Chapter 5: Crowley’s Guide to Not Dying

To understand just how spectacularly Lucien Crowley’s life was teetering on the edge of ruin, we must first take a moment to appreciate his origin story.

You see, Lucien was the last living heir of whatever was left of his mother’s side, of the once-proud D’Claire bloodline, a noble family famed for its wealth, its sprawling estate, and its disturbingly high incidence of tragic balcony-related deaths.

The D’Claire legacy came to an abrupt full stop when Lady Seraphina D’Claire, Lucien’s mother and the only functioning adult in his immediate orbit, died under vague circumstances that involved “a long illness,” “deep melancholy,” and a conveniently timed thunderstorm.

Upon her death, Lucien inherited everything.

The house.

The land.

The servants.

The fortune.

The crumbling family name.

The ancient manor that groaned at night like it had secrets to tell but was too tired to talk.

Now, you might ask: “Surely, there was someone to help him manage all of this?”

Ah, you must be new here.

Lucien’s father, Count Albrecht Crowley, technically still drew breath and had the social power of a moderately feared duke’s drinking buddy.

But in practice, he treated Lucien more like a distant tax deduction than a son.

After Seraphina’s death, the Count more or less shoved Lucien into the D’Claire estate like one shoves an unwanted package into a dark corner of the closet and hoped he would come out either married or dead.

They did not speak.

They did not dine together.

In fact, they had not made eye contact since Lucien was twelve and accidentally called him “father” instead of “Sir Count.”

The Count, unimpressed by his son’s lack of political value, deemed Lucien “best left alone”, which is a generous, noble way of saying, “Let the boy rot in his gold-plated sandbox.”

Now, this suited young Lucien just fine.

He had no oversight.

No responsibilities.

And absolutely no idea how money worked.

The estate, flush with D’Claire gold and prestige, became his playground.

Parties, tutors dismissed for petty reasons, self-indulgent hobbies, and enough magical accessories to make a warlock cry, it was all on the tab.

And the estate, bound by bloodline and old laws, kept churning and burning through its reserves to maintain the lifestyle of a boy who thought budgeting was a kind of spell.

The staff tried to raise concerns once.

Just once.

Lucien threatened to “curse their bloodline into mildew,” which was both concerning and biologically confusing.

That was the end of financial planning at the D’Claire Estate.

By the time the events of the visual novel began, the estate was already in economic cardiac arrest.

Roof leaks were patched with illusion spells.

Ballrooms were closed due to “arcane rot.”

Entire wings of the manor were shut down to save heating costs.

And the kitchen switched from imported chocolates to domestic dried fruit, a change that sent ripples through the local nobility and was, frankly, treated like an international crisis by Lucien himself.

And yet, because Lucien never left the academy grounds for long, most players of the visual novel never got to see this.

The game didn’t show him balancing ledgers.

Or not balancing them.

Or setting fire to them and blaming the moon.

No, he existed purely as a bad-boy romantic detour.

A bonus route.

A narrative spice.

But behind the scenes?

Behind the velvet curtains and the rose-strewn confession scenes?

Lucien Crowley was a walking bankruptcy.

A twenty-year-old disaster given absolute power and zero training.

The only thing holding the estate together was the staff’s combined willpower and the antique furniture being sold off one painting at a time.

And now?

Now the estate was being run by someone else.

Someone in Lucien’s body.

Someone polite.

Someone who said “thank you” and didn’t ask for gold-leafed shaving soap.

The estate was watching.

The staff were whispering.

And the house itself, ancient and moody, creaked as if it too was confused by this sudden outbreak of sanity.

Whether this new Lucien could save what remained of the D’Claire legacy was yet to be seen.

But for the first time in years, the estate didn’t smell like expired cologne and emotional damage.

It smelled… hopeful.

Also slightly burnt.

(One of the chimneys was still broken. No one had gotten around to fixing it. Baby steps.)

***

It hit me while I was brushing my teeth with a toothpaste so floral and decadent I felt like I was rubbing my molars with crushed pearls and lavender royalty.

Mid-scrub, I paused, the brush still in my mouth.

“Wait a second…”

I mumbled through a foam beard.

“The Academy arc doesn’t start until the second year of Imperial enrollment, which is around…”

My eyes widened.

I dropped the brush dramatically into the gold-rimmed sink.

“Oh hell. How old am I right now!?”

And then I did something that, in hindsight, was exactly the kind of thing someone who’s technically possessed by a shut-in would do.

Still foaming at the mouth and in a fluffy robe I was ninety-percent sure was made from unicorn hair, I marched out into the hallway like a man on a mission.

Half-damp hair?

Check.

One slipper?

Check.

Minty death grip on a toothbrush?

Absolutely.

“Excuse me!”

I called, spotting a maid arranging a flower vase with the sort of precision that screamed ‘please don’t talk to me.’

She froze.

Her eyes locked on my wild-eyed, toothpaste-foaming replicating that rabies in a wild dog and the overall visage was the kind of look you would give a lunatic who just staggered out of an opera house wearing nothing but a towel and confidence.

“Y-yes, Young Master?”

She replied, hands trembling over a rose.

“How old am I right now?”

I asked, voice dead serious.

She blinked.

“Pardon?”

“My age. Me. Current. Right now.”

I pointed at my own face like I was doing performance art.

“I need to know how many years old this body is.”

She gawked at me as if I had asked whether birds had political parties.

“Y-You turned twenty this past spring, Young Master…”

“THANK YOU.”

I spun on my heel and marched back into my room, leaving a trail of dripping foam and one very traumatized floral arrangement behind me.

Back in my suite, after spitting, rinsing, and having a short but emotional moment with the towel, I stared at the mirror in grim silence.

“I’m twenty,” I said to my reflection.

“Which means…”

“The story doesn’t start until I’m twenty-one.”

‘I have a year.’

I blinked.

And then I laughed.

I cackled.

“A full year! Twelve glorious months! That’s unheard of in isekai! Usually, you get isekaied into a boss fight, or a harem misunderstanding, or worse, a farm. But me? I get time. Glorious, delicious, prep-time.”

Time to scheme.

Time to train.

Time to become not a corpse!

“Holy crap,” I whispered.

“I’m gonna make it. I’m gonna survive. I can raise a spy network. Learn forbidden arts. Maybe even…”

I paused, eyes gleaming.

“...develop a skincare routine.”

But my grin faded.

“If I have a year…”

That means he has a year too.

The joy in my chest withered like a leaf in winter.

Leonardo.

That filthy, conniving, obsessive bastard.

If I had twelve months to prep, so did he.

And if that wasn’t bad enough…

The montage.

The afterlife preview.

The smug smile.

“He’s already met her.”

My stomach twisted.

“That stalker freak speedran the game.”

Of course he did.

That lunatic was obsessed.

He probably had cheat sheets, flowcharts, save backups by the megabyte.

Probably roleplayed romantic dialogue in the mirror every night with the conviction of a method actor and the sanity of a damp toaster.

And I just knew, knew in my bones, that he had already said something poetic and manipulative like, “You remind me of starlight in the dusk,” or some emotionally predatory garbage like that.

“I should kill him,” I muttered, deadpan.

“Just find where he lives and fold him like laundry.”

But it wouldn’t work.

Even if I turned him into compost, he would just pop back like a Disney princess with better lighting.

Because she, the Heroine, has Reincarnation Magic.

So long as she loved him, truly and deeply, the magic would always bring him back.

She could wish him back from hell itself.

And I’m not sure she wouldn’t.

“That’s so stupid,” I groaned, dragging my hands down my face.

“She literally has a stalker-respawn spell.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, stewing in toothpaste-scented doom.

But…