My suspicions that this whole experience was my subconscious working through the finer points of my fanfic while I was under general anesthetic were blown to smithereens over the next couple days.

See, dreams jump around locations and timeframes like bunnies playing hopscotch. Fanfics and video games skip all the boring parts. Like when the royal cobbler is weirdly impatient with your indecision about what shoes to buy. Or when you poke at your unfamiliar face in the bathroom mirror for an hour. Or when you lie awake in your cushy bed, fighting the urge to check your non-existent phone for a new fic comment or some middle schooler picking a fight with you on Tumblr (hmm, maybe those scientists were right about phone addiction).

This wasn’t that. This was real life.

Some funhouse version of it, where I was a student with magic powers, convenient amnesia, and mysterious murder in her past.

Where the richest bachelors in Eavredor loved me.

Where my favourite tempestuous gal in all of gaming…hated me.

Well…unless I’d fallen into one of my own fanfics? An M-rated one, if I was really lucky?

Over the last couple days, I’d been free from dialogue trees since none of it happened in the game (besides a ‘splosive magic demonstration to the school headmaster) but the programming would be back in action tomorrow.

If the game went as it was supposed to, I’d make it out of here with magic powers and an estate. And I’d have to deal with having a husband.

It’d be worse for Antoinette.

If things went well for me, she was screwed—taking the fall for her family’s crimes, her reputation wrecked, banished to rot in a cartoonishly dank cell. I could practically see my own essays on Tumblr now.

Are you telling me there was NO point in the writing process where the devs thought to add in a mission where you can protect Antoinette? Like, hello, redemption arc??? You're besties with four SUPER RICH GUYS. Three of them have close ties with THE KING AND QUEEN.

They could save her without breaking a sweat!!!

I decided right then, like it was the only rope offered to me at the bottom of a deep well, to do what I’d technically been doing for almost a year since I’d entered the Love Blooming fandom.

I was gonna protect Antoinette.

And I needed to match her with the love interests to do it.

#

The Academy La Belle Lavande wasn’t half as beautiful on the tiny DS screen as it was unfolding in front of me for real.

And the golden text that told me the entire student body was staring at me sure didn’t hold an ounce of the pressure of actually being stared at.

Poor Étienne was making it a thousand times worse! He’d brought two butlers to carry my new supplies and clothes (all donated by the prince). I could practically hear what everyone was thinking: Who is that plain girl with our prince?

(Plain in anime standards. Let’s be real, here.)

This prestigious university was lit by dancing chandeliers, glittering with gold and bronze. Everywhere I looked, there were plants—potted, growing down the windows, flowering in hairstyles or on lapels. Everyone wore uniforms that probably cost more than a year’s worth of textbooks back in Canada. Regardless, this feeling of being scrutinized by peers shot me right back to being the weird girl in university, shuffling into classes and sliding into my seat with no one to talk to.

Étienne said, “I’m drawing a lot of attention. I…tend to do that. I can grab an RA to guide you.”

Ping!

1. I’m grateful for your company, but I bet you’ve got better things to do!

2. Please stay by my side.

3. Clear out. I don’t want people thinking I’m Prince’s Pet.

Étienne had been with me at every step in my new otome life. He was my only sure thing in a world of confusion.

2.

“Please stay by my side,” I said in sugar!Marie’s darling tones.

(Okay, girl, whoa! Grabbing his sleeve was over the line!)

I was so distracted by the dialogue choices puppeteering me that we were almost at my dorm when I realized what was coming.

My hands clenched into fists at the sides of my uniform skirt. Étienne gave me a comforting smile and lightly knocked on the door.

It swung open. And there was Antoinette, in all her gorgeous glory, seeming far too grand for that undecorated little doorway. Her eyes entrapped me first—that glowing blue was as glimmering and sharp as cut glass. Her silky, thigh-length cherry-red waves were a mesmerizing feat of detail on the DS screen, but in real life, she seriously looked like a goddess. Outside the constraints of Love Blooming’s anime-inspired art style, she had a strong Roman nose, full lips set in a delicious scowl, and that splash of realism made her curvy frame even more perfect.

