I Start with a Bad Hand!

“You are the one, aren’t you?”

The one who grabbed my hand was a boy I did not recognize. So…

“…Who are you?”

His face was obscured by darkness, and a robe he wore prevented me from seeing it properly. The only thing that was distinctly clear was the strong grip he had on my hand.

‘What is this….’

I frowned due to the sudden contact. No matter how hard I tried to remember, this voice seemed unfamiliar to Dietrich. …Then, he must not be very important to Dietrich, right? As I reached that conclusion, I twisted my hand free from his grasp.

“It seems you have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Wait….”

Before he could say more, I had closed the door to my dorm room. There are some strange people here….

Yet, it seemed he was not the only one acquainted with Dietrich. Just as I was about to leave the dormitory, someone abruptly grabbed my hand again.

‘Why do people here keep grabbing others’ hands so rashly….’

With a feeling of reluctance, I turned around, and what caught my eye was……

“Miss, it’s me!”

It was a girl about Dietrich’s age, dressed as a maid.

“I heard you were taking the academy exam and I’ve been looking everywhere to see if you were here!”

“Who….”

Noticing my stunned look, the redhead quickly continued.

“Don’t you remember me? From the house of Elexion….”

As I looked at the girl with the dimly bright red hair, a scene flashed through my mind like lightning. That red-haired maid who was about to be executed for the crime of helping Dietrich escape so then she commit suicide by poisoning. Her name was…

“Yuri?”

The name I blurted out was right, as Yuri exclaimed with a bright expression, “You remember me!” and began jumping around while holding my hand. So it was Yuri, the exclusive maid who had been with Dietrich until she was expelled, and who was later executed for helping her after her expulsion.

There she stood before me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I followed Miss Roxanne! I’m not an exclusive maid, but one maid isn’t enough to serve a lady, right?”

Yuri said this with a scrubbed smile and began checking me over, asking how I had been. Then, with a suddenly speculative expression, she asked.

“Miss, are you going to the entrance ball dressed like this right now?”

Yuri’s eyes seemed to imply ‘in this state?’ without her saying it, and I nodded unwittingly as I shrank back.

“This won’t do,” she insisted, and after urging me to tell her where my dorm was, she led the way there.

As soon as we entered the dorm, Yuri began to meticulously comb my hair in front of a mirror, adding worriedly that we were pressed for time.

“I’ve always wanted to apologize to you, miss.”

While gently applying hair oil, Yuri spoke softly.

The unexpected statement made me look at her reflection in the mirror with a puzzled gaze. Trying to recall any significant memories of Yuri from Dietrich’s past, I couldn’t conjure up anything substantial before Yuri continued.

“When you left like that… I couldn’t do anything… You always covered for my mistakes…”

Yuri’s voice became choked with emotion as she spoke calmly.

“And… because of my lack of judgment, I always brought you dresses… not suited to the dignity of a lady…”

Finally, I realized who had been choosing the dresses that filled Dietrich’s wardrobe with their astral sense of style. It was the work of a young maid who had just left the orphanage and a street urchin who had stumbled into the mansion.

The older maids mockingly told her that ‘a good dress must be flashy and covered in jewels,’ and Yuri, believing them, chose the dresses hoping that her young mistress, though of a different status, would not be looked down upon anywhere she went.

“Now I’m known as having the best taste in the ducal house.”

Yuri added proudly that the maids subtly call her when it’s time to choose the lady’s clothes.

“…But it’s meaningless now that you’re not with me.”

Her fingertips trembled as she applied makeup. It seemed Yuri wished to see Dietrich, not me, yet I couldn’t ignore the emotion in her voice.

“Now that we can meet from time to time… please recognize me whenever you see me.”

“Of course!”

I’m glad to serve you again for a while, thanks to still being in the ducal house,” Yuri replied with a renewed vigor.

Despite being from a noble but destitute family, Dietrich had jumped off the academy rooftop. The maid from the streets, Yuri, is said to have died in prison waiting for her execution, with a peaceful expression after committing suicide by poison.

