Satsuki I Refuse to Be Your Enemy! Volume 1

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7183-0180-1
Verlag: J-Novel Heart
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 303 Seiten

Reihe: I Refuse to Be Your Enemy!

From an early age, Kiara has been plagued with dreams of another world-dreams in which a girl she doesn't recognize plays a strategy RPG called 'Farzia: Kingdom at War.' Farzia is, in fact, the same kingdom where Kiara currently lives. Oh, and one other thing: there's an enemy character who's also named Kiara, though her name is Kiara Credias. Naturally, as with any other RPG villain, this enemy is slain by the heroes.
So when her adoptive father, Count Patriciél, orders her to marry Viscount Credias, Kiara comes to a horrifying realization: perhaps those 'dreams' were visions of things to come! She hatches a plan to get the hell out of Dodge and create a new future for herself-one where she STAYS ALIVE, thank you very much!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Satsuki, Kanata

Weitere Mitwirkende

Fuji, Mitsuya

Lee, Molly

Leseproben

“There’s nothing to fear, you two. I believe this is a residual effect of the sleeping-draught.”

“What are you—ack!”

Sure enough, right as he pulled me to my feet, my knees buckled, and I slumped back to the floor. I blinked in surprise. Had all that sleep weakened me so terribly?

Meanwhile, Reggie still held me by the wrist, though he didn’t seem interested in giving it a second try. Instead, he turned back to the other two.

“See? Clearly this is another effect of the sedative, intended to keep her from escaping. There’s no way a lucid person would tumble face-first off the bed like that.”

“Wait, what? ‘Keep me from escaping’?”

I was embarrassed to learn that he’d witnessed my less-than-graceful swan dive to the floor, but more importantly, something else had caught my attention. Who was I supposed to be escaping, exactly? And what sedative was he talking about? When did I ingest such a thing? Suddenly, I found myself paranoid. Did these men do this to me?

Just then, Alan finally broke his long silence.

“Last night, we found you asleep in our carriage,” he explained.

Yes, that made sense. I could remember nodding off to sleep in there.

“So we carried you out, but you didn’t wake. Then we tried shaking you and shouting at you, both to no avail. And since you were a stowaway, we needed to take every precaution, so we examined your possessions. That’s how we came across the letter from your father... and we determined that it was laced with a sleeping agent.”

He held up the letter I had received from Lord Patriciél.

“What...? So he put a sleeping-draught... in the letter?”

“Lady Kiara Patriciél, we believe your father attempted to sedate you in order to prevent you from escaping the arranged marriage prescribed in this letter. And sure enough, that is precisely what you attempted to do. However, you managed to find your way to safety before the sleeping-draught took effect.”

“Nngh...”

Sure enough, I’d taken one look at that letter and bolted like a bat out of hell. After all, he was only my father; there was no love between us. I didn’t much care if his plans were dashed. I was fourteen, and I was convinced that with a bit of hard work, I could make it on my own.

At no point, however, did I suspect that the count might have laced the letter with a sleeping agent in order to take me home and marry me off by force. I suppose even must have realized that no one in their right mind would happily agree to marry an awful lecher like Lord Credias.

The second this thought crossed my mind, a wave of mingled relief and exhaustion washed over me, and my upper body slumped forward.

“You alright?” Reggie asked gently, still holding my hand.

“Frankly, I feel like passing out... but I know that’ll just create more hassle for everyone, so I’ll endure it.”

After all, it was probably really annoying to have to carry my unconscious body—and I’d put them through it once already, so I didn’t want to make this first impression any worse.

Then Reggie started snickering again.

From there, I explained my circumstances—that the count had “adopted” me from my stepmother, and that I ran from the marriage due to my would-be fiancé’s terrible reputation. Obviously I couldn’t tell them about my past life, so I wasn’t able to explain that I was trying to avoid being turned into a villain. Fortunately, they seemed reasonably convinced that a girl who had essentially been sold into slavery wouldn’t want to be forced into marriage.

To be fair, this world likely had its share of horrible biological parents as well, but to them, this inhumane treatment seemed to make more sense coming from someone who wasn’t related to me by blood.

