The Lady's Butler: I Reincarnated To Serve The Villainess-Chapter 2: Death And The Void

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The alarm rung for the nth time today and just like the past few times, a hand moved from under the covers and tapped the phone’s screen, snoozing the alarm.

Silence returned to the apartment room again as it failed to do it’s job once more.

Well, it was not that he had been asleep in the first place.

The room was illuminated by on the screen of a laptop which was laying on his chest, his tired eyes reading through the pages of the manhwa before him.

"How cliché," he muttered.

And yet, he had reread this Chapter more times than he could count.

He had read it so much that he knew every line of dialogue, he also knew the exact panel where the prince would raise his hand to strike and the moment the crowd would turn against her.

He knew that in three Chapters, the author would begin her social downfall, building her as the villain she was supposed to become.

And in forty-seven Chapters,

Her death.

He now knew this manhwa by heart and yet, for some reason, he kept reading it over and over again.

Well, he knew exactly why he was stuck on it, and it was all due to a single name, Renelle Ardent.

She was the final villainess of the manhwa: The Saintess and the Silver Crown.

It was a story as cliché as any, one told many times over, and yet, he had read it over and over for a single reason only,

The villainess.

It wasn’t because he thought she was misunderstood or anything, after all, after this Chapter, her spiral would begin, and she would become a proper villainess.

Rather it was just an unexplainable infatuation ever since she first appeared way back in Chapter 20.

He was someone who felt no emotions.

He understood them, of course, and he could very much recognize, grief, joy, anger, love, fear.

He could instantly identify them on the faces of others, but only because he had spent years studying human reactions back when he was concerned with seeming normal.

Yet all this was changed by a single panel from a manhwa, and thus, his obsession was born.

Of course this was abnormal, but so was he.

And he was self-aware enough to admit that much, after all, normal people didn’t fall for a bunch of inks and pixels.

.....

Slowly, he placed the laptop on the bed and got off the bed. A wave of dizziness hit him but he managed to catch himself before he could fall.

He walked towards his bathroom, coming to face with his reflection that seemed to stare right back at him.

He had messy black hair, dark grey eyes with unusually heavy bags beneath them, but that wasn’t surprising, after all, he hadn’t slept in, what, thirty hours?

If he had a choice, he’d stay copped up inside reading, but as an adult that belonged to a society, he had responsibilities. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"You’re pathetic," he muttered as he stared at his reflection.

As a twenty three year old, he had no reason to be wasting most of his day obsessing over a fictional character, and yet, here he was.

Splashing cold water on his face seemed to help wake him up a bit more, the cold shower doing the rest of the work.

Stepping out, he underwent his routine, dressing up in whatever was both comfortable and fit for a work environment, crossing his work bag and stepping out the door.

But not before glancing once more towards the laptop, the screen was dim, but he could clearly see Renelle’s cold face that seemed to be looking directly at him.

"Wish me luck," he muttered before finally closing the door and stepping into the apartment’s hallway.

***

The thing about not getting enough sleep was that, everything suddenly became a lot louder and irritating.

But he was used to it....kind of.

He stepped out the apartment building, the sound of the city hitting him fully, but there wasn’t a single change in his expression.

He calmly walked towards the nearest bus station, with a couple of people bumping into him and apologizing, to which he paid no mind.

"It’s late," he muttered as he glanced at the clock on his phone while waiting for the bus to arrive.

Usually, it’d have arrived by now, but it was running late for some reason.

Slowly, he lifted his head from the screen and suddenly, all sound seemed to disappear.

It felt as if everything had gone completely still, and before he had the chance to understand what was going on, he spotted something strange.

"A doll?"

It stood in the middle of the street, unnervingly still, and utterly out of place among the bustling city crowd.

Its body was perfectly proportioned, but its face was featureless, save for the tightly stitched line where a mouth should have been.

One second, he was on the sidewalk, staring at the doll.

The next, he was standing in its place, with the doll now exactly where he had been.

They had somehow swapped places?

"Huh?"

Was the only thing he could let out before,

BANG!

Something heavy slammed into him, crushing every bit of bone in his body, and sending him ragdolling.

Everywhere hurt and he couldn’t even breathe as his brain struggled to understand the sequence of events.

Slowly, the sounds that had returned seemed a lot distant, almost as if people were screaming and calling for help from afar.

He had been hit by a truck, hadn’t he?

The last thing he saw before the blackness swallowed him completely was the doll, its stitched mouth was somehow... smiling?

And that’s when darkness took him.

***

Cold.

That was the first thing he felt when his senses returned.

«How peculiar?»He heard someone say as his eyes slowly opened.

Once his eyes were fully opened, he realized that he was floating in absolute darkness. It was darkness so potent that he couldn’t even see his own hands....

If he had any.

"Is this....death?" He muttered, looking around.

If it was, then it definitely wasn’t what he expected.

Now, he really wasn’t religious, but he had at least expected death to be a lot more than him floating endlessly in the void.

«Fascinating, » the voice spoke up again, pulling his attention towards it, «not only can your soul handle my power, it seems you’re you’re becoming one with it.»

The voice seemed to come from all around at once. Before he could say or ask anything, the being spoke again.

«Very well then,» it paused for a short while before adding, «entertain me mortal.»

With that, he heard what sounded like a snap, with it, a sudden pressure fell on him as he felt the darkness latch unto him.

It was a painful experience, one that felt as if his very soul was being ripped apart. He was sure that if his face could be seen right now, his expression would definitely be ugly.

But even through all that, he didn’t let out a single scream, and again, slowly, darkness took him.

The moment his consciousness faded, the darkness moved, creating an outline of a robed man with white glowing eyes.

The being stared at the unconscious soul before it and muttered,

«This should be entertaining.»