The image above is our villainess. ಠ◡ಠ
➷❖❖‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙❖❖➹
It was a mystery. Just… a mystery.
She kept repeating the words, staring blankly at the maid before her. Anyone who committed truly unforgivable sins *should* go to hell. That was the core of the mystery.
She’d killed herself. So why was she still breathing? Why was she still choking down this toxic air?
Why was she staring at this maid, who was nervously wringing her hands? Why was she even *alive*?
She remembered the pain. The suffocating, burning pain of asphyxiation. Her past life hadn't been… special. Happiness seemed to actively hate her. Her existence had been a slow drip of pity, loneliness, boredom, and endless suffering.
According to everything she’d ever read, suicide earned you eternal torment: burning alive, torture beyond imagining. Had they all lied? Or was this *different*? Was this a different kind of punishment?
The lack of information was already starting to fray her nerves. She abandoned her thoughts, sat heavily, and massaged her forehead. She closed her eyes, trying to force a calm, logical perspective, ignoring the maid’s hesitant voice.
It wasn't a dream. It wasn’t a nightmare. She’d stood, elegantly, noticing the soft silk of the nightgown against her skin. Her pale hand covered her lower lip, a gesture she hadn’t even realized she’d made. She was thinking again. She didn't wear nightgowns. She started walking towards the window, ignoring the slight tremor in her legs, and pushed it open.
She felt it. The rough texture of the wood under her fingertips. It was real.
Her eyes widened, a shock of terror and disbelief ripping through her. She stared out into the garden. Before her stretched a vast field of crimson spider lilies, flowers for the dead. But it wasn’t the flowers themselves that sent a cold wave crashing over her.
It was the realization. She’d been reincarnated. Into her favorite manga.
The flowers confirmed it. The angle, the light, the exact shade of red… it was exactly as she remembered from the manga panels.
The Flower of Death…
A flower symbolizing the Hyll Reiss household.