Aurelie had ignored the doctor’s orders to rest and take a break for the rest of the week, she wanted to at the very least attend her classes even if she couldn’t complete her student council duties, due to those people knowing how serious her state was. But she wasn’t going to miss class, not when she knew how much it would influence the heroine’s future.

She needed to deal with that damn side-character as soon as possible.

Her fingers continued dancing across the fingerboard of her violin as she continued playing the song amongst the sea of students in the music hall. Her professor for this class was her former tutor, and one of the games’ romantic leads, Renaud hal Trudeau zer Du Firth.

She was called over by Renaud, well, Professor Renaud when class ended. He tilted his head at her before giving one of his classic princely smiles and looking ‘concerned’, though she knew he wasn’t genuinely concerned for her, since he never liked the original her, something he admitted to the heroine in the original game, he could have been lying though, since he said it while he was in princely mode, and likely lied to placate the heroine.

“I’m surprised to find you in class today, Lorraine had informed me that you were too sick to attend your lessons.”

“Well, the physician did tell me that, but I felt like I was well enough to attend, it’s not like doctors are infallible. I know my own body better than anyone. Plus, student council duties would build up and so will my lessons with how much I have to do, I don’t think I’m capable of catching up on class work if I take a break.”

“Hah… You shouldn’t be pushing yourself Aurelie, even back when I was your home tutor you used to study the piano until your fingers bled.”

“Well, now my fingers will bleed due to the amount of paperwork I’ll be needing to do, fufu~”

“Feels just like yesterday when you used to cry whenever you got a mistake…” He wistfully looked out the window. ‘What an amazing actor, I would have believed him if it wasn’t for those alarm bells ringing and my experience with the game.’

“Does it? I for one, barely remember an excerpt from half of my lifespan ago.”

His face stiffened, she would never distance herself like this in the past, since well, he was sure she used to still hold feelings for him from her old crush from way back when he was her tutor. He glanced back at her, she looked different now, her make-up was less offensive to him, but that was beside the point, now her eyes looked at him like they were strangers, completely different to the admiration she used to look at him with, not too long ago, just yesterday, in fact.

She slightly bobbed her head towards him before brusquely excusing herself, she had no intention of staying any longer around this psycho, his route left her with a bad taste in her mouth, she never liked hyper possessive manipulative abusers. They never tasted appealing.

He watched her walk away, a little appalled at the change in her behavior, before shaking his head and pushing it to the back of his mind. What does he care that one of his many resources had left his clutches, she was just one person in a marquisate, he had better options, like her fiance, plus, she was unreliable as her behavior had defied his expectations in the past, and her father was immune to his manipulation and easily navigated around him. Though, her mother was a completely different matter.

Renaud tapped his fingers on the table, reminiscing about the older marchioness’ nightly visits when Aurelie’s half-brother, Duane, had joined the household after the marquis had finally found him. He didn’t take the marquis for a sentimental man, and he was sure that ‘the bat who flitted between factions’ wouldn’t have brought his illegitimate child into the household if he didn’t have something to gain, but it also conveniently happened around the time that Aurelie’s engagement to prince Leon was announced, so it’s likely he wanted an heir for after his daughter married off. But in Renaud’s opinion, that benefit wasn’t big enough, especially when he witnessed his political prowess himself and doesn’t believe the rumors of his incompetence since it was likely that it was the Marquis himself who had it spread.

Just after she left the classroom she bumped into someone, face smacking against a solid chest.

Aurelie was kind of unlucky, though to be truthful, the person she bumped into was unluckier than she since he was desperately trying to not think about her. At the sight of her, and her improved look, his face grew red. And the vampire ended up tilting her head, mainly because she could smell the lust drifting off of him. He quickly ducked out of her way and into the classroom with a brief acknowledgment of her existence. She stood in place for a few seconds before heading off, not even watching him run away as she contemplated a few matters due to his behavior.

‘In the original route he acknowledges that the competitiveness he felt toward Aurelie was because he was in love with her. Though his infatuation towards her quickly faded under the Heroine’s ministrations.’ Her vision narrowed, ‘I can use this since we’re still early on in the game’s timeline. It would be interesting to have one of the male leads as one of my playthings... Huhu, it would be fun to change the fate of the game.’

She started walking, subtly looking for a purple head of hair as she was immersed in her thoughts. ‘But then again I really don’t want the baggage that comes with them, or the chance that the heroine will keep interacting with me because of it. Plus it would be troublesome if her main character halo was strong enough to undo whatever progress I’ve made with him.’

‘Though I doubt the Heroine would still want him if I manage to turn him into a complete d- Bingo. There you are.’ Her thoughts were cut off by the appearance of the supporting character she was looking for.

Linnaea jour Marcinthus, that damn side character who gathers all the ‘evidence’ against Aurelie in all the routes. One of the three students running the student papers, and eventual best friend of the Heroine. She gathered evidence of Aurelie’s misdeeds and smartly didn’t publish them and saved them for the ‘trial’. She learned her lesson after the first time she did it in an attempt to protect the Holy Maiden, though she failed spectacularly as the ‘bullying’ only ramped up, since some of the other nobles decided to use Aurelie’s reputation as a shield.

In fact, throughout the entire duration of ‘Serenade of the doves’ this so-called villainess had never taken direct action. In fact, in the dev team’s fan community there was a subsection of people who were part of the ‘Aurelie did nothing wrong’ party, who took up meticulous levels of details through screenshots and gameplay clips that added context to some lines and showed how the authors had subtly hinted that she had nothing to do with these incidents, most of it on Elias’ route as Aurelie was framed as an absolute heinous villain in Leon and Duane's route.

Of course, there was still a large portion of people who took the game as it was at face value despite the authors constantly showing that many characters were unreliable narrators, a running theme in all of their games. In fact, this company was very reputable for well-written games, but despite all the good prose, attention to detail, and gorgeously executed foreshadowing in this game, this was their weakest creation, and the main reason many of their veteran fans hate it? The heroine... Mainly.

Naive, indecisive, and a blatant madonna-type mary sue, she was an anomaly when it came to female leads for a company known for making well-written MCs. It was also the first time they let the players customize the MC’s name, and the first time they gave an MC a blank face. Many of their long time fans, me included, suspected this was their attempt to appeal to a broader audience by letting the players try and self-insert.

Their gamble paid off though, as there was a sudden surge of new readers, many of them taking Leon’s perspective of Aurelie as their stance toward her; conniving and using these other people who bullied her as lackeys. They used the scene where the heroine was confronted by Aurelie as proof for her rotten personality which , as I said, if you took everything she said at face value was ‘evidence’, the key line being, ‘It’s unsightly seeing you and my fiance gallivanting around in broad daylight. I’d appreciate it if you spared me some face and showed some restraint.’

This was the line that caused a rift between readers, the former group interpreting it as her chasing away the heroine for the sake of her own reputation with no attachment to the male lead as she couldn’t even bother to name him and the second group interpreting it as the legal wife scolding the mistress who should have remained a ‘hidden woman’, yet still giving the ‘kept lover’ a free pass provided she remained low-key.

But fan community discord is not very relevant right now and is a story for another time. I should be focusing on the story about how Linnaea brought about Aurelie’s destruction.