I Raised the Villainess Too Well

One day.

When I woke up, a man I’d never seen before was looking at me and said something strange.

“Virdem, that is your name. My son.”

“…?”

I tried to protest, but it came out as babble.

Wrapped in a swaddle, I watched as the man with wild, unkempt hair shed tears, and I wondered if I was dreaming. A really bizarre dream, at that.

But no matter how long I waited, I didn’t wake up.

“Sylvia… I swear, I will protect the son you left behind—”

…What the hell is this?

My denial lasted until a year later—when I finally learned to walk.

Only after pinching my cheeks countless times, tumbling around, and even putting bugs in my mouth did I finally accept it.

Apparently, this was what they called reincarnation in another world.

‘…Why me?’

It made no sense.

I had no particular complaints about my previous life. I wasn’t hit by a truck, and I definitely didn’t write some obscure web novel with an absurd number of chapters that no one read.

Why, out of all the desperate people in the world, did this bullshit happen to me?

I sighed as I looked down at the hardworking villagers from the top of the castle.

I wonder what’s happening back on Earth.

What about Hyejin? What are my parents doing?

…No idea.

The future was daunting, but at least one thing was good.

The fact that I was a noble.

It was a small territory, but a territory nonetheless. The villagers numbered barely over a hundred, but they were still my villagers.

It seemed like life in this world would be smooth sailing.

Maybe I could even find a way back in the meantime.

That’s what I thought—until the day before my seventh birthday.

That year, my father suddenly called for me, his expression grave, and said something strange.

“Virdem, whose life do you think yours belongs to?”

“Mine…?”

“No. It belongs to Lord Pitus.”

What kind of nonsense was this?

Who the hell was Pitus?

Patting my bewildered shoulder, my father began explaining slowly.

“Lord Pitus is the head of the Seriratus family.”

“I see. But why does that matter?”

“Our Serbus family has served the Seriratus family for a thousand years. You will do the same.”

“?”

It took about thirty minutes of my father’s rambling before I finally understood.

In short, the Serbus family—the one I was born into—was a prestigious butler family that had served the Seriratus family for generations.

In the past, during the bloody feuds between nobles, they had been an assassin family, carrying out the Seriratus family’s orders to eliminate key figures in rival factions. But now, in this peaceful era, they served as butlers.