“So, in dreams, you’re free to do anything you want.”
“What I want is for you to quietly return to the village.”
“Ugh, how boring.”
Click.
The voices that had been playing stopped as Chloe touched the recorder.
“How about this? Do you think it will be of some help?”
“Did you put a recorder on the Duke’s clothes?”
“Let’s just call it a cute prank from his only sister.”
Cute prank, my foot.
“Well… the content is a bit vague, but I think we can use it as evidence.”
“Really?”
Chloe’s face brightened. She must really dislike Lydia.
“By the way, she’s quite the repeat offender, isn’t she? Even though she has a fiancé, she’s still messing around with other people…”
“It’s a bad habit that won’t be fixed.”
The tone was one of utter disgust.
“You seem to know Miss Lydia well.”
“I’ve never actually met her. This time, at least.”
Natasha gave a puzzled look at the ambiguous statement.
“Still, I don’t think you need to worry. The Duke seems more determined than I thought. He still seems to be thinking about Miss Estelle.”
The one Claude referred to as “the one in his heart” must be Estelle.
The fact that he was still holding onto those feelings, even after all that time of refusing to eat or drink, showed how serious he was.
“That… surprised me too.”
“Does he still send letters to Miss Estelle?”
“Probably.”
Natasha silently wished him luck. Who knew if Estelle would ever accept those feelings?
“Anyway, thanks for the recording. With the Duke’s signed consent, there should be no problem using it as evidence in court.”
She had even brought along Claude’s handwritten signed consent, making it official.
Thanks to this, the recorded conversation became legitimate evidence.
“Of course. My brother was a bit surprised, though…”
Who wouldn’t be surprised to find out that their sister had planted a tiny recorder on their clothes?
“Well then, good luck.”
Chloe elegantly handed the metaphorical sword to Natasha.
Not directly expressing her desires but using others to accomplish her goals—her way of speaking was very aristocratic.
***
Something was off this time.
That was the conclusion Lydia Dorothea reached with her barely functioning brain. There were too many things that didn’t add up.
‘Testify in court as a witness?’
The official document she received bore the court’s seal and requested her attendance as a witness at a trial.
A trial? Was there even such a system?
No, wait. Why on earth would the protagonist of an R-19 reverse harem game attend a trial as a witness?
‘And what’s this about an affair?’
Since when was there such a thing as “an affair” in a reverse harem game?
Lydia knew she was supposed to be the crown prince’s fiancée, but despite her mingling with countless men, he had never filed a complaint.
‘Isn’t that normal?’
What kind of insane reverse harem game would include something like that?
That wasn’t the only thing that seemed strange.
‘Claude Richard. In the original game, it was just established that he had a fiancée. But this time, he’s married and divorced.’
In the previous round, he had despised his fiancée to the point of obsession, almost like a stalker.
There was even a plot where the female lead appeared, and the jealous fiancée tried to poison her in a fit of rage.
But now, not only had he married that villainess early on, but he also had another woman he loved?
‘A love interest in a reverse harem game is in love with another woman?’
This wasn’t just a plot hole; it was beyond an error. Something was definitely wrong.
‘A divorced Claude, Denis and Aidan who are having affairs, and an unfamiliar divorce lawyer…’
Yes, the center of all this chaos was her.
Natasha, the divorce lawyer.
A character who had never appeared in the original game, suddenly showing up and throwing all the game’s settings into disarray.
‘Yeah. Maybe she’s the key.’
The key to the true ending of this hellish reverse harem game, where you have to conquer all the male characters to escape.
***
The rain drizzled down.
The office was filled with the damp scent, and Natasha sat in the darkness, reading documents by a single lantern.
Only the space directly in front of her, lit by the lantern, was visible.
Boom, crack!
The sound of thunder echoed from the window behind her, but other than that, the night was still.
Drip, drip.
Raindrops pattered against the floor.
“I didn’t hear the door open.”
Natasha spoke without lifting her eyes from the documents. In the flickering light, a pair of bare feet appeared in the distance.
“Does the Dorothea Ducal family teach their daughters stealth techniques?”
Flash!
A bolt of lightning briefly illuminated the office.
A woman with red hair, dressed in a white dress and standing barefoot, was revealed.
To an unsuspecting observer, she might have looked like a ghost, one whose beauty was almost too striking to be true.
“You’re not surprised.”
She spoke informally, but breaking into someone’s office was a much greater offense than that, so Natasha let it slide.
“I sensed your presence. No sound of the door opening, and the window is behind me, so it was as if you suddenly appeared out of thin air.”
“Accurate.”
“Are you some kind of legendary dragon?”
The only beings capable of using magic without an incantation were demons or dragons.
