Chapter 1 - She Was My Favorite (1)

I gave up everything to win the heart of just one person.

My pride, my reputation, my worth, even my future.

Yet all I got in return was a hateful reaction and a look that said she could never accept someone like me.

I sneered at that gaze that told me everything had been in vain.

I realized she never had any intention of understanding me in the first place, no matter what I did.

"It's okay. I never expected anything from you in the first place."

If only she had listened to me just once... No, if she had treated me fairly like she did others, could our ending have been different?

Briefly imagining a future that would never come true, I opened my mouth, thinking all of this was meaningless.

"...Don't you want to hear my story?"

"It's pointless."

"It seems you won't even listen to my story, let alone grasp the context of the situation."

"..."

I tried begging her to listen to my story until the very end, but she just stood there silently, looking down at me.

The moment I saw those emotionless eyes, I felt an intense sense of futility.

I uttered harsh words I had never dared speak in front of her before.

"Then fuck off, bitch."

***

Favorite

[Even if everyone points fingers at you, I'll be on your side forever, so don't worry.]

As we went through life, sometimes a favorite character suddenly stuck to our minds.

In my case, it was the character of Elisia, the Northern Grand Duchess…

A cold and proud character, but warm to her man.

When the protagonist fell into endless despair after being betrayed by everyone, she was the only one who reached out her hand, a “true love” character of unwavering loyalty.

Some malicious groups often spouted nonsense like, "Even so, the true love is Rwen, the female lead, so she's out since she has a fiancé," but…

Originally, the virtue of a true love character was to reach out when the protagonist had fallen to their lowest point, so it was an absolute truth that Elisia was the true love, without exception.

Anyway, the important thing is.

From the moment I first saw Elisia, I fell completely for this character and did every kind of fan activity possible.

Unfortunately, since the novel featuring Elisia wasn't very popular, there were no official goods for sale, so I often made them myself through home crafts.

About 20 goods were made that way.

Sadly, I had no talent in art, but I had money earned by enduring a terrible company life.

I poured all my salary into commissioning illustrations, then used them to make goods, with the author's permission of course.

I also made crude but simple figures and things like cushions, filling my room with them.

And if that wasn't enough.

I even wrote fan fiction making Elisia the protagonist, posting it on novel sites. I also sent 57,000 characters to the author about Elisia's good points.

I could assert that I'd never pour this much affection into anyone else in my life, expressing my love by pouring everything I had into it.

That was why when I first realized I had been reincarnated as Elisia's fiancé…

To be precise, her ex-fiancé, a character who ended up being killed by the protagonist due to his cruel and dissolute nature…

Damian, I felt joy before vague fear.

Isn't this a huge win?

If a friend, which I didn't have, had heard this reaction, they probably would have said I was crazy, or at least I assume.

I was so overjoyed at the fact that not only did I get to meet the character I had poured my entire life into loving, but I had become her fiancé. I couldn't see anything else in this world.

...To be honest, there wasn't really anything else to see.

Anyway, leaving the dark story aside, the important thing was that I had become the fiancé of the character I sincerely loved, so I immediately headed to Elisia's office.

I had no plan or strategy for going to her office.

The only thing occupying my mind was the fact that I could meet my favorite after 5 years of being a fan.

So I entered her office with the simple goal of facing her and exchanging light greetings, but...

"You seem to have a lot of free time. I'm envious."

What I got in return was dismissal, as if I wasn't even worth dealing with.

It was a natural reaction, if anything.

Elisia was a character who showed a cynical response, drawing a line until she opened her heart.

According to the novel's description, quite a few people were hurt by her response, but…

As someone who knew all the actions she took after opening her heart to the protagonist, I knew how warm a character she really was, so I accepted it with a smile.

"Yes, good morning."

"..."

Elisia looked at my face with disbelief at my response.

Thinking she was finally making eye contact with me, I calmly met her gaze.

Skipping over the obvious fact that she was beautiful.

Rather, I felt sympathy as I looked at the dark circles spread around Elisia's eyes and her sickly pale skin, indicating poor health.

Work seems to be tough.

Due to the harsh nature of the North, there were too many things to consider, and since each risk was large, work tended to be excessively concentrated on a few capable decision-makers.

One of them was Elisia. Recognized for her abilities from a young age and aiming for the position of head of the family, she was constantly suffering from excessive work.

Seeing this, I thought I might be able to gain her favor if I helped Elisia, so I smiled brightly again.

Returning to Damian's room, I finally felt like I was coming to my senses.

Until just now, I had been thinking only about finding Elisia as if I had been enchanted.

But as I sat alone in the room staring at the ceiling, reason slowly crept back into my mind.

...

I realized that my actions and thoughts had been quite ridiculous and let out a hollow laugh.

But thinking about it, it didn't seem all bad, so I sighed and closed my eyes.

Since I've been reincarnated, there's no choice but to accept it, even if I asked to go back.

Regretting what has happened didn't change anything.

Knowing well that the more I blamed myself, the deeper I’d fall into the quagmire, I decided to shake it off and organized the situation while running my hand through my hair.

I am Damian Carsaril.

A villainous character who appeared in the early to middle parts, and ended up being killed by the protagonist in the latter part.

Until then, he was a character who exerted enormous influence and put all-around pressure on the protagonist.

In the original work, he had a very bad relationship with his fiancée Elisia, and treated her as his possession.

Of course, Elisia openly rejected and ignored such a fucking Damian Carsaril, so nothing particularly happened.

The important thing was that their values were so mismatched that Damian tormented Elisia like crazy.

So according to the original work, their relationship was worse than the worst, at a level of complete breakdown…

Judging by the fact that Elisia just ignored me…

Whether it was luck or fate, I could understand that we were still in the state before fighting each other, in other words, it was shortly after Damian had come to the North.

Then there might be a possibility.

World salvation? Returning to Earth? Coming to another world and being loved too much by big-breasted elves, dragons, and saint-samas? Those things were meaningless, I only needed Elisia.

So I decided to try my best to make Elisia open her heart to me, and pondered what I could do.

First of all, the character Damian is wealthy.

Being engaged to the Northern Grand Duchess, he was the youngest son of a prestigious noble family, so having money to burn was an advantage.

In his first appearance, he was a useless bug with no abilities, but by the middle part, he became a powerful enemy who could stand against the protagonist, so his talent was quite outstanding.

He has a naturally lazy and dissolute nature.

In the early parts, his abilities were weak and he kept getting beaten by the protagonist.

In other words, this meant that if he worked hard in the early parts, he could become someone who could help Elisia.

Recalling this, I decided to take the direction of working hard to be of help.

In addition to this...

I nodded, thinking that if I worked on making the North a better place to live, our mutual favorability might naturally increase.

However, all of these are things I'm trying to do unilaterally.

It would be better to go through the process of becoming friends as naturally as possible without showing my intentions as much as possible.

Although I wanted to become close quickly, I didn't want to burden her, so I decided to approach slowly and took a deep breath.

Let's give it a try.