The shower isn't definitely the perfect set-up for this, but with Lady's caretaker and bodyguard around, it'll have to make do.
She took her seat on top of the lid of the toilet, a pen and a piece of paper readied. To her pleasant surprise, she found it quite comfortable to sit there. Then again, considering that this is a five-star hotel, even the bathroom is of a whole different level compared to the small, shabby place she used to live in during her past life.
"Past life, huh? Don't know if I'll get used to that any time soon. Heck, I don't think I can even get used to this body. This is just all too mind-boggling..." she rambled to herself while she scratched her head.
"Which is why I'm here to go over the details again!"
For once, Lady will make use of her brain cells to their fullest potential - hopefully, her desperation to make sense of everything can make up for their small amount.
Firstly, she wrote down all the major details she could remember about the story she made - a story she titled, "The Princess of High School." It is kind of a cringe, she knows, but it is still meaningful to her since it has always been her dream to go to high school. Because of her sickness, she never got to enjoy her school life, and after learning that it's a rare condition that's difficult to cure, she knew that she'd most probably not make it past grade school.
So, Lady wrote a story about how she wanted her high school life to turn into.
"In the shoes of the protagonist, Sarah Gracelyn, I became a high school student...!" she enthused, starting to get a little excited.
"Sarah is a top student who is kind, smart, and beautiful! She's a commoner who earned a scholarship in the country's most prestigious academy, became very popular because of her beauty and wits, and was taken in as the step daughter of a business tycoon!"
And that tycoon is Lady's adoptive father, Maximilian.
It's a pretty straightforward plot with a Mary Sue of a heroine and a billionaire daddy cliche. There are conflicts, of course, but because it's the main character, it all works out for her somehow. Though it's not that great of a story, she had so much fun writing it - perhaps, much too much that she ended up making the villainess suffer big time.
Lady gulps.
"R-Right. Let us move on to the antagonist, Lady Mireille, who is apparently me..." she blurted out nervously as she began to write down her predetermined fate.
"Lady was adopted to act as Maximilian's illegitimate daughter. He faked her DNA, her personal information, and all of her other records just to make his relatives stop nagging him about marriage. Little did he know that he'd fall in love with the heroine's mother, Regina, whose husband died a long time ago."
That's when the rivalry between Lady and Sarah starts to heat up - with the former refusing to see her as a sister, and the latter unwillingly getting to her nerves and becoming her object of envy.
However, even before Maximilian falls in love with Regina, they're already in that kind of relationship. The villainess is jealous of the heroine who is just so perfect that she can practically get everything she wants, including the ones she has been struggling so hard to achieve.
Therefore, when Sarah also ended up earning Maximilian's genuine love, Lady vehemently protested to welcome her in the family.
"Selfish, greedy, prideful and arrogant..." she muttered as she thought about this particular character in terms of personality.
"Yep. Those smell like 'doom flag' to me."
In this case, the 'doom flag' came in the form of a plane ticket to the land of disowned daughters.
At the age of eighteen, Lady was kicked out of the Mireille household, got sent to a branch family abroad, and gradually lost her mind over the course of her confinement in a mental health facility there. What's worse, she's the only antagonist in the story who received a bad ending. Everyone else who went against the protagonist was either redeemed or started anew.
Again, Lady gulps.
"First, I was physically ill. Now, I'm going to end up mentally ill...?" she grumbled in dismay.
"Just how am I so unfortunate?"
She wrote Lady as an irredeemable villainess who only cared about herself. Even when she was practically exiled, she desired to take revenge on Sarah who, on the other hand, was good inside out.
However, if it wasn't for the antagonist, the protagonist wouldn't be able to reach where she was. The same goes for the supporting characters.
Because Lady is the main source of conflicts throughout the whole story, she led certain events to happen - events that're significant to the progression of the plot and the character development.
"In order for everyone, except Lady, to have a happy ending, they all have to play their respective roles..." was what Lady came to realize then, enlightened yet downhearted.
"I don't really want to play as the baddie, but if I stay as I am and try to be a goodie, I might end up derailing the plot, which then can ruin the characters' happy endings."
She has always seen herself in Sarah, so she will definitely root for her. Lady will keep her from attaining her happiness, but she's also the reason why she'll grow as a character.
In other words, the villainess is like a blessing in disguise to everyone in the story - when she fell, they rose.
"Oh, my precious little babies..." Lady sighed helplessly like some damsel in distress.
"Sarah deserves the happy ending I laid out for her. As her creator, I must make sure she will get it. This is not only for her sake. It's also for everyone else, especially Maximilian."
She thought about her adoptive father.
After meeting him earlier, she realized that she may have overdone her characterization of him. Because his frosty stoicism is his hugest yet one and only drawback, she has made him as cold-hearted as possible. However, in the future, someone will come and melt that cold heart of his.
And that someone is Regina.
"Only she and her daughter can baptize that devil with their all-mighty saintliness. They're one another's happy endings, after all..." Lady said to no one in particular, smiling wanly.
"I, on the other hand, am only someone who's trying to force herself in everyone's life. Even if I choose to be good, I still don't belong here. My adoptive father will never love me - no one probably will, and I'm fine with that. However, if that's just going to be the case, I don't have to force myself in anything - not in his life or anyone else's. I want to live my own life."
And so, Lady has come up with a decision.