"Aw, are you going to cry again?"
Their laughter echoed inside our classroom—sharp, cold, and mockingly. It reverberated through my skull like the chime of a cracked bell, each note louder than the last. I held tightly on my dirty old uniform I brought with my hard work.
I remained on the cold wet floor as i stared down not wanting to see their faces. I already knew what they looked like. I had memorized the sound of their voices, the tilt of their mocking tones, the way they circled like predators who had found an easy meal.
"Haha! How disgusting… The blind girl is about to cry!"
They didn't understand. But even if they did i doubt they wouldn't even care to.
My eyes—my cursed, not that I am exactly blind but because of it's unusual color. It has Sky blue with a streak of violet below. I can see clearly, but what would be the use of my own vision if I always stares nothing but the ground to hide them? if I uses my hair to cover them? Every time i tried to at least look up to see how beautiful the world could be, all my sight see was the people staring at me in such disgust look.
"They say people like her are born unlucky. Probably cursed or something." Monica said, the popular girl that everyone admires. She was their definition of beauty.
"Her parents didn't even want her. That's why they dumped her at the orphanage."
"They just abandoned her."
Their words are shaper than any knife could be, they could throw harsh words at me, or even hit me physically, yet hearing how they insult me of being abandoned by my father was something I know I couldn't handle.
That… wasn't true.
I gritted my teeth as i shut my eyes closed and gripped tightly on my skirt.
"No... they never abandoned me!" My voice cracked as i shouted so suddenly, causing the classroom to fell silent in instant. "They'll come back. They promised they would. They love me—they love me just as much as I love them!"
Even as I said it, I felt the lie unravel in my throat. I could taste the bitter truth behind it. That hollow ache of being left behind. Of waiting years, only for silence to answer.
Soon... I didn't hear their laugh, nor their mocking voice... And suddenly, I snapped my eyes open as the cold air hit my body and peaceful sounds of the city reach my ears. The cold concrete biting through my thin shoes. My breath burned in my lungs as the night view of the city present before me.
It was quiet up here. Too quiet. Only the hum of the city below reminded me that the world was still spinning. Neon signs blinked in the distance, windows glowed with life I didn't feel part of. I stood there, shaking, the wind tangling through my hair like invisible fingers trying to hold me back.
"ahhh... right, it was nothing but another mere memories that was stuck with me." I said to myself as I realized I was lost in my own nightmare again.
My feet carried me to the edge. It was peaceful up here. Detached. Like the world no longer had a grip on me.
"As if I am finally free to do whatever I wanted... " I smiles, but it soon slowly faded. "I wanted?" I scoffed. How can i be still foolish after all these years of suffering all alone? I hate myself... no... I despise myself.
I stepped on the edge of the rooftop and fell on the cold and rough ground and tears start escaping my eyes like waterfalls. "I never wanted anything but to see my papa one more time..."
That's when I felt it—the flutter. Soft, Delicate. Barely there.
A butterfly landed right on top of my head. Its wings were a haunting shade of blue edged in Purple, like a tiny omen written in color... no, it was just like my eyes, yet the difference was it was beautiful unlike mine.
It didn't fly away as I slight moved. As i reached out my hand, it flies and landed onto my finger.
Weightless.
"Was it comforting me?" I muttered, tears clinging to my lashes. "Or… was it in pain too?"
"Since when… did I feel this empty?"
Ah… right.
Since forever.
Even when my parents disappeared, I kept waiting. Kept believing. But slowly, their absence faded into normalcy, and the pain became background noise—like static from a broken TV I'd never bother fixing.
"Was the world cruel to you too?" I asked the butterfly, fully aware that it wouldn't even able to answer nor understand me. "Maybe I've truly gone mad already. " I chuckles bitterly.
"Even so… from the depths of my heart—I hope you suffer as I do. I hate you."
And with that, I stepped forward. The wind brushes past me softly. The butterfly fluttered away as I let myself fall down, m y vision went blurry with tears. As soon as i hit the concrete below, In the end am able to look up and once again the world shows its beautiful Illusion as I stares above...
And then—
Suddenly, I was snapped out of my thoughts and dragged back into reality.
I flinch and fell down on my crib, lying on my back, I lift my arms and saw it was so tiny and chubby. The warmth of the sheets, the familiar scent of lavender, and the faint sound of voices in the distance pulled me from the numbness of my own mind.
I blinked rapidly, disoriented. A little too much for my still-underdeveloped senses. My small body lay on a plush, overdecorated crib that looked far too expensive for someone like me. The faint shimmer of golden toys attached above my crib glitters just like the stars i saw during my death. The light from the bright sun casted down the windows, filling the room with its light.
Ah, right.
I was a baby.
A literal, helpless, tiny infant. I almost forgot about the reality. It already been a week since I gotten in this weird world. I couldn't mutter a single world, i couldn't control my body properly. My limbs were too weak to hold me up for too long and yet maids were so proud of me when i simply sat up on my own. All i could do for the rest my day is to squirm, grip on my expensive toys and even just poop and pee in pampers and wait till the maids change me, other than that, I am pretty useless and uses crying as my way of communicating with the maids. Crying for attention as it was governed entirely by instinct, crying when I am hungry, crying when i needed to change my diapers, Crying when I am bored. It's not like I have a choice.
