I thought I had tamed the villain - chapter 1
EPISODE 1
‘How did I end up like this?’
I slowly rolled my eye and was dazzled by the light shining through the clear water.
‘Jess was about to fall into the lake…I jumped in after. And after that, I save Jess…..’
Short breaths made me instinctively move my limbs.
But my body was already sinking to the bottom of the water, causing me to panic.
It didn’t seem like there was any point in moving my body anymore. I reached out for the light but I felt like I was already far away.
I closed my eyes slowly, so very slowly.
“Iris, Iris!”
Through the dark, I heard a voice calling me out anxiously.
“Ugh….”
“Were you out of your mind?”
Lifting my heavy eyelids, I could see Serena’s face, the oldest in the nursery.
She was just as drenched as I was, as if she had saved me from drowning.
“Sister Iris….!”
Jess, the reason I fearlessly jumped into the lake, was in my arms.
Her face was full of tears, worried that things might go wrong and I have drowned instead.
“….”
Normally, I would have wiped away Jess’ tears and smiled that it was okay, but unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do that right now.
“Iris, were you really okay?”
Likewise, as Serena put her hand on my shoulder, I didn’t move.
Something caught my attention even though he was far away and hidden behind a tree.
I was staring at it.
Theo.
His red eyes.
“There didn’t seem to be any major problems, so if you get a good rest, you’ll be fine.”
“Thank you.”
Ms. Hailey, the counselor in charge of the nursery, rolled her eyes as she looked at me smiling mischievously.
“Iris. I know you wanted to save your little brother* in front of you, but that doesn’t mean it was a good thing for you to jump into the water yourself. If something like this happens again in the future, I won’t even give you a bed.”
It was almost threatening, but there was a hint of deep concern in it.
“Hehe. I’ll be careful.”
“Somehow, every time, you get hurt trying to help other kids. You had to think about your own body too.”
Listening to Ms. Hailey’s nagging, I couldn’t help but laugh.
What can I did? Maybe I’ll have to risk my life to help this time…..
Iris.
She was a child who had been growing up since birth in a nursery school established under the patronage of the Temple of Hailis, which enshrines the goddess.
An ordinary ten-year-old child with golden thread-like hair and blue eyes that shine like a piece of glass, like the goddess who saved the world in the beginning, even though her birth was unknown.
Well, she WAS.
Until she jumps into the lake to save Jess from drowning.
It was good to pull Jess up and send him up to the ground. The problem was that my body was so weak that I fell into the water myself.
And as I lost consciousness, I recalled my previous life at death’s door. In addition, the world I live in now was from a book I had read in my previous life.
“Yes, it was all good. In an instant, I became a child with eighteen-year-old consciousness, but I also knew that my hard-lived life was just a book! I was mentally strong, right? It was all acceptable. But…”
Why was I in a devastating novel with no dreams or hopes?
I screamed silently and buried my face in my pillow.
I wish I had been born into a romance novel with petals falling into my path like everyone else (tl/n happy route/ending), but this novel I was born into was just a crime thriller about one person becoming evil.
Collaboration with the original heroine?
Romance with the male protagonist?
‘It was a big dream. In this novel, it was all about the protagonist and the person who dies at the hands of the protagonist. You just have to worry about survival.’
I burst into tears with a smile on my face that defied everything.
Theo.
He was the protagonist of this novel and the villain himself.
He was called the blood of the devil because he had both dark hair and blood-red eyes, which were known as demonic symbols.
And as time went on and he grew, he gradually built up malice against the world…
As an adult, he visited all the people who stayed with him in the nursery school and commits a murderous spree that brutally kills them.
It was because of the memory of being despised and being called a demon in the nursery.
Haillis Nursery School was actually big.
But he didn’t care about that at all. His murder was solely to satisfy his desire for revenge.
And I, too, was one of those who would die at his hands in the future, not knowing when.
“It was frustrating. I didn’t know anything about him.”
And sadly, I didn’t remember the contents of the book perfectly.
I only knew the fact that I was going to die in his hands.
No matter how much I tried to think of other details, my head went white like a blank page, as if something was constrained.
Eventually, I decided to focus on what I had learned, and I came up with the most essential question.
“How did I survive….”
Prevent Theo from later becoming evil.
Even if I thought about my previous life, the most important thing for me was the life I was living now.
Whatever I was in my previous life, I was living as Iris now.
So finding a way to live safely in this novel was a natural step.
“I had to change him.”
It seems the most impossible, but it was something that could be tried.
Even if he later grew up to be a killer, he was a child now.
We already know how much childhood affects a person’s character.
“Can I did it?”
Anxiety rose over me, but I shook my head.
Now that this happened, I had to keep my mind straight.
“Even if you can’t, you have to do it, think you were saving a person.”
Although I can’t say exactly if that ‘person to save’ was me or him.
The very next day, my villainous obstruction project began.
I headed to the library in the nursery.
I chose among the few books I could use and began reading them.
Evelyn, who happened to be passing by, looked at me and spoke to me in wonder.
“Our daughter has changed. Iris, why were you suddenly reading this?”
“There was nothing wrong with knowing the world. It was about preparing for the future.”
I smirked at Evelyn and then shifted my gaze back to the letters in the book.
“I see… But it seems like a strange mix of kinds…”
Evelyn tilted her head but soon left so as to not interrupt my reading time any longer.
Alone, I nodded, reading the important sentences over and over again.
‘Always be consistent…’
Consistency. Perhaps no one had shown Theo that.
In the book, he was always alone.
The sense of security consistency and belief in the person who learns from it. It was evidently what Theo lacked the most.
No one becomes a demon in the first place. You can’t have malice from the moment you first open your eyes when you are born into this world.
Everything has a cause.
Given that Theo’s first murder involved the nursery, I think the cause might have arisen here.
Perhaps being rejected by children my age played a big role….
Children are innocent. And the cruelty that cames from that innocence was unspeakably heinous.
The discrimination that came from difference would have ruthlessly crushed and hurt Theo.
Having concluded this, I closed the books and stood up.
Maybe this moment was the only key that could stop Theo from the grim future.
“Aww, why was it so hard to meet?”
I took a deep breath while clutching my tired legs.
I set out to find Theo, but I still couldn’t see a glimpse of his face.
“I didn’t even know he existed. We were in the same building., how come we didn’t run into each other?”
It was true that Haillis’ nursery school was large, but this was strange.
“Were you hiding…?”