The Villainess Fights with a Ledger

📖 Synopsis

You are the daughter of House Melvied, a ducal family, and high society whispers that you are the "villainess." A "script" of unknown origin is circulating through the salons: at the ball of the Millennial Founding Festival one year from now, the crown prince will break your engagement and condemn you. But three days ago, you recovered the memories of your past life. Ten years as an auditor, when the only thing you ever faced down was lies in ledgers.

Opening the family's books with fresh eyes, you found an unnatural gap in the accounts for the dowry fund entrusted by the Crown. Someone is embezzling, and preparing to pin the crime on you. You have a fair idea who, but not a single piece of proof yet. So this story is not a year spent cowering before rumors, but a year spent crushing the "grounds" for your condemnation one number at a time. Your weapon is the double-entry bookkeeping of your past life; your battlefield is the ledgers and the ballrooms. And it seems you are not the only one who knows how the script ends.

👥 Characters

Your fiance, Crown Prince Siegward, is a suspicious man who always tests people before trusting them. Having known your bad reputation only through reports, he begins to take the measure of the woman who fights with a ledger. And there is one more: Lucio Galvani, aide to the chancellor, who drops decisive advice while wearing the face of an ally. A brilliant upstart who climbed from a pawnbroker's family to the chancellery, his aim can never quite be read until the very end. How you win the trust of these two, or whether you fight on trusting no one, is for you to decide.

🎭 How to Play This Story

Examine ledgers and receipts, question the servants and the trading houses, maneuver at balls. The moves are yours to make. But a lady with a head for numbers is easily underestimated at court, and the more you act, the more wary the steward becomes. Reading how much of your hand to reveal will be one of the pleasures of this story. What happens on the night of the condemnation is decided by everything built up until then, which is to say, by how you spend your year. Your choices change who stands beside you on the night of the Millennial Festival.