"Miss?"

A gentle, masculine voice shimmered out of the dark. Right…that had to be my doctor, bringing me back from the anesthesia-induced haze of surgery.

So why on earth was he calling me miss? It was kinda part of his job to at least know my name is Hanna. The guy’s known me since I was sixteen. Come on, didn’t we have a rapport?

"Miss, can you hear me?"

I rubbed my forehead. Blobs of light peeked through my eyelids. I felt…too light, like someone scooped out all my bones and guts and I was gonna float away. Thankfully, a warm hand was on my shoulder, anchoring me on a soft…sofa? The smell of flowers and wood polish stuffed my head with cotton balls. So many flowers.

"Easy, now. You struck your head very hard."

"It’s fine," I mumbled involuntarily.

"What are princes for but helping maidens?"

My vision cleared. Instead of a sterile recovery room I was in a lavish parlour, crowded by knick knacks and clashing patterned furniture. And a blonde young man was right in front of me.

A weirdly familiar young man.

Oh.

Everything crashed into me. The literal crash itself, the puddles in the street, and that snide, wickedly gorgeous face sneering down at me from the carriage as it raced past…

Antoinette Delphine!

I bolted straight up. The Your Highness watching over me jumped back and hit a coffee table strewn with teacups; the parlour rang with the jangle of porcelain. I knew this parlour. I knew the hodgepodge of different French and Germanic eras all thrown together into an autumn-toned backdrop, stuffed to the brim with the flowers that made up so much of Love Blooming’s marketing. I knew that young man with his cosplay-contacts-blue eyes. His blonde hair tousled just enough to be boyish and sweet, juuust enough to make you want to see who he could be if he loosened up his perfectly-pressed powder-blue suit.

Étienne Alarie.

This was phase two of the game’s prologue, where Marie—the protagonist—wakes up in the first love interest’s palace.

Probably satisfied that I wasn’t gonna keel over and break my face on the coffee table, a smiling Étienne sat opposite me.

"I’m relieved to see you’re awake, Sleeping Beauty."

The crappy DS storage couldn’t handle more voice acting than an old Ace Attorney game: just the occasional sigh, gasp, or chuckle. And yet here was Étienne, speaking with a subtle French lilt.

I reached over the steaming teacups and poked his bare hand. He was warm.

The night before my surgery, I’d been so wound up that I wrote a whole oneshot on my phone in bed, and then posted it, un-beta’d, on Tumblr at three in the morning.

Obviously my subconscious was clinging to it.

This early in the game, Étienne’s true self was buried under about a hundred layers of princely persona, so he didn’t shake off my prodding. Instead, he lightly rested his hand on mine and said, "You’re fortunate my staff saw that awful crash. The clinics are all closed at this hour, but—"

"But they knew you’d want your personal physician to check me over." My voice wasn’t my own and it tripped on the way out of my mouth.

His blue eyes grew wide. "Oh. Yes, that’s absolutely the case."

Marie’s body was shorter than mine. Willowy in a very 2000s-anime way. Dark violet bangs kept tumbling in my face, and the hand that brushed them away had longer fingers and nails, so long that I nearly took my eye out in the process.

Even if he was a basic beginner’s choice, Étienne was a fan favourite. Seeing his warm, easy smile and the dimples in his cheeks, I could suddenly understand why. He was the princely archetype—and an actual prince in this game’s faux-French kingdom, Eavredor.

When playing Love Blooming for the first time, I skated right on past Étienne. I wanted to find that wickedly beautiful redhead.

She had to be a secret girl love interest like Jaehee in Mystic Messenger, right? Sure, she didn’t get even a fraction of the fanart and fanfic that the guys did, but what else was new? Maybe she was a bonus character for the underwhelming tenth anniversary Steam port and that’s why the only things I could find for her were a dramatic silhouette on the promo art, cameos in untranslated Pixiv comics, and a pile of weird femdom lewds on Danbooru.

Nope.

Turns out, Antoinette’s the jealous, petty love rival, who makes Marie’s life miserable no matter which guy you go for. The villainess of Love Blooming. And my favourite character, despite her bare-bones script, total lack of backstory, and her undignified, unearned downfall that the game forces her through so Marie can run off with her true love.

Blech.

Marie. Antoinette. Their names were meant to stitch together. They were made for quippy ship names and fanfic titles. Would it have killed the game devs to give Antoinette a connection with—

"What’s your name?”

The world stopped.