This was what I’d been waiting for. I wasn’t so sure I was asleep anymore (or in one hell of a medicated coma), but I couldn’t help it.

I threw my arms around her.

It was like meeting a friend you’d only known online. No, better—like finally seeing someone who you hadn’t seen in years, who you understood every fibre of, whose shape and scent you’d almost forgotten after so long apart.

Honestly, I probably knew her better than she knew herself. I knew all her lines in the game. I knew the fandom’s agreed-upon backstory for her, and the soooo much better backstory made up by stacistar. I knew how she’d act in a modern AU (Instagram influencer and heiress), a Harry Potter AU (Slytherin, duh), and a Pokemon AU (poison-type gym leader).

So I should’ve guessed that she’d shove me away.

Her electrifying blue eyes zapped onto mine. My knees practically gave out.

Étienne led me back a step and said with a nervous chuckle, “Miss Delphine, this is…Chloé.”

“Chloé what? What family?” Antoinette looked me up and down, brushing invisible dirt off her uniform sleeve. I shivered. “I can’t imagine it’s anyone of note, if she treats the Delphine heiress like this.”

Étienne knew I’d lost all my memories, including my family name. “She’s under the crown’s protection, so Alarie will do. Would you excuse us?”

Antoinette snapped, “This is my dorm room. I made it clear to the headmaster that I cannot have a roommate.”

Ping!

Antoinette’s glower wasn’t weakened even an ounce by the paralysis. I deliriously wondered if I could touch her again; dialogue options popped up between us before I could be dumb enough to try.

1. I’m a great roommate. The prince can tell you all about it.

2. You’re right, maybe there’s been a mistake…

3. Aren’t you a peach? This is my room. Take it up with your beloved headmaster.

I gritted my teeth and selected 1.

Marie actually made me wink. Antoinette snarled. Hell yeah.

Étienne said, that princely persona slipping to show more of his nerves, “She spent the last couple of nights at the palace while she was enrolled here. There was an accident with a carriage…”

“I apologized,” Antoinette said.

“Not to her. It was very serious.”

Antoinette glared him down.

He squirmed. “She lost her memory.”

“In that case, I don’t think an apology would be worth much, would it?” Antoinette hit him with a cutting smile. “What a hassle. How can the crown prince attend an Academy that also lets in the likes of her?”

Ah, classism, an otome villainess classic.

“She’s quite talented at magic. The headmaster allowed her entry even a month late, because of her power–”

“I don’t care–“

So much for Antoinette x Étienne. They were already at odds.

“Excuse me?” A new voice joined us. “Something wrong, Antoinette?”

Trotting up the hallway’s green carpet was a young man—who looked like a teenager, really—with a mop of ginger hair, a faceful of freckles, and a clipboard full of pages clutched in his arms. As soon as he saw Étienne, he skidded to a stop and dropped into a low bow, his hair flopping over his face.

Louis Chapelle, the sweet little brother-type love interest. Currently roped into being an RA thanks to his responsible older sisters. He was even more adorably unassuming in real life, like a teenager at his first real job.

Antoinette snatched the pen hanging around Louis’s neck and wrote a jolting note on his clipboard, tugging him closer with every flourish. I read over her arm: Please revise rooming for Loft A-12. Immediate action is required or else Georges Delphine will get involved.

She punctuated her “There” by thrusting the clipboard back into his chest.

Louis frowned at the note. “Sure, I can pass this on, but she needs to put her things somewhere in the meantime?”

I said quickly, “I won’t unpack a single box!”

As nasty as Antoinette was being, all I could see was a woman who was simply used to having privacy—needing privacy, actually, though the game never bothered to delve into why.

Still, as she stepped away from the door and pointed a lacquered fingernail at the empty bed, I felt uncannily like she’d won anyways.

Of course. As far as base-game Antoinette figured, she was gonna make Marie’s life a living hell.

Little did she know, I was gonna matchmake her to a better end, even if I had to drag her kicking and screaming all the way.