Villainess Café, Grand Reopening
Elena Violet remembers everything: her past life's death from overwork as a Japanese office drone, and the fact that she's now reincarnated as the infamous villainess of the otome game *Crown of Roses*—a woman whose every route ends in ruin, exile, or imprisonment at the hands of three devastatingly handsome love interests.
Her solution is simple: ignore the plot entirely.
No romance. No scheming. No princes. What Elena wants is something far more precious—a q
The Villainess Café Grand Reopening - The Villainess Opens a Café! ...The Signboard Turned Into a Philosophy Book
The first thing I thought when I woke up was about paid leave.
How strange. Even when my brain is supposedly dead, it still operates from a worker's perspective.
Elena Violet—who in her previous life had been an office worker named Naoko Odagiri, a woman who had spent seven years at some infrastructure company consistently racking up 120 hours of overtime a month—posed a question to the ceiling from atop a canopied bed.
"...How many days of paid leave do I have left?"
Keeping her head on the frilled pillow, she moved only her eyes to survey her surroundings. A high ceiling. A chandelier. Morning light streaming through lace curtains.
She had her memories of the previous life. All of them. The memory of collapsing from overwork, the linoleum ceiling of the hospital, her boss's words—"Come back after you've rested a bit more"—all of it remained crystal clear.
And she had all the memories of this world, too.
Elena sat up and moved to the mirror on the desk.
In the mirror, there she was. Long golden hair. Clear blue eyes. Perfectly formed features. A seventeen-year-old noble daughter who looked like she'd stepped out of a painting from any angle.
"...Whoa."
Elena's reaction was neither "cute" nor "yes!"
"It's an otome game."
A quiet but certain resignation drifted through the clear morning air.
She remembered. In her previous life—when she had lived as Naoko Odagiri—she had a memory of fiddling with her smartphone under the covers after a severe all-nighter. The title was *Crown of Roses*. An otome game set in the Kingdom of Fluresia. A massive hit that had surpassed 800,000 copies sold, recommended to her by a coworker.
And the face in the mirror was that of the villainess who appeared in that game—Elena Violet.
Lowering her feet to the floor, Elena rapidly searched her memory for information about the game.
The heroine was a commoner girl named Lilia. She enrolls in the Royal Academy Lumière—a boarding school in the Kingdom of Fluresia where noble children study—and romances various love interests. And Elena Violet was depicted in that game as a thorough villainess who appeared in every route to obstruct the protagonist.
Five routes total.
A destruction ending in every route.
Elena lined up the list in her head. Social exile, broken engagement, stripping of magical power, banishment from the country, imprisonment. There were variations, but in the end, she'd be cornered by one of the love interests—all wearing the same face—saying something like "You're finished now."
"...Mass-produced pretty boys."
A venomous observation slipped from her mouth first thing in the morning.
Well, from what she'd seen in the game, they should have each had their own distinct personalities. The golden-haired First Prince Alphonse, the silver-haired Knight Commander Sebastian, the black-haired Court Mage Leon. But in her current memory, all she could really recall was "all three are handsome" and not much else.
Elena took parchment and a quill from the desk drawer and began writing meticulously.
"Alphonse Fluresia (do not approach), Sebastian Grayford (do not approach), Leon Ashbury (do not approach)."
She had meant to write a café business plan, but at some point a "no-approach list" had been born on the parchment.
Elena continued filling in the plan as it was. Property candidates, initial costs, suppliers, magic circle design. As she wrote, she fell into concentration, moved on to a second sheet of parchment, and before she knew it, a nonsensical note had appeared in the margin of the plan: "Alphonse Fluresia (do not approach) → potential regular?"
Elena looked at her own note.
"...Potential regular?"
She had written it herself, yet it was incomprehensible.
Oh well. Anyway, the policy was decided.
Romance? Don't need it.
Destruction ending? Avoid it.
Villainess behavior? Zero intention of doing it.
What she wanted to do? Run a café.
What a person who had spent seven years doing clerical work at a black company in her previous life ultimately dreamed of was a calm, small café. Not rushed by anyone, at her own pace, making delicious things, and having the people who came be happy. That alone was enough.
Here, she had the convenient wealth of the Violet Marquis family. In the royal capital Blanche—the capital of the Kingdom of Fluresia, located in the middle reaches of the Edel River, a city of about 180,000 people—there were naturally vacant properties. And she had aptitude for intermediate magic. She was especially good at temperature manipulation, and she remembered being told at the Magical Institute's examination that she could control it in half-degree increments.
A café? She could open one.
──────
The central market street of the royal capital Blanche was crowded with people from the morning. A major commercial district with over 300 permanent shops and even more if you counted street stalls, where bags of coffee beans brought from the southern port city of Palmeira and barrels of milk delivered from the northeastern village of Petrika were being traded amid vigorous calls.
Elena passed through the commotion and stood at a spot one alley off the main street.
"...This is it?"
The old woman from the real estate agency—a cheerful-looking person named Hanna, whose forehead wrinkles were etched like a map—said apologetically, "My lady, are you truly sure? This place, the sunlight is..."
"There's no problem."
"But, the sunlight is..."
"There's no problem."
"...The sunlight is."
"I'll manage the lighting with magic."
On the fifth round, the old woman gave up. Elena took fifty gold coins from her purse and signed the contract without hesitation.
