Leaving the capital after being broken off with by this Crown Prince had been because of the man standing right before me in the first place.

“Why are you standing in front of someone else’s window first thing in the morning?”

At my bold question, the man slowly closed and opened his silver eyes. Even that looked like a reptile blinking, and it made my skin crawl.

Karl Drian. After several generations of atavism, despite having a human body, he was the man closest to a dragon.

And he was the original story’s villain, destined to later go berserk, become a true dragon, and destroy the Empire.

❀❀❀

This world was the world inside a novel called The Dragon Fades at the End of the World, a romance novel.

The protagonist of the novel was Georgiana. Born with powerful holy power, Georgiana grew up as a commoner before learning the secret of her birth and becoming a lady of the Goldworthy ducal family, the bloodline of a saintess.

Many men were drawn to Georgiana, with her angelic nature and beautiful face, and among them was Karl Drian, the dragon’s descendant. Karl Drian, who had always suffered from a burning pain deep inside his body, discovered that only Georgiana’s holy power could soothe that agony, and fell for her.

But Georgiana married Crown Prince Adolf, and a heartbroken Karl Drian went berserk as a dragon, burning the capital to the ground and destroying the Empire. A sad-ending novel, in other words.

And my name was Viviana Goldworthy.

……Have you figured it out? I was the stepsister of the heroine Georgiana, and the designated villainess of the original story.

When I first realized I was the villainess of the novel, I privately thought this:

‘The reason the novel ended in a sad ending was because Georgiana did not choose Karl Drian. So if she chooses Karl Drian this time, could the ending of the novel change?’

In my past life, I had burned to death in a fire. And the ending of this novel also concluded with Karl Drian, having awakened as a fire dragon, burning the entire Empire to ash.

To die by fire twice. It was an ending I absolutely wanted no part of.

To change the ending, all that was needed was for Crown Prince Adolf, the male lead of the original story, to choose a woman other than Georgiana.

This was also a favorable situation for me. Viviana was Crown Prince Adolf’s fiancée.

‘In the original story, the Crown Prince grows fed up with the foolish and arrogant Viviana, and then, in the midst of that, meets the pure and lovely Georgiana and falls in love.’

So if I did not behave like the overbearing villainess of the original story, could the future change?

No matter how much I thought about it, there was no better plan than this. I clenched my fist and made up my mind.

‘Alright! I can do this! Let’s go!’

But life, as ever, was not as easy as I imagined. What good was a plan?

The life of Viviana Goldworthy was impossibly busy.

Truly impossibly.

❀❀❀

Early in the morning, when the cold air of dawn had not yet faded.

Rising early as always, I had finished getting ready and was sitting down to write a letter. Filling it with the usual pleasantries about meeting up sometime later, I heard a maid calling out to me loudly from outside.

“Miss! Are you still in your room!”

“I know. I’ll be right out.”

At the sound from outside, I set down my pen, having been in the middle of writing a letter to Miss Nanari of the Drian household.

Then I slipped the letter into the wide-open mouth of the large lizard sitting at the window. The lizard swallowed the letter whole, as though it had been waiting for exactly this.

‘Ugh, I know it is not a real creature but a magical tool for delivering letters, but it still feels unsettling.’

Even if the ancestors of the Drian family were dragons, there was no need for a letter-delivery magical tool to look like a lizard, was there? Usually they came in the shape of small sparrows or pigeons.

‘This one is a Komodo dragon.’

But if I saw a palm-sized baby sparrow straining and struggling to carry letters, my heart would soften and I would never be able to write letters this long, thick enough to stuff an envelope.

I gave the lizard’s head a few strokes and turned away.

Opening the door, the dozens of people standing outside all bowed at once.

“Good morning, Miss!”

The dazzlingly brilliant crystal chandelier on the ceiling, the antique glass lamps decorating the corridor, the ornate wallpaper and every manner of artwork, and the servants with their deferential manner, unable to meet my eyes.

