Chapter Text
It wasn’t that Hinata did not expect this. Greediness has always been both his strength and waterloo. He probably got careless. Drunk in power and fame, he made a few missteps somewhere. He just didn’t think he would get betrayed. He had made sure he got them wrapped around his little fingers. Or that is what he initially thought of.
Was it Lord Kinoshita?
Kneeling down, he scans the crowd below the platform. He clicks his tongue at the pitiful sight of the little lordling. No, that man is too far gone to ever betray him.
Was it Lord Aone then? Or Lord Matsukawa? Lord Terushima? Master Kenma? Lord Konoha? Lord Hyakuzawa?
Was it not enough for him to bend over and be taken repeatedly? Used like a hole pleasure so he can go about his way and climb the top? Who betrayed him?
Hinata had hardly believed in any of them. They were merely tread on a stair for him to use. There shouldn’t be any hard feelings. They did use him too. Countless times for their own selfish interest and impure intentions. They were as evil as he was.
He looks at the trembling form of Yamaguchi Tadashi. He snarls, a feeling of spite and grudge overtaking his bones. In truth, he never hated the shy Omega. It was just unfortunate that Yamaguchi was the object of affection of the cold-hearted Marquis. He hated the Marquis with a passion deeper than the Moonlit river.
Who was he not to play with everything that the Marquis loves? After the humiliation and abuse he had to endure because of that bastard’s hatred to illegitimate children? Was it his fault to be born out of wedlock? Was it his fault that his bastard of a father forced himself to a mere baron’s daughter? Was it his fault that his mother killed herself after giving birth to him?
Who was he to be hated by the Marquis for a circumstance that he doesn’t have any say in?
He will do every vile deed again, in the next lifetime and the next after that, if it means that the Marquis will be miserable. The Marquis deserves thrice the hell that he had gone through. He is a pompous bastard, cold and unforgiving and horribly Alphan. If he was only an Alpha, he would not have needed to open his legs to anyone just to taste a sliver of what the Marquis was born with.
Wasn’t it unfair? Him, an Omega bastard, against an elite Alpha? What the fuck are the gods thinking? His life was nothing but a nasty jest to laugh at by all these unassuming cruel people beneath him, by the elites who did nothing but mock his existence before he gained himself a seat in the High Society, by him .
Hinata glares at everyone in spite of the loud jeers booming.
These people below lived a better life than he was. He was basically a high-end prostitute with a thirst for power, opening his legs to buy things he was deprived of. A ruined Omega with no chance of ever being picked by an Alpha.
Disgusting as they say. Ruined in the most humiliating demeanor.
Yet, they are the same people who had adored him so, revered him like he was a saint. But their affections were shallow. Hinata never believed in them. Even when they had offered the whole world, Hinata could only pretend to give them back the paltry affection he held. He was right, as he always is. As soon as they got a wind of his terrible misdeeds, they turned their swords his way.
What a bunch of pathetic fools.
“Do you have any last word, Hinata Shouyou?”
No longer a Master, Hinata grits his teeth. He should have just been abandoned by a river or something, he might have lived a good life as a beggar. He hated himself for being caught. He hated people who betrayed him when he trusted them. He hated his family for turning him into this atrocious villain. He hated Marquis Tsukishima for turning his life into hell even more. He hated how this should end just like this after going through so much to gain power.
“It’s not my fault.” He mutters before repeating it. Twenty-four years of misery explodes within him and out of his lips. He does not hold back with every poisonous claim pouring out of his wilted chest, so he curses them and wills them all to burn with him as he says, “You laugh and sneer at my fall from grace. But do not forget, you all play a great role to my end, you hypocrites. At the end of the day, you’re all hateful beings who thrive on the misery of others. Isn’t that right, Marquis Tsukishima?”
He slides a wretched look at the silent Marquis. He smiles despite the ache that plagued him. He is just so tired now. His bones had grown weary with the weight of the manacles that he was forced to wear. There is nothing in this world for him anymore. He is back to square one, no power nor fame nor even a friend.
Hinata lifts his head up until the crowds and the buildings disappear from his view and all he could see is the wide blue sky. Ah , he thinks, even the sky does not mourn my death .
The sword glints menacingly as the crowd erupts with insults and cheers. Hinata Shouyou sees his life before his eyes and finally it all turns black.
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The sky is bleedingly blue. Rays of sunlight flood in an open window, creeping softly until they reach the center of the room. Letting out a low groan at the disturbance, he shifts tiredly to the left and lifts a fistful of the blanket to shield him away from the prying sun.
The action only suffocated him a few minutes later. Sighing, he rolls out of his bed and rubs his nape, stretching them into loosening the kinks that had gathered, grumbling at the pain he feels in his neck.
He sleepily shuffles around his bed until he is facing the mirror in his room. Blinking sluggishly, he ponders at the strange image in front of him. Orange tresses as soft as clouds crowns his head. The beautiful color of bronze dominates the delicately wide eyes of the owner’s face. His button nose scrunches as he moves his pinkish lips. He is beyond beautiful. He looks so warm and innocent, it’s almost as if he could never hurt anyone.