I was unable to control anything.
I never knew being a baby is this much a hassle. The indignity of it all gnawed at me. A helpless infant with no control over my body, I wanted to scream, but all that came out were garbled cries, a desperate attempt to be heard in a God to just let me rest.
In the end of the day, my effort of jumping that building came to be nothing but useless like me. It's not like I just suddenly thought of dying one day, of course I went to multiple hesitation before I finally gathered my strength to just be dead.
This was so stupid.
I always zone out and forgot my situation. the fact that I ended up being reborn a few weeks after jumping of the building.
The irony of it didn't escape me.
I should have known. The moment I made that decision, the moment I had let go of everything in my previous life, I should have expected some kind of consequence. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would be like this. I to read books about fantasy and stuff but I never once believed any of it were true and it can happen in reality, that is just absurd to believe.
Just thinking of it makes my head hurts a lot.
I should stop thinking about the past. It was pointless now, wasn't it? I was alive again, even though I had chosen to take my own life in that cold, cruel world.
Even God seemed to think I deserved another chance, a second life, despite the way I had cast mine aside. What a cruel twist of fate.
I didn't ask for this.
And yet, here I am.
Alive. Again.
And not just in any world.
No.
This world felt eerily familiar. The heavy with the scent of something ancient and timeless. The distant echo of servants scurrying through the halls, their soft footsteps a gentle reminder of the palace's formality. The weight of gold and velvet in the room seemed almost suffocating.
The way they all servants treated as if I am some sort of a rare diamond that needed to be protected and admired. I even once heard before when a guest came to visit the emperor, their purpose of visit was soon revealed when they showed up in front of my room.
"May I see the beautiful young princess? All people in the empire and very curious of the princess appearance." The voice of the man said, and a little boy's voice after yet I wasn't able to see nor they see me since they are immediately warned by one of the guards.
The names of the people around me...
The titles they carried...
And the places...
I am not stupid to not figured it away right away, and I am sure of it...
That this was the world of the novel I read before I died.
I thought it was a dream at first, of course I did, who on earth would realized it right away that this isn't a dream but the reality?
A world that existed only in the pages of a book. But no, this wasn't a dream. It was real.
Alderic Del Castillo.
The emperor. The villain.
His name had echoed through my memories since the moment I regained consciousness. A name filled with power, terror, and infamy. His character had been that of a cold, ruthless tyrant—a man who ruled with an iron fist, a monster who had slaughtered anyone who dared oppose him. He was the villain of the novel I had once devoured in my past life, the one whose actions had shaped the course of the story.
And yet, yesterday...he was stood before me, looked down at me with eyes that carried a weight I couldn't comprehend. He might be already thinking how to get rid of me.
"Princess, are you feeling bored?" a soft, careful voice asked. it was once again the maid, Amy. Her hair and eyes were dark as sky at night, she also the only one I see not tying her hair up neatly.
She is also the one I first saw when I first open my eyes. She is so gentle and careful round me as if I'm some sort of a fragile glass. I think she was in charge of changing my diapers, feeding me and putting me to sleep at night.
I blinked. The word "princess" lingered in the air, echoing around the room as if it were a foreign language. It was still so new to me being cold princess, when at my previous life, all I was called but harsh names.
But there is something that keep bothering me for already a week now.
I was sure… sure that in all my memories of the book, there had been no mention of Alderic having a daughter. None.
I had devoured that book. Every word. Every page. There was no daughter. There was no princess.
So how come I am here as his daughter? not just any daughter, but as...
The nonexistent princess.
My tiny hands clenched into fisst, confusion clouding my mind. I was certain this was some kind of mistake. This wasn't how the story had gone. But here I was, reborn into the very world I had read about. I wasn't just an extra character, a nameless face in the background or an add up character.
I was the princess.
The daughter of the villain.
I tried to wrap my mind around it. How could I be his daughter? How could I have ended up in this palace, in this life? A life that felt like it was built on the wreckage of a past I had left behind. If so, I might have the chance to actually changed the plot of the story, the only problem is that I might not live long living in the same castle with the very villain himself.
But the answer was as simple as it was terrifying.
I was here. I was alive. And I had to survive.
The heavy weight of it all settled onto my tiny chest, a burden too large for someone of my size. I wasn't just a lost child, reborn into a world of chaos—I was the product of fate, thrown into the lap of a tyrant. A princess, yes, but a princess with no future to hold onto. I can I avoid my fate when it was never written down on the novel for me to read? I wonder if i ended up getting bullied again or ended up getting abandon by my father. But I'm sure I am not going to be the very same pathetic girl who jumped off the building, Not again. I can't afford taking my life twice.
I am really starting to think that the God is actually punishing me even in this life.
I had been given a second chance, why not I try to live for myself and not for the same stupid bastard fathers!
And somehow, someway, I would make this life my own
If I won't be killed by the tyrant emperor.