This was the Goldworthy ducal family. And I was Viviana, the first daughter of that Goldworthy ducal family.

More precisely, I was an ordinary office worker who had transmigrated into the body of Viviana Goldworthy.

‘I never imagined I would be the one to experience a book transmigration, something I had only read about.’

When I realized I had transmigrated into a villainess, I was overjoyed.

Was that not natural? A villainess was originally the role in a story that had everything in her grasp. Everything except one thing, that is. A man.

‘Yes! This life has both money and status! I don’t even have to wash my own face!’

In my past life I had worked myself to death, so in this life I would play to my heart’s content!

But the joy did not last long.

As I walked down the corridor, the servants who had bowed to me each pressed their own matters forward.

“Miss, the tailor is scheduled to visit at two o’clock today.”

“The trading company has deposited the dividend for your share as written here, but no matter how I look at it, the ratio seems……”

“Here is the menu for the food to be served at next week’s tea party, please review it.”

That was right. I was……

Viviana Goldworthy, the lady of the Goldworthy ducal family, was……

‘Good grief, this is insanely busy!’

Truly busy without a moment to breathe.

Why was it that a noblewoman’s daily life in a novel was supposed to be graceful and leisurely?

Waking up late, eating a lavish breakfast, taking a stroll, drinking tea, working for just a brief moment, then reading a book, riding horses, and eating another lavish meal.

But the life of a Goldworthy lady that I actually experienced was nothing like that.

‘If I had thrown up my hands and said I had no idea what I was doing, like the Viviana in the original story, I could have lived comfortably.’

But I was a born office worker, trained in paperwork, and I simply could not pretend not to see documents I was capable of handling.

So I handled one, and then another came along, and as I dealt with them one by one, I ended up buried in work rather than playing at all.

But wasn’t this still too much?

‘Why does everyone come to me for approval! Where is Father?’

Burning with indignation, I ground my teeth and barged into Father’s office.

But what greeted me was not Father’s face. It was a mountain of documents.

“Vivi? Is that you?”

Remarkably, the documents spoke to me. Instead of answering, I took a step back. The documents spoke again.

“Vivi! Do you happen to have some time to spare? Then help your father with……”

“My, wherever could our Father have gone? I cannot see him anywhere. I shall have to look elsewhere.”

“Vivi!”

Leaving the documents, or more precisely, Father buried beneath a mountain of documents, I closed the office door behind me and stepped out.

That was right. Father led a life even more crushed by work than I did.

‘Oh, Father. It brings tears to my eyes. But still, one must handle one’s own affairs, yes?’

These days, self-directed learning was important for young and old alike, was it not? Right?

In any case, the Goldworthy ducal family I was born into was extraordinarily busy. A high rank as a duke, and the many estates that came with it.

Not content with that, an ancestor had also established a trading company, founded a mercenary guild, and, perhaps because there was a crooked one among them, had even founded an assassin’s guild.

‘I did away with the assassin’s guild.’

More precisely, the decisive incident that led to Viviana’s downfall in the original story was being caught attempting to harm Georgiana using that assassin’s guild, which was why I had eliminated it.

But eliminating it was just as difficult as creating it. If I suddenly disbanded a perfectly functioning organization and released trained assassins into society, they would simply become another social evil.

So I transformed the assassin’s guild into an intelligence bureau.

‘But if I had known I would end up this tormented by work, I should have just dissolved it outright.’

Even today, the documents flooding in from the intelligence bureau were a full load.

When I had applied to repurpose the assassin’s guild, Father had been waiting for exactly that moment to dump the whole affair onto me. All while spouting nonsense like, “As expected of my daughter. A talent who will carry the future of Goldworthy on her shoulders!”

‘Just flattery to work me until I collapse and die under the load.’

What was even sadder was my own body, which responded automatically at the sight of work.

Seeing documents piled up like a mountain made me feel I had to resolve them quickly and clear them away, and when someone asked me something, I felt compelled to find an answer somehow……