I Became the Female Lead Ruined by Others - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 2

The rain had thinned to a drizzle.
The faint patter carried on the wind, brushing against my ears with a soft rustling sound.
But my body was no longer trembling from the cold that accompanied the downpour—it shook for an entirely different reason.

‘Wait. Can I even call this my body anymore?’

I looked down at my small, trembling hands.

‘This can’t be real.’

Why?
Why on earth?
I had fallen asleep in my room at the Duke’s Mansion last night—I was certain of it.

‘And besides… what happened yesterday?’

Yesterday I had stayed at the Duke’s Mansion all day.
I hadn’t finished checking all the gifts I’d received at my birthday party a month ago.
So I’d spent the entire morning sorting through them.
In the afternoon, Baron Carzen stopped by the mansion for tea. Our conversation, as always, consisted mostly of idle pleasantries.
After dinner, I took a walk through the garden with Father and my brother. Nothing unusual had happened then either.
Except for going to bed later than usual, it had been an ordinary day.

‘But why am I now Roselina Mesh?’

I turned my head slowly to look at the ‘me’ lying in the coffin.
Possession or not, it had been five years.
The body I’d carried for five years was now a cold corpse lying in that wooden box.
The blood drained from my entire body just watching it.

‘And why… am I dead?’

I couldn’t comprehend it.
I couldn’t understand any part of my current situation.
It was far more bewildering than the day I’d possessed Bianca Bardencia, the villainess of the game I’d loved to play.
For the past five years, I had struggled desperately to escape this villainess’s predetermined fate.
Because I had possessed her before she began her full descent into villainy, I had succeeded—through sheer determination to survive—in reversing the villainess’s reputation.

‘But I’m dead now.’

All five years of backbreaking effort had become meaningless without my knowing it.
Every ounce of struggle I’d poured into escaping the villainess’s narrative—the one that led inevitably to an execution ending the moment someone harbored enough resentment—had evaporated.
An unexpected variable had emerged, true, but I’d dealt with it safely just last week…
Wait. Could it be?

‘Did that person orchestrate all this?’

But how?
Transplanting my soul into Roselina’s body? Such a thing was possible? Was such a method even possible to begin with?

‘Then what happened to that person? Why is the villainess dead?’

My vision could find no anchor in the endless confusion.
As I alternated between staring at the corpse in the coffin and my trembling hands, the priest continued speaking without pause.
But that sound—barely worthy of the name—didn’t touch so much as a thread of my awareness.

“Hey!”

The sharp roar that followed snapped my head up, though.

“This damned——!”

The voice belonged to Leonardo Bardencia, heir to the Bardencia dukedom.
The moment his eyes found mine—empty, hollow as they were—he quickened his pace with crude, violent strides.
Mud heavy with rainwater splashed beneath him, the sound jarring and loud.
His eyes blazed as if they would burn through me whole, consume me entirely.

‘Brother.’

He closed the distance in a few steps, teeth gritted, words mangled from the tension in his jaw.

“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Leonardo——”

The priest tried to interject, sensing the threat in his tone.
Tried, rather.
But Leonardo paid him no mind, chin raised, drawing ever closer to me.
His eyes—fixed on mine from above—overflowed with a single, unmistakable emotion: revulsion.

“Do you have no sense of where you are?”
“…….”
“I’ve let you claw your way up here despite your utter lack of place—only because of Bianca. But now, to dare, to——!”

Leonardo fell silent.
He drew a sharp breath, as though starved for air.

‘It’s never been like this.’

In five years, I’d never seen Leonardo rage as he was raging now.
Even before we’d reconciled, even when he’d called me an embarrassment unfit to be seen in public—he’d never burned like this.
His lips trembling with fury, he suddenly began to laugh.

“Now that I think of it, I have no reason to protect you anymore. Whoever let you in here—I’ll drag him out and have him dealt with alongside you——”
“Compose yourself.”

It was then.
The rain had stopped entirely, and through the biting wind that cut like a blade came a voice.
The steady footfalls of its owner drew closer, toward both of us.
Yet Leonardo continued to glare at me, his rage undiminished.

“Your Highness! This concerns my house as well!”
“I am not ignorant of your feelings, young lord.”
“But now that Bianca is gone, why should we not simply——!”

Leonardo’s body convulsed as though he might throw a punch.
But in that moment, tears began to fill his bloodshot eyes.
He staggered, his face suddenly contorting into ruin.
Then his body gave way, and he collapsed onto the damp earth below with a heavy thud.

“Bianca. My Bianca. I’ll never see her again. Never……”

Baron Carzen approached and stood at his side, his gaze turning toward me.
His hair, ordinarily so immaculately groomed, hung wet and disheveled from the rain—as though he hadn’t bothered to tend to it at all.
Still wearing wet gloves, he slowly swept the sodden strands back from his brow.

“I hope you understand the circumstances that have left the young master so unsettled.”

His eyes remained as steady and unwavering as always, direct as an arrow.
Yet that eerie gaze—merely having it pass over me was enough to steal my breath.

“Allow me to apologize on behalf of the young master.”

Baron Carzen spoke in a voice from which all the warmth he’d shown me yesterday had vanished without trace.
And I could say nothing in return.
Not because I didn’t understand why Leonardo was angry with Roselina Mesh, or because the Baron’s apology had mollified me—no, it was neither of those things.

‘What on earth is happening? How did we get here?’

I still couldn’t make sense of this moment unfolding around me.
A single Chrysanthemum Flower lay crushed beneath Leonardo’s feet as he knelt there weeping—trampled, buried in mud, a ruined petal among the filth.
Its condition looked almost enviable compared to my own.
I’d even forgotten how to swallow when, from above, I heard Baron Carzen’s voice again.

“Thank you for coming to the funeral of my dearest friend, my lady.”

His tone had grown even colder than before.
As he spoke, he stepped closer—near enough to reach me.

“Bianca must be pleased. She was quite fond of you, after all.”

Before I could react, Baron Carzen had drawn near enough to lay a hand lightly upon my shoulder.

“But I think it best you return home now, my lady. Did you catch a chill from the rain? You’re trembling so pitifully.”

Return home? To where?
A nameless dread crashed down my throat like a fist.
Something pressed down upon my chest, suffocating me.

‘If I tell them I’m Bianca now, no one will believe me.’

Of course they wouldn’t.
But perhaps it was because I hadn’t yet grasped the situation clearly.
My mind, wrapped in panic, thought differently.

‘Baron Carzen, though—’

Perhaps he might be different.
At first, our connection had begun as merely a lifeline—that was all I’d thought. Yet somewhere along the way, we’d grown closer than I’d ever anticipated.

‘If I reveal something only the two of us know, maybe—just maybe—’

Perhaps he could help me break through this nightmare.

A small, strangled sound escaped my lips.

Until the moment a heavy pressure bore down upon my shoulder.
Baron Carzen’s face was utterly devoid of emotion.

“You look so exhausted you’ll need support to stand, my lady.”

With that expressionless face, he pressed down slowly, deliberately, crushing my shoulder beneath his palm.

‘Why… why is he doing this?’

He tilted his head slightly, studying my face with eyes of cold crimson red.
And he whispered, low enough that no one else could hear.

“Once matters are settled, I’ll come for you. Leave this place.”

The grip in his hand tightened steadily.
It was not mere physical pressure, but a kind of warning.

“I can’t very well tear the Young Lady to shreds here and now, can I?”

And it sounded too like a declaration that what was wrong extended far beyond my new body alone.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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