The property was an old two-story wooden building, and the first floor was spacious enough to serve directly as a café. Ivy tangled along the walls, blending with the stone pavement. Twelve seats. Four tables. In her previous life's terms, about the size of a small independently run coffee shop.
It was perfect.
That same day, Elena carried in her belongings and began preparing the kitchen.
Installing the cooling magic circle was the biggest task. It had to be carved directly into the floor, and she repeated incantations as she worked. In this world, magic required a short incantation and hand gestures to activate, and using too much would deplete her internal magical power and bring on dizziness. That was similar to the lightheadedness after overtime in her previous life, and Elena knew it all too well.
So she proceeded with the work, building in breaks at planned intervals.
That was the idea, anyway.
When she started making a prototype pudding, a problem arose.
The caramel is baked at 127 degrees. This came from her previous life's memories as Naoko Odagiri. The pudding itself is cooled to 4 degrees. This process, which demanded abnormal precision in temperature control, paradoxically evoked a feeling of "fun" in Elena. Pouring her magical power into pursuing a perfect finish that allowed not even a 0.1-degree deviation, she lost herself in it.
Before she knew it, she had used too much.
A sensation of consciousness fading away with a swoosh. She thought it closely resembled the feeling of passing out on a company chair after the last train, and that was her last memory.
The next thing she knew, Elena had face-planted into the pudding.
There was a soft *pff* sound. When she raised her face, a face-shaped hole remained in the center of the pudding. Caramel was tangled in her bangs, and she felt egg on the tip of her nose.
After a brief pause, Elena picked up the parchment nearby and wrote meticulously.
"Magical power allocation, adjust to 7:3 next time."
Her previous-life office worker spirit did not vanish even with the impact of a face-first pudding dive.
Then, the caramel stuck to her cheek gave off a sweet aroma, and she licked it with her tongue for no particular reason.
"...Delicious."
Alone in the kitchen, Elena blushed faintly. Even though no one was watching.
──────
She decided to make the signboard the next day's task.
She prepared a wooden board, dipped a quill in ink, and began writing with full confidence. The shop name was decided. Tsukikage-tei. It felt right. She liked the name.
The problem was that the memories of Japanese from her previous life and this world's writing system were somewhat jumbled in her brain.
She put up the finished signboard and felt satisfied.
Passerby A stopped.
"...What is this place?"
"Um, a place where the moon... stops?" Passerby B whispered. "Isn't that scary? Like a haunted house?"
Passerby C stared at it, then silently scurried away.
Elena looked at the signboard.
It said "Moon-Shadow Halt."
"..."
She had meant to write Tsukikage-tei, but all three characters had turned into different ones. It could be read as "a place where the moon darkens and stops"—a declaration of an ominous building.
She immediately took it down and rewrote it.
This time for sure, she put it up.
Passerby D stopped. "...A monastery?"
Passerby E stopped and read it with a serious face. "How profound..." they murmured, and left.
Elena checked the signboard. It said "Moon-Shadow Enjoy." A philosophical slogan: "Partake of the moon's shadow."
"Why."
She entered her third rewrite. This time carefully, checking stroke by stroke. Footsteps came from across the stone pavement, and she sensed someone passing by.
When Elena looked up, the person was already halfway past.
A black robe. Black hair. A slender back. They stopped, glanced sideways at the signboard—still unfinished, the third attempt at "Tsukikage-tei"—and
snorted.
Quietly, but unmistakably. Without saying a word.
Watching the figure disappear beyond the stone pavement, Elena muttered.
"...What's with that person, so unpleasant."
But the profile had burned itself into her mind against her will. The well-formed features and the sharp line of the profile.
(...Who was that?)
She didn't realize who it was. The appearance information of the game's characters remained only vague, and besides, the signboard problem was more important right now.
On the fourth rewrite, she finally managed to write "Tsukikage-tei."
Elena sat down on the floor right there and fell asleep clutching the signboard.
──────
Opening day.
Elena lined up twelve puddings in perfect form. The coffee beans were top-quality, procured through Palmeira. The super-spicy ramen broth had been prepared since last night. Dressed in a fluffy blouse, white apron, and a long skirt easy to move in, she stood behind the counter.
Her chestnut short hair curled slightly inward, brushing her cheeks. Her deep green eyes alternated between the counter and the door. On the index finger of her right hand was a small bandage—a scrape from carving the magic circle.
10 a.m. Opening.
No one came.
11 a.m.
No one came.
12 p.m. Noon.
No one came.
A pair of passersby stopped in front of the signboard, and just as Elena leaned forward internally thinking "They came!", she heard "Hey, what kind of shop is this?" "Beats me... it's too far down an alley to tell," and the footsteps receded.
Elena rested her elbow on the counter.
"..."
Even by evening, no one came.
──────
The second day was the same.
The only difference was that a child opened the door and peeked in around midday.
"Is this a candy shop?"
Elena answered with a beaming smile. She demonstrated the results of her customer service practice.
"We have pudding."
The child silently closed the door.
And ran away.
The reason was unclear. (Elena would never know that the child later reported to their mother, "The big sister's smile was scary.")
At night, Elena sat alone against the wall. Twelve puddings remained neatly lined up, eaten by no one. The coffee had gone cold. The ramen broth quietly gave off its aroma in the pot.
"...I didn't do a location survey."
Where had the business sense she was supposed to have cultivated over seven years in her previous life gone? Just one
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