My Next Life as a Villainess

by Satoru Yamaguchi

  “Oh, hi Maria, hi Dewey. We’ve come here to look for the covenant too.” I looked around, but didn’t see Cyrus anywhere. “Isn’t Mister Cyrus with you?”

  “He has gone to question some people who may have useful information, and he also has his normal duties to attend to,” Maria explained.

  As newcomers, the four of us could focus entirely on our search, but the directors had to balance this mission with their usual day to day work.

  That must be tough. Wait, that’s true for Cyrus, but Larna said something about entrusting her work to subordinates... So it’s the people left at the department who have it tough.

  My imagination went to Raphael and his desk, barely visible under a mountain of documents, and I decided that I had to find the covenant as soon as possible.

  “Why are you two in the library? Pray tell, have you found any useful information?” While I was busy thinking, Sora asked Maria and Dewey with the most polite speech he could muster.

  “Mister Cyrus told us to ask several researchers about it,” Dewey said, “but none of them have ever heard of any magic like this, leaving us with no clue. We are looking through these old texts to see if there is any mention of a kind of magic like the one in the garden.”

  “So you aren’t looking for the covenant itself?”

  “Well, of course we would be more than happy to find it, but I doubt things will play out that well,” Dewey replied calmly. He was so mature for a thirteen-year-old... At that age, I was romping around the mountains in my previous world and in the garden in this one.

  I was looking at Dewey, appreciating how much of a grown-up he was, when our eyes met.

  “Lady Katarina, did you happen to find anything?”

  “Why, yes, we found a children’s book,” I said, and both Dewey and Maria stared at me questioningly. I may have left out too much of the story there.

  Sora, after aiming a look of disapproval in my direction, started explaining the whole story behind our coming to the library: our meeting with Professor Hyde, what he had told us, the book we read, and its contents.

  “That professor must be an incredibly smart person to be able to remember that book just by hearing your story!” Maria said in admiration.

  “Do you have the book with you right now?” Dewey asked.

  “Miss Larna took it to do some more research, so you will be able to see it if she comes here,” Sora replied.

  “That means that if we keep searching, we may just happen to find it. And if the covenant is really supposed to be in the largest library in the kingdom... I am glad to know that searching this place was not a terrible idea after all,” Maria said.

  She looked so relieved that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the professor had said that we had no way of knowing which parts of the book were true, if any.

  With that, Sora and I joined Maria and Dewey’s search.

  “How have you been looking through the books? In the order that they’re placed on the shelves?” I asked.

  “No,” said Dewey, surprised. “We have been looking at them in chronological order, from oldest to most recent. Since nobody had heard of that magic, it is likely that it is very ancient.”

  “Dewey, you’re so smart!”

  Dewey blushed as he laughed off my comment, but Sora gave me one of his wry looks and whispered, so quietly that only I could hear it, “I told you to use your head a bit more...”

  Using my head has never been my forte. I think I can manage to look through some books though.

  “Okay then, we’ll start searching with you.”

  Sora and I went to the shelf that Maria showed us, the one that had the oldest books on it, and took some that hadn’t been checked yet.

  I froze.

  “Hm, these old books have no pictures or charts; they’re so boring. Uh? What’s wrong?” Sora said, noticing how I wasn’t moving at all.

  “I can’t read this,” I told him sadly.

  Surprised, he looked at my book. “And... why is that?” he asked. That meant that he was able to read it.

  “This is ancient script!” I replied. The book wasn’t written in our modern, everyday language, but in an old one that I couldn’t understand. “Do you mean you can read it, Sora? How?”

  “It’s just that I once fell in love with a girl who said she liked ancient— Er... I just learned it because I needed it for work. Didn’t you learn how to read it at the academy?” he replied with a further question.

  Sure, there were lessons on ancient script at the academy, just like the ones on classical Japanese that we had in school back in my old world. But to be honest, I never liked either of those subjects. I only studied as hard as I could before tests, having my smart friends teach me the most important parts and just memorizing those. As soon as I passed one of those tests with the bare minimum of required points, the information I’d crammed inside my brain would just evaporate, leaving nothing behind.

  This had already been one of my special skills in my previous life — I called it “forgetting useless stuff.”

  Because of this, I couldn’t read a single letter. Just to make it clear: not even word, but letter. Not a single one.

  Since there wasn’t much point in lying, I admitted to everyone that I couldn’t read any of it. Maria and Dewey were also surprised, and the latter, just like Sora had done, asked me how that could be possible, since I was supposed to have studied that at the academy.

  I started feeling really bummed out, and I stared at the floor in a mixture of embarrassment and self-pity.

  “But were you not able to read that old story at professor Hyde’s place?” Dewey asked.

  “No, that was a modern translation that the professor had made so that children could read it,” Sora explained for me.

  Now that I thought about it, that was obvious. There was no way that such an old story would be written in modern language, and I only had the professor to thank for being able to understand it. Back at his house, the thought just hadn’t occurred to me.

