Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Script of a Saint
They always told me I was cold.
Not the poetic kind of cold you read about in gothic novels—not mysterious or elegant. I was cold like a clinical instrument left on a metal tray. Cold like a house where the furnace has died, and the air just sits there, heavy and unmoving.
At the orphanage, the adults didn't talk to me; they whispered *around* me, as if loud noises might trigger something dormant and dangerous. They watched me the way you watch a stray dog with glazed eyes—unsure if it wants to be petted or if it’s waiting for your throat.
"Leyla has dead eyes," the other children would hiss in the dark of the dormitory. "She can't feel anything."
They were wrong. I felt everything. I just didn't know what I was supposed to *do* with it. I didn't know how to map the chaos inside me onto the skin of my face. While they were busy being afraid, I was busy being curious.
I still remember Luca’s rabbit.
We were five years old, shivering in stiff uniforms that smelled of cheap bleach and burnt soup. Luca was a heap on the floor next to the hutch, clutching a limp, matted ball of fur. He was sobbing so hard his entire body jerked, his face a frantic shade of purple.
"It’s dead," he wailed, looking at us for a miracle. "It’s dead."
I stood there and watched. I watched the adults rush in with their practiced sympathy, their voices dropping into that soft, melodic coo reserved for tragedies. I looked at the rabbit—its stillness, its sudden lack of purpose.
"And?" I asked.
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Luca looked at me like I was speaking a language from another planet.
"It’s dead," he repeated, his voice breaking.
"So you get another one," I said, my voice flat and logical. "Or you eat it. My aunt cooked rabbit once. With garlic."
I didn’t have an aunt. I’d just overheard a volunteer talking about stew in the kitchen. To me, it was a solution to a problem. But a caretaker grabbed my arm so hard her nails left crescents in my skin. It wasn't anger in her eyes; it was the raw, jagged edge of fear.
"What is wrong with you?" she hissed.
*Wrong?* I wondered. I was just answering the question.
Years later, there was a kitten. It was a tiny, vibrating thing smuggled into the laundry room. A week later, I found it in a utility closet. It didn't purr anymore. Two boys were hunched over it in the dim light, one holding a screwdriver, the other holding the tail like a trophy.
I didn't scream. I didn't run for help. I just walked closer, tilting my head to see the messy work they’d done.
"If you're going to kill something," I told them, "you should be quick about it. This is just sloppy."
They didn't smirk. They didn't feel like tough guys anymore. They looked at me—a small girl with a blank face—and they scrambled back as if I were the one holding the blade. They wanted me to be a victim, or a witness, or a crying mess. They wanted a performance that made them feel powerful.
I gave them nothing.
The staff didn't punish the boys. They punished me. Not with words, but with distance. They stopped touching my hair. They stopped looking me in the eye. They treated me like a ghost that had overstayed its welcome.
That was when I learned the only rule that mattered: **If you cannot feel the script, learn to act it.**
I spent hours in front of cracked mirrors, aching as I forced my cheeks to hold a smile. I timed the rhythm of other girls' sobs. I learned which tone of voice made adults feel safe and which look of "shyness" made them feel kind.
By eight, I was a masterpiece. I was adopted by a couple who looked like they stepped out of a catalog—pearls, firm handshakes, and hollow hearts. They didn't rescue me; they acquired me. Behind closed doors, my father would step on my bare toes, pressing down until I saw stars, just to see if he could make me break.
"Do you know what it costs to keep you?" he’d whisper.
I didn't cry. Not until I realized that crying was the only thing that would make him stop. So, I learned to cry on command. I treated my life like a system to be hacked.
At sixteen, I ran. At twenty, I auditioned. Acting wasn't a career; it was a survival mechanism I had perfected since the orphanage. Fame was just a larger stage for the same lies.
The night I died, I was exhausted. The premiere, the cameras, the plastic smiles—the mask was heavy. I got into the car, closed my eyes, and then... white. A blinding, absolute roar of light.
Then, the System.
It was a pastel-colored nightmare, a floating screen with a voice that sounded like a flight attendant. It told me I was dead. It told me I was a "Villainess." It told me I had to collect "Vital Essence" by making a man love me.
"So I manipulate him," I said, my voice echoing in the void. "I make him fall in love. I advance. I return."
"Exactly!" the System chirped.
I looked at the progress bar hovering in the air. 0%.
It thought it was in control. It thought it was giving me a quest. But I had been navigating heartless systems since I was five years old. I had spent my life imitating humanity to survive humans.
"Send me," I said.
As the world folded, a final bit of text flashed: *MALE PROTAGONIST ID: CONSTANT.*
I hit the ground of a new world, the smell of cold stone and old incense filling my lungs. I stood up, smoothing my dress, my face already shifting into the perfect, approachable expression of a girl who needed help.
This was just another stage. And I had never missed a cue in my life.
