I Am The Game's Villain

I often wonder when I first began to realize just how wrong my life had turned out.

I was born into a modest family. My parents both worked, and because I was their only child, all their attention flowed toward me. Looking back, I can admit they spoiled me a little. But it was the ordinary sort of love, the kind that makes a child feel safe without ever having to think about why.

I had a good father. I had a caring mother. For a long time, that felt like all I needed.

Everything was going well until the day my father told us something neither my mother nor I had ever expected to hear.

I can still remember how hesitant he was. He looked like a man forcing himself to walk into a storm he already knew would tear everything apart. He struggled to find the words, pausing more than once, but in the end he said them anyway.

He had a child with another woman.

It had happened before he met my mother, he explained. He had only recently found out. The woman had died, and the child had been left alone. My father said he could not ignore that, could not abandon his own son, so he had decided to bring him into our home and raise him.

I remember the silence that followed almost as clearly as I remember the words themselves.

My mother was the first to react. Her shock turned to fury in an instant, and she stormed out before my father could say much more. As for me, I simply stood there, stunned, barely able to process what I had just heard. I was only in middle school. One moment I had been living the life I knew, and the next I was being told that somewhere out there I had an older half-brother.

The week that followed was awful.

My parents had rarely argued before that day. At most, they had the kind of small disagreements most couples do, things that passed quickly and left no mark. But after my father’s confession, something in our home broke. Their arguments became constant, long and bitter, stretching late into the night. Even when I shut myself in my room, I could still hear the sharpness in their voices bleeding through the walls.

It felt as though a crack had opened in the middle of our family, and every day it widened a little more.

Eventually, my father brought him to the house.

His name was Leon, and he was a few years older than me. I still remember the first time I saw him standing there, awkward and uncertain. The moment he entered, an ugly feeling rose inside me. Discomfort, resentment, maybe even fear. I only knew that I did not want him there.

In my mind, he became the reason everything had gone wrong.

Before Leon, we had been a happy family. Before Leon, there had been peace in the house. Before Leon, I had not seen my mother cry behind closed doors or heard my father trying and failing to fix what he had broken. I was too young and too angry to understand that none of this had truly begun with Leon.

My father managed to convince my mother to let him stay, at least for a while, but the atmosphere in the house became unbearable.

The arguments only grew worse. My mother’s anger toward my father sharpened, and though she did not direct that hatred toward Leon in the same way I did, his presence was a constant reminder of the betrayal. Everyone in that house felt it. Leon and I both heard the shouting. We both lived in the shadow of it.

And I was cruel to him.

I told him it was his fault. I said things a child says when he wants to wound someone because he himself is hurting and has no better way to handle it. I remember one moment in particular, when I threw those words at him and expected him to defend himself, or get angry, or tell me I was wrong.

Instead, he only said, "I know."

That made me feel guilty immediately.

He never seemed like a bad person. If anything, he seemed like someone dragged helplessly into a mess he had not created. He was quiet, withdrawn, almost apologetic just for being in our house. But at that age I was too immature to see him properly. I clung to my anger because it was easier than trying to understand him. I sided with my mother without question, even though her true anger was meant for my father, not for Leon.

In the end, what felt inevitable finally happened.

Only a month later, my parents divorced.

My mother took me with her, and we left that house behind. I still remember the last time I saw Leon before we went. He spoke to me and said only one word.

"Sorry."

That was all.

And somehow that simple apology hit harder than any argument could have. In that moment, I understood how much of a jerk I had been to him. I understood that I had been punishing someone who had already lost more than I could imagine. But realization came too late.

By then, the damage had already been done.

After that, my mother refused to see my father again. She wanted nothing to do with him, and by extension nothing to do with Leon either. Our lives split apart completely, as though that part of my family had been cut off and sealed away.

Then, only a few months later, I saw Leon on the news.

I can still remember the shock of it, the way my whole body went cold as soon as I recognized his face. The report said he had driven a truck into a family, killing all of them except for one boy who survived. I stared at the screen in disbelief.

Even my mother, despite how bitter things had become between her and my father, reached out after seeing it. Maybe some part of her still needed answers. Maybe some part of her could not believe it either.

But when she contacted him, she learned that he was dead.

And just like that, whatever chance there might have been to understand any of it was gone.

I tried to find out what had happened to Leon after that, but nothing certain ever surfaced.

There were only rumors, each one contradicting the last. Some said he had been shot dead in the courtroom, that the trial had ended in blood while neither my mother nor I were there to witness it after what he had done. Others claimed he had survived somehow, that he had escaped death and simply vanished from public sight. No one seemed to know the truth, and perhaps no one cared enough to find it.

My mother certainly did not.

