I ended up meeting the villain of an angst-ridden novel in the very same orphanage.
I approached him solely to avoid meeting my end at his hands in the future, but…
“Iris. You’ll never leave me, right?”
“You’re the only one who calls me by my real name, the only one who thinks of me as a good person.”
“So… I’ll keep every single promise I made to you, so please don’t leave me, okay?”
I unintentionally reformed the villain a little too well!
Now, all that remained was a future of our own that had nothing to do with the original plot.
I truly believed we were heading toward a happy ending together, with the villain safely tamed…
Or was that all just my own delusion?
“Shooting an arrow at me the moment you lay eyes on me? That’s rather cruel, Iris.”
“Are you planning to kill me? When thinking only of you was the sole reason I endured ten brutal years of torture?”
The boy I was certain I had tamed returned to me after a decade.
And to make a complete mockery of all my efforts, he had become the consummate villain.