1. The Villainess Returns

“Senior? Senior!”

Someone shook me up.

I jumped up. And looked around.

A simple, beggarly student laboratory, and cheap laboratory equipment..

‘What? I was in prison just a moment ago.’

“You can’t sleep here. I know you are crazy about your degree, but please keep the student lab hours.”

Suddenly, I heard the blunt voice of a junior who woke me up.

‘Wait a second, this junior.. ’

He doesn’t have any skills, but he’s a relative of the dean, so he’s a kid who kept getting listed as a co-author with me on research projects.

I was confused about the current situation, so I responded timidly, reflexively.

“Dr. Nabrang, what are you doing ? Get out of here, or I’ll beat your epithelial cells with a pendulum exercise!”

“ What do you mean I’m a doctor?.. You still aren’t awake from your dream?”

The junior clicked his tongue and left the lab.

‘What? What really happened?’

I first checked the lab coat I was wearing.

‘Wait, this.. The one I wore when I was in my PhD?’

I just said ‘Doctor Nabrang’ for nothing..

I blinked, and inadvertently saw the headline of a newspaper thrown in front of the lab door, startled and ran.

<Breaking News> Melissa Prelai returns the surname of Prelai and applies as a priestess to Erloa Monastery.

“Hey, what the hell is this?”

Declared that she would dedicate his life to service.

The date on the paper was surprisingly a year before her last memory.

“I’ll go back in time. With all these memories, I’m going back to a year ago. So I’m going to go straight to the monastery and live a life that has nothing to do with the Prelai duchy. I will never die in vain like this!”

‘What, did the real Melissa turn back her time with her divine powers?’

I was dumbfounded.

At any rate, I was amazed by all of this, so I immediately sent a letter to the monastery where Melissa was.

Since it was a story related to treason, I kept my words as low as possible, fearing that the pod would be caught later.

‘Since I used the word ‘after’, you’ll notice that I’ve returned with my memories, too, right?’

It’s because I thought it was enough to communicate anyway.

‘First of all, the fact that I sent her a letter is surprising. Of course you’ll understand.’

After sending the letter to the monastery, I locked myself in the dormitory. Because I had to make some plans for what to do next.

‘.. Anyway, is this all because of Prince Heaton?’

Once I got Melissa’s reply, I decided to move on. Thinking of as many different numbers as possible.

But after a few days.

It was when I was confined to my room like a dead person and was making my 184th plan. With a ‘tock-tock’ sound, something bright yellow knocked on the window.

“Well?”

In a room covered with memo papers with the numbers of all kinds of cases written down, I looked at the window with wide eyes over my glasses.

“What are you.. ”

I mumbled blankly after discovering the main character of the sound ‘tock tock’.

“.. Could it be Pyeol?”

Melissa’s pet, a yellow lark, Pyeol came to me with an envelope in her mouth.

As soon as I received the letter, Pyeol started flapping his fluffy wings and chattering.

<Kiana, I’m on Melissa’s side.. >

And I greeted Pyeol and said kindly.

“It’s chaotic, so you should close you beak first, Try chirping when I am done reading.”

<JJang!>

I closed Pyeol’s mouth like that and opened the letter.

Kiana, long time no see. You always grumbled at me, but in fact you were worried about me a lot.

What did you say?

I frowned for a moment.

‘Isn’t the content a bit strange? What are you talking about after a long time and what are you worried about..’

Everyone else saw you and called you a spoiled aristocrat mad with jealousy. But I’ve always believed that there is a tiny bit of goodness in you.

Even if your last words were a threat, ‘You, next time we meet, I will make you remove the seeds from the strawberries I will eat’.

I quickly skimmed through the following.

I woke up one morning, and suddenly I had the idea that I should become a priestess and enter a monastery. Isn’t this a revelation from God?

Well?

Didn’t she say with her own mouth, ‘I don’t want to die, so I’m going to go to the monastery by myself!’?

Now I’m leaving for volunteer work with the other priestesses, so I won’t be able to contact you for a while. So goodbye.

The content was finished as it was, with only one postscript attached.

p.s. Finally, I will enclose a meaningful gift for you while deeply appreciating your insignificant kindness that only I have noticed.

In an instant, my eyes widened.

‘A meaningful gift?’

Could it be that [I pass all my property to my damn human cousin, Kiana]?

It was time for me to turn the envelope over.

<Jjang!>

At my command from the side, Pyeol, who had been silent, appeared with two short wings and intervened.

<That gift is me, Kiana!>

Before I knew it, even the messy ribbon that had been rolling around on my desk was hanging around my neck.

<Melissa is no longer Prelai, so she thought she didn’t need a summon pet. That’s why she sent me to Kiana.>

“What?”

I almost dropped the letter I was holding in surprise.

Anyone from the Prelai duchy could handle summoned beasts. Usually, around the age of eight, each summoned their own summons.

