I used to be a nerdy weirdo who liked romance fantasy games, even though I was a guy. Something about the main character being a hot powerful girl appealed to me, I liked the strategy components, and I gave bonus points if there was a girl-on-girl romance option.

And yes, I was bullied at school. But a few months before I died, I got some revenge karma. One of my bullies' girlfriends, a popular girl, was filming the whole thing on her phone. She even followed when they dragged me into the bathroom and commanded her boyfriend to shove my head in the toilet bowl. It was weirdly sweet when she stumbled into a broken power outlet in a puddle of water and got electrocuted to death. But my social life still didn't improve after that, so I stayed home and played more and more games and stole from my parents' liquor stash.

The game I was playing just before I died didn't have any girl-on-girl love choices, but it had lots of battle gameplay and a cute main character. I was in the middle of playing the harem route.

I really didn't mean to drink too much that night and hit my head on the bathtub and die drowning, but there you go ...

Next thing I knew, I was pulled from a stream while I gasped for air, I was much smaller, and not long after that I realised I was a girl.

Not just any girl, but a peasant girl in medieval Europe. At least I thought it was medieval times until I saw a guy in the streets doing magic, actual magic rather than just street tricks. My new mother and father, the Morningstar farming family, called me Noelle.

Wait ... this is just like the video game I was playing! I reincarnated as the main character!

Unfortunately, my special magic was sealed away and wouldn't get unsealed until I hit puberty, my so-called father couldn't stand me, and I lived on a shitty medieval peasant farm with lots of chores and a gross outhouse with snakes rustling around the area. My life sucked.

But finally it was time for the game to begin. Noelle Morningstar's special powers kicked in, I got noticed, and I was ready to go to magic school.

I reviewed the cheat code notes I'd written for myself. Red hair, the Knight, the standard romance. Silver hair, the Crown Prince going incognito, the most prestigious romance. Green hair and glasses, the nerdy obsessive one. Purple hair, my evil 'stepsister' and the main antagonist.

Long story short, the Duke was secretly Noelle Morningstar's father, but before she was born he was married to an evil lady who cheated on him and produced Dromio von Hexenwick, the villainess. Then he fell in love with Noelle's mother, but the Duchess didn't like that, so she chased the poor woman into the forest trying to murder her with her baby. The Silver Fairy happened on the scene and sided with Noelle's mother, so she executed Dromio's mother and blessed Noelle - me - with my amazing magic powers. Then my mother went into hiding and married her old peasant sweetheart, but he resented me so it wasn't a great ending.

Now I'd be sure to gather all the evidence against Dromio and beat her at magic so I could take her place as the Duke's real daughter, then see her executed or exiled in my happy ending.

I waited for the cutscene to begin. It was the first day of school. I was at the gates while the nobles were arriving. Dromio, carrying a large hat box, was supposed to dump the thing on top of me and tell me to take it up to her bedroom like a servant, then when I said I was a student she'd mock my clothing and tell me to know my place as a peasant. I watched her get out of the carriage.

But this version actually wasn't carrying anything, though her maid wrestled with the gigantic gold-edged suitcase I remembered from the game. Dromio swept forward with her hands free. I met her dark eggplant-coloured eyes and her lips twitched. Then she just went upstairs.

What's going on?

Red-hair was supposed to approach the heroine and ask if she was okay. That didn't happen this time. I sidled in Silver-hair's direction - the prince was masquerading as just an ordinary student, of course. Maybe I could trigger a different cutscene by asking him about class schedules. Silver answered politely but I felt like he wanted to leave the entire time, then Green-hair called and they headed out together.

It was frustrating. I did pretty well in my classes, but none of the game characters responded to any of the hints I threw down to get the game back on track. Dromio didn't bully me at all, although I overheard her make bitchy comments about some of the aristo girls who were outside her circle.

One day in a tutorial group, Dromio's neighbour nudged her at the wrong time and made her spill an ink blot over her book. I quickly grabbed my blotting paper and handed it to her before the bit character got hers out.

"Thank you," Dromio told me politely. "You're Noelle Morningstar, aren't you? The scholarship student. You must be very talented."

Then she whipped back around to the blonde girl who'd spilt the ink and muttered something to her. From the look on the girl's face, it wasn't very nice.

That's it! She's bitchy sometimes but not to me. She's getting in my way of winning the game on purpose!

I fluttered my eyelashes and heavy-breathed a lot in the direction of one of the bit-part guys, a male character who wasn't even in the game but who was twin brother of one of Dromio's hangers-on. Eventually, Mr. Forgettable escorted me to one of Dromio's weekend tea parties. I ditched him as soon as possible and made a curtsy to the leading purple-haired lady.