“What on earth were you planning to do after you left the dormitory?” Alan asked, his annoyance plain as he sat across from me on the opposite bed.

Alan was fifteen, one year my senior, which explained how we’d never met. At school, classes were grouped mostly by age and by gender. The only exception was theology class, which boys and girls attended together. Without some invested research on my part, I never would have had the opportunity to meet him.

“Well, I figured I have enough money for carriage fare, so I thought I’d travel to a distant corner of some other territory and make my living doing... I don’t know, needlework or something.”

“And then some kidnapper would’ve come along and snatched you right off the road,” Wentworth muttered under his breath, his expression impassive. Supposedly he was Alan’s knight-guard.

He was absolutely right, of course, but due to a certain undisclosed reason, I was just that desperate.

As I awkwardly averted my eyes, Alan’s attendant Reggie spoke up. “Same difference, really. You read the letter. The count was already planning to kidnap her himself.”

He did have a point. Either way, I would’ve been sold off to someone against my will. The only difference was that in the letter, my future owner was named outright.

“Out of the furnace and into the fire,” Wentworth mused, seemingly convinced.

That said, this Reggie person struck me as peculiar. He was an attendant—a servant—and yet he addressed his master, Alan, like one would a friend. Was there more to the story? Curious as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to ask. After all, once I left, I wouldn’t be seeing them again.

In fact, I was pretty sure I needed to minimize our interactions at all costs. Why? Because once I learned Alan’s surname, I nearly screamed.

Alan Évrard, son of Margrave Évrard. As it turned out, I very much knew who he was. Not because we’d met at boarding school—but .

The reason I didn’t realize sooner was because he was two years younger than his game counterpart, who was seventeen at the start of the storyline. At the moment, he only came up to Wentworth’s chin, but in two years’ time he would grow taller, and his face would lose much of its youthful roundness. In my experience, puberty had the tendency to make guys more... what’s the word... broad? Rugged?

In the game, Alan’s expression was always grim and joyless—focused entirely on the objective before him, like a sort of tunnel vision. The real-life Alan was still serious in temperament, mind you, but not quite to that extent.

There was one other reason I didn’t recognize him right away: his name was so commonplace. At school, at least two of the girls I knew had a brother named Alan. So when I heard that this guy’s name was Alan, my only real reaction was “Oh hey, another Alan. I guess it was a popular baby name back then.”

Now that I knew who he was, however, sharing a room with him had become incredibly uncomfortable. Granted, I hadn’t reached villain status yet, but if destiny had had its way, this was the guy who would’ve killed me. On top of that, I’d smuggled myself aboard his carriage. And since I wasn’t originally “on his side,” I felt exceedingly out of place here.

Thus, I decided it was high time we parted ways.

“Well, um... Again, I’m sorry for what I did. I’ll probably recover my mobility once enough time has passed, and I’m sure you all have somewhere to be, so by all means, feel free to get going without me.”

The sun was now high in the sky—noontime or thereabouts, by my estimation. Because of me, they were wasting precious daylight. And yet, for some reason, they declined my suggestion.

“Think about it. We’re talking about the sort of man who was planning to kidnap you while you were unconscious. Do you really think he’ll just shrug his shoulders and give up?” Reggie remarked.

Alan grimaced at the implication. “Our boarding school receives very few visitors as it is. First they’ll comb the area within the distance she could have reasonably traveled on foot—and when they don’t find her, they’ll start looking at the visitor records. Then they’ll see that our carriages departed the same day she went missing, and they’ll track us down. Plus, they’ll have full knowledge of the sedative’s effects. If they she should still be incapacitated, and they haven’t found her collapsed on the side of the road, they’ll start searching the inns, one by one. Long story short: they’re going to find you here.”

“Nngh...”

He was completely right. In order to haul away my unconscious body while the drug was still in effect, the count would’ve needed to send a carriage straight away... so it was entirely possible they already knew I was missing and had started a full-scale search. In that case, it wouldn’t take long for them to arrive. And in the meantime, my legs were still jelly.

As I was trying to figure out my next move, Alan sighed in exasperation and looked at Reggie. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we put ourselves at risk by harboring this fugitive.”

...