“Beautiful…” He passes the mirror, trudging towards the bathroom as if on auto-pilot. There’s so much to do this morning, he thinks. He probably needs to, pausing from his thoughts, he scrunches his nose, eyebrows meeting in confusion. What does he need to do?
Something, right?
“Erm…” Pausing once more, was that a mirror he passed by? He swivels in his direction and rushes to the glass. True to its nature, the mirror reflects everything that is in front of it. The bed, the bedside table, and him. Or a person that is supposed to him.
“This is not me.” A dawning realization rattles him out of his sleepy demeanour. Grabbing his face, “This is definitely not me.”
Orange tresses. Bronze eyes. Beautiful visage. A cog clicks into place and he gasps, “How did I become Hinata Shouyou?”
No matter how much he stares at the mirror, the image he sees in it does not change. He’s Hinata Shouyou. Orange tresses. Bronze eyes. Beautiful visage , an exact description of the villainous omega in a popular novel he had read a long time ago. Somehow, he knows it. But who was he before? He can’t remember. There is only a blank, a clean slate, nothing.
He rubs his head as an onslaught of pain stings his mind. A flurry of memories rising and overtaking the clean slate, memories of someone pitiful and villainous and whose ending has to be the saddest he had ever come to discover.
He staggers at the pain, falling down on his knees.
“What the hell happened?” He groans when the waves of throbbing stop. Staring at his reflection, he panics, “Why am I you?”
Hinata Shouyou. Orange tresses. Bronze eyes. Beautiful visage. A villain that had burnt his candle all too quickly after obtaining power. Someone who will even sell his soul to the devil if he can. Someone who swore all his life to inflict vengeance.
He bites his lip and watches his reflection do the same, “But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to become a villain.”
He is almost whining when he says this. No person in their right mind would even think of following the original plot. No person in their right mind would want to become Hinata Shouyou. Nobody would want to live such a miserable life.
He moves to his bed, sitting with his arms and legs cross. He rubs his temples as he thinks. His brain hurt just by overusing them. He is sure that whoever he was in his past life, he’s probably not that smart. In this kind of dilemma where his life is at stake, he would be needing all his brain cells to survive.
“First, I have to stop seeing myself as a separate person from this Hinata. I’m basically Hinata Shouyou already. There’s nothing I can do about it anymore.” He frowns, “So, I’m Hinata Shouyou. What do I know about him?”
Hinata Shouyou. Orange tresses. Bronze eyes. Beautiful visage. A villain, a bastard, a poor soul. Abused and ostracized by his siblings, ignored by his father, abandoned by his maternal family.
The frown on his face deepens at what he had surmised, “I think this explains his villainous tendencies. He did eventually kill these two brothers and the Count. The only kind thing he did in the novel was making sure his sister lived her life as she would like it.”
Beautiful as he was, Shouyou ended up using his charms in deceiving and seducing people to do all his dirty works. He has no qualms in using himself to gain all that he desired to have. He wanted so many things, too many things, as if he is compensating for everything that had been robbed from him as a child and as an Omega.
An ache throbs in his chest, Hinata places a hand on top in an attempt to calm himself down. He grits his teeth at the writhing sensation, as if he is being torn to pieces and then reorganized into a new puzzle. Desperately ignoring the pain, he continues with his analysis of the situation.
Shouyou’s suffering, however, did not start when he entered the household. He was ten, a year after entering the Count’s house, when he met the young Marquis of the Tsukishima family. And then, Hinata chews on his lip feeling as if he had forgotten something important, something definitely happened because of the Marquis. Afterwards, Shouyou faced his brothers’ violence and his father’s negligence.
“That’s right. The plot revolves around his hatred towards this Tsukishima person. So, after gaining power, when he is twenty, he met Tsukishima again and realizes that this person is in love with…” He narrows his brow together in thought, “…I think it’s Yama something. Yamashima? No, that’s not it. Yamashi? Ack, no. Yamaguchi? Right. Yes, it’s Yamaguchi. And then he bullied this person and made life a living hell for both Tsukishima and Yamaguchi. Everyone was none the wiser too. Shouyou can really hold a grudge. But now, I’m Hinata Shouyou.”
Hinata sighs, cupping his cheeks. He’s in a very bad situation. As an illegitimate son, he probably doesn’t have anything to his name. The original owner of his body did go around sleeping with people to build up his fortune and influence. But he doesn’t want to sell his body. That’s the last thing he will ever do.
He doesn’t want to follow the path that the original Shouyou had chosen to take. Shouyou was desperate to live and thrive with a power of his own. He doesn’t have that kind of desperation for power. He only wanted to live.
“Let’s start with that ambition. What should I do to live?”
After a few minutes, he came to a blank. He lets out a small scream in his frustration, pounding on his pillows. Why is thinking ways to live hard? Or is he just this stupid?
Before he could answer his own question, a knock disturbs him. He quickly sits up and coughs, clumsily gesturing for them to enter. A young blond maid nervously crosses in, head bowed, hands fidgeting with the hem of her white apron.
“M-master Shouyou, good day! I am Y-yachi, I w-will be serving you today.”