As Yuri’s hands worked through my hair, the question I had while reading the original novel—why it was the noble Dietrich, not the commoner Yuri, who faced such a painful death—seemed somewhat clearer to me.

***

“Miss, just a little bit more!”

“No, I think that’s enough.”

“Really, just a tiny bit more—let me touch up your hair once more, and oh, adjust your dress… and your makeup here….”

It seemed like it would take until the opening day of school to arrive at the ballroom if we continued at this pace. Eventually, managing to peel away Yuri who was clinging to the hem of my dress, I hurried my steps toward the hall of the ballroom.

Fortunately, the focus of the people was not on the entrance of the hall but rather on the elevated stairs in the center, where Prince Elius, the male protagonist from the original work and the keynote speaker, was standing.

In that moment, I saw the most beautiful entity since the possession.

What stood out was his jet-black hair. In stark contrast, his eyes bore the intense glow of rubies.

Despite the flamboyancy of his colors, his gaze carried a calm and firm dignity. His tall, slender figure matched his face and created an elegant ambiance. Even from a distance, his fingers turning the pages of his speech were gracefully sculpted.

The beauty of the original novel’s male protagonist shook my resolve to ‘never influence the flow of the original work’, albeit briefly. However, this was beyond my control.

Living daily in a provincial estate of the empire surrounded by old men with fittingly robust names like Marquis Robert and Baron David, and then seeing a well-groomed, ethereally handsome man in the capital, it felt like a natural law that my heart would flutter.

Escaping the breathtaking beauty, I reluctantly turned my head down the stairs. But as they say, out of the frying pan and into the fire, or perhaps even better—this might be the icing on the cake.

Below the stairs was Danae, the fiancée of the prince and the female protagonist, watching Elius recite his speech.

The real Danae, or rather Roxanne, was like a petite and clear fairy. Especially her eyes, which looked as if the Milky Way was contained in the clear sea, were stunning. It was not difficult to predict that the name Danae would pass to her, seeing the pre-Roxanne Danae; it seemed instantly understandable.

Her silvery wavy hair glistened enchantingly as it reflected the light from the chandeliers. Every time she offered a slight smile to those she made eye contact with, it seemed as if the area around Roxanne brightened a bit. Her smile had a power that made it difficult for anyone, regardless of gender, to look away, drawing people to linger around her.

Every time I saw the translucent Roxanne, I felt that the name did not suit her at all. Rather, her original name, Danae, seemed more fitting for such a pure child.

‘What use is it now?’

As the music signaling the start of the ball played, Roxanne stood guarded by Evan, who naturally asked her to dance. In the heart of the ballroom, the two from the Elexion Ducal House danced gracefully, their silver hair shimmering with each elegant step to the melody.

I was behind the dancing students, pushed by the crowd, leaning against the wall and idly tapping my foot in time to the music. I was merely enjoying the music, casually considering whether to join the school’s music club.

That’s when it happened. Someone roughly grabbed my arm.

“……!”

Before I could even understand who it was, I was forcibly dragged into a secluded balcony.

“What were you thinking, sneaking into the academy?”

Even though I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, the malicious tone was unmistakable. As soon as I recognized him, a sigh escaped me like a breath that had been held back.

‘Ah, this guy’s a real piece of work….’

Cedric Elexion, the quintessentially loving brother of a typical romance novel protagonist, and in this case, Roxanne’s.

“Did you think you could deceive the Elexion Ducal House and still set foot in the capital? You don’t know your place.”

He was the one who had made Dietrich’s short life within the ducal house a living hell in the original story. Having lost his mother at a young age, his grief turned into resentment towards the naïve Dietrich, freshly out of the orphanage.

It started with nitpicking at Dietrich’s lack of proper manners and decorum, and later escalated to pointing out Dietrich’s appearance, which bore no resemblance to the duke or duchess, driving him to the brink. After graduating from the academy, Cedric, who had entered the academy of sciences, never missed a chance to metaphorically stab Dietrich with cutting words whenever he was an eyesore.

Faced with this sudden confrontation, I was speechless. Cedric, finding my silence contemptible, furrowed his brow and stepped closer, grabbing my chin roughly and growling.

“You’d better watch your step from now on.”