  “But this is quite the problem. If she cannot read ancient script, she will not be able to check most of the books in this area,” said Dewey, looking troubled.

  “Yup,” said Sora, who, maybe because of how disappointed in me he was, had forgotten about using polite speech.

  What am I going to do? I’m completely useless!

  “If that is the case, you could check stories instead of these ancient books,” Maria said.

  “Stories? What do you mean?” I asked as I looked up, noticing her smile.

  “The hint that you found was inside a story, so you could try checking other stories written in modern script. They could hold something valuable.”

  Maria, my angel, why are you always so kind?

  “I guess that could be true...” Sora said.

  “Yes, there is certainly a possibility...” Dewey said.

  And thus, I started looking through stories. Thanks to Maria, I avoided being completely useless. She was such a good girl that I considered fighting off all the love interests to marry her myself.

  I thanked my beautiful angel for her kindness and made for the area where the story books were being kept.

  “Hm, it’s all boring stories,” I murmured to myself while flipping the pages.

  The story books were kept near the library’s entrance, in a place easily visible from the librarian’s counter. Most of the texts here were technical books on magic, but there were also normal story books, if only a few (of course there were no romance novels, though).

  However, these stories weren’t particularly exciting — they were the kind of classical story that you’d find in a school textbook. The writing was also full of metaphors, making it difficult to understand.

  Oh well, still better than those ancient books though. At least I can read these. Thank you, Maria...

  A lot of these stories had a prince as protagonist, and he would usually end up married to a kind and beautiful princess or other no
ble girl. The explanation of how the protagonist used magic to defeat the villain was always so lengthy and detailed that it made you forget about the story itself. Do we really need this many details?

  After all, I was looking for hints about lost magic, so I couldn’t skip those parts... but most of the magic featured in the books was of the kind I’d already heard about anyway.

  While I was focusing on one of the books, someone entered the library and started talking to me.

  “Miss Katarina? What are you doing here by yourself?”

  I looked up and saw that it was Cyrus. “Oh, Mister Cyrus, are you done with work?”

  “Not yet, but I wanted to check on Maria and Dewey.”

  What a proper, thoughtful boss.

  “I see. They’re reading through ancient texts right now.”

  “I know that, but... Sorry to ask again, but what are you doing here by yourself?”

  “Me? I’m reading through these story books.”

  “Stories? And why would that be?” he said, looking perplexed. I explained about the story that the professor had shown us, and Cyrus responded, “He showed you a book like that? As expected of Morris Hyde; he’s so knowledgeable.”

  “You know him?”

  “He’s famous as a great scholar, you know. Well, he’s also infamous for his difficult personality, which makes it difficult for people to talk to him despite his undeniable intelligence,” he said.

  This was surprising to hear. “What?! He wasn’t like that at all! He let us in to talk to him in his room without a hitch!”

  “That’s probably because Larna Smith was with you. I’ve heard she used to live amongst royalty, so she must have lots of connections.”

  “She did say that she’d known the professor since she was a child... Wait, did you say that she used to live with royalty?!”

  Despite being her subordinate, I didn’t know much about Larna apart from her knack for disguise and her passion for magic.

  “Yes, I heard so directly from her, but I don’t know anything about her family. Some say that she’s a noble, but nobody except for a few of the higher-ups knows for sure about her background.”

  It turned out that my superior’s background was classified.

  “There are a lot of people like that in the Ministry, though. Just look at me. I come from a small farming village, but people treat me like a high-ranking noble,” Cyrus said, laughing at himself.

  Then he got back to the subject at hand. “I understand why you’d want to look through these books, but why are you doing it alone? There aren’t that many here, so wouldn’t it be faster if you all cooperated and got it over with quickly?”

  Ugh, this is so embarrassing... I wish I didn’t have to explain it.

  “Well, actually...”

  I told him about how I couldn’t read ancient script.

  “You graduated from the Academy of Magic, correct?”

  “...Yes.”

  “And they teach ancient script there, correct?”

  “...Yes.”

  Confused, he looked at me silently. I felt so bad that I once again stared at the floor as I murmured, “I could read it back then, but after the tests I just kind of... forgot all of it...”

  After a few moments of unbearable silence, Cyrus spoke again. “...I see,” he said. “Keep checking these books.”

  He then went off to the area where Maria and the others were looking at the ancient texts, so I followed his order and kept doing my best to flip through the pages.

  As the end of the workday grew closer, Larna came back and told us that she’d already interviewed several people. We then went back to the same conference room where we had been debriefed in the morning.

  Cyrus, being the one in charge, spoke first. “I have asked historians and ancient magic researchers in and around the Ministry, but all of them said that they had never heard of any such magic. I sent Maria and Dewey to research ancient magic texts — did you two find anything?”

  Maria and Dewey looked at each other, and the latter spoke. “We have checked dozens of books on ancient magic, but none of them mentioned the spell we were looking for. However, there still are several books that we have not yet checked.”

