecting hallway on her left or her right. She made the split-second decision to take the left path. Just as she was about to stand near the wall and search her bag for a class schedule, someone’s fingers curled around her elbow.

  Heart in mouth, she stopped and whirled around.

  “Where are you going?” It was Magnus. “Your classroom isn’t that way.”

  Red light.

  Of course, he couldn't just leave her alone for one minute.

  She looked into his unsmiling eyes, desperately wanting to scream in his face to get off her back.

  Instead, she forced a smile.

  “I … I thought I saw someone I knew over there and wanted to say hi,” she said, holding her breath.

  No red light.

  However, Magnus’ eyes narrowed once again.

  “Are you up to something? Is that why you didn’t want me to come with you?”

  Here we go again. Blythe, just how insufferable were you?

  “No, honestly,” she insisted. “I just … felt guilty. I realized I’ve been taking up a lot of your time in the mornings. You shouldn’t have to escort me to school or class every morning.”

  “Really? I recall you telling me that, by virtue of being your fiancé, I should be picking you up from your home every morning to come to the academy together.”

  “W-well,” Mira said, her eyes darting around wildly as she came up with some excuse that would seem plausible, “I did some self-introspection and realized I shouldn’t have been thinking that way. It was very demanding of me, and I’m sorry.”

  Annoyed that she had to apologize for what she hadn’t done, Mira focused her gaze on the ground so Magnus couldn’t see her frustration.

  His mistrustful tone didn’t let up. “Is that really the reason why you’ve been behaving so strangely today?”

  “Yes,” she said, swallowing the urge to shove him away. “I apologize if I worried you.”

  She suppressed the desire to clench her hands into fists. It was so unfair. Favorability fell easily by fives and tens, but the rare increases in points were miserly.

  “Of course. It’s my duty to be concerned for my fiancée,” he said, although he didn’t sound very concerned at all. “Well, since I’m already here, I’ll escort you to your class.”

  She opened her mouth to decline his offer. One look at the ice in his expression despite his smile made her shut it.

  The real Blythe would have been delighted at his offer. She couldn’t risk incurring more suspicion.

  “Okay.”

  She followed him down the other hallway, where they walked past several mahogany doors to climb up a winding staircase with gilded handrails and recurring floral patterns on the black metal balustrade. At the second floor, Magnus led her to a mahogany door with a frosted glass plaque stating ‘225’ affixed to it.

  He opened the door and made a wide sweeping gesture for her to go in. To all the squealing girls who were already in the classroom, he probably looked like a chivalrous gentleman.

  Mira went in.

  For some reason, she’d thought he would come in with her, but he remained at the doorway.

  “Have a good day, Blythe,” he said, waving before he left.

  She breathed out in relief upon realizing he wasn’t in this class.

  “Blythe!”

  A couple of girls came bounding up to her with stars in their eyes. They looked quite familiar. Mira hastily pulled up their information windows.

  Sophie, the blonde-haired girl with beautiful turquoise eyes, cupped her face with both hands and gushed, “It’s so sweet that His Highness walks you to class every morning.”

  Mira strained a smile at her.

  Jessica brushed her lilac-purple hair over her shoulder. Her amber eyes were warm as she smiled at Mira. “Well, of course. Blythe is so lovely that His Highness must simply be enamored with her.”

  Daisy had encountered them several times at the beginning of the game and throughout the common route, where Jessica and Sophie would bully her on behalf of Blythe. Mira still remembered their snooty attitude and words when they implied Daisy was a commoner desperate for attention from the aristocratic boys in school.

  Mira wondered if the original Blythe had been so obtuse she’d thought Magnus’ acquiescence to all her requests had been out of love, or if she’d simply been parading these acts of services around to mark her territory. Either way, her best friends didn’t seem to see the perfunctory nature of Magnus’ actions.

  “Good morning,” she said, following them to the desks they had their books open on, which was in the middle of the classroom.

  There were a few other boys and other girls in the large room, all gathered in small little groups either at a corner or at someone’s desk. A chalkboard-looking slab set on the wall at the front of the classroom had a faint blue glow along its edges.

  She sat down at the desk next to Jessica’s, which was behind Sophie’s. She began opening her bag and searching through it for her class schedule. Surely an aristocratic girl in an otome game had something like a cute planner, right?

  On her left, Jessica let out a derisive scoff. “Look who’s here. Miss Attention Seeker.”

  Startled, Mira lifted her head from the binder she’d been digging into.

  Daisy Willoughby, clutching the strap of her bag against the front of her shoulder, stepped into the classroom. Despite her antsy gaze, her beauty seemed to shine through the room.

  Her wavy ash-blonde hair, pulled into a half up half down style with a thick crown braid at the back of her head, just about reached her waist. It seemed to shimmer as she walked.

  At her entrance, the air in the classroom shifted.