Isn’t Being A Wicked Woman Much Better? - Chapter 4

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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 4
Patrick realized he’d exceeded the allotted time the moment he glanced at the clock, his face draining of color. He seemed to recall the catastrophe when a prestigious Academy professor had hung upside down from a window.
“M-Miss, of course there’s no homework. Thank you for enduring my humble lecture. I was so moved by your beautiful and noble eagerness to learn that….”
He bowed deeply while stammering his words.
“Leave.”
“Yes, yes!”
The moment I dismissed him, Patrick vanished in a dazzling backward step.
‘No homework. Perfect.’
I stretched languidly with a carefree thought. Once I finished the theory lecture on magical circle creation, today’s schedule would be complete. Remarkably, Deborah had skipped even these four-hour morning classes out of sheer annoyance.
‘So that’s the setting—stupid and lazy.’
I shook my head and walked toward the Annex Building where a Magic Tower researcher was waiting.
“Miss, you’ve arrived.”
As I entered the magical training chamber prepared separately in the Annex Building, a woman with ash-gray hair greeted me with a ninety-degree bow. Her politely clasped hands trembled faintly with fear.
It was understandable. The number of magic instructors Deborah had cycled through was beyond counting.
“It’s not that I can’t sense mana—it’s that you’re incompetent and worthless! I’m of direct Simour blood!”
Deborah refused to acknowledge her complete lack of magical talent and instead blamed her hapless instructors, hurling whatever came to hand. The fact that all throwable objects had been removed from the vicinity spoke volumes about the severity of Deborah’s tyranny.
The Simour bloodline was famous for high mana affinity, so why did Deborah have absolutely no magical aptitude? Most protagonists who transmigrated into novels wielded magic as a basic skill, mastered swordsmanship, and could even summon spirits.
‘That wretched villainess debuff….’
I sighed at the abysmal stats, then quickly corrected my thinking.
Deborah possessed overwhelming beauty, wealth, and influence.
That was everything. Conversely, the protagonists in novels faced jealousy and persecution proportional to their abilities.
But Deborah was the one oppressing others out of inferiority. As long as I stayed quiet, days would pass without incident or trouble.
“Not bad at all.”
After class ended, I contentedly hummed while eating a macaron—the kind the Capital’s finest craftsman made only seventy-seven of each day.
I idled away the entire day, and when evening came, servants attended to my bath with meticulous care.
“Miss, is the water temperature acceptable?”
“It’ll do.”
As I sank into the large tub with flower petals floating on its surface, a contented sigh escaped me.
The attendants gently worked natural oil with a fragrant scent into my untensed muscles. They washed my hair with such devotion and thoroughness.
At first, their meticulous service felt strange, but the human body is fickle—I quickly grew accustomed to such comfort.
‘This is wonderful.’
I draped a silk robe that clung softly to my skin and sprawled across the bed, thinking.
Another day had passed peacefully.
I hoped tomorrow would be the same, but to ensure that, I needed to change the future of Deborah, the villain in the original story.
I lingered in bed for a while, then entered the adjacent room furnished like a study. There, I activated a mana stone containing a lighting spell and began organizing the novel’s contents from memory.
Deborah was a typical one-dimensional villainess character who tormented the original heroine Miya Binoshu before meeting a bad end. Hair-pulling and slapping were standard fare; she even poisoned Miya’s drink with a substance that would dissolve her throat.
The most egregious act was creating a doll that looked identical to Miya and cursing it.
The one who exposed Deborah’s horrific crimes to the world was none other than the Crown Prince, one of Miya Binoshu’s admirers.
‘The only chapter that felt satisfying.’
The Crown Prince pursued Deborah for creating the cursed doll, charging her with blasphemy.
‘That was a clever strategy.’
In the Empire, there was only one authority that stood above the Emperor and the high nobility. That was the status of a Saint.
Saint Naila, who had sacrificed her own life to drive out evil and save the people, was the most beloved figure in the Empire. They called her a goddess—the Saint who had divided her body into six pieces to establish a powerful Barrier—and everyone revered and loved her.
‘How is even the Saint so hardcore here?’
Miya Binoshu possessed such pure holy power that she was praised as the incarnation of Saint Naila herself, and because the accumulated misdeeds I had committed were so egregious, the Crown Prince’s claim of ‘blasphemy against the sacred’ gained considerable weight.
Even the child of a founding family could not escape the gravity of insulting the Empire’s Saint. I was brought to trial, and the jury was composed of people bribed by Miya’s admirers. Having lost the case, I was confined to a Convent near the Barrier—a place no different from a prison.
I had committed ten thousand insane acts, yet the author received tremendous criticism for giving me nothing worse than confinement to a Convent. What had the author said back then?
“She’s the daughter of the Simour Family. As the child of a founding family, execution is simply impossible.”
Many readers had dropped the series at that point because of the author’s excessive attachment to the established lore.
‘To avoid the Convent, the key is not to torment the heroine.’
The reason Deborah—who possessed the tremendous backing of the Simour name—had fallen was simple. She had touched the novel’s heroine.
‘But I have absolutely no intention of tormenting Miya.’
The fortunate part was that the story was just beginning, so Deborah hadn’t yet met the heroine. Thanks to the ‘Pink Diamond Necklace’ that Duke Simour had mentioned, I realized that the first chapter of the novel and the moment I possessed this body were simultaneous.
Chapter One of the novel.
Near the Barrier, a powerful monster emerged from a mysterious rift, gravely wounding Philaf Montes—one of the heroine’s many admirers. The one who healed Philaf, who had suffered severe injuries from the monster’s attack, using holy power was none other than the heroine herself, Miya Binoshu.
As with most reverse harem novels, Philaf fell for Miya at first sight for saving his life. Moreover, taking pity on her impoverished circumstances as the daughter of a fallen noble, he wanted to do anything for her.
