Goodbye, Overtime! This Reincarnated Villainess Is Living for Her New Big Brother Volume 1 (eBook)

Chidori Hama (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
250 Seiten
J-Novel Heart (Verlag)
978-1-7183-0650-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Yukimura Rina is an overworked twenty-something systems engineer who's dangerously close to her breaking point. Her only comfort is an otome game with a charming side character, the brother of the villainess, who soothes her weary heart. She gets so hooked that she forgoes sleep and ends up blacking out...only to wake up inside the game as the villainess, Ekaterina. She's now the little sister of her favorite character! Her new brother Alexei is handsome, kind, and responsible-the whole package. Rina, now Ekaterina, would be happy just staying by his side, except for one little problem. If she allows the game to run its course, she and her brother are headed straight for a terrible future! Can Ekaterina overcome the doom flags that threaten her new family and the empire, while also preventing Alexei from working himself to death?

Textauszug

Prologue: The Corporate Drone and the Villainess

Who am I? Where am I?

You might think I asked those questions as part of an elaborate joke, but I was deadly serious. As serious as anyone could be, in fact.

Who in the world am I, for real?!

I can’t tell anymore. There are...two of me.

My name was Yukimura Rina, embattled systems engineer, just a working woman circling the drain toward thirty. The company I worked for had apparently never heard of labor laws, so I spent most of my time up against the twin foes of unreasonable expectations and sudden specification changes. Every day, I was at it from dawn to dusk, getting three hours of sleep a night at best. In fact, I pulled all-nighters at the company so often that getting to rest my head on my own pillow was a luxury.

For better or worse, I found my job very rewarding. I loved to jump in and save the day, putting runaway projects back on track. No one ever celebrated me, but I knew my work was appreciated.

Or, rather, I convinced myself that was the case to avoid looking the truth in the eye: to my company, I was nothing more than a well-worn tool, easily replaced if I broke.

Yippee! Here’s to another day of corporate servitude.

I should have changed jobs, but I was so accustomed to working myself to the bone that all I did when I was close to the edge was download a game to soothe my weary heart.

In hindsight, why didn’t I take advantage of the few hours of rest I could get? My decision-making process was so altered by overwork that I turned to a random otome game instead. I started it during my commute and got hooked right away.

To be honest, I thought that both the setting, a fantastic magic academy, and the main love interest, a dashing prince, were incredibly embarrassing. Hearing him propose to me with the cheesiest lines in existence when I reached the happy ending was downright torture.

I was always an action manga kind of gal, so why in the world did I download such a girlie game?

Somehow, I found myself a fave anyway.

Villainesses were otome game staples, and the one I picked was no exception. Really, it ticked all the typical otome game boxes, but you probably guessed that from the cliché magic academy setting and the main boy being a prince. An imperial prince, at that!

The slightly less cliché part (or was it?) was that the villainess had an older brother.

I fell for him at first sight. He was much better looking than the prince and the other love interests. You could tell he was an ice magic user from his light blue hair and eyes. He had delicate features, but despite his pretty looks, he usually wore a blank face or cold glare. He even had a monocle that gave him the air of an intellectual—which he was. He stood at the top of his class.

Yup, he’s the whole package, gorgeous and capable!

He also happened to be a duke. Not the heir of a ducal house—no, an actual duke. Despite being a seventeen-year-old student, he’d inherited his father’s peerage after his early death.

No matter how you look at it, he should be in his twenties, right? He totally looks like an adult!

Sadly, that perfect guy was way too attached to his sister! Virtually all of his lines were about her:

“You’re more beautiful than any other girl, my dear sister. You’re the only one worthy of being the empress.”

“I shall use all of my power as a duke to make your wish come true. You’re my treasure.”

“I won’t allow anyone to hurt you; not a god, and certainly not a prince!”

He barely ever appeared, so they probably hadn’t splurged on a big-name voice actor, but he had an attractive, deep voice. Too bad he only used it to pamper his sister, though! He was so obsessed with her that it bordered on ridiculous.

Aren’t you supposed to be a frosty, stoic hot guy?

Worst of all, his sister was an idiot. She spent her time harassing the heroine in the stupidest ways possible in the hope of winning the prince’s heart. Not sure why she thought that was a good plan, but she was hung up on it. She also spent astronomical amounts of money on her dresses, but all she achieved was drowning herself out with flashy clothes. I barely remembered her face.

