Our meal ended in silence. I could tell Ikki was holding back his tears, so I quickly finished eating and left Nari and him alone. Later, she told me they went somewhere quiet and he wept like a baby.

‘He’s always been a crybaby’, she explained.

I went upstairs to our bedroom, and started getting ready for a bath.

The bathroom in our room was large and had a big bathtub. It was decorated with all kinds of plants and it made me feel at ease. I was looking at my reflection in the mirror and popping all the pimples I could see when Ari told me the water was warm enough. I got in the bathtub and thought: 

'Ah, this is fine”.

I closed my eyes for some time, trying to gather my thoughts. Even as I made no contact whatsoever with the novel’s female and male leads, they were still in my life. Was it fate? It seemed as if even if I tried living a carefree life, it wouldn’t be so easy.

Ari looked somewhat tired. They materialised their physical body and got inside the bathtub with me. We closed our eyes and remained silent for some time. Each of us focused on their own thoughts.

‘We seem to have a problem in our hands’, Ari remarked.

‘Only one? There’s at least two silver-haired problems’.

‘I’m afraid living peacefully will be difficult…’

‘And not getting involved in the plot of the novel will be even trickier’, I completed.

A cold breeze suddenly swept through, and I shivered. Ari sighed. They waved their hand and the air suddenly got warmer. 

‘I brought in some wind from the south, so you won’t be cold’. 

Ari then put their hand on my face and caressed my cheek.

‘Well, where should we start?’, they asked, more to themselves than to me.

‘What’s your impression of the Saintess?’, I questioned.

‘She gives me the creeps. What about you? What do you make of her?’

‘Hm…’ I started, but was somewhat at loss at what to say. Yes, Lady Ishtar did give me the creeps, but there was also something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. In the end, I simply agreed with them.

‘She reeks of blood, that’s for sure. Though I don’t think humans would notice. You guys tend to have a clouded spiritual vision. Could you smell it?’

‘No… but I do know from the book that she killed people and drank their blood. That’s what Tsisana thought, at least’.

‘That’s most likely true. The smell was fresh, so she probably killed recently too’.

Ari looked pensive for a while, but then their expression suddenly changed. They looked bewildered, as if only realising too late that something was incredibly wrong.

‘Wait… so you knew? You knew she was some kind of crazy serial killer and still laughed at her face?’

‘I… I mean… I just couldn’t help it. Not when you burst out laughing like that’.

‘Yes, but most humans can’t see me’.

‘By the way… do you think she can see you? Ishtar is the female lead, they tend to be special’.

‘Hm… I’m not sure. I am positive she didn’t see me this time. But, if she’s different from most humans, that might not be the case a second time. Female leads usually have powers other people don’t have, right? Most humans cannot see me unless I wish for it, but I’ll make sure to be careful just in case’.

‘Right, female leads can do things other people cannot. Like when her tentacles came out but no one thought anything of it’.

‘That’s because most students in the cafeteria couldn’t even see the tentacles’.

‘How come?’

‘Well… that’s one of the perks that come with dark magic. It’s invisible, unless you are a dark mage yourself or you have light mana. So most of your peers just felt that the air was heavy’.

‘But why was I able to see it? I’m none of those things’.

‘Probably because you are the villain? Villains also have special powers y’know’.

‘Right… the strongest power of all is always the power of plot’.

‘Precisely’.

‘But say, don’t you think it’s strange? In the novel Ishtar was cunning and intelligent, but she reacted too emotionally at the cafeteria’.

‘Perhaps the Saintess is so certain of her public image and her powers that she simply does not care? Or maybe she is embarrassed that her boyfriend lost to a nobody from the countryside? Maybe her pride got the best of her?’

‘Well… But here’s the thing, in the original novel Tsisana loses to Gin. But here it seems as if he lost to Tsisana. We transmigrated after that, so there shouldn’t have been any changes to the plot before that’.

‘Maybe our dimensional trip was a bit more rocky than what we originally thought of’.

Ari was right. It was only natural that we would cause ripples in this dimension’s timeline. There was also the possibility that we weren’t really inside the world of ‘Villainess Undone’, but somewhere that was just similar enough. If that was truly the case, we were in dire straits.

Or was it perhaps that the novel did not shed light to the entirety of the situation? Writers are liars, after all.

My reflections over the matter were interrupted by the realisation of a more pressing issue, that sadly I had failed to take notice of for some time.

Wasn’t Ari also naked in the bathtub?