"Hey, Liam? Who was that woman you were talking to today?"
The question hung in the air between us, deceptively soft. I could smell the faint lavender oil she wore—usually calming, tonight laced with something sharper, more acrid. My pulse quickened despite myself.
"Ah, well, that was…"
"I don't want to hear your excuses!!!"
A surge of black magic—writhing like a nest of tentacles—burst from her and coiled tightly around me. The air crackled with ozone, and I felt the familiar crushing pressure against my ribs, the way darkness seemed to devour the lamplight in her chambers. Each tendril pulsed with her fury, cold as midwinter iron against my skin.
A normal person would've fainted instantly, but for me, it was barely a mosquito bite. The magic stung, yes, but no worse than the time I'd trained shirtless in a thornbriar thicket, earning myself a back full of scratches and the village healer's exasperated lecture.
Still… even if she doesn't realize she's doing it, isn't this a bit much?
I watched her face contort with emotion—jealousy, fear, rage, all swirling together like storm clouds. Her pale, roseate gold hair, normally arranged with perfect aristocratic precision, had come loose from its pins. Several strands clung to her damp cheeks. The sight made something in my chest twist painfully. This wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen.
Honestly, how did things end up like this?
The tentacles tightened, and I heard the fabric of my uniform jacket strain at the seams. A button popped loose, clattered across the marble floor, the sound absurdly loud in the charged silence. I didn't move to retrieve it. Moving would mean acknowledging the danger, and acknowledging the danger would mean admitting I'd failed.
I thought I'd been doing everything I could to prevent her—no, the final-boss villainess—from falling into darkness.
But looking at her now, at the wild desperation in those violet eyes, at the way her hands trembled even as power poured from them like water from a broken dam, I knew the truth: I'd already lost her. Or perhaps I'd never had her to begin with.
＊＊＊
My name is Liam, and I am a reincarnator.
Even now, years after waking in this world, the word feels strange in my mouth. Reincarnator. Like something from the pages of a light novel, improbable and vaguely embarrassing. I remember lying in my crib—yes, I was conscious even then, cursed with awareness—staring up at wooden rafters so different from anything I'd known before, breathing air that tasted of woodsmoke and unfamiliar flowers.
That said, I don't remember much about my previous life. My name, where I lived, anything personal—it's all a blur, like trying to recall a dream three days after waking. Sometimes I'll catch a flash of something: fluorescent lights, the smell of instant ramen, the distinctive chime of a convenience store door. But when I reach for those memories, they scatter like startled birds.
If I really dig through the fog, I vaguely recall a planet called Earth, a country called Japan. The words themselves feel foreign on my tongue, consonants and vowels that don't quite belong to this world's linguistic patterns. I think there were cities there, towering and bright, so different from the thatched-roof village where I grew up here. But the details? Gone.
And I remember one thing with inexplicable clarity:
This world is the setting of an otome game from my past life.
The knowledge sits in my mind like a foreign object, complete and crystalline while everything else around it remains murky. I can't remember my own mother's face from before, can't remember if I had siblings or friends or lovers. But I can recite the game's title and tagline as if I'd just read them yesterday.
The title was "Pumitra Celest Kingdom," boldly advertised with the tagline: "Encounter a Hundred Destinies."
I remember the box art: a beautiful heroine in a school uniform, surrounded by an array of handsome men—princes and knights, mages and merchants—all gazing at her with varying degrees of devotion. The art style was soft, romantic, with that distinctive glow around each character that marked them as special. As chosen.
A humble, commoner heroine stumbles her way into a noble academy, meets a cast of handsome men, and falls in love—your typical setup. The kind of premise I must have rolled my eyes at, even as I found myself downloading it, then playing it, then losing myself in its branching narratives like a man possessed.
But what truly set it apart was the staggering number of branching routes.
I remember staying up late—how late, I can't say, but my eyes had burned with exhaustion—chasing down every possible ending. The game had been massive, sprawling, with choices that rippled outward in unexpected ways. Save the white cat in Chapter One, and fifteen hours later you'd unlock a secret route with the mysterious librarian. Choose to study healing magic instead of combat, and suddenly the cold-hearted general would soften toward you. It was intricate, beautifully designed, addictive.