Each of the summoned beasts had various abilities that were helpful to their masters.

‘Except me..’

But even when I got older, I couldn’t summon a summoned beast. There was a reason why I left the duke’s residence and came to the academy in this village.

But now it’s not that important..

‘No, isn’t it too much to throw away the summoned beast while abandoning Prelai’s surname?’

<It’s very difficult to turn back time with divine power. How could it have worked out for Melissa?>

While I was dumbfounded, Pyeol lay quietly on my bed and said,

<At that time, I was in contact with Kiana.. It seems like something went wrong and only me and Kiana had the memory of regression, not Melissa.>

“Oh my gosh”

<Well, I don’t know for sure about divine power, but that’s roughly what I figured out.>

I blankly recalled the situation at that time.

Pyeol was slumped at Melissa’s feet, and I was shaking Melissa’s shoulder, telling her to come to her senses.

Yes.. contact is contact..

t/n: the reason why she came back with memories was due to her being in contact with melissa while she was using her powers.

“So what about Melissa?”

<She didn’t even know she had returned. However, her final decision, ‘she will become a priestess and give up the name of Prelai,’ seemed brainwashed.>

Pyeol flapped her wings and explained.

<So she said that as soon as she returned, she would go straight to the monastery.>

If so, I could understand the contents of the letter as if she was somewhere in a flower garden.

He had no memory of anything before her return. And she just thought that she had suddenly attained enlightenment while living, so she became a priestess.

Perhaps we regressed at the same time, but I was asleep at the time, so it seemed that Melissa’s movements were quicker.

“So Pyeol, didn’t you tell Melissa about her return?”

<Yes.>

Pyeol confidently nodded her head.

<Melissa is no longer Prelai. Summoned beasts are not loyal to non-Prelai. Even if it’s malicious, it’s better to go to another Prelai.>

To be recognized as Prelai by Melissa’s pet and not by anyone else. The feeling was really strange.

However, the ‘act of summoning’ was important. So, even if Pyeol was given over by Melissa, that didn’t mean I summoned the beast as a true Prelai.

As I sighed, Pyeol pounded the bed with his little wings and grumbled.

<The bed here is really bad. The room as a whole is stuffy. No, did the 16-year-old Kiana run out of the Duke Prelai’s mansion with such a ruckus just to come to a place like this?>

He’s already beating people with words.

First of all, I kindly gave advice on the attitude of life as owner.

“Pyeol, you can’t lie down in front of the master already. Get up right now .”

<Oh my, look at her personality already abusing her power because she is the owner. It’s exactly what I expected.>

However, Pyeol was also not normal.

<Prelai Pyeol is too tired to make it all the way to this corner of the country. Even if it’s a cheap bed like the one of a beggar, I need to rest for a while.>

That lark with only a mouth..

It was a truly equal and cheerful atmosphere that did not really say a word to each other.

Anyway, thanks to Pyeol, I finally figured out the situation. The only ones who knew the future were me and Pyeol.

Hmm, then..

<But Kiana, what is all this?>

While I was lost in my thoughts, Pyeol looked at the notes on the wall and said a word.

<Does it make you dizzy just by looking at it? It makes me feel like a real?loser in the room.”.>

I looked at Pyeol and answered.

“These are just, um, traces of thinking about what to do next.”

<Yes? Are you worried?>

“If it continues at this rate, I think the Prelai duke family will be helplessly defeated by Prince Heaton again. Then I am helplessly hanged.”

<So?>

“In the end, I have no choice but to save the ducal family in danger somehow.”

<But.. Did you think about it this much?>

Pyeol looked around and gave an expression of embarrassment for some reason.

“Yes, I’m a bit of a hard worker.”

<Um.. Well, yes. But is it possible for Kiana to rescue the duke? Kiana is stuck in the country and doesn’t know a thing about the Empire right now. Doesn’t she just know who’s behind it? Is it too far to go?>

“Right. As you cheekily pointed out, I don’t know anything right now.”

I readily agreed.

“So I was really stumped, but now I have a pretty good solution.”

<What if there is a solution?>

I smiled as I looked at Pyeol, who tilted his head.

“Don’t you know about the future events of the empire? You must have been in the Empire the whole time because you were next to Melissa.”

<..Yeah? Wait a minute, then the solution is.. >

“Lets go.”

I said, taking out a new notepad and pen.

“Tell me everything you know. Anything, even the smallest thing. I’ll have to re-analyze the situation by adding each one to the memo. Can you give me two weeks?”

<Yes?>

With a far-off face, Pyeol opened his beak.

<2 weeks? Kiana, how can you be so full of venom? Just like a person made up of tenacity..>

“Beep.”

I cut off Pyeol’s words with a straight face.

My major was magic engineering based on mathematics and science, and I couldn’t stand it.

My major was magic engineering based on math and science, and I couldn’t stand such words.

“I’m made up of neurons”

<.....>