Literally. The steam from our teacups hung in the air like cotton, the round lavender pearls freezing. A perfect lock of blond hair stopped mid-tumble on Étienne’s forehead.

Ping!

A dialogue box appeared between us. Latte-brown partial transparency, cheesy stock filigree on the edges, golden text.

My name? It takes me a minute to remember…my memories are so hazy…all I can find in the shifting sand of my life before this moment is a first name. I know nothing of my family. Nothing of my origins, nor my fate. But my name…it’s…

I never, ever used my real name when I played otome games. There’s a reason Doki Doki Literature Club tries to creep you out by making Monika access your computer’s username.

We all hide behind something when we play video games.

1. How did I forget? The name’s [TYPE NAME!], Your Highness!

2. Please forgive me, in all the madness, I forgot… My name is [TYPE NAME!]

3. Ugh, fine, only because you helped me… [TYPE NAME!]

Spice!Marie. Sugar!Marie. Sour!Marie. The personality type presets, all here.

Tentatively, I reached up for the hovering keyboard and typed in the first name I thought of.

As soon as I finished, something pressed Play on the world.

“How did I forget? The name’s Chloé, Your Highness!” popped out of my mouth. I involuntarily bounced in my seat, exactly the way I often wrote spice!Marie, the sporty, cheerful preset.

That charming curl fell on Étienne’s forehead and he effortlessly blew it back into place before saying, "What a beautiful name. I had a beloved aunt with that name. Hearing it reminds me of warm cocoa and fairy tales. Well, I did call you Sleeping Beauty, didn’t I, Miss Chloé?"

A shiver zapped down my spine. Exactly like if he’d said Hanna.

Marie usually stood between me and the boys, doing all the daring tasks, casting her chaotic magic, and flirting her way into their hearts.

Yet it was my hands that were scuffed from the road, my face he was looking at, my body he could reach over and touch.

I stood up. If this was a dream, I only wanted one thing.

Antoinette.

This was my brain. And my brain had spent almost a year hyper-fixated on that red-headed high class bitch (affectionate). I stomped towards the door.

When she was human and not an anime-style pixel drawing, how much more beautiful was she? I’d make the most of it and have her glare me down with those gorgeous eyes!

Étienne was quick to catch me. “Miss Chloé, what do you need? We can bring you food or—”

“I need to see Antoinette!” I tried to dodge around him. “Right now!”

"Lady Antoinette Delphine?"

“Yep, the heiress to the Aconitum Corporation! The loveliest girl in all of modern gaming!”

“I-I understand you’re upset that her carriage hit you. My guards are working closely with hers to solve—”

“I know why she was on the road. She lost an earring at a dinner party and she thought the servants might have stolen it from her, so she was racing back to catch them.” Blah blah, vain women are evil, blah blah. “Let me find her and—”

Ping!

1. Thanks for getting right on the case, Your Highness!

2. Please don’t inconvenience yourself for my sake.

3. I hope you make her pay for what she did to me.

Where was the option for, Seriously, leave it alone! Let’s get on with the magical boarding school plot! Someone hand me a dying houseplant to save!

I carefully tapped 2.

"Please don’t inconvenience yourself for my sake" popped right out of my mouth. Hand-wringing, eye-averting, and all! Damn it, sugar!Marie!

"It’s hardly an inconvenience." Étienne tried to steer me back to the couch. "You were seriously hurt. I’m sure Lady Delphine will apologize and this will all be smoothed over."

Antoinette will refuse to cooperate by apologizing to Marie or helping her recover her memory, which puts a dent in her reputation with him. This dumb crash starts everyone off on the wrong foot.

I needed to see her. She was my muse, the home base for my stresses, all my pent-up creative energy, all my fandom passion that got me in so much trouble on Tumblr. Seeing her was the only decision that felt sane.

So I needed to…move the plot forward?

“Étienne, please, I need my tea. My head’s all spinny.”

Gallant as always, Étienne handed me my cup with the dramatics of giving me a legendary diadem. Tightly-wound lavender pearls floated in it, tinting the tea purple. I lifted it to my mouth and thought magical, magical, Love Blooming thoughts.

In the game, Marie’s anxiety about forgetting her whole life (and the handsome prince doting on her) triggers her magic. Maybe it was my anxiety that made the lavender pearls pop open into blooms the size of cinnamon buns, flinging themselves out of my cup from the force.

In the game, Marie made a cutesy, pre-recorded "Eep!"

I, meanwhile, flung the cup across the room and covered the crown prince in tea.