F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I’ll be Queen, and I’m not a narcissist!!!!!

"This can't be happening!" I run crying to my room; I can't believe everything that's happening, and my body isn't helping, it doesn't matter if I came from another world.

To "me," the Demon King is still my "Father," so hearing him say those things to me and humiliating me in front of others was as painful as having a piece of me torn out. I felt suffocated and could barely muster the strength to speak.

Adding that to the fact that in the end, I'm still considered a failure and a burden just like in my previous life, I really couldn't hold back the tears.

But that was something I could set aside for later; the biggest problem was this marriage, which never happened in the game. It's the worst thing that could happen to me.

It's horrifying. My heart beats wildly as I feel like the little I've achieved is being ripped away from me, and I'm being sent to my death.

In the game, the endings where the main character ended up "trapped" by something were an instant Game Over. This could be various things, from relationships to more specific things like a map area.

The thing is, in the game, a relationship beyond friendship could only be formed much later, and the game "punished" anything extra with a Game Over, which was frustrating.

Since even minimal actions could make you fall into this trap, it forced players to think about what every choice, no matter how small, would do in the future. And a marriage this early also falls into the category that traps you, bringing a Game Over.

And to make it worse, I'm not even the protagonist. What kind of script is this where two romantic targets from different routes get married? Evelyn and Esther should never, ever have any kind of relationship like that.

For me, who depended on the knowledge I gained from the game along with its rules, having this marriage completely destroys everything I know.

Because if Evelyn and Esther get married, what happens to the future? Esther, a cold sociopath who sees the world as something to be destroyed, marrying the one who is treated as a failure is terrible!

Esther slapped me just because I was crying. That alone shows perfectly what our relationship will be like in the future.

To Esther, everything I do that she considers a problem will need to be corrected, and she will undoubtedly hurt me in this marriage just to maintain control.

And it gets worse because I don't know how she'll behave! With Grace, in one of the game's routes, Esther even went so far as to slowly poison Grace, sapping her strength until she became so weak she was at Rank F in power, and all her attributes decayed to E-Rank, and even D-Rank.

All because Grace did something she considered a "humiliation," making it clear that Esther is controlling. She was always controlling in the game; she always wants everything her way, and if she can't have it, she does horrible things to regain control.

So, the problem isn't just me getting married. The fact that I am getting married is part of why I'm desperate, but another part is because I'm marrying the worst possible person to have a marriage with.

I like Esther as a character; she was incredible and fascinating. But like her as a person? Impossible! She is a horrible, monstrous being who hides behind a mask of nobility.

She is literally a monster, and among all the players who were part of the game's community, Esther is compared to the game's final boss since everything always converges on her killing everyone.

Now imagine what she won't do to me, who is weak? If she could even slowly destroy Grace's life without Grace, who is a heroine, noticing, imagine if she decides to do something to me?

And I won't have anyone to help me or protect me from her. I even wanted to get close to Esther and become her friend to understand why she wants to destroy all life on the planet.

But I only wanted friendship! I never, ever in my whole life wanted a relationship beyond friendship with her! To begin with, I never even wanted romance in this world, to the point of avoiding Grace so she wouldn't try to win me over.

Now imagine Esther?! Having a relationship with her is the literal Game Over of Game Overs. I don't think there's even a Game Over as bad as this one in the game.

I'm... terrified, literally terrified of my future. How can I trust living near someone who would try to screw me over for anything?

I can already imagine my life beside her: the constant fear of making a mistake and Esther starting to punish me without me noticing until it's too late.

This isn't a game. It stopped being a game a long time ago. I don't get second chances; if I make a mistake, it's over for me! And because my father took away my adventurer's license, I don't even know how I can get strong now.

What do I have left? I lost almost everything I fought to achieve. All I have now are the puppets I created and some money, but money won't protect me from Esther, and my puppets are too weak to deal with a girl who can devastate a city with a single attack.

When my father took my adventurer license, it wasn't just the permission to go to the guild; it was literally my freedom. The guild for me was one of the few ways I could choose what I wanted to do.

