Chapter 1
“What is this…?”
I couldn't help blurting that out.
A small child stood before the large mirror. The clothes were finely tailored, but the eyes clearly belonged to someone with a nasty personality.
In short, he was a brat who looked incredibly insolent.
There was no way I was supposed to look like that.
But when I saw the person reflected before me, I suddenly remembered.
“Could this be…?”
No way. It had to be a lie—but reality was cruel.
This appearance… This appearance was unmistakably…
“It's Kuzutos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
That day, my scream echoed throughout the room.
Randall Ultos.
He was the heir to the powerful ducal house of Randall, and a villainous noble in a certain adult romance game.
Known as “Kuzutos.”
What's more, the hatred people felt for Kuzutos was on another level.
To put it simply, Kuzutos was a cowardly villainous noble, something like a mid-boss.
A chubby, pig-like fellow, he grew jealous of the handsome protagonist who enrolled at the academy of magic and subjected him to all sorts of harassment.
Well, if that were all, Kuzutos would have been just another ordinary villain.
But Kuzutos didn't stop there.
One of the heroines carried the trauma of losing her mother in childhood—and Kuzutos was responsible for it.
An ugly guy who made a pure-hearted, busty heroine beloved by every player cry, all while getting in the protagonist's way.
And on top of that, he had a terrible personality.
To make matters worse, his first-person pronoun was “me, the great me,” and his laugh went “Guh~gufufufufu”—making him one of the lamest characters in recent memory.
Who on earth could possibly like a character like that?
And so Kuzutos became overwhelmingly popular—for all the wrong reasons.
In interviews, members of the development team singled him out, saying, “Even I can't forgive this guy.” And in countless fan works, the standard plot was for a protagonist reincarnated in another world to beat Kuzutos to a bloody pulp and heal the heroine's childhood trauma.
The moment Kuzutos appeared on livestreams, the comments would overflow with things like “This scumbag lmao” and “Just die already lmao.”
Yeah.
But that wasn't the end of the story.
As the game progressed, the other mid-boss characters would somehow reconcile with the protagonist's party or even lend the protagonist a hand. But Kuzutos was so obnoxious in everything he said and did that he didn't even get a reconciliation event.
Right?
It's completely ridiculous, isn't it?
Kuzutos's eventual fate was to be controlled by the mastermind and killed.
Despite being born into a fairly prestigious family, the Randall ducal house, he was ultimately beaten to a pulp by the commoner protagonist.
For the record, the protagonist doesn't even comment when Kuzutos dies.
Such is the cruelty of the world.
No…
“Wait. How old am I right now?”
I voiced my question.
The boy in the mirror certainly had the air of someone with a twisted personality, but he wasn't all that fat yet.
Judging by his looks alone, he wasn't so bad.
I stared straight into the mirror.
Eight or nine, maybe?
Around this age, Kuzutos-kun discovers his talent for magic and starts getting incredibly full of himself.
He gives himself over to women and does whatever he wants. He doesn't study magic or train with a sword.
And after living such an unhealthy life, he gets beaten to a pulp by the very embodiment of protagonist plot armor—and thus the fine specimen known as Kuzutos comes into being.
—But.
I can still turn things around, can't I?
I found myself asking the mirror.
When you think about it, the solution is pretty simple.
In short, I just have to avoid every single one of Kuzutos's scummy moves from the game.
That way, I can stay alive.
Sure, I want to fall in love, but it's not like I want to build a harem of beautiful girls like Kuzutos does in the game. I'm a fan of true love.
That's right. I just have to live the opposite way.
I'll live honestly. Keep a low profile. Train a reasonable amount and study a reasonable amount.
And try to stay as far away from the protagonist's party as possible.
That's it.
I want to be an ordinary background extra A, clapping alongside the protagonist's party in the final episode.
“All right.”
I'd decided what to do from here on out.
I clenched my fist.
Then I looked into the mirror once more.
Kuzutos.
Sorry, but I'm going to live an honest life.
Well, since all I'm thinking about is surviving, maybe I'm not all that different from Kuzutos after all…
Oh, well.
—But then.
I'd been naive. Utterly naive.
I never imagined the young Kuzutos could be such a scumbag. Now I was at a loss, staring at the maid trembling in front of me.
“Ultos-sama, I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry. Please, anything but my job—please, anything but my job. I have a family…”
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
The timid-looking maid said this as she trembled all over.
“……………”
Of course, I could only stare at the maid in silence, my expression awkward.
Just let me say one thing.
—Hey, Kuzutos.
Didn't you go a little too far, even as a child???????