Chapter 1: With my memories returned, it turns out that I was a villain who has been killed 108 times. I don’t want to die anymore.

From the author:
[Greetings.
A story about a villainess. Loop, time travel. Misunderstood feelings. All sorts of stuff.

I was suddenly struck by an impulse to write something like this.

And please don’t bring up that she was killed only 107 times.]

Stabbed to death 7 times. Put to the sword 11 times. Decapitated 5 times. Hanged 3 times. Burned 7 times. Drowned 8 times. Ran over 3 times. Shot 12 times. Poisoned 6 times. Strangled 7 times. And so on, and so forth.

All adding up to a total of 108 deaths.

A splendid record. All of those were the numerous ways in which I died.

My name is Scarlett Ruby Noel Hydrangea.

Oh, excuse me. At the moment, I am not Hydrangea yet. I’m Lingard.

A duke’s daughter, that eventually would rise to the queen of the country.

And in the end, I always meet my demise at the hands of others.

Over and over, I repeat the same life as Scarlett.

The life of nothing but gathering everyone’s hatred as a villain, and getting killed in the end…

I lived through 108 lives, and this is the 109th one.

However, on each death, my memory reset, so I couldn’t even imagine that I was caught in such a loop.

But in my previous, 108th life, I accidentally misstepped and fell from the stairs.

And badly hitting my head and dying.

With my first death, that was purely an accident, unrelated to other people, my fate was twisted.

As I recalled the memory of all the lives I went through as a villainess, my new life began.

「I’ve had enough of living as a villainess or a queen. From now on I’ll live a quiet life, so I can peacefully spend my old age. 」

So I swore, staring at the ceiling in the body of an infant that can’t even hold up its head.

The words of my oath came out as weak as a meowing of a kitten.

How feeble!

I’m not taking even a single step outside of my domain.

From now on I’ll stick to the life of seclusion.

I don’t want to be involved in the power struggle anymore.

High society? Huh? What is that? Is it edible?

If I do so, I should be able to die of natural causes in old age, without getting involved with 『Them』.

The five men that came to give a final accord of death at the end of each of my lives.

Throughout my 108 lives, I experienced all kinds of deaths, but all of them had one thing in common. It would always be one of them who is responsible for my death in the end. To me they are like very familiar grim reapers.

The only exception is the previous death, when I had an accidental death after I fell down the stairs.

「I swear, that I, Scarlett, going to spend my current life as the home guard, without ever meeting them!」
[1.TL note: Home guard (自宅内警備員) is a nice way of saying hikikomi or NEET. ]

I, an infant, cried out, reaffirming my resolve.

I’ve had enough of getting stabbed, slashed, burned, or crushed.

…But of course, there is no way that my fate as a villainess could be so easily changed.

Not even 5 years would pass before I fall into panic upon meeting them again…

Completely oblivious to such dark clouds shrouding my future, I was immersed in building plans for my new life by fully exploiting memories of my previous lives.