Before entering the world of Claiming Maddox, I had expanded my reading material to include comic books. But the comics I read were of the Asian variety, specifically manga, manhwas, and manhuas. 

Comic books that featured reincarnation characters had taken hold prior to my possession of Emma's body. Especially those that featured villains as the main characters. 

I mostly read the romantic ones, and while reading them, I discovered a common (at times annoying) trope: the main character's ability to not avoid meeting important characters, even though they knew/had a feeling they were said important characters and did not want to run into them, because they never did their research thoroughly enough to avoid them in the first place. 

The reason for this was usually to avoid the bad endings that the main characters would face and to avoid drawing attention to themselves. It was dumb most of the time because the protagonists would use their knowledge of the original story to avoid being the villain which would instead attract the major characters and have them stroll to their new happily-ever-after at the end of such stories. 

And to think I would end up in the same situation as the main characters in those reincarnation stories, but with worse people... Ugh.

If I were in a peaceful romance story, I would not have minded running into the main characters. But, given the nature of the novel I had entered, I wanted to avoid them entirely. 

It was already enough getting involved with the characters that rarely made an appearance in the novel.

Hence why I needed to sit down and think before things could get further out of control.

After making it to my bedroom, I pondered in the comfortable silence, attempting to recall the novel's major events. Then I got to work, recording what I remembered in a book. I then copied the contents to a new page, this time in chronological order, as I tried to figure out precisely what happened before what.

I then copied everything I had written into another book.

'I should have the butler get me a desk with a secret compartment. One with a lock,’ I thought.

Looking back at my notes, I decided to go over them again.

“I think this is it,” I said later.

I had written down the novel's events as I remembered them. Currently, two were crossed out: "James' arrest" and "Joining the Barrett family." 

I had to consider, and possibly guess, the direction the story could take now that some things had changed. 

Based on where I was in the story, Emma's relationship with the other major characters had not changed. She was still being bullied, things between her and Maddox were still bad, and the bullying was supposed to last until her junior year; the period when she would begin having unconsented "activities" with Maddox, which consisted primarily of being s*xually ass*ulted, humiliated, and used to fulfill his needs. And also, in the process, she would start falling in love with him.

… Ugh. Just, ugh.

Fortunately, Emma's junior year would begin after the summer break, so she had not become too involved with Maddox yet.

“Thank fuck,” I said out loud.

It was one thing to read about it. But to experience it? No. Heck no.

It would have been better if I had become Emma before she started high school. I would have chosen another school and avoided most of the events in the novel entirely.

However, it would have taken me longer to wait until I turned 18. And I would have had to deal with James and Alice for much longer than I would have preferred.

‘... maybe it’s better this way.’

I decided to move on to the next step of my research: learning about the characters mentioned in the novel. 

I did not need to know everyone; I just wanted to know the ones who appeared frequently throughout the story.

The only name I had was Maddox Grayson. Given that his family name was mentioned in whatever Jaxon had been reading earlier, it was likely that he would appear on the Internet. Also, I had a feeling that Maddox was popular in his own way. He would be instrumental in identifying the other major characters of the story.

“Time to find out what that fucker looks like.” 

After retrieving my new laptop and turning it on, I opened the browser. A quick search of Maddox Grayson on the Internet followed that left me speechless.