Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

The boy Layola brought had ordinary brown hair but unique red eyes, yet his outward appearance was exceptionally striking even for a child.

In my decade at this orphanage, having learned the world’s standards of beauty from the stacks of idol magazines Layola hoarded, I thought my slightly slanted eyes were the peak – how foolish of me to have forgotten the heavenly realm’s existences.

It was the first face I had ever seen like that, across both my past and present lives. Though the reason for his brown hair was unknown, there could be no denying that this child was the male lead.

For someone else to be the male lead would have shattered such balance and perfection beyond repair.

“Wow… he’s like a prince…”

Terry peeked out from behind me, staring entranced at the newcomer.

“His name is Luka. Abandoned by his parents, he became a drifter chased by forest bandits until a head injury caused amnesia. Ria, you’ll be responsible for taking good care of him.”

‘Forest bandits…’

A conveniently plausible cover story for Layola from Duke Kablos’ underlings.

That Luka had lost his memories was solely due to the dark magic seal placed by the villainous Duke Kablos in the original story.

As soon as Layola retreated into her room, I spun around and approached Luka.

Giving a bright smile, I said:

“Hello, Luka. I’m Ria, and I’ll be helping you from now on.”

If I had any sole ally in this novel world, it would have to be the male lead.

Had the villainess Laveria not tried poisoning the female lead Senia and tormented her, she could have instead become renowned as the Crown Prince’s close friend and benefactor.

Though an ordinary greeting on the surface, I was inwardly screaming, ‘You are my only hope for salvation!’

Luka silently regarded the hand I offered with his clouded red eyes. Just as I started to withdraw my outstretched hand in embarrassment, he suddenly grabbed it.

“My name seems to be Luka.”

True to his original reputation as a gentle, personable male lead, he accepted my greeting despite the confusing situation.

Was that why, even faced with the crazed obsession of the original Ria, he had treated her with unfailing courtesy out of gratitude?

Fortunately, we were off to a good start.

Wait, was I perhaps too eager? I had been clinging to his hand like a magnet for too long.

It could no longer be considered a handshake, with Luka as the one holding my hand against my will.

“Luka, will you let go now? I’ll give you a tour of the orphanage.”

Luka ignored my awkward request, refusing to release my hand until the very end as I showed him around, sweating profusely.

As I was taller than average for my age while Luka seemed around the norm, there was a height difference of roughly a handspan between us.

That, coupled with memories of my own arrival here, meant I couldn’t bring myself to shake off the small hand grasping mine so tenaciously, making him seem like a younger brother figure.

By the time I had introduced Luka to the other children and shown him around places like the laundry room, dining hall and library, the setting sun’s rays were streaming in through the high window.

Watching me gaze up at that window, Luka spoke up for one of the first times:

“Are we trapped here?”

I couldn’t answer that.

I couldn’t tell him ‘No, you’ll be rescued soon by the kindhearted female lead,’ when I might escape this ‘prison’ while taking him with me beforehand.

Unlike the original story, I wouldn’t lose my legs here, nor be swaddled into a wheelchair to be essentially sold off as an adoptee to Duke Rayes’s family.

I would walk on grass with my own feet, feel the soil, and run out of these woods like a tadpole finally growing legs to desperately leap over the wall of its well toward the outside world.

That high window represented the world beyond to me – unattainable for now, but its mere existence urged me not to give up hope.

I would leave this place. Ten years of imprisonment was enough.

I simply smiled at Luka and led him, asking if he was hungry, toward the dining hall wafting the aroma of delicious potato stew.

The children in charge of the kitchen today were cooking with the potatoes Miss Layola purchased from town once weekly.

“Luka, do you like potato stew? Ben’s is really tasty, so you can look forward to it.”

At my words, Ben, peeling potatoes, gave an embarrassed smile.

The candles on the tables were lit, and after saying grace together, we all enjoyed another flavorful dinner in each other’s company.

The children chattered noisily, mostly about what they wished to do once outside at fifteen.

As I ate my potatoes, I glimpsed at the unusually quiet Luka seated beside me amidst the clamor.

‘These children, along with those already sold off – I have to save them all, and you too, Luka.’

For we would eventually become royalty and nobles ourselves, so I must never forget them.

Concealing my perhaps selfish desires from Luka’s perspective, I helped him become attached to the other children here.

Neither too quickly nor too slowly, time passed as Luka gradually opened up to me.

Perhaps I was special to Luka as the first person he met here, just as sister Serine had been for me – he was unusually obedient towards me.

Whenever the little munchkin would follow me around, corner of his eyes crinkling cutely as he smiled, I too became endeared.

I’m unsure if Luka and Ria were this close in the original story.

If so, it might have provided some insight into Ria’s forcibly villainous acts that I had found incomprehensible before.

The author had portrayed Ria’s misdeeds as overwhelmingly evil to make the female lead Senia shine brighter, so much so that I hadn’t given it much thought.

But it was clearly stated in the villainess side-story that Ria’s feelings were one-sided, with Luka not being so obedient towards her as he was with me now.

