My Next Life as a Heroine – Chapter 9 – I’m In Love With the Villainess

“What is the meaning of this, Lady Hunt?” Katarina – Katarina! – growled. Why was Katarina growling?!

“The meaning?” Lady Hunt – Mary! But I probably shouldn’t call her that! – asked, arching an eyebrow. “Is it not perfectly obvious, Lady Claes?”

Lady Claes? Wait, Katarina used Lady Hunt, too! What the heck?! Were they fighting or something?

Well, yeah, they obviously were. Over me. Or more like about me. Which, I repeat – what the heck?!

“Are you trying to say that the Hunt family has taken some interest in this commoner?!” Katarina – Lady Claes? – demanded.

Mary Hunt only smiled.

“Fine. If you wish to concern yourself with the wiles of a lowly commoner, then far be it from me to stand in your way. Just see to it that she doesn’t let the attention she’s received get to her head.”

With those words Katerina – beautiful, shockingly cold Katarina – turned her nose up and strode away from me. No doubt off to do things like… I don’t know. Not till land and not climb trees, I guess? 

“Are you alright?” Mary asked me, once she was gone.

I nodded. Because that was the polite response when a helpful stranger asked if you were okay. “No. Not at all.” My mouth wasn’t so polite, though. “Was that really Katarina Claes? As in the Katarina Claes? As in, the one and only Katarina Claes? There isn’t, like, another Katarina Claes is there? Because that is not what I expected of Katarina Claes!”

Was I saying Katarina Claes too much? Yes. Did I care? No! Maria.exe was still broken, dammit! It had to be. Because if my brain stopped being broken, I’d have to face the fact that Katarina Claes wasn’t acting like… 

Well, she was technically acting like Katarina Claes. Just… not the one from the books. More like the one from the games… But she couldn’t be the one from the games! Because… because that would imply that I was in the game! And that everyone except me was their game-self! Jeord, the blackhearted prince who only wanted entertainment. Alan, the eternally dense and depressed prince who could never match up to his brother. Keith, the playboy. Sophia, the lonely shy girl… Nicol, the…. handsome sis-con, I guess? And Mary…… who was…. saving me?

What the hell? I was pretty sure there wasn’t a scene like that in the games or the books!

“You’re going to make me blush if you keep staring at me,” Mary – Lady Hunt? What did I even call her – remarked, turning her head away from me. 

“Uh… right. Sorry, Lady-”

“Mary,” the noble lady interrupted, a smile on her lips. “Just Mary, please.”

“But Lady-” I started, then stopped. The smile on Mary’s face hadn’t changed, but somehow… somehow it suddenly was sending chills down my spine… “Mary. Um. Why did you save me? Did the Hunt family really take an interest in a commoner like me?”

“The interest was entirely mine,” Mary informed me, her smile losing that chilly edge. “And I suppose you could say I was returning the favor…”

“Returning the favor?” I questioned, tilting my head to one side.

“The favor I owe towards a little girl, who told me that I was someone special. That my garden was beautiful, and that anyone who could make it such had… how did you put it?” She tapped her chin, tilting her head to the side. “‘More talent in her thumb than I’ve got in my whole body,’ I believe?”

“Wait, that… That was you?” I questioned. “You were the girl who showed me Mary Hunt’s – I mean your garden?”

“So you do remember me!” Mary declared, clapping her hands happily.

…For some reason, I was getting the weird impression that I’d just dodged some sort of bullet! But that was probably just my imagination, right? …Right?

“Is something the matter?” Mary asked me. “You look a little pale…”

“N-nothing,” I promised. Because there was nothing wrong. Nope! Nothing at all! “I’m just… surprised you remembered something from so long ago…”

“My, but you remembered, did you not?” Mary pointed out. 

“Well, yeah,” I confirmed. “Getting to see the Mary Hunt’s garden was a pretty precious memory to me, you know? It was seriously gorgeous! Way better than I could ever have imagined! But that’s me. You’re… I mean, surely that was just another night to you?”

“Of course not!” she cried. “It was the first night anyone ever paid me a compliment like that… the first time anyone ever valued my hard work…”

“But it wasn’t like it was the last time, right? I mean, surely your fiancee said some nice things, too?”

“Alan?” She scoffed. “He cares more for competing with his brother than he does me… He barely even listened when I tried telling him about you…”

“You tried telling him about me?” I asked. “…What did you say? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say much of anything,” Mary admitted. “And I quickly learned better than to try and share my problems with him… he’s too wrapped up in his own head. But enough about him, hmm? I’m more concerned about you…”

“About me?” I questioned. “Why?” She wasn’t… interested in me, was she? I mean, yeah, I’d sort of preempted Alan’s line, but it wasn’t like I’d said the line about her having a green thumb. And it wasn’t like I had Katarina’s raw magnetism to make up for it, either! I mean, if it had been her spouting nonsense about remembering someone forever, I could see it going in a romantic direction, but me? No way!

“Well, you’re a commoner in a school full of nobles,” she pointed out. “You’re going to have trouble, aren’t you?”

“Well… Yeah,” I admitted. Both in the games, and the books, Maria had lots of trouble with bullies. Of course, in the books, Katarina helped by taking Maria under her wing… something that obviously wasn’t going to happen here. If anything, we’d be following the route of the game, where the various male love interests…

…Oh god. I was in an otome game, wasn’t I? As the Heroine. Without Katarina to draw their attention, the male love interests were basically guaranteed to take an interest, weren’t they?! How the heck was I supposed to deal with that?! I didn’t want to date guys! I mean, maybe the original Maria would have been okay with it – she was probably bi? – but I’d pretty much maxed out the Kinsey scale in my last life, and I wasn’t really interested in finding out if a new body made a difference!

Besides, even if I was going to date a guy, it wouldn’t be one of these! I mean, seriously? My choices were a sadist, a self-hater, a player or a sis-con? If my romance was going to be synonymous with ‘fixer-upper’ then I chose Katarina! I mean, the original Katarina’s traits had to be in there somewhere, right? I was sure that the dense, clumsy glutton of a kind hearted girl was just waiting for someone to drag her out of the darkness! And the best thing was, if I managed to do it, there wouldn’t even be any competition for her love!

You know, because everyone would be more interested in my love… but I wasn’t going to think about that! For now, I needed to follow the footsteps of a certain girl named ‘Rei’ and chase after my bully! Preferably without drawing the attention of the male love interests. The last thing I needed was them trying to ‘save me’ by going after Katarina…

“Maria? Are you listening?”

“Bwuh?” I blinked up at Mary. And then at the table in front of me. And the tea. Why was there tea? I didn’t even remember sitting down!

“You really were lost in your own little world, weren’t you?” Mary accused.

“…Well… sort of,” I admitted, grabbing the tea and taking a sip, to hide my blush.

…Of course, in my hurry, I forgot to add sugar. Still, a bit of bitterness was nothing if it saved me from the embarrassment of-

“And I made such a dramatic pledge, too – to ensure anyone who bullied you met the fate they deserve…”

“Pffft!”

~~~

I’ve been told I maybe didn’t do the best job with Katarina in this one? I admittedly have much less experience with OG Katarina than Bakarina, but I’ll try to improve on that for future chapters.