Demons had been wiped out in ancient times, and dragons hadn’t shown themselves for over a thousand years, so neither seemed like realistic options.
“No. I’m just… a player.”
“A player?”
“There’s such a thing.”
What an unkind intruder.
“And your reason for visiting? If you don’t have a good one, I’ll call the guards.”
“I’ll be gone before they arrive.”
“Well, I guess the guards will have served their purpose just by chasing you off.”
“That’s not a bad deal.”
Surely, she wasn’t here to make jokes. Breaking into a law office—talk about walking into the lion’s den.
Natasha put down the documents she had been reading.
“So, what’s your point? As you can see, I’m rather busy.”
“What are you really?”
“I’m a divorce lawyer.”
“Not that. I mean your ‘real’ identity.”
It was a difficult question to understand. It wasn’t some philosophical talk like “know thyself.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“They say you’re the one who got Claude divorced.”
“Technically, I only did my best with the cases I was assigned, but if you’re asking whether I was involved in the divorce, then yes, that’s true.”
“And you’re also Denis and Aidan’s lawyer?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
See? It’s strange, isn’t it?
No matter how much Natasha listened to Lydia’s mutterings, she couldn’t grasp what Lydia was trying to say.
“This round is a complete mess because of you. How do we fix this?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, what exactly is this ’round’ you’re talking about?”
“A round is a round.”
Right, what kind of answer could you expect from a crazy person? Natasha was about to brush it off when she heard something she couldn’t ignore.
“I’m looking for a way to end this game.”
“A game?”
“Yes. At first, I thought it would end if I cleared it completely, but it seems like it’s impossible to fully clear it in hard mode. There’s always one person who fails.”
Natasha didn’t understand even half of what Lydia was saying.
“So… you’re saying this is a game?”
“Yes, it’s a game. Oh, but you wouldn’t know since you’re an NPC, Natasha.”
The downfall of the Illyhad Empire was undeniable. How else could all the high-ranking nobles be so mentally unstable?
Lydia Dorothea was escaping reality, dismissing it as a “game!”
‘Tsk, tsk. What a shame, at such a young age…’
For a brief moment, Natasha felt sympathy. But then, as she considered that Lydia might have committed all these actions because she was delusional, everything started to make sense.
‘Since she has no grasp of reality, she probably just enjoyed hanging around handsome men. Who cares about fiancés when you’re in a game?’
Huh. It’s not a bad ending? How strange…
Even the words Lydia muttered when they first met seemed to come from this delusional way of thinking.
“Bad ending.”
“Hmm?”
“When do you get the bad ending?”
“Well, when I die, or get imprisoned, or go insane…”
“What about losing a case?”
Lydia tilted her head in confusion.
“Losing a case?”
“When you received the lawsuit last time, you said, ‘It’s not a bad ending?’ Was that one of the possible bad endings?”
At Natasha’s sharp remark, Lydia tilted her head in the other direction.
“Maybe… it could be?”
There was no clear definition of what marked a bad ending. Besides, it was Lydia’s first time being sued, so it was even more ambiguous.
But based on her years of experience, Natasha could make a few guesses.
“I thought a bad ending would come up when I received the lawsuit, but since it didn’t, maybe if I lose the case, the ending will appear. Could it be a hidden ending?”
“Well, whatever. As long as it’s an ‘ending’ to this game, right?”
“Yes.”
Natasha was a lawyer, not a psychiatrist, but she knew a thing or two about dealing with people suffering from delusions.
Well, divorce does have a way of driving people a little crazy. That was Natasha’s reasoning.
“Then let me help you.”
“Help me?”
“I’ll give you a bad ending.”
A bad ending in the form of “losing” the case.
“Let’s make a bet. Whether this world is really a game or not. If the game doesn’t end after you lose the case, then I win.”
“What are we betting?”
“Hmm, not sure.”
Natasha would have liked to bet money, but taking money from someone mentally unstable could land her in trouble, maybe even getting sued herself.
“I can’t think of anything right now.”
Money! Gold! Coins!
Natasha forced herself to ignore the voice in her head. A lawyer has to have at least that much self-control.
Lydia took a couple of steps closer to Natasha. The flowing red waves of her dress shone brilliantly, even in the darkness.
“How about this: if you win, I’ll do whatever you ask. But if I win…”
Her usually clouded eyes were now sharper than ever.
Natasha unconsciously widened her eyes at the intensity.
“In the next round, kill me.”
Even Natasha, who had mocked the absurd idea of being trapped in a game, flinched at the deep despair in Lydia’s words.
“If you can remember, that is!”
Lydia smiled brightly.
Crash!
Lightning struck outside the window.
• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •By Esraa• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •
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