Having lost his memories, the confused Luka had found Ria overbearingly clingy, ultimately earning only his dislike.

It was also portrayed as a selfish sacrifice when the original Ria took Luka’s punishment of being whipped by Layola after their failed escape attempt, merely to gain his guilt-ridden attention.

‘Thinking about it that way, she really was an impressive girl.’

I headed for the library, knowing Luka would be there.

* * *

Luka truly had no memories at all.

Since he had even forgotten basic common knowledge of the outside world, I spent our afternoon hours teaching him roughly about things like the greater nobles, the imperial family, the state of affairs on the continent, and so on.

My knowledge only extended to the contents of the novel and what I had seen and heard, so it may not have been fully accurate, but I hoped it would still be helpful.

If I considered that the female lead was supposed to rescue him from here and restore his memories, then perhaps such lessons were unnecessary. But Luka still needed a basic level of knowledge.

“This is the crest of the Greffin imperial family I just told you about.”

I took out the old button sister Serine had once given me and showed it to him.

After fiddling with the crest on the button for a while, Luka abruptly remarked that the red eyes of the lions looked ominous.

‘Says the one with red eyes himself…?’

I responded nonchalantly:

“Black hair and red eyes are symbolic of royalty. It’s not ominous at all. Now that I think about it, you have red eyes too, Luka.”

Luka met my gaze.

Though slightly clouded, his eyes were indeed red as well.

If his hair had been black instead of brown, Miss Layola might have rushed to present him to the imperial family with both hands.

However, among commoners it wasn’t uncommon for some to be born with red eyes, so the distinguishing trait was black hair rather than eye color.

I brushed back Luka’s soft brown locks as I spoke.

“Your eyes remind me of a burning sunset, so I think they’re nice.”

The sunset outside the window we had gazed up at together when he first arrived here came to mind.

At my words, Luka gave a faint smile and said:

“If sister Ria likes them, I’ll try to like them too.”

Aww, he speaks so prettily too. Whenever Luka said cute things, I would affectionately ruffle his hair, and he would close his eyes happily like a pleased puppy.

Luka often struggled to sleep through the night, so after realizing he could only doze off while holding my hand, I started sharing my bed with him instead of Terry, who I used to room with.

Although his original room was separate from mine, he ended up moving into my quarters.

From then on, we became the closest of friends at the Troy Orphanage, even sharing the same bed.

* * *

Two years later, the current Luka had grown taller to meet me at eye level, gained more vitality compared to when he first arrived, and helped care for the other orphanage children alongside me.

All those memories kept swirling through my mind.

Watching Luka sleep peacefully beside me, his hand in mine as always, I spent the entire night meticulously planning our escape.

First, over the long years I had spent here, there were countless things I had seen and heard, but the most chilling realization was that there truly seemed no way out of this orphanage.

Recalling the library escape attempt that led to the tragedy of Ria losing her legs in the original story after provoking Layola’s wrath made it even clearer.

Luka had discovered what appeared to be a passage leading outside from the library floor and tried escaping overnight, but it was actually just an underground storeroom not connected to the outside at all.

While Layola paid little attention to us children overall, she was meticulously careful in maintaining control over us to an alarming degree.

In the past decade, only a handful of people had ever entered her quarters, and even they only saw a small part of the maze-like room.

This building was likely structured with the exterior leading to Layola’s private residence, which then connected to the Troy Orphanage area.

Otherwise, there was no explaining why she holed up inside if what lay beyond that single door was simply another building.

Moreover, whenever she went out, she intentionally locked that sole exit door in front of us.

The high ceiling window was unreachable, with no ladders or means to climb up.

‘And yet… there was one person who successfully escaped.’

This was a story I had heard from sister Serine.

A tale she had witnessed firsthand as a very young child, about a boy who escaped.

Seventeen years ago, a boy named Alex somehow vanished without a trace overnight at the tender age of seven.

Whether he flew into the sky or burrowed into the earth, Miss Layola mobilized all the children to scour every inch of the orphanage, but not a speck of dust turned up regarding his whereabouts.

Sister Serine, who was five years old at the time, recalled how Alex, who had been particularly kind to her, once asked, ‘Want to run away together?’

Being too young then, fear overtook curiosity and she shook her head no. But she still remembered wistfully remarking that if she had known he would truly succeed in escaping, she would have gone with him.

‘I need to remember more, more.’

As I gripped my head, straining to recollect further, a warm voice from my childhood suddenly echoed:

-Ria, if you’re hurting you can cry. But not where the wicked witch can hear, so softly…

-Hue-ung…

-More softly…!

-Hng…

That was the day I first received corporal punishment from Layola.

As a young child, I had received sister Serine’s tender treatment in that small room as she attempted to console me with her rambling words:

-Someone once took care of me like this too. I wonder if brother Alex is doing well now? I didn’t realize it then, but thinking back he was such a pest always nagging me to play hide-and-seek in that stuffy laundry room.

-Ah-!

Along with sister Serine’s playful voice, a certain location flashed through my mind.