『MV:INEBCEBTH』Arc-1 Ch-2

The Moment of Awakening The moment I was born with a cry and gained awareness, I heard unfamiliar words from the mouth of my wet nurse.

 “You are of the bloodline of the Keika-in Ducal House, after all.

…Excuse me?

Why does a nobility system still exist in modern Japan!?

No—wait, more importantly, the Keika-in family!?

That name sounds ridiculously familiar!

Of course, none of my indignant retorts could come out properly. My mouth only managed slurred baby noises—“auu, auu”—and before I could even begin to process why I was alive when I should have been dead, or why I’d become a toddler, my thoughts were swept away by urgency. There was something I needed to confirm.

 “Unya?”

 “Yes, yes, there there.”

The wet nurse gently rocked me in her arms.

No good. She didn’t get it. One more time!

 “E—aiin unya?”

 “Yes, yes, unya~~~ unya~~~”

It didn’t get through!

One more time!!

 “E~kaiin runya?”

"Oh my! Lady Runa, that’s right. Your name is Runa—Keika-in Runa-sama.”

 “Una~~~~~~!!!!!”

"Yes, Runa. Ru. Na!”

Keika-in Runa. The name of the villainess from my favorite otome game. The very same villainess who, on September 15th, at the age of eighteen, is condemned by the game’s protagonist and the handsome love interests—

and falls into complete ruin.

Ruin…

The villainess destined for ruin…

This is way too ominous!

From that moment on, and for quite some time after, my entire life could be described as one long effort to confirm a single question: Had I truly been reincarnated as Keika-in Runa, the ducal lady doomed to destruction?

1. Promised Ruin

This one was unclear. There was no way to verify it yet. At the very least, not until I could find out whether or not I could resist my supposed fate—so I shelved it for later.

2. Whether I Had Become Keika-in Runa, the Ducal Lady?

This took quite a bit of time to confirm. My name and title as a ducal lady were easy enough to check. But there was still the possibility that it was just a coincidence—a different girl with the same name. So I recalled the names of Runa’s relatives from the game’s setting, comparing them one by one.

The result?

They all matched perfectly. At the very least, I couldn’t deny it anymore.

3. Whether I Had Been Reincarnated Inside the Game

This, fortunately, was answered rather quickly—with a firm no. Leaving aside the absence of things like favorability chimes when I met new people or choice windows that might only appear for the protagonist, just looking at the scenery around me was enough to know it was different.

The sky wasn’t a flat sheet of blue, white, and black lines, nor did it have clouds that stayed the same shape unless an event triggered rain.

There were shades, shadows, and countless tiny details—changing constantly, overwhelmingly real. The trees in the garden were the same: alive, irregular, impossibly natural. There was simply no way this was inside a game. The people around me were another clue. Their responses weren’t uniform—they changed, adapted, with infinite variations. Nothing about them felt scripted.

Unless this was some kind of cyber-world like in a certain famous movie— a simulation of the real world so perfect that even it simulated another world inside itself—then this couldn’t be a game.

And if it were that kind of simulation, it would be indistinguishable from reality anyway, so it might as well be treated as real. In that case, this must be what’s known as a parallel world.

A world very similar to my original one—adjacent, yet not identical. If that was true, I needed to investigate exactly how this world differed from the one where I was born, lived, and died miserably unnoticed…and decide how to act based on those findings.

Because even if this wasn’t the game world, if it was close enough in structure— and if my fate mirrored that of the villainess—then ruin awaited me all the same.

And so, I had to struggle.

Even when I was only two or three, I would pretend I knew how to read and pore over the encyclopedias in the study. The history written there was clearly different from the one I knew.

 “Ah. The Pacific War is written as just ‘surrender.’

Normandy failed, and Germany fought to the end… What on earth happened here…?”

Leaving aside the finer details, the Japan of this world followed a history subtly different from the real one—but roughly the same path overall.

During the East–West Cold War, it sided with the West, dispatched troops to the Manchurian War (which probably corresponded to my world’s Korean War) and later to the Vietnam War.

It even sent forces to the Gulf War that occurred in between, joining as a core member of the multinational coalition. Still, it seemed intervention by the Allied powers had been unavoidable, which explained the creation of the Self-Defense Forces—an interesting twist.

The House of Peers had become the House of Councillors after several reforms, shifting political power toward the House of Representatives and elected members.

They’d probably tried to tweak the setting around the “villainess’s noble title,” too.

I could imagine the game developers’ struggle. Another area the game must’ve wrestled with: the zaibatsu conglomerates. In my original world, after Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, the zaibatsu were dissolved and replaced by looser corporate groups. But because this Japan had surrendered rather than unconditionally surrendered, the zaibatsu survived.

Still, their corruption hadn’t been erased.

During the current bubble collapse, many of the weaker ones were crushed—a sort of second zaibatsu dissolution. 

The Teia Group—the conglomerate led by the game’s capture target, Teia Eiichi—had grown by absorbing those weaker companies during the reorganization, becoming one of Japan’s leading corporate giants. It was still standing now, but burdened with enormous non-performing loans.

