Yes, he was me.
I panicked at first.
I thought I had lost my mind, or worse, that I was dead and floating around in some ethereal form watching my own body, but that thought disappeared just as fast as it came when I realized that wasn't it at all. Somehow, some way, this other person who looked exactly like me had ended up trapped in here just like I was.
I asked him his name.
He didn't answer.
He never moved from where he sat, not even once.
But there was something different about him, this other me was holding a book, clutching it against his chest like letting go of it would kill him, and his eyes were completely dead, no life in them at all.
For what felt like several eternities, all I did was try to get him to talk. I tried everything I could think of, slapping him, beating the shit out of him, begging, pleading, crying, nothing worked, not a single damn thing got any reaction out of him, except for one, when I tried to take his book.
"Young master, your bath is getting cold again, please go and freshen up, today is an important day," Sasha said, snapping me clean out of my thoughts.
Right.
Today is the day I get to stare death in the face.
Great.
Kill me.
"Sasha, you're looking particularly beautiful today."
"You flatter me, young master."
"Not at all, I'm simply stating facts. Which reminds me, since we won't be seeing each other for a while after today, why don't we make some special memories together before I go?"
"What kind of special memories could you mean, master?"
"Come here, I'll show you," I gestured toward the bed.
I could see the vein on her forehead from where I was sitting. No matter how hard she plays dumb, she knows exactly what I'm implying, she's always known.
This reminds me of the time she nearly killed me after the incident with her sister.
Now that I think about it, her sister would be attending the entrance ceremony as well, which means I'll probably run into her at the academy.
Wonderful.
This is even worse than I thought.
Her sister doesn't merely dislike me the way Sasha does, no, she despises me, she hates me so thoroughly that father had to remove her from the mansion entirely, even after covering the full cost of her studies at the academy, because he genuinely worried she might actually kill me one day.
Her name was Christy, or that's what I called her, her full name was Christina.
Back then she was my personal maid and attendant, and an insufferably overbearing one at that, she was just a maid but at some point I started actively going out of my way to avoid her, whether that was fear or something else I honestly couldn't tell you.
Anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if father surrounding me with beautiful women is actually a coincidence, and even when word reached him that something may have happened between me and Christina, the old man didn't seem the least bit bothered, not for a single day, not for one second, he acted like it was expected, and to this day I have my suspicions about that, but that's beside the point. The point is, Christina was my personal maid, and her sister Sasha was a general household maid like the many others working in the estate.
Then one day something happened.
I think it was during one of my more desperate attempts at playing the role of the scum heir to perfection, I had drunk something, some kind of drink or maybe a potion, I can't remember exactly, all I know is I was supposed to go meet my fiancée, Helene, and I already knew how those meetings went.
In the original story I was completely gone for her, hopelessly, pathetically in love with the woman. But with the knowledge I now have of how everything plays out, I was fully determined to disgust her so thoroughly that she'd want to break the engagement herself, while I worked on my end by getting father to agree to it. The problem was, every single time I actually stood in front of her, I fell apart, and I don't mean that lightly, I mean I have never in my life felt anything as overwhelming as what hit me the moment I first met her. That first meeting alone told me everything I needed to know, that escaping my death in this world was never going to be possible unless I removed myself completely from the plot and everyone connected to it, because what I felt standing near her was this completely irrational, all consuming, possessive and obsessive flood of emotion, and I knew in that moment that I was madly in love with her. I didn't want to be, I never asked for it, but the story was built that way, I was designed to feel exactly that way about her, to be completely helpless around her, and God I hated it, I hated myself for feeling even the smallest scrap of warmth toward someone I knew was going to destroy me. No matter how much I wanted to be an ass to her, I couldn't do it, I had to physically fight my own mind and body just to say no to a simple request, and at some point I accepted that I couldn't manage it on my own.
So I found a workaround.
Booze.
I'd have Christina go into town and buy as much alcohol as she could carry, I'd drink all of it, and that was the only thing that actually worked. I never had any memory of what happened during those meetings, but the fact that Helene's visits were getting fewer and further between told me it was working, so I kept at it, right up until the day everything went spectacularly wrong.
I woke up in bed next to a crying Christina.
Was I fucked?
Completely.
Possibly in more ways than one.