"Lady Dromio, thank you so much for your kind invitation! Please accept my small gift," I said. It had cost me a lot of bleeding fingers to do the cross stitch the way I wanted it. "Though it's not so magnificent as the Tokyo Tower ... or glorious as the Taj Mahal ... or famous as Sailor Moon ... "

I saw her startle. Everyone else was just weirded out by my foreign sounding words. Dromio rapidly opened the gift with her long purple nails and saw a classic pattern made in cross stitch. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.

"Thank you, Miss Morningstar. Would you like to take a turn around the garden with me? You are so gifted in your studies, and I would love to discuss ... the Astronomy assignment."

"You speak English?" I said in what I remembered of that language, on another planet in another time.

"Hate English. Disgusting class," she said in Japanese. Great. We'd come from the same country.

"Prime Minister?" I asked.

Crap. It was the same one.

"You played Bright Morningstar Princess?" I said.

"It was my favourite game. Yours too?"

"It had cool battle gameplay. You ever play Sword Girl Destiny?"

"That was a crap fanservice game for shut-ins jerking off in their bedrooms. Did you ever try Angel of the Kingdom?"

"That was a shit dating sim for silly girls, no yuri options and no strategy."

Something about the way Dromio spoke Japanese, from her accent and more, seemed horribly familiar to me from memories I would much rather have kept buried.

"So you've been cheating this game," I accused her.

"Yep! It was pretty easy. All the male leads grew up with me as kids, so I just had to play nice and not horsewhip any servants in front of them. We all got to be friends and the Crown Prince even told me his incognito identity." She laughed. "As if his silver hair didn't give it away, what a joke!"

"Then what the hell do I do?" I said. "Are you going for the harem ending or what?"

Dromio laughed again. "Yeah, how about no," she said. "They still like chop your head off here if you so much as think about a handjob before marriage, so I'm a good girl. I'll probably pick the Crown Prince since we're already engaged and let's face it, he's the best option. You can have Red or Green or whatever, but they're kind of not paying attention to you since I kind of stole all your main story events. My bad!"

Well, even if I wasn't going to get the best ending with the powerful love interest, I was still a hot girl with magic powers. Fuck Dromio.

"I can go tell your father I'm his real daughter," I said. She laughed again.

"Good luck! I destroyed most of the evidence already, and Daddy will keep me around for all the political benefits. At best you'll be my younger sister. Also, my dad is a shitty piece of shit, refer to the way he cheated on his wife and nearly got your mom killed, so it wouldn't be great for you.

"But look, I've really missed talking about Earth, everyone here would think I'm crazy," Dromio went on. "Let's do a truce and I'll get you a good palace job so that we can be our own otome game fanclub, okay? You got any fave yaoi pairings? I'll pay if you draw me some doujinshi!"

I was getting seriously upset with her. "Hey, were you from Kumamoto Prefecture?" I asked. She jerked in surprise.

"Yeah. Taragi Town."

"And you died because you stepped into a puddle full of electricity in the boys' toilets, right?"

She glared at me. "Yeah. So you know me."

"Yeah, and fuck you," I said.

Then for the first time in many years, I heard my own name spoken out loud. I returned the favour by calling her a bitch.

"Cool, so I fucked you over in two different lives," she said. "Did you top yourself? Oh, an accident? I guess that's good. I always assumed you were gay, but it seems you were into girls after all. You're sad that this game didn't have any yuri pairings, right?"

I was, but it felt stupid to worry about now.

"I'm a hot girl, you're a hot girl," Dromio went on, thrusting her chest and breathing heavily at me. I had to admit it, typical for this sort of game, she was hot. "I can't have affairs with guys due to the head chopping thing, but I'm bi, did I mention that? And I've been a really bad girl to you. How about we add that yuri option?"

She was very demanding but it was oddly satisfying, I thought, after learning how to tie proper knots and getting to know the angles Dromio preferred to be punished at. She married the Crown Prince, helped me get a job as a parliamentary mage researcher after graduation, and we continued our affair behind closed doors. I was even the Queen's private secretary for a while.

But it turned out that a twenty-first century mindset wasn't very helpful in ruling a medieval fantasy country. When the revolution came, the King and Queen got the guillotine while I escaped to a neighbouring country that had already figured out parliamentary democracy. As a powerful magician, I found good work and ended my days as a peaceful exile.

fin