I had always wondered how it hadn’t collapsed.

Then I remembered the in-game relationship chart. The Izumikawa family, from which the political-clan heir Yujirou came, had a heavyweight within the Ministry of Finance.

Meanwhile, Gotoh Mitsuya’s father would later become the ministry’s administrative vice-minister. Ah, of course—this was a classic “too big to fail” case.

They’d survived through a national bailout!

Since the group owned several banks, the plan must have been to enlarge through bailout mergers and secure special financing from the Bank of Japan. That was their survival strategy.

I got sidetracked.

My own family, the Keika-in family, had originally been a Hua (court noble) lineage—descended from an imperial family branch that had entered commoner status. The main line was extinguished during wartime, but my grandfather, Keika-in Hikomaro, was adopted into it.

Despite his refined name, he had been born as an illegitimate child of another family and had entered the Ministry of Home Affairs.

He rose through the ranks of the police bureaucracy, eventually becoming an inspector of the Special Higher Police, and was drawn into a major political upheaval in wartime Japan.

He led the investigation into a prime minister’s assassination case, but after the typically “Japanese-style” inconclusive result—case closed, culprit unknown—he resigned from the ministry. Afterward, as though rewarded for his silence, he inherited the defunct Keika-in family name and was granted the ducal title. As an upstart noble, he naturally made many enemies.

But the secrets of his political rivals, uncovered during his time as a police officer, became the foundation of our family’s rise. When Japan’s defeat left its factories intact, the country rebuilt by continuously selling military supplies through the Manchurian War, Chinese Civil War, and Vietnam War—and the Keika-in family prospered alongside it.

The core of our empire was Keika-in Pharmaceuticals. After the war, it supplied medicine to the Self-Defense Forces during overseas deployments, amassing great wealth.

Through that success, we came to control Keika-in Chemical Industry, Keika-in Shipping, Keika-in Trading Company, Keika-in Warehouse, Keika-in Marine Insurance, Far Eastern Bank, Far Eastern Life, Far Eastern Hotel, and Far Eastern Land Development—expanding into a mid-tier zaibatsu that soared with the bubble and suffered in its aftermath.

The engagement between me and Teia Eiichi, the story’s central axis, had been partly arranged to rescue the faltering Keika-in conglomerate. A pharmaceutical company that profited from war…

A former Special Higher Police inspector who knew Japan’s underbelly…

…Let’s just pretend I didn’t see that.

It’s too heavy for a child this age. I closed the encyclopedia with a soft pat and left the study.

✧✧✧✧✧

In the hallway, I idly played with the strands of blonde hair reflected in the mirror.

It was strange for a Japanese girl to have such fair skin and golden hair—but I supposed they’d worked hard on that too. The game developers must’ve gone through hell to justify it.

My grandfather, having seized power and wealth, was notoriously flamboyant with women, reportedly having affairs with countless mistresses. Among them was a woman descended from exiled Russian nobility. My father was born from that union, but naturally, he wasn’t recognized as legitimate at first and lived on the fringes of the family.

Eventually, some people approached him with a business proposal. It was the Far Eastern Group, formed around exiled Russians. Without my grandfather’s knowledge, they borrowed the Keika-in name and assets, married my father to one of their ladies, and expanded their business under the Far Eastern Group banner—eventually becoming independent.

But when it was discovered that the Far Eastern Group had ties to an Eastern spy organization established for Western tech espionage, the situation had already reached a point where no one could benefit. My Russian mother died shortly after giving birth to me, and my father—shielded by noble immunity—had his investigation dropped, only to “commit suicide” soon after.

I never knew my parents’ faces.

By then, my grandfather—the only one who could’ve resolved the mess with an iron fist—was already dead, and the Eastern bloc had collapsed.

To settle the scandal quietly, as a kind of national policy, the Keika-in conglomerate absorbed the Far Eastern Group. And right after that… the bubble burst. The Keika-in Group, now saddled with non-performing loans, was destined to be absorbed by the Teia Group. At that point, I had no allies.

In reality, I lived apart from the main household, in a detached mansion with my wet nurses.

Yeah. It’s twisted. I’ll struggle.

And from the Teia Group’s perspective, there was no real reason to remain engaged to me. Could it be that the annulment was planned from the very beginning?

All I had was this beauty that could pass for Western—and this radiant blonde hair.

And just a little knowledge from my previous life.

Ah. So this beauty is the compensation, isn’t it?

For being properly, spectacularly dumped.

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Footnotes 

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Hua Clan

The so-called nobility.

Researching this reveals the tangled mud of both the military-born noble families (descended from daimyo) and the ancient court families.

Pacific War — “Surrender”

In reality, it was “unconditional surrender.”

In Kant○i terms, that’s a C-rank defeat.

Bank of Japan Special Financing

The Bank of Japan’s last trump card.

This measure saved Yamaichi Securities—but when it couldn’t be used again, Yamaichi collapsed.

Special Higher Police

A notorious organization of terror, known for its deadly clashes with communists.

Keika-in Pharmaceuticals

Loosely inspired by the film version of The Inugami Family.

10/1

Added to the opening per reader feedback.