“Miss Miya. I truly wish to repay the debt of gratitude for saving my life.”
The Montes House, like Simour, was one of the founding families, so the words of its heir carried considerable weight. To Philaf, who acted as though he would tear out his own liver and gallbladder for her, Miya simply smiled gently and shook her head.
“I was merely doing what needed to be done.”
“Miss Miya….”
“I simply hope that you recover swiftly, Lord Philaf.”
Moved by Miya’s pure heart, Philaf happened to learn that her birthday was approaching soon, and he wished to give her something splendid as a gift.
After inquiring here and there, he discovered the existence of the Pink Diamond.
It was the first time a colored diamond had ever been mined, and since Miya Binoshu’s hair was pink, Philaf decided that a Pink Diamond Necklace would be the most appropriate gift for her.
However, I—with vanity that reached the heavens—also coveted the Pink Diamond, of which there was only one in the entire Empire. When news spread that both Simour and Montes were pursuing it simultaneously, other nobles became interested as well, and the jewel’s price skyrocketed beyond all reason.
To summarize: in the novel, it was Philaf Montes who ultimately possessed the Pink Diamond Necklace. The price had risen so high that even a noble daughter would find it burdensome to purchase with her own funds, and Duke Simour, tired of my relentless depravity, had no intention of acquiring it for me.
Innocent Miya Binoshu, unaware of the jewel’s true value, arrived at the Academy in splendid fashion wearing the Pink Diamond Necklace that Philaf had gifted her.
‘And then I grabbed her by her pink hair….’
I had torn the necklace away roughly, leaving scratches on her delicate neck as a bonus.
It was particularly unfortunate that the one Deborah had harbored feelings for since childhood was Philaf, so my harassment of Miya only intensified with each passing day.
‘First and foremost, I must never grab her hair. I should pretend not to see the Pink Diamond even if it’s right in front of me.’
I wrote down the things I needed to be careful about to survive this damned novel with a quill pen, then let out a hollow laugh. Surviving as the villainess Deborah seemed far easier than surviving as the pushover Yoon Do-hee in competitive Korea.
Deborah had money, connections, and beauty, but I had none of those things. To make a living, I needed to find employment, yet my qualifications were pathetically meager. I had been taken advantage of and wasted my time on meaningless things, never truly taking charge of my own life.
Even if I had been fortunate enough to secure employment, my major wouldn’t have suited me, and I likely would have suffered even more after joining the company.
‘I actually wanted to retake the exam.’
“Do-hee, you know our family can’t afford for you to retake the exam, right?”
Just before the college entrance exam, my father’s cautionary words weighed heavily on me, and my score came out much lower than my practice tests. I desperately wanted to retake the exam, but knowing our family’s circumstances all too well, I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the subtle pressure prevented me from even mentioning it. I had naively thought that if I just worked hard enough, eventually my major would become familiar to me.
I recalled the past that had already slipped away and sighed, then set down my quill pen and jumped up from my seat.
‘From this moment on, I’ll get my act together and live properly.’
I couldn’t simply while away my time like this. No, if I wanted to continue living this cushy life, I needed to improve my circumstances.
‘Improving my relationship with Duke Simour is the most critical priority.’
The fact that my powerful backer held me in contempt was a serious problem. Looking at it objectively, every ounce of wealth and privilege Deborah enjoyed flowed from Duke Simour. Lose the backing, lose the fortune.
I had to maintain good relations with the Duke at all costs, and he was the only one worth playing against.
‘Deborah is the only child in this household who resembles her mother.’
I pushed aside the curtains drawn across the window and gazed down at the darkened landscape of the Simour Family Estate’s Town House.
‘It’s time to make my move.’
Surrounding the main residence where the Duke’s study was located lay a magnificent rose garden. Powerful preservation magic kept it perpetually in bloom throughout the year.
Duke Simour, who had loved his wife with extraordinary devotion, maintained her cherished rose garden exactly as she had tended it during her lifetime.
Moreover, that garden was also the setting where the kidnapped Miya Binoshu and the eldest son Rozad shared their sadistic, explicit intimate scenes in the novel. I had concentrated so intently, absorbing every single word, that ‘that scene’ remained vividly etched in my memory.
‘I never imagined back then that it would become the foundation of everything.’
Feeling fortunate, I slipped the parchment back into the drawer and locked it securely with the key.
* * *
‘Deborah has been unusually quiet.’
Duke Simour found himself musing as he reviewed the ledger detailing his daughter’s expenditures.
She was someone who loved indulgence more than anyone else. Yet aside from the money spent at the dressmaker’s last month, there were virtually no other expenses.
Why? Could she actually be under punishment?
A flicker of suspicion crossed his cold gaze.
Being under punishment wouldn’t prevent her from spending money. This was the girl who summoned dressmakers and jewelers to the house daily—what scheme was she plotting?
His daughter’s unusual silence, given her insatiable appetite for desire, only made it more suspicious. This was the girl who had fasted and even engaged in self-harm over a mere jewel. There was no way Deborah, who absolutely had to possess whatever she coveted, would have abandoned that pink diamond that had become the most talked-about item in the Empire’s high society.
Of course, disgusted by Deborah’s behavior, Duke Simour had no intention whatsoever of acquiring that worthless bauble for her.
‘The more I think about it, the more infuriating it becomes. She dares attempt blackmail under the guise of affection?’
Duke Simour clenched his teeth, resolving that he would never place what his daughter desired within her grasp.
“Y-Your Grace. The young lady has been seen in the rose garden….”
It was then that his aide reported something to the Duke, whose expression had turned savage.
“What?!”
At the aide’s shocking report, the Duke’s face went pale as he shot to his feet.

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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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