  “I see. Good work. Keep on searching those books, then,” Cyrus said to Maria and Dewey, before turning to the people from the Magical Tool Laboratory. “Please tell us what you’ve found.”

  We’d already told them about the professor’s book, but Larna explained everything in detail once more. She might have been a problem child of sorts within the Ministry, but she really was smart. Her explanation was comprehensive and easy to understand, so much so that Cyrus, who had only heard the story from me, was surprised by several points throughout.

  After leaving us, Larna had gone to find more information about the book, but, unfortunately, she had found none.

  “I’m planning to go farther from the Ministry tomorrow to ask more people about the book, but I don’t expect to find anything. The story said that the covenant will draw to itself those who look for it, and the library in the Ministry is the largest one in the kingdom. Realistically, that’s our best bet at finding it,” she said, and so it was decided that we’d be searching in the library on the following day as well.

  The workday was now over, but Maria said that she would go back to the library to do some more research.

  “There’s no rush,” Cyrus said, stopping her. “You’re still a newcomer, and you aren’t used to working here yet. It’s way too soon to overwork yourself.”

  Despite what he said, Cyrus went back to his office to finish his own work. He probably wouldn’t have time to tend to the field and relax for a while. Maybe because she was influenced by his diligence, Larna said that she’d be going to her office too, leaving us four newbies in the meeting room.

  We prepared to go back home, and despite the fact that everyone but me actually lived in the dormitory, they all casually followed me all the way to the gate.

  While we walked there, the conversation was naturally drawn towards the topic of searching through the books.

  “You guys are all so incredible, being able to read through all of those heavy, difficult books,” I said in awe.

  “I haven’t read even half of what those two have. They’re the awesome ones,” Sora said. He wasn’t trying to speak politely anymore, probably because he’d gotten used to Maria and Dewey.

  “Not at all,” said Maria, smiling at her younger colleague. “Dewey has done much more than I have. He is so smart.”

  Dewey’s face instantly turned red. Seeing his love grow in real time like that was really endearing.

  We eventually reached the gate, and I hopped into the carriage. Tomorrow would be another long day of searching through books.

  Chapter 5: The Covenant

  We all kept looking for hints about the covenant for a few more days, but we had no luck. After all, it took a lot of time for the prince from the book too. There weren’t any details about the number of days, but it said that he had looked in a cave full of monsters, a dark forest, and more before finally finding it.

  I briefly considered looking for the covenant in caves and forests ourselves, but when I thought about it, it didn’t really make sense. Why would you go there to look for a book? Wouldn’t you start with the library? But maybe he was able to find the covenant in the library exactly because he had suffered those failures in other places.

  “Maybe we should go fighting tanuki in the forest...” I murmured while looking through a book.

  “Stop talking nonsense and focus on looking for hints,” said Sora sternly.

  That was my way of looking for hints, but seeing the face that Sora was making made me reconsider how good my tanuki idea was.

  After a few days, thanks to the efforts of the talented Maria and Dewey, we finished looking through most of the old books. I had already finished looking through the story books since there weren’t that many to begin with.

 
; All that was left to do was for Maria and Dewey to look through the remaining ancient-script books, while Sora and I read through those that, while also old, were written in our modern language.

  Cyrus and Larna, in the meantime, kept working on their normal duties while interviewing people. (Larna, to be precise, was having her subordinates take care of her normal duties.)

  However, no matter how many books we checked, none of them said anything about the covenant. Since Professor Hyde had found a new hint for us in so little time, I’d been expecting things to go more smoothly.

  I was getting tired of spending day after day staring at letters, and I remembered nostalgically the manual labor and cleaning I’d done before that. I wondered how much longer it would take before our search was finished and I could get back to that.

  “I can’t even focus my eyes anymore...”

  I wasn’t used to reading difficult books. I had no problem with romance novels, but doing this kind of research for several days in a row was taking its toll on me.

  “It’s going to be lunch break soon, so why don’t you go on ahead and rest? I’ll follow you as soon as I’m done with this book,” said Sora, seeing how exhausted I was.

  I did as he said and left the library. I didn’t hate libraries, per se — in fact, I loved the libraries of my old world, full of all kinds of novels. But after all the reading I’d done in the past few days, just being there was enough to make me feel tired.

  Breathing some fresh air instantly made me feel better. “I’ll have a nice lunch and then do my best again in the afternoon,” I said to myself.

  “Katarina?” It was the voice of someone who I hadn’t expected to see here — Jeord.

  “Prince Jeord? What are you doing here?”

  “I have come to the Ministry for training. What a pleasant surprise to see you here,” he said with a smile.

  After graduating from the academy, all of my friends had started working. The nobles mainly took after their parents’ duties, which is what Keith did. I’d heard that Jeord and Alan, as royalty, were now much busier with diplomatic work than they were last year. Last time I went to the castle, Jeord had mentioned that he’d just come back from something like that.