Villains Are Destined to Die

Chapter 2

The love child of a chaebol owner.

The words have quite a romantic ring to them, especially if that love child is a girl. In novels and dramas, such girls were protagonists, akin to Cinderella. Reality was different, however.

After my mother died, I gained two half-brothers. They harassed me nearly to death. They ignored me and cursed at me in turn every single day. They did vile things to my food and my living space and ruined my school life by inciting the other students to exclude me from their friend groups. This was possible because my dastardly second eldest half-brother was close to my age, and we attended the same school for a year. My plight at school didn’t improve after he graduated.

My father’s first wife had passed away from a chronic illness long before I was born, but my lunatic half-brothers treated me like I’d killed her or something. They treated me so despicably that even I grew confused at times, wondering if I truly deserved to be treated that way.

Maybe I’d placed a curse on their mother while I was only a squirming little sperm cell in my father’s body? Why else would they treat me so badly? In their house, I was worse than nobody. I actually preferred the days when I’d lived in a single-room apartment with my mother with hardly a cent in our pockets. I lost weight rapidly and gained new wounds and scars almost like some kind of sick compensation for my weight loss. My father, who’d brought me into his house, didn’t seem to care at all.

Why didn’t you just send me to an orphanage instead? I wanted to complain, but no one would listen.

Be it a misfortune or otherwise, I’d been raised by a poor single mother. I was quick to give up. There was no point in craving affection and attention from people that treated me like I was less than an animal.

I had no money and nowhere else to stay, so I applied myself single-mindedly to my studies until I graduated high school. I got accepted into a prestigious university, not because I wanted acknowledgment from my half-brothers or my father, but because I wanted to escape from that horrible house. The day I got my acceptance letter, I ran to my father with, for the first time, a bright smile on my face.

“Father! Look! I got accepted! They accepted me!”

“So what? Why are you telling me?” My father didn’t offer so much as a single word of congratulations, even after seeing the elation on my face.

But that was okay. I wasn’t there to be congratulated anyway.

“Let me move out! I want to live near the university and focus on school. You can do that for me, right?”

My father’s emotionless stare had turned into a surprised frown. However, I didn’t doubt it was an attractive suggestion to him. This nuisance of a girl was offering to leave the house of her own volition, after all!

“All right. I’ll help you find a place.”

The escape I’d been dreaming of went off without a hitch. My father was stupid enough to leave the preparations to his first son, that bastard, which meant I ended up living in a half-basement room covered in mold.

But even that was okay. Everything made me happy after leaving that house. I had left behind the memories of my dark school years and was making lots of new friends. It was through these friends that I learned of the game.

“Daughter of the Duke Love Project? That’s what it’s called? It sounds like it was made for children.”

It was a mobile game that was extremely popular amongst my friends. The cringey title and fancy illustrations were enough to tell me what the game was about. I wasn’t really interested in playing it, but it was all my friends were talking about. Deciding I’d just try it out, I downloaded the game onto my phone as it just so happened that I had no shift at my part-time job that day. I opened the game and the first screen presented me with two difficulty modes to choose from: normal and hard.

“Normal,” I said, clicking the lower difficulty without hesitation. My plan was to go to sleep after playing for just a few minutes.

I booted up the game. A cutscene played, introducing the characters.

The youngest daughter of the duke—lost through an unfortunate incident when she was a child—returns to her family to take back her rightful place.

A lively tune played as the innocent-looking female protagonist appeared on screen. The story had begun. The illustrations were pretty and very high-quality, but other than that I couldn’t really see what was so special about the game. The goal was to interact with the male protagonists and raise their affection scores, defeating villains in the meantime and accruing wealth and reputation. The game ended with a romantic confession from the love interest with the highest affection score.

“Well, this is more fun than I expected.”

The game, despite its cringeworthy name, had a well-structured story, immersive plotline, and user-friendly interface. The illustrations also helped with the player’s immersion greatly. Whoever had drawn them had spared no effort to make them look good.

The storyline bore a close resemblance to my own life, and I couldn’t help becoming hooked. Among the male protagonists were the heroine’s two older brothers. Because the game took place mainly in the duke’s mansion, the player often encountered the mean brothers who disliked their sister and picked on her whenever they could.

