Chapter 3: Born to Lose

I laid back down on the obnoxiously soft and luxurious bed, arms splayed out, staring at the canopy like it personally insulted me.

‘So I died. Fought a stalker. Got ghost-chained by the universe. Got reincarnated into a visual novel.

Woke up as Lucien bloody Crowley. And now… I live here?’

‘Does this mean that the afterlife is a thing? Was heaven and hell real? Wait then why did I end up here in this visual novel world? And why is that son of a bitch here as well? Shouldn't he be in hell? Am I in hell? I wasn’t the best person in life but surely I don’t deserve to go to hell right? Purgatory maybe- Putting that aside for a moment- How come he gets a better reincarnation than I do?? Was this some kind of cosmic irony? Am I being filmed by some trickster god right now?’

I rubbed my face and groaned, “Okay. Okay, Jihoon, wait, no, Lucien, whatever. You have read enough reincarnation stories. Focus on the immediate crisis. One thing at a time.”

Which led me to step two of my breakdown: remembering who Lucien Crowley was.

And oh boy.

Lucien wasn’t one of the optional love interests in Twilight Enchanted: Bloom of Fates (yes, that’s the actual name).

He was ‘a hidden route’.

Like, real hidden.

You had to ignore every single other love interest, trigger some very specific flags, and basically speed run moral depravity to even see his first CG.

He was what the fandom liked to call, affectionately, “the toxic wildcard route.”

Which, honestly, should’ve been a warning sign.

Because while the other characters had cute, color-coded affection meters, Lucien had something worse: an infatuation meter.

Not love.

Not affection.

Obsession.

And unlike the others, his end wasn’t the heroine holding hands with him at a flower field or dancing under moonlight.

Nope.

If the heroine managed to “win” him over, the game ended with Bad Ending #7: Mind’s Chains.

A not-so-fun epilogue where the heroine became little more than Lucien’s bewitched doll, locked in a velvet room while he wrote poetry about eternal love and “perfect obedience.”

Yeah.

Super romantic.

I shivered just thinking about it.

“To be fair,” I muttered, “that might be the easiest way to get revenge. Let the heroine trigger that route, let Lucien's freak-flag fly, and make Leonardo, the stalker-in-disguise, suffer and die.”

It was a solid plan.

Only two problems.

One: I couldn’t trigger that route.

The heroine had to be the one to go full bad ending, and from what I remembered, that involved making every wrong choice, intentionally.

And two: Ew.

“No, seriously, ew. I’d rather die again, stabbed, shot, set on fire, even drowned in grape jelly, than become some discount hentai hypnosis creep.”

So that left the canon routes.

All of which, as I recalled, had one thing in common:

Lucien loses.

Hard.

I ran through the mental list.

In Route A: Executed by chapter fifteen after a failed ambush on the heroine.

Route B: Exiled to a cursed island after a spell backfires and he accidentally turns a royal into a newt.

Route C: Loses everything, gets dumped by the villainess, and ends up homeless, bitter, and wearing a trench coat made of old curtains.

“…Right,” I whispered, feeling my soul slowly detach again.

“My options are being a manipulative psychopath or cannon fodder with a fabulous wardrobe.”

I slumped into a nearby armchair, hands in my hair.

“Why couldn’t I have reincarnated as a background extra? One of those nameless NPCs who gets three lines and lives to retirement.”

I groaned again, louder this time.

The birds outside chirped mockingly.

And the worst part?

Most players didn’t even know Lucien was a love interest.

But my sister?

She was a mega fan.

She 100%ed the game- five dozen times.

Every route, every flag, every secret.

She cried when the heroine got brainwashed.

She made me sit next to her every time she played Lucien’s route.

She even made me voice act him once when her friend was sick and they were doing a livestream.

The plot of this cursed game wasn’t just known to me.

It was tattooed in my memory.

In cursive.

With sparkles.

And now?

Now I was in it.

Now I was him.

Lucien Crowley.

Tragic footnote.

Human red flag.

Walking, talking bad ending.

I stared blankly at the fireplace, then promptly face-planted into the carpet with a muffled scream.

***

I didn’t go back to sleep.

Not because of a lack of trying.

I was sufficiently tired, even if not physically.

Definitely mentally.

Some sleep would do me good.

Help me process the absurdity around me and deal with them in a more cohesive way.

Yet.

How could I?

I was too busy staring at the canopy, plotting a murder I couldn’t commit.

“Should I just kill him?”

I muttered, eyes bloodshot, voice cracked from stress.

Leo.

Leonardo.

That bastard.

That smug, reincarnated sack of charm buffs.

“If I just stab him. Right in the face. Swift. Clean. Maybe dump him in a well after- no wait, no, cremation. Just to be safe.”

It was a tempting fantasy.

Cathartic, even.

But alas.

Reality.

“Nope,” I groaned, smothering my face into a pillow.

“That won’t work. Because of her.”

The Heroine.

Saintly, bright-eyed, dangerously genre-blind.

In the lore of Twilight Enchanted, she was the final descendant of an ancient bloodline gifted with a terrifying power: reincarnation through true love.

Which sounded like a Hallmark Channel tagline, until you realized what it actually meant.

So long as she loved someone purely, truly, completely?

They couldn’t die.

Not permanently.

You could push them off a cliff, feed them to a hydra, run them over with a magical train, and boom—three days later?

Reincarnated.

Rebooted.

Good as new.

Like some cursed fantasy DLC Jesus patch.

So even if I did murder Leonardo in a blaze of glorious vengeance…

I would be the one arrested, tried, and executed.

Meanwhile, he would be reborn somewhere nearby, probably with a new haircut and a smug grin.

“And all because she loved him,” I muttered.

And that was the other kicker.

He didn’t even have to love her back.

Nope.

As long as her love for him remained unwavering?

He was practically immortal.

A walking “Try Again” button with abs and a tragic backstory.

I could understand the meta reason for why they would implement that in game but now, having to deal with it in real life.

I would rather shoot myself in the head be done with it.

"Does this world even have firearms the begin with??"

I grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.

Again.

“This is so stupid,” I groaned.

“I can’t brute force it. I can’t confront him. I can’t even accidentally stab him during fencing practice—because the damn heroine might cry and bring him back with a hug and a motivational speech!”

Was I doomed to spend this life just… waiting?

Waiting for the plot to destroy me?

I was mid-rant, hand waving dramatically to the ceiling like an overworked playwright, when a soft knock at the door interrupted me.

Followed by three timid maids shuffling in like prisoners approaching a guillotine.

They had the look of people who’d been given a grim task.

Eyes darting everywhere but me. Expressions etched with fear.

One was trembling like she was walking into a lion’s den.

“…What now?”

I said, far too tired to fake being princely.

They hesitated.

The tallest one, a brunette with a shaking voice, finally spoke.

“M-Master Lucien. We… we’ve been ordered to… uh… assist with your morning bath.”