Imprinted with the Obsessive Male Lead - Chapter 3

“Why did it have to be this one?”

I had become Nita Grace.

<A Kind and Gentle Tomorrow> was a novel I had read while looking for a healing story to cope with job-hunting stress. It told the tale of Vivian, a female lead with outstanding magical talent, saving the Empire.

After the World Tree withered and died, unrefined mana began to pollute the land of the Empire. The story begins with Vivian heading to the North in search of her missing younger sister. It was a slice-of-life healing novel with very little romance and a slight touch of bleakness. After meeting the male lead, Chase, Vivian uses her purification ability to erase mana and cleanse the contaminated land, gradually gaining the people’s admiration. A fairly standard progression.

And I, Nita Grace, was that missing younger sister.

In a soft, all-ages, fluffy healing novel, I was the only role that received no healing at all. A miserable supporting character destined to be dragged away by a madman lurking behind the scenes, used in experiments, and die.

I was, quite literally, the existence farthest removed from anything like a kind and gentle tomorrow.

To think I’d been thrown overnight not onto the job market front line, but the survival front line.

The Grace family, which had inherited the bloodline of mages for generations, judged a person’s worth strictly by ability. Within that family, Nita, who failed to manifest any power at all, was treated as a disgrace.

Despite being born with the intact blood of a Duke and Duchess who were both mages, she failed to awaken magical power. For that single reason, she was branded a failure, a dropout, an incompetent, vermin. She unwillingly bore a whole collection of horrific titles.

I looked down at my hands, reduced to skin and bone. A body emaciated from not being properly fed, cracked nails, rough skin, dark circles beneath my eyes from malnutrition. Long years of abuse that hadn’t stopped even after turning twenty.

“Idiots.”

But it wasn’t that Nita had failed to awaken magic. She possessed a purification ability stronger than anyone else’s.

The problem lay only in the way that ability manifested.

When the World Tree was still alive, refined mana was the most precious and beautiful power of all. But after the tree died, mana came to be treated as the most dangerous and filthy thing in the Empire.

Unrefined, powerful mana not only polluted the land, but could also turn people into monsters. Even if one was lucky enough not to become a monster, they would contract Graphite Disease. Their skin would harden like stone, and in the end, they would crumble into black ash and die.

That was why, in the present Empire, the most highly valued magical ability by far was the power to purify mana. And yet Nita, who possessed that purification ability, became a disgrace to her family because her parents hid that power for a certain reason.

The female lead Vivian manifested her ability at the age of twelve, during a visit to the Mage Tower with her parents. Nita had accompanied them that day as well. While Vivian was undergoing her test, the Duke and Duchess toured the archives with Nita.

There, among the research materials, was a stone containing collected mana. Curious, Nita touched it, and in an instant, absorbed the mana.

‘Disgusting. How did something like you come out of my womb!?’

‘You’re filthy. Don’t let anyone find out. If others learn about your power, they’ll kill you.’

Ordinary mana purification is done by deploying a magic circle in the air and purifying it that way. But Nita purified mana by absorbing it directly into her body.

That was the reason. The mana entered her body and became tainted.

To preserve the image of the great and immaculate Grace family, pure and untouched by mana, they abandoned their daughter solely for the sake of the family’s honor. In a situation like this, even if I told others, ‘Actually, I have an ability too!’, it would be hard to expect anything good to come of it. Most mages in the Mage Tower shared the same view as the Duke and Duchess.

Then what about trying to run away?

I scanned the room. The door was tightly locked, but if I smashed the window using that chair in the corner with one broken leg, it wouldn’t be impossible to escape.

But that would be suicide. The moment I leave the estate, the mastermind targeting me would appear. He had been at the Mage Tower in the past and happened to witness the day Nita’s power manifested. From that moment on, he had coveted the power of purification.

Unable to use my power here, and even if I escaped, I’d only be choosing a path straight toward death at the hands of the mastermind.

My vision went dizzy, then dark.

“This is the worst.”

I trudged over to the old bed beneath the window and lay down. Even staying still felt like I might collapse, and perhaps because I had lost blood, the dizziness was even worse.

Resting my head against a filthy pillow with all its stuffing gone, I thought,

‘No, there was no need to think. In this situation, there is only one way for me to survive.’

Be abandoned. Completely, just like the original Nita.

And then go to the male lead, Chase. The only man who could save me from both the family and the mastermind. The man who needed my ability more than anyone else.