At the guild, my decisions were my own, and I was the one who chose what to do. Now that this has been taken from me, I'm once again trapped by the restrictions of nobility, as if it were a mockery of my attempts to be someone better.

And to make the situation even worse than before, now, on top of being without freedom again, I'll also have to be careful with the sociopath Esther around.

This marriage is like a chain that destroys any hope I had. How can I fight to become queen if my means of strengthening myself have been completely destroyed?

Esther isn't someone who would accept my competition. If Esther realizes I want to take the queen's position and that I have a chance, she'll treat me as an enemy. The only thing protecting me minimally right now is that I'm too weak for anyone to imagine I could be queen.

However, if Esther realizes I actually have a chance, she will use this marriage to destroy me. Combined with the fact that all the power in this matrimony goes to her, I literally have 0 means to fight her.

As soon as I reach my room, I slam the door hard and lock it immediately, breaking down in tears.

"H-Hic.." I sob with a mixture of terror and pain from the slap and the situation. Wasn't it enough that my father humiliated me in public with his words? Now there's Esther hurting me too.

"W-Why is life so unfair to me..." I murmur, crying as I lean against the door. Has it always been like this? I can't pinpoint when, but my life always goes wrong somewhere.

Is all that's left for me to live like a rat hiding in a room to avoid being killed? Why should I even try to improve when life throws in my face how much I'm hated?

I was a failure, and I know it, but I tried to improve. I did my best. I pushed myself to the limit, thinking about how to be a better person and survive.

So why did everything shatter in seconds? What was the point of all my effort? If almost everything I achieved was taken from me, and even the little I achieved is useless now.

And now I don't even have the internet and games to isolate myself from everything. In the end, all that's left is for me to isolate myself in a room and wait for Esther to kill everyone in a few years?

Is that my fate? If I have such a horrible fate, then why was I given this new life? If it was going to be like this, I would have preferred to stay dead. I didn't need to come to this dangerous and cruel world just for fate to throw my uselessness in my face.

"..." I look at the window, and the hopeless desire to just throw myself from it comes to me... maybe I should just end my life now?

I already tried my best, right? I did my best. If I tried and everything failed, then I have the right to give up now that I've ended up in a dead end worse than my past life.

Who can judge me for just giving up? I fought for this life. I pushed myself to the limit, far surpassing my own limitations... and yet here I am, back to square one with everything crumbling around me.

'Why do I have to go through this?' I'm just an ordinary girl. I was never ready for this. Coming to the world of my favorite game has just become a horrible nightmare.

Aren't I even worse off than in the past? At least in the past, as a simple human girl, I could just live playing games until the day a heart attack killed me or something.

But in this world, I don't even have that escape. How can I run from reality? What can I do in a world with a culture only slightly better than the Middle Ages?

There's nothing that allows me to escape the horrible reality that I will be brutally murdered, and if no one kills me during the next few years, in the end, Esther will do the job.

"..." But, looking at the window, all I do is start crying more, because when I think about taking my own life and just running away from everything again, my cowardice speaks louder.

I'm afraid of death. I can't end it all, and this fills me with a sickening despair, because even for a decision so "simple," I'm too cowardly to make it.

"H-Hahaha w-what a joke... d-did I ever really change?" Looking at the window, all I feel is that I'm still the same failure from the past, a failure who tries to hide as soon as everything fails.

A failure who doesn't even have the courage to put a stop to it all. And since I can't end it, all I do is cry.

Tears that are a mixture of shame, humiliation, pain, and despair. Shame for the pathetic girl I am. Humiliation from the harsh words my father said to me, belittling what I'd achieved.

Pain from the slap and from feeling like a useless person who can't do anything right. And despair from knowing my future will be horrible, but I can't even handle my own tangled feelings.

Whatever gave me a new life chose the wrong person. It shouldn't have chosen a cowardly failure. It shouldn't have chosen an ordinary girl who didn't know how to live a real life.

Me being the one who came to this world is a mistake. Whatever gave me this life should have just left me dead on that sidewalk after I was split in two by a truck door.