Chapter Twenty One

Mira found herself looking up at a very familiar and unwelcome face. Bad memories flooded Mira’s head and not just the ones she’d inherited from Violet.

The man (a boy, really) was tall and handsome, which of course you had to be if you were going to star as the canon love interest in an Otome game. He was the blonde option with brilliant green eyes like emeralds that burned with their own inner fire. He wore his cornsilk colored hair worn short and slicked back from his face. Violet’s memories showed him wearing a half-cape with his school uniform, but he was dressed down for today in a white dress shirt with a black ascot, pale blue silk waistcoat, and charcoal colored trousers.

If Mira’s lives tended to follow a theme, they also recycled cast members—and the man approaching her was chief among them after Cecily. This too was within her expectations. The entire reason she picked up ‘Lost Daughter’ in the first place was because she’d seen an echo of an old enemy in the promo art pictures, even though dating sims weren’t her favorite genre. All dating sims got a little samey over time and she preferred strategy games or first person shooters, but her instincts had served her well this time.

Prince Andrei was the Kuudere archetype. He was cold and critical upon casual acquaintance, allegedly because of his poorly defined status within his family, but in the game Cecily melted through his icy exterior with her uncomplicated and sweet demeanor to uncover his true sweety and goofy self.

Mira had her own thoughts about the ‘I treat you differently because you’re special’ types, but she also didn’t intend to fight Cecily for him.

Following close behind Andrei was Bryn Havard, Andrei’s personal escort knight. Bryn was another of the capture targets in ‘Lost Daughter.’ He and Andrei were close and, if you played your cards right, the player could lure them into becoming a throuple with Cecily as the third member of their polycule.

Bryn was the blue-haired option and about two years older than Andrei, which made him three years older than Cecily and the oldest love interest in the game. He was the Dandere type. He was extremely reserved to the point where he hardly had any dialogue. The developers compensated by giving him twice as many facial expressions than the other characters, although the differences were slight. Anyone who wanted to play the Bryn route had to get very good at parsing his microexpressions very quickly.

Although their personalities seemed similar at the beginning (they were known around school as the Ice Sculptures) Bryn was less gruff than Andrei and slower to anger. He was a decisive fighter and wouldn’t hesitate to throw down if necessary, but at the same time he was the love interest who was least likely to fly off the handle if someone tried to punch his buttons. Andrei was a lot more impulsive and prone to snap judgments. Bryn, meanwhile, wasn’t exactly hostile to Violet. For example, he didn’t necessarily agree with the rest of Cecily’s faction that Violet was the anonymous bully hassling their heroine because there was no clear evidence to prove it one way or the other, but he also disliked Violet on Andrei’s behalf so he wasn’t going to be of any help in a conflict.

In short, these were the last two people in the world that Mira wanted to see at present.

“…shit…” Cecily whispered and started moving faster. “Sorry! I’m sorry!” Although whether she was apologizing for swearing or manhandling Mira was anyone’s guess. It was possible that Mira had been a bad influence on her.

Mira couldn’t respond to what her sister was saying.

Memories crashed over her in wave after unforgiving wave. If Vesper, Violet’s own sister, hardly had any presence in her life and memories the same could not be said for Andrei. Her memories overlapped each other until the edges blurred and all Mira saw was various permutations of Andrei, unhappy with Violet.

She saw him pacing, smacking his thigh with a riding crop, as he spoke curtly to her. “I do not owe you any explanation,” he was saying. “I did not request an invitation and it was insensitive of you to insist on sending one anyway. I correctly sent my regrets. I will not stand here and beg your forgiveness for an offense that I did not…”

Violet remembered his words, but not as loudly as the sound of the riding crop. None of the memories of Andrei showed him ever hitting her or even threatening to, but somehow Violet expected violence from—from who?

Then she was very small and lying in bed. Everything hurt, but especially her head and she was sick to her stomach. Mira recognized the sensation as that of a very bad concussion. From the open window near her bed, a voice (not Andrei’s, but someone Violet associated with him) said, “Watch your mouth in the future or I won’t be so kind to you next time.”

Even the memory of that voice made Mira’s stomach clench with dread and horror. Why? What had—? Only then she remembered being Violet not long after the scene where that stranger threatened her through her window. Her head still hurt in the memory, enough so that she’d gone outside to lay on her back in the shady grass with her eyes closed.

Her first and only warning came from the sound of booted feet in the grass. She sat up and…

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The seizure hit. The one good thing about it was that the sudden involuntary jerk of her body threw off that memory’s hold on her so she didn’t have to relive more than the first splash of the acid as it hit her face.

Once again, Mira lost several seconds before Cecily’s magic flowed into her and protected her body from what was happening to it. Mira took as much stock of the situation as she could and tried to remember what had happened.

Cecily had been hustling her into the carriage with Colvin’s help, but Mira thought that maybe the seizure had already started by then. She felt like Cecily had been struggling to keep a hand on her while Colvin both helped Mira into the coupe and tried to shield her from the prince’s view.

“I’m afraid I can’t talk right now,” Cecily had been saying to—Andrei? Yes, he’d caught up by then, hadn’t he? “My–my friend isn’t feeling well and we need to get her home.”