Lady Misfortune: Daddy, I'll Be A Righteous Villainess!

The last thing that Sarah heard before falling from the heights was Lady's shriek of horror. 

She had been pushed aside with enough force to get her staggering in her steps until she hit the metal handrails. Her eyes bulged wide, her lips parted. She had wanted to scream out loud but had felt too shocked to do so.

Then, Sarah descends.

It's like the world has come to a still, paving way for cold, dead silence. Anything that could've kept her up was out of her reach. In the blink of an eye, she's diving through the air. That's when her life seems to flash through her eyes. 

Along comes her mother's words.

'You're nothing but a deadweight to me, you piece of trash.'

'The only thing that can help you live in this world is a man.'

'Learn from me, dear. Kindness won't get you anywhere."

'They've taken from us. Now, it's time for us to collect from them.'

She doesn't want this. She hasn't asked for this.

She can't understand why everything has to be this way all the time. She can't understand why she always has to go through the same thing.

Deceiving. Lying. Pretending. Craving. Thirsting.

Reared with the belief that she needs someone with more power and strength in order to survive – someone who's a man, she was so desperate to find love to the point she herself became a reason why it's so hard to find one. She'd play around with countless guys, rarely taking any of them seriously. Because of that, she ended up in this situation. 

'Why, it's because you're my daughter.' 

Knowing that she willingly played this role, she couldn't even blame that woman anymore.

It's her fault that Glenn turned out like this. Sarah had led him on, after all. 

'Ughhh… I really hate this.'

---

Hartigan was on the way back to the rooftop staircase when Lady's voice thundered all around the hallway.

In mounting trepidation, he immediately made a dash for it. His feet picked up pace at the sound of rustling metal, his arms dropping all the stuff he bought from the school canteen. He kept running in a panic, and as soon as he got to the end of the stairs, he compelled himself to look up.

Once there, Hartigan sees Sarah free-falling from above.

"E-EHHHHH?!!!"

He still wasn't able to register everything that's happening, but as if by instinct, he got himself to react by stretching out his arms. It's both a smart and dumb move. While he did manage to catch her before she crashed on the floor, he ended up getting crushed underneath her as she collided with him. 

"Urkkk!!!" he yelped.

"Kyaaa!!!" she cried.

And they both hiss in pain. It hurt a whole damn lot.

Fortunately, they did not hit their heads or anything. They would definitely get bruises, though. 

"M-Ms. Gracelyn?! W-What in the world's happening?!" 

Hartigan puts his elbows down. He uses them to raise his body up. Sarah, on the other hand, is lying a tad bit more comfortably on top of his chest. She is quivering from head to toe.

He was so distraught by the turn of events that he did not even mind how heavy she was – it may have had to do with how high she fell from as well as the speed at which she descended. As much as he wants to go up there, he doesn't think he can move yet. She also seemed to be in a similar state – maybe worse, so he just waited for a reply and let her recover for a moment.

"I-I-I'm sorry! I-I… I-I-I didn't mean to fall on you."

The poor girl was so shaken herself. 

Sarah looked up to him with trembling eyes and lips. Her face is ghastly pale, and her cheeks are stricken with tears. Hartigan was disconcerted. He had never seen anyone this frightened before.

"Calm down. It's alright. You're fine," he tried to reassure her, but instead of feeling at ease, she began crying instead. 

She must have been very petrified. And he's utterly baffled right now.

"LADY!!!"

While the two of them remain paralyzed on the ground, the others come barging in with perturbed expressions.

Belle gasps in surprise upon seeing the position Sarah and Hartigan are in. She hurries off to help them up while she gestures at Fallon and Weiss, who also look just as equally disoriented, to look for Lady at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, goodness. Oh, dear," Belle murmured as she kneeled before Hartigan and Sarah.

Her vocabulary may have just run out of the right words, but she swears she feels like cursing at that very moment. She can tell from the looks on their faces alone that this isn't a simple fall. One of them is even crying, and the other is just straight up bamboozled.

"What happened?" she inquired as she gently held Sarah by her arms and helped her sit up straight up so that she was not crushing Hartigan anymore.

She was answered by silence. Of course, she would be. 

Neither of them appears to be up for a conversation yet. They're still trying to regain their bearings. 

'Well, that just leaves Lady then.'

---

Lady felt the universe stop as Sarah fell from the stairs.

Her insides turned icy, and her vision faded to black. It's like an entire bucket of freezing cold water had been poured on her. The sensation brought forth an emptying feeling, causing her to drift in the dark. 

She had breathed heavily. She had tuned everything out.

And for a moment, she thought for sure she was going to faint. 

Lady was practically hyperventilating, after all. This couldn't happen to Sarah at all.

She doesn't want this. She hