[You’re my new butler?]
Xian’s languid eyes lit up. The clicking that had filled the room for hours stopped, and he straightened from the slouch he had maintained in his chair.
On the screen of his aging laptop, a woman sat upon an ornate chair as though it were a throne. Long, dark-crimson hair spilled over her shoulders, framing porcelain skin and a face far too beautiful for someone the game insisted on treating as disposable.
Two swordmaidens stood behind her in fitted black armor. One wore a katana at her waist, while the other held a sheathed longsword with its tip resting against the floor.
He knew what this scene meant. Or rather, he knew that it should not exist.
For countless playthroughs, Carmillia Montagne had remained an antagonist in Rozenfall: Romance and Ruin, a fantasy academy dating simulator known for its sprawling routes and infamous for its brutal endings.
The protagonist entered Rozenfall Academy, grew stronger, formed relationships, and eventually chose one heroine.
At least, that was how a successful route was supposed to unfold.
Trying to pursue several heroines usually ended in jealousy, betrayal, ruin, or death. The community had spent years theorizing about a hidden harem route, but no player had ever found one. Some players had begun to suspect that the developers allowed them to attempt it only so the game could punish them.
Xian had stopped caring about that theory a long time ago.
He only wanted Carmillia.
She was not one of the main heroines. Depending on the chosen route, she became a rival, an obstacle, an early casualty, or a late-game boss branded a traitor to humanity. Occasionally, the player could influence her fate, but none of those outcomes gave her anything resembling happiness.
In one ending, she lost her position as heiress and was married off to an old noble whose name barely mattered.
Xian had never forgiven the developers for that one.
It was not that Carmillia was secretly kind or misunderstood. She was vain, vindictive, manipulative, and responsible for more bad endings than some major villains.
She was also breathtakingly beautiful, more so, in Xian’s opinion, than most of the heroines.
As someone online had once put it: If evil, why hot?
Carmillia was the living example.
Her appearance alone had convinced Xian that a hidden route had to exist somewhere. Why else would the developers give an antagonist such elaborate artwork, expressive animations, and a voice that could make even a death threat sound alluring?
So he searched.
He replayed the game until his first few failed attempts became dozens. He tested obscure choices, deliberately entered Ruin Ends, ignored the recommended heroines, and combed through community discussions written by people just as obsessed as he was.
Nothing worked, until now.
He had begun another run using the so-called empty route, the path where the protagonist entered the academy without choosing an early heroine or forming an initial bond.
Instead of continuing toward Rozenfall, Xian forced the protagonist into a high-level region long before the character was prepared to survive there. After several failures, an unfamiliar attendant discovered him near the Montagne estate.
[Are you the young lady’s butler?]
The encounter produced an unfamiliar dialogue option.
[Introduce yourself as Carmillia Montagne’s personal butler.]
By then, Xian had followed too many false leads to expect much from a single new prompt. Even so, he selected it without hesitation.
That choice had led to the scene now displayed before him. This was the first scene he had encountered where the protagonist stood before Carmillia as someone connected to her rather than as an obstacle or eventual enemy.
“Finally…” Xian whispered. His exhaustion vanished beneath a sudden rush of triumph. “Finally! This has to be the beginning of her route!”
He waited eagerly for an option to respond, ready to select Yes or whatever choice might bring him closer to Carmillia. Instead, the screen slowly faded into darkness, and a familiar song he had heard countless times began to play.
The credits began to roll.
Xian fell silent. The smile fixed upon his face gradually lost its joy as familiar names drifted upward across the screen and Carmillia’s image faded behind them. By now, he had nearly memorized their order.
“What?”
The ending theme continued to play.
“No. Why are the credits rolling?” He leaned closer, as though glaring hard enough might force the game to continue. “That’s it? After all those failures? After all the time I spent!?”
The credits offered no answer. The names continuing to scroll upward were answer enough.
When the developers’ logo finally appeared, Xian raised his hand, nearly striking the laptop before stopping himself. It was old, slow, and increasingly unreliable, but it was also his only remaining source of entertainment. Breaking it would accomplish nothing except leave him alone with the consequences waiting beyond his locked door.
Xian sank back into his chair.
His reflection stared back at him from the darkened screen: unwashed hair, hollow eyes, and a face made pale by several days without proper sleep. He had spent nearly every waking hour searching for Carmillia’s route, and his reward was a ten-second scene followed by credits.
“Damn this game.”
Not knowing what else to do after failing more times than he could count, even after discovering a completely new scene, Xian closed his eyes.
A notification sounded from the laptop. He blinked and lazily raised his head.
The developers’ black-rose emblem had appeared at the center of the screen, surrounded by falling petals and curling thorns. If that was not strange enough, something far more unsettling appeared beneath it.
[Thank you for your dedication, Player “Xian.”]
Below his player name was another name, his real one.
Xian’s thoughts went still, and his fingers froze above the keyboard.
He had pirated the game and possessed no official account. He had never contacted the developers, given them his personal information, or connected his player name to his real identity. There should have been no way for the game to know who sat before the screen.
For several seconds, he could only stare. Then another message appeared and broke his stupor.
[You have discovered the Villainess’s key to survival.]
[Would you like to continue?]
Two options waited beneath it.
[YES]
[NO]
His unease warred with excitement. The reasonable response would have been to shut down the laptop, disconnect it from the internet, and assume that someone had compromised his information.
But reason had not been particularly useful to him lately.
And if there was even the smallest possibility that the game truly contained more—
Xian clicked YES.