Hinata smiles brightly, waving enthusiastically, “Hey!”
Yachi visibly flinches at his loud greeting. Hinata blinks before remembering himself. Did Shouyou already begin terrorizing the maids for her to be this scared?
“Yachi, how old am I?”
“You’re sixteen, Master!” Yachi must be a new maid. She can’t hide her expression well. There are obvious lines of dubiousness on her face for the query she had received. But at least, she knows not to question her master.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Hinata jumps up. There are still four years before the original story takes place. If he is only sixteen, this is the time where his brothers were sent off to the borders and the time that Shouyou began changing for the worst. He can still turn his life around. He can live!
“Yachi!”
“Yes?!”
“How much does this cost?” He runs to his wardrobe and points to a dress shirt where three linings of gold run across the chest.
“I think it’s probably around five golds.”
“That’s all?” He laments in disappointment. Five golds would only let him live for two months at most. So, it might be good to gain more that would secure him for life. Should he steal bit by bit?
“Hey, Yachi, how much gold do you think someone should have so they could live peacefully?” Hinata tilts his head in curiosity, eyebrows scrunching together in genuine thought. Yachi flushes at the strange question but still, she answers, “Around two thousand golds, maybe?”
“Two thousand golds?” Can he steal that much? Well, there’s no other choice. It’s better to steal than kill all those poor people and bullying Tadashi. He nods to himself, he’ll rob this place and run away before his brothers return and hopefully, he will never have to meet the Marquis again.
“Um… Master Shouyou…” Yachi fidgets. She shuffles awkwardly by the door and seems to shrink into herself. Hinata almost forgets that she’s still there. He swivels and scratches the back of his head, “Oh right. Yes? What did you come here for?”
“Since the Lordlings and Mistress Natsu are away, the Count d-decided that you should go and attend the b-banquet hosted by the Royal Family.” Yachi winces at the announcement. There had been far too many times the Count would do this to humiliate her master. The appearance of the illegitimate son always leads to unwelcome backlash to her master and sympathy to the Count’s family—as if her master decided to be a burden and push his way to the party rather than being forced to attend.
She shrinks even more at the expected tantrum that her master was prone to these days. But there were none. Only a choking sound, a cross between coughing and trying to swallow one’s saliva.
She peers at her master and sees him double over.
“Master Shouyou!” She panics, rushing to his side and patting his back. He thanks her after a few minutes of coughing. He groans at the sudden invitation. He wasn’t expecting to go out of the house as soon as he woke up in this body. He didn’t even remember this part in the novel.
There had been many parties Shouyou was forced to endure but he didn’t imagine he would be able to attend a Royal banquet. What was the Count thinking?
“Are you okay, Master?”
He nods at the fussy maid. He doesn’t have a choice but to attend then. Not attending meant he could be a target to the Count’s abuse. He’ll just have to go and then come back. That’s not a poor plan, right?
Ugh, he wishes he’s smarter than this.
He just prays that nothing would happen to him. He’s an illegitimate son. No Alpha nobility would take interest in him. No, not yet. Shouyou manages to seduce Alphas left and right by exploiting their weaknesses—it did greatly help that he’s really pretty. But people here are far too immersed with keeping their bloodline clean; and he is not going to go around trying to sleep with Alphas. That would just lead him to his destruction.
That’s right, nobody will bother with him if he just minds his own business. There’s nothing to his name. He’s really beautiful but his illegitimacy will deter Alphas from making contact with him.
He would be safe.
He would attend, drink a glass, then go back.
That’s it. That’s the plan.
“You can do this, Hinata Shouyou!” He shouts to himself, making Yachi jump in surprise before doing her duty as well, supporting her master without questioning anything.
“You can do this, Master!”
Attend. Drink a glass. Go back. Simple.
“Yes, I can do this!”
Attend. Drink. Go back. Simple, right?
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Attend. Drink. Go back. Yes, simple.
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This is not as simple as he thought it would.
Hinata grips the blanket that covers his body. This is not his room. This is the room of someone with immense wealth and fame. The place is too big—he could probably fit ten rooms the size of his own in this space alone. But that is not the most important thing here.
He lifts the silken sheet a tad and sees his body covered with bruises that are not from fists or from feet. He flushes before rigidly turning to his companion on the bed.
Hinata Shouyou, he thinks, has the worst luck in the whole world. Of all people to fraternize with! He would scream if he could. His sore throat told him a lot and he reddens even more.
He should get out of here before things get more complicated.
He quietly slides out of the bed and sees the simple garb he wore to the party. Taking a few careful steps, he wobbles to the area where their clothes are haphazardly strewn. He clumsily put them on, struggling against the ache his body carries with him.
“How do you put this on again?” He peers confusedly at an article, turning them in and out but before he could figure it out, a hoarse voice freezes him on the spot.
“Where are you going?”
Hinata turns in fear and meets the second prince’s eyes. Prince Kageyama glares at him hotly as he drops the confusing article to the ground.
He doesn’t know if it was a greeting or a flinch that came out of him. But he is sure that there’s a sound that barely escaped him.
“H-hi…”
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To be continued