Just as the "hundred destinies" slogan promised, the game offered an incredible variety of stories and earned massive popularity. I remember reading forums about it—or do I? That memory is fuzzier, but I'm certain the game had been a phenomenon. Award-winning, even. The kind of title that spawned fan art and fan fiction and endless discussion about which route was the "true" route.
And yet, no matter which route you chose, the character Liam never appeared.
I've wracked my brain trying to remember. Spent sleepless nights staring at the ceiling of my small room in the orphanage, mentally walking through every route, every side character, every throwaway NPC mentioned in flavor text. The name Liam appears nowhere in my memories. Not as a villain, not as a rival, not even as a merchant who sells you healing potions.
In other words, I'm a mob. A background extra.
The realization had been crushing at first. I remember being seven years old, finally old enough to understand what my situation meant, sitting in the orphanage's small garden with dirt under my fingernails from helping with the turnips. I'd cried then, silently, tears cutting tracks through the dust on my face. To be given this chance—this miraculous, impossible second life—and to be nobody in it. To have knowledge of the story but no role in its telling.
Even though I can't remember my own past-life identity, for some reason I remember Celestia Kingdom in striking detail. The memory is sharp-edged, precise, while everything else is watercolor and shadow. I can recall entire story beats, character motivations, the way certain scenes played out. I know that the Ice Prince's route requires befriending his younger sister. I know that the Merchant's route has a secret bad ending if you're too greedy.
I also recall, faintly, that I played the game obsessively. There's a ghost of memory there: the weight of a device in my hands, the glow of a screen, the satisfaction of hearing that little chime when you unlocked a new CG image. Hours and hours poured into something that, in the end, couldn't follow me into this life. Except it did, didn't it? Just not in any useful way.
But even with that knowledge… I have zero memory of any character named Liam—a name that sounds like a brand of Wine. Liam. Fort. I've tried variations: Liam, Liama, liaam. Nothing. The name is utterly, completely absent from the game's cast list.
So yeah, it's almost certain. I'm a mob.
I remember the day I fully accepted it. I was twelve, watching a traveling merchant's caravan pass through our village, and I'd recognized one of the guards—a named character from a minor route, distinctive for his scarred eyebrow and gruff manner. He'd walked right past me without a glance, his attention on the horizon, probably heading toward his destiny with the heroine. And I'd understood then: I existed in the margins of this story. In the spaces between scenes. I was part of the world, but not part of the narrative.
Well… I suppose being a named character comes with its own headaches. It's not like I mind.
That's what I told myself, anyway. And most days, I believed it. Named characters faced assassination attempts, political intrigue, heartbreak, and—in the villainess's case—execution or exile depending on the route. Being a mob meant freedom. Safety. The ability to live a life unmarred by the game's dramatic inevitabilities.
Most days, I believed it.
Still, couldn't the universe have given me a slightly better starting position?
The main story takes place in the royal capital's noble academy, a sprawling campus of white stone and arched windows that I'd seen illustrated in the game's backgrounds. Meanwhile, I'm a nobody from a rural village in the middle of nowhere a place so insignificant it probably didn't even have a name in the game's lore—and an orphan, just to add another flavorless garnish to this particular dish of hardship.
Which means that despite being reborn into a game world, meeting those characters or those characters is practically impossible.
A tragic fate for someone who loved the game.
And I had loved it, hadn't I? That feeling remains even when the specific memories fade. There's an ache in my chest when I think about those characters, those stories I'd never intersect with. Like missing old friends I'd never actually met.
Well, it's not like I expected to buddy up with the main cast anyway. What would I even say? "Hello, I'm Liam, I know your entire backstory and all your romantic preferences"? That would end either with me in a dungeon or a medical ward, probably both.
And this world does have swords and magic. That alone is pretty thrilling.
Real magic. Not tricks or illusions, but actual, So I figured I'd just do my best and enjoy life here. Work hard, maybe become a village guard or a merchant's assistant. Live simply. Fall in love, perhaps, with a kind local girl who knew nothing of game routes or branching narratives. Grow old watching the seasons change over , content in my insignificance.
Who knows? Maybe I'll bump into a named character someday.