In the end, his excitement got the better of him. Light flooded the screen. He recoiled and raised an arm over his eyes, but the brightness continued to expand until it poured from the laptop and swallowed his room.
“What the hell?”
When Xian lowered his arm, his room was gone.
He stood within an endless white space. The table and laptop remained before him, but there were no walls, no ceiling, and no visible ground beyond the pale surface beneath his feet.
A voice reached him from every direction.
[It seems we have found a dedicated one.]
Xian looked around. The voice seemed to come from all sides at once, a strange chorus of several people speaking in perfect unison.
“Is this what I think it is?” He tried to make it sound like a joke, fully expecting that he had fallen asleep and entered some unusually vivid dream.
The chorus answered immediately.
[Yes.]
That was exactly the answer he had hoped for. Since this was supposedly his dream, the voice was only confirming what he already wanted to believe.
Even so, his heart began to pound. Had he truly fallen asleep at his desk? Was this a hallucination brought on by exhaustion? Or had his body finally surrendered after days of neglect?
“What exactly is this situation?” he asked. “Did I die?”
[You did.]
The answer came without sympathy and caught him completely off guard.
That was not what he had expected to hear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a lingering hope had remained that he would live long enough to see his circumstances change. Yet it seemed that even this dream would not grant him that possibility.
He wanted to wake up immediately, but his thoughts felt disturbingly clear. There was none of the haziness or fractured logic he associated with dreaming. Normally, that would have made him question whether any of this was fake.
Instead, an exhausted laugh escaped him.
“So that’s what happened.”
He remembered the hunger he had ignored, the rent he could no longer avoid, and the life outside his room that had gradually become more frightening than the thought of never leaving it again.
Death should have felt more significant. At the very least, he should have felt free now that every obligation and consequence had been left behind.
He did not.
He was still himself, with nothing but the same bitter regret lodged within him.
“What happens now?” Xian asked. “Do I get reincarnated?”
[No.]
[We witnessed your dedication until your final breath.]
[Such dedication must not be put to waste.]
[Therefore, we have decided to answer that dedication ourselves.]
Three voices spoke in succession, each different from the last. Xian could not be bothered to decide whether they belonged to men or women, much less remember how many speakers there were.
“Then… do I get some kind of reward for being so impressively dedicated?” he asked with a sneer.
[Indeed.]
[Although it would be more accurate to call it a punishment.]
Xian’s faint amusement disappeared. “A punishment? For what?”
[You allowed your life to end through neglect.]
[To die without caring for the life you possessed is itself a sin.]
Xian frowned.
“So you liked that I wasted my last days on this game, but now you’re blaming me for dying because of it?” His lips twisted bitterly.
“That’s rich.”
He had already assumed that whatever these entities were, they had some connection to the game. He had never believed in gods or the supernatural, but arguing with the voices was hardly stranger than anything else happening around him.
[Your dedication reached us.]
[That does not absolve you.]
The surrounding whiteness seemed to press closer despite having no walls or shape.
[Therefore, we have prepared a punishment suited especially to you.]
The laptop screen lit up on its own. The black rose remained at its center while fragments of Rozenfall flickered behind it, heroines, battles, and endings Xian had witnessed too many times.
“What kind of punishment?”
[You will relive what you loved.]
[Again.]
[And again.]
A chill passed through him.
“Relive?”
[Until you reach the end.]
The voices spoke together.
[The Proper End.]
The light around him intensified, forcing Xian to raise his arm once more.
“Wait! What do you mean?”
[We will be watching, O Dedicated One.]
“What proper end? Hey!”
The light swallowed everything, and Xian squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, he found himself standing within the familiar hall he had seen on his laptop only moments before. Two armored women stood on either side of him, their hands resting near their weapons. Before him sat a woman whose face he had seen in countless illustrations, battle scenes, and endings.
Carmillia Montagne.
She was even more beautiful in reality.
Her dark-crimson hair flowed freely over her shoulders. Her pale features were finer and more expressive than any sprite could reproduce, while the cold indifference in her eyes possessed a weight no screen had ever conveyed.
Those deep-green eyes he had admired looked down upon him. Her thin, reddish lips parted faintly as she spoke.
“You’re my new butler?”
Xian could not answer.
Her voice was the same one he remembered, yet hearing it without speakers between them left him momentarily breathless.
He was inside the game.
There was no other explanation. He stood before the very woman he had died trying to save, with every route, choice, and possibility he had ever memorized suddenly becoming real.
Carmillia’s gaze sharpened.
“So why is a thing like you standing there and staring at me?”
Xian opened his mouth, but the urgency of the situation had yet to register. Too many thoughts crowded his mind at once: everything he could change, every event he knew, and every opportunity now within his reach.
A faint crease appeared between Carmillia’s brows.
“Tsk. Unpleasant.”
She lifted one hand. That mere gesture was enough.
The swordmaiden to her right closed her fingers around the hilt of her weapon. Xian heard steel leave its sheath, but the blade vanished from his sight before he could follow its movement.
A cold line passed through his neck.
There was no immediate pain, only the strange sensation of something piercing skin, flesh, and throat in a single effortless motion. His vision tipped sideways as the floor rose to meet him.
Blood flooded his sight.
Through the curtain of red, he caught one final glimpse of Carmillia’s cold, expressionless gaze.
Only then did Xian understand.
Carmillia had ordered his execution. His new life had ended within the span of a few words from her.
Author's Note
YuzaiRearu
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