Her doting brother showered her with everything: affection, money, and he even took responsibility for her when her pestering backfired. You didn’t even know until after the fact, so how could it be your fault? If you don’t let her take responsibility for her own actions, how is she gonna grow up?

That was how I wound up making comments to myself about them all the time, focusing more on the villainous pair of siblings than the main cast. I couldn’t have cared less about the prince!

Eventually, the in-game day of reckoning arrived. The villainess went on a rampage and tried to murder the heroine, but her deeds came to light. As a result, the brother and sister were stripped of their titles and possessions and forced to become commoners. Even then, dumbfounded as he was, the brother’s first reaction was to gently embrace his weeping sister.

I assumed this event was designed to satisfy the player, but I just felt sad. Obviously, the duke had never wanted to put his sister on the throne to expand his power. All he wanted was to grant the wishes of the sister he loved so much. While he appeared mature, he was still a kid on the inside.

I played until the end, but the rest of the game felt like a slog.

Thinking back on it, I might’ve kept playing because of my awful job. I didn’t have anyone who supported or cared for me. Watching the duke absolutely treasure his sister, even if he went about it the wrong way, warmed my heart.

If he’d been a dateable character, that would’ve been sweet, but a bit of googling had crushed my dreams. He didn’t even have a hidden route! All I could do was restart the game to enjoy the crumbs of my fave, standing by his sister’s side.

All right, time for another run.

I really should’ve gone to bed, but I had such trouble sleeping those days that I didn’t feel like it. Stress and depression were hot on my heels, and I wanted to escape reality.

So, I lay on my bed, playing until my hands started trembling. After a while, I couldn’t move my fingers anymore. Soon after, I outright blacked out.

That’s when I died—probably.

Stupid, right?

My name was Ekaterina Yulnova and I hailed from the prestigious House of Yulnova.

Oh, right, the villainess’s name! I remember! And your brother’s Alexei, yeah? Not much else is historically accurate, but your names are straight out of Imperial Russia.

When I turned fifteen, I left the duchy for the first time and traveled to the imperial capital in order to enroll at the Magic Academy. I was just beginning to discover the vastness of the world, which frightened me more than I could express. Just six months prior, I’d been living a much smaller life with my mother in the manor I’d been confined to since birth.

Huh? “Confined”? What’s up with that? The game never mentioned anything about that!

My house stood among the three great ducal houses of the Yulgran Empire. It had been founded by Sergei, one of the younger brothers and the most faithful follower of Pyotr the Great, the father of the Yulgran Empire, and had thus been granted the most plentiful territory in the Yulgran Empire. Many empresses had come from these families, which took great pride in the purity of their blood. They were so noble and influential that, if the imperial family ever found itself with no heir, one could be chosen from the three great ducal houses. The ties that linked the House of Yulnova to the imperial family were strong. In fact, our grandmother had been an imperial princess before she’d married into the dukedom.

Oh yeah? That’s so cool. I guess Edo Japan was like that too. The eighth shogun, Yoshimune, was adopted from the Kishu Tokugawa family, a branch of the main Tokugawa house, wasn’t he? At the end of the day, the three great ducal houses are like the three branches of the Tokugawa family. Super prestigious!

My grandmother had been a proud and, above all else, strict person. As she had been an imperial princess, no one could stand up to her, and she’d eventually become the family’s indisputable matriarch. There’d been no one in the world that she’d loved more than her only son, and no one she’d despised more than my mother, the daughter of a measly marquis.

After I’d been born, my father had stopped visiting my mother. I’d never met him nor my older brother, not even once. My grandmother had taken it upon herself to raise my brother, keeping him from my mother.

She hadn’t done the same with me. As a girl, I’d been of no interest to her. Instead, I’d lived with my mother. Things had been normal enough when I was a child but, as the years passed, the number of servants had declined, and our lives had become more and more difficult. We’d not been allowed to leave the residence under any circumstances, but by relying on one another, we’d withstood these dreary days during which we...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.6.2024
• Reihe/Serie: Goodbye, Overtime! This Reincarnated Villainess Is Living for Her New Big Brother
• Illustrationen: Chidori Hama
• Übersetzer: Chidori Hama
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: bad bosses and backstabbing • female protagonist • Isekai • Magic Academy • Nobility • Otome Game • Shojo
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-0650-4 / 1718306504
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-0650-9 / 9781718306509