[Antagonist? That doesn't seem right.]
"Well, let's just say I was into some weird stuff, and the novel I read was a pretty niche genre, so yeah, this world isn't exactly normal," I muttered to myself, watching the girl as she stood up.
"Shelly Trinika," she said, and I glanced down toward the front row where I spotted that bastard staring at her with completely unveiled lust.
"Disgusting," I muttered, watching him as I turned my options over in my head.
I could step in and alter the plot, stop whatever incident pushed her down the villainess path before it ever happened, but why should I? I already had my hands full dealing with my own villain fate, and the cannon events were going to start kicking off soon enough.
In the original storyline, I should be engaged to a princess at this point, Elena.
I sighed and let my gaze drift to the far corner of the classroom, where I found a girl with amber eyes and white hair held in place by a golden hair clip.
'She still has that?'
[The hair clip?]
"Yeah, I gave that to her," I muttered.
[Didn't she also attend that nursery school you all went to?]
It wasn't a nursery school, it was a pre-academy, and we were only there for about a year. I think the whole point was to force most of us into awakening.
[But that was around ten years ago.]
"Yeah."
[Don't you think that's strange?]
I don't just think it's strange, I know it is. How and why were the children of nearly every prominent noble and royal family from across the empire suddenly gathered in some unknown place under the name of a pre-academy? There's definitely more to it than that, but the novel never actually explained what the real reason was. It only ever served as a foundation, a place where most of the major characters crossed paths and built some kind of history with each other when they were young.
Since the novel never told me what Yuphenia's actual motive was, and I didn't really care enough to dig into it, I moved on.
[But why did you give her the clip? Did you mistake her for someone else too?]
"No. At first I just wanted to follow the original storyline, I was a bit scared of what deviating too early might lead to."
So I went ahead and built connections with people the same way the story laid it out, though not exactly the same way. In the original, Lorelle's meetings with everyone were mostly coincidental, like being bullied by his stepbrother and getting helped by Eloisa and Ariana, which was how they became friends, and his eventual meeting with the loner Elena was purely by chance, at least according to the story.
Mine was more deliberate. I used what I already knew about these people from the novel, their likes, their habits, their weak points, and made direct contact. The bullying scenario was never going to play out the same way with me involved, and as for Eloisa, I probably overdid it with her because she got a little too attached. Either way, it was on the day we all left that place that I gave Elena the clip, the same way Lorelle had in the original story.
But that was the last time I saw her, and it wasn't supposed to go that way, because in the original story she was supposed to be engaged to him after the pre-academy period ended.
[So what changed that?]
Me.
It was after the pre-academy that everything with Eloisa happened. I mistook her for someone else, and the situation spiraled from there. I ended up engaged to Eloisa instead of Elena, so I assumed Elena's role in the story had just been cut off entirely.
[Does that make her a side character then?]
"No," I said, "she's a side heroine, a hidden one."
[So she isn't that important to the story?]
"She is, or she should be, but now that she has no direct connection to me, there's no reason for her and the protagonist to ever cross paths."
[So then what about the clip?]
"That's exactly what I don't understand. All of this happened ten years ago, so why does she still have it?"