She wanted that entire Chapter of our lives buried. Whenever I showed even the slightest interest, she shut it down immediately. She made it clear that she wanted me away from all of it, away from Leon, away from my father, away from that ugly past that had already taken too much from us. In the end, I obeyed. Whether out of respect, fear, or simple exhaustion, I let it go.

A year later, my mother remarried.

This time, I gained an older sister.

After what had happened with Leon, I was determined not to repeat the same mistake. I did not want to let resentment or awkwardness poison things before they had even begun. So instead of closing myself off, I tried to relax and get along with her. Fortunately, she made that easy. Jeanne was kind and comprehensive, and before long we settled into something comfortable.

I did not call her big sister, of course, and she never called me little brother either. That would have been far too awkward for both of us. Still, we had a good relationship, and that was enough.

In her presence, life slowly began to feel normal again.

And more than that, it helped me forget.

Not completely, perhaps, but enough.

Enough to stop thinking so often about Leon. Enough to think less of my father. It did me a great deal of good.

Which is why, even now, I still do not understand why I was reincarnated into that game’s world.

My life had been good by then. It was not perfect, but whose life is? I was no longer trapped in the wreckage of that old family conflict. I had adjusted. I had moved forward. I was not wishing for another life, nor praying for escape, nor aching for some fantasy world to claim me.

So why?

Why was I the one who ended up there?

[Princess and Dragon]

Even the title now leaves a bitter taste in my mind.

When I think back on how I first found that game, the whole thing feels strangely random, almost absurd. And yet, at the same time, when I truly sit with the memory, it no longer feels random at all. If anything, it feels staged, as though a series of invisible hands had been quietly guiding events into place while I remained too blind to notice.

It began with that woman who came to our house.

She said she knew Leon.

I remember that clearly because the moment she said his name, the air in the room seemed to shift. My mother’s expression hardened at once, and without giving the woman any real chance to explain herself or let her enter, she sent her away. She refused to speak to her, refused even to hear her out.

I still do not know why, but that day I found myself following after her.

There was something restless inside me, something I could not quite name. Curiosity, perhaps. Or guilt. Or the old wound Leon had left behind suddenly opening again at the mention of him. Whatever it was, it drove me out of the house and after that woman until she reached a gaming store.

Even then, I did not actually approach her.

By the time I arrived, other people had gathered around her, and whatever resolve I had built on the way there began to crumble. I hesitated. Then I pulled back. Part of it was unease. Part of it was fear. And part of it, if I am being honest, was that I was no longer sure I truly wanted to stir up those memories again. Leon belonged to a past I had spent years trying to bury, and standing there outside that store, I suddenly realized I might not be ready to dig him back up.

So I did nothing.

I let her go and never met her again.

Instead, I bought the stupid game she and the others had been talking about.

Princess and Dragon.

And somehow, through a twist of fate so bizarre I still cannot fully accept it, I ended up reincarnating into it, waking in the body of Eric Scarlett at six years old.

I became Eric.

At first I thought it had to be a dream. There was simply no other explanation my mind was willing to accept. Everything was too absurd, too detached from reason. But as time passed, denial became impossible. The world remained. The people remained. The memories of the game aligned too closely with the reality around me.

It was real.

And to be honest, that terrified me.

I had played all the games. I knew exactly what kind of world I had fallen into, and I knew how dangerous it could become. The tragedies, the deaths, the betrayals, the horrors hidden beneath the bright surface of nobility and magic, I knew all of it. Worse still, I knew where Eric stood in that story, and it was not in a safe place.

But perhaps the cruelest part of all was Edward Falkrona.

My so-called childhood friend.

Even now, calling him that feels generous.

He was more like one of the members of that large group made of children of high nobility including myself.

The moment I realized who I was and where I was, scenario after scenario ran through my mind. Should I interfere? Should I try to change things? Should I use what I knew of the game’s plot to prevent the disasters ahead? Could I save people? Could I alter Edward’s path? Could I protect myself?

In the end, I found myself paralyzed.

What exactly could I have done?

No one would have believed me if I had started speaking of future events. I barely understood my own circumstances well enough to make sense of them, let alone explain them to anyone else. And on top of that, I wanted as much distance from Edward as possible.

Once Oryanna, his mother died, that only became worse. Seeing what he became afterward convinced me that staying away was the wiser choice.

So I chose the simplest path available to me.

I focused on my own life.

I focused on my new family, especially my sweet little sister. I told myself that was enough. As for the game and its larger story, I decided I would deal with it only when it truly began, when Jayden and Milleia finally appeared and the plot moved into motion. If anything needed to be changed, if anything needed intervention, then I would think about it when that time came.

Until then, I would keep my head down.

I would live quietly.

I would play it safe.

But that resolve did not last long.

Because on that very first day of the academy, the first major deviation from the game appeared.

And it happened the moment Edward walked into that ceremonial hall, already changed.

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