Oddly similar to my own situation. Though of course, the girl in the game got far better treatment than I ever did...

I was soon lost in the game as I slowly won the other characters over. It had me hooked, even though I’d intended to try it for only a few minutes. I’d never played this kind of game before, and yet I got to the ending with little difficulty.

It was fun, but as it turned out the normal difficulty was too easy even for a complete beginner like me. Every love interest started with an affection score of 30%. I thought it should be called easy mode, not normal. I completed the endings for every male protagonist within three hours of starting the game. After that, I got a notification with an image of a lock that read, “Hidden Ending.”

“100,000 won? They must be insane! Why is this so expensive?”

I had to pay an exorbitant price to see the hidden ending, or alternatively, complete all the endings in hard mode.

“Damn it... it’s already past midnight.”

I thought for a moment. I had classes in the morning, but I didn’t let myself think too long.

“Oh, whatever! Let’s see this through!”

I think the sweet endings must have flipped some kind of switch inside me. I’d never have acted like that otherwise. My fingers were tingling with excitement as I clicked to start hard mode. Majestic music played, and I got a different cutscene from the one I’d seen in normal mode.

“Wow. Now she’s the player character?”

Oddly enough, the protagonist of the story was now someone else. Of all people, it was the villainous imposter from normal mode who posed as the duke’s daughter.

The setting of the story was different, too. The timeline had been pulled further back than when the original protagonist had appeared in the story. The game felt completely different.

“So this is why the game is so popular.”

A meticulously drawn illustration of the new protagonist popped up on the screen, and I felt the heaviness in my eyelids dissipate. This was fresh, intriguing, and so different from the usual gamut of similar games. And this time, I’d be playing as the villain—who’d treated the angelic protagonist horribly—as I tried to win over the unreceptive love interests.

It filled me with a mysterious excitement. I was exuberant as I entered hard mode, and full of confidence as I’d just cleared the lower difficulty with ease. Hard mode was probably not all that different from the original experience—perhaps it had some harder dialogue choices.

I was wrong.

“What! Why? Why did I die again?”

Hard mode was really hard. It was extremely difficult to increase the affection scores with the protagonists, being a villain and whatnot.

And that wasn’t all.

What few affection score points I managed to accrue immediately plummeted at the slightest mistake and triggered the game over screen—and even it was special. It always showed the protagonist’s death.

“Why is this game so violent?”

The illustrations were very realistic and gory. I frowned when I saw my character beheaded by the crown prince.

“What a crazy game...”

No matter how carefully I made my choices, my character always died. I was stumped. What had the creators of this game been thinking? I died so many times that I felt even more compelled to beat the game.

“Let me survive just once, darn it!”

My initial goal, getting to the hidden ending, was already forgotten. I wanted to keep this poor girl alive and see things through to a happy ending with someone, anyone.

It’s not her fault she’s the villain. The author made that decision!

Besides, I felt a connection to the villain who got turned down everywhere she went, in contrast to the original protagonist who had no trouble winning others over at all.

“I’m going to make sure I get the endings for those two.”

The older brothers had killed her again. I gritted my teeth. I’d lost count of how many times I’d died. My phone was hot in my hand, and my fingers were quivering from exhaustion. I knew I was too caught up in the game’s story, but I couldn’t stop my finger from reaching for the restart button again.

I started from the beginning. I selected from the dialogue choices, slowly built up the affection scores, and gathered money and reputation to access different storylines.

“Ugh! Why? Why!”

I’d died again. I was so irritated that I even considered paying for an affection score booster. If encouraging micro-transactions was the end goal, the developers had succeeded with flying colors. I hated wasting money, since I was saving whatever I could so I wouldn’t have to ask my family for help, but now I felt like spending the cash. I ended up not actually going through with the idea, but I stayed up the whole night trying to beat the game.

I died and started over.

Then died again, and again, and again, and again.

The sun rose, but I still hadn’t completed a single ending in hard mode.

“F*ck... Again...”

I was reaching for the restart button when I finally gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep with my phone in my hands. And then when I opened my eyes...

“Penelope Eckhart,” said the man with an empty gauge and the gleaming words “Affection score 0%” over his head, “You are prohibited from using the Eckhart name for the foreseeable future.”

I was inside the game on the difficulty mode I’d failed to beat. And I was the villain.