A Regressed Villain: Heroines, Villainesses and Me?

She wiped away her tears with the palms of her hands and slowly stood up, favoring her leg a bit as she did.

Her uniform was a mess, dirt smudged across the fabric, but none of that seemed to matter to her.

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She was laser-focused on what Professor Aven had to say next.

"Huh? Why the shock? I figured that since you saw my title as a Villain, you\'d have pieced it together by now, right?" Avendial acted surprised, carefully crafting his words to avoid any mention of his past life and the whole time-travel thing.

He wasn\'t sure if his title made it obvious or not, so he worded it in a way that he hoped would clue her in without him spelling it out.

\'Wait, what?!\'

\'He knows?!\' Aria practically froze, her eyes wide as she took a small step back, disbelief written all over her face.

She was aware of his title \'regressed villain.\'

Panic bubbled up inside her.

She had always thought that if anyone figured out what she could do, it could lead to two things: either people would think she was crazy or things could get really dangerous, thanks to human greed.

As her back hit the tree, she realized she was subconsciously backing away from him.

But the surprise in Aven\'s eyes made her hesitate.

Did he expect her to already get it?

But how in the world did he know about her ability?

"Aria? You can\'t be serious. Don\'t tell me you haven\'t awakened yet… No, wait, you told me before that you\'ve had this ability since you were born," Avendial said, pretending to be confused while rubbing his chin as if he were deep in thought.

To him, this was more of a confirmation.

He already knew that she was aware he was from the future, but he wanted to drop some hints instead of spilling everything out to see if there was something more attached to his title besides regression.

\'I-impossible?! Why would I reveal this to anyone?\' Aria couldn\'t make sense of it. Since her birth, she hadn\'t even revealed this to her parents, let alone to Lin.

How could she have revealed the fact that she possessed this ability to anyone?

This caused her to stammer, "Wh-why would I reveal it to you?"

She just wanted to know why her future self would have revealed her ability to him.

\'Of course, to save Lin...\' Avendial thought inwardly, keeping a surprised face. He remembered the day when, at the brink of death, she had revealed that he held the title of villain.

Instead of pitying her, he had given her a simple offer: he would leave Lin alive if she told him everything. (* Of course, he had already sent someone to kill Lin.)

Like an idiot, she kept revealing everything about her ability and how she awakened, going through a double awakening inside the tower, through which she could now look at people\'s status windows.

Naturally, Avendial didn\'t care whether she loved someone or not.

But Avendial knew one thing very well: if she loved Lin but he didn\'t appreciate her gesture, then she should just love Avendial instead.

He would at least respect her ability and gestures.

Of course, love wasn\'t something he could genuinely give her, but it didn\'t matter much, given how even in today\'s life some people use AI to generate fake replicas of their dead loved ones just so they can live in the illusion of them talking to them with love.

So acting like a lover wasn\'t too much of a deal; he could just pretend to be one, and in exchange, Aria should just love him back while letting him use her abilities.

"....I shouldn\'t have mentioned it." Avendial turned to leave, acting as if he was slightly guilty for mentioning that Aria was the one who revealed her ability.

"W-wait, answer me!" Aria instantly arrived in front of him, blocking his path with her open arms.

Avendial glanced at the students, who were slowly starting to gather; though their numbers were fewer than a dozen, they were at a good distance to hear anything.

"Aria, I can only say that you yourself told me not to reveal anything to you and to let you experience suffering first." Avendial looked directly into her eyes as he stated those words, causing her eyes to visibly tremble, not understanding what he was saying.

"What? Why would I want myself to suffer?" Aria couldn\'t grasp it completely, thinking how nonsensical this sounded; why would anyone want their past self to suffer?

"Sigh, because you would never believe me. You would always doubt me. So, instead of talking to you, you—I mean your future self—made a promise to me," Avendial revealed. His narrowed gaze observed the visible clench of her fist and the flinch and trembling lips that wanted to understand and hear more.

Not that he didn\'t expect it; if it were a normal day, she would have definitely thought about the probability that he could be making things up.

But right now, being overwhelmed by emotions, her mind was hardly processing at its usual capacity.

This was a simple and very popular method he learned inside the tower: if you want to kill anyone, just make them flow and drown in their own emotions.

"Ridiculous, doubt? Tell me everything; it\'s me who would decide if it\'s true or not." Aria wasn\'t in proper control, knowing well that she needed to know everything now.

This was the time.

She didn\'t care about the students, given no one was hearing their words. If they looked from far away, it didn\'t matter. A student was talking to a professor.

Not a big deal.

"You want to hear it? Fine. You said you were so madly in love with Lin Diego that if I said anything against him, you would never trust me; no, you would even consider me an enemy?" Avendial targeted the first obstacle in his way, knowing very well that he could convince her of everything except matters regarding Lin Diego.

In the end, it was clear that he would kill Lin Diego today or tomorrow, given he just needed to deal with him.

If Lin was of some use, then he would live longer, or else he would be killed.

So it didn\'t matter more. What mattered was the fact that he needed to be thrown out of Aria\'s mind.

In the end, Avendial was always possessive. If something belonged to him, then it should only belong to him or shouldn\'t exist.

\'!?\'

"Wh-what?" Suddenly hearing the straightforward words of Aven, Aria\'s mind went into a trance. Given that, his words made 100% logical sense.

She kept looking at him, trying to understand if she should trust him or not.

But it all seemed that this was the most likely thing: if some misfortune happened to her due to Lin in the future, her future self would want to tell her past self this very thing.

She herself knew that Lin was her weakness.

"....Please, tell me everything." Aria shook her head, thinking that if it\'s true or not, she should decide it in the future. But first, she needed to know everything.

What her relationship in the future was with this man?

How he was able to travel back in time?

And why he was talking as if she was close to him in the future.