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🖤 The Villainess Just Wants to Sleep

Chapter 1: The Puppet Made of Porcelain

> “You were not born to be loved. You were born to be perfect.”

— Lady Virelia, concubine of the king

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The room smelled of rosewater and blood.

Kaelaira sat in the center, dressed in a gown three sizes too tight. Her ribs ached. Her feet, tucked neatly beneath her, had gone numb from hours of kneeling. But she didn’t move.

Not until her mother said, “Again.”

Kaelaira rose with grace. Back straight. Shoulders relaxed. Spine tall. The bow she performed would make any court lady envious.

But her mother’s cane struck the floor anyway.

"Your smile wavered."

Kaelaira blinked. "I didn’t smile."

"Exactly." The cane cracked down across her knuckles.

She didn’t flinch. Flinching would only make the next strike worse.

"Your face must bloom like spring even when your soul rots like winter," her mother whispered, circling her like a hawk. "You were born a bastard. A mistake. You will never be a queen, but you will be their mirror. Their fear. Their competition."

Kaelaira remained still, lips parted in a perfect, fragile smile.

Behind her eyes, something twisted.

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By age nine, she had memorized the entire Royal Etiquette Doctrine, could recite over 120 noble family trees, and could write letters in five styles of calligraphy — all while balancing books on her head.

She didn’t play. She didn’t laugh. Laughter earned slaps.

Her mornings began before dawn with philosophy and statecraft, her afternoons with sword drills, and her evenings ended in tearless silence on a cold, silk mattress.

She was graceful. Brilliant. Obedient.

And hated it.

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Her mother, Lady Virelia, had once been a baron’s daughter, married off for political convenience, then tossed into the king’s harem like so many other discarded noblewomen. When Kaelaira was born, Virelia saw not a child—but a weapon. A second chance.

"You will be the daughter I never could be," she had whispered once, brushing Kaelaira’s hair so hard her scalp bled.

"You will rise. Or you will shatter."

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Sometimes, Kaelaira would close her eyes during sword training and imagine the tip of the blade pointed at her own chest.

Not in despair. Not in fear.

Just curiosity.

> “If I die, will I finally sleep?”

“If I sleep, will I finally be me?”

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In the palace, no one praised her.

The Queen never acknowledged her.

The nobles saw her as the concubine’s puppet.

The servants called her “The Glass Doll” — beautiful, cold, and ready to break.

And Kaelaira smiled through it all.

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At night, when her mother believed her asleep, Kaelaira would trace invisible runes into the air — old letters from war manuals, secret sword forms she had memorized in the dark.

Not because she wanted to win.

But because if she became perfect enough… maybe they’d stop expecting anything more.

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Because perfection, she learned, is the fastest way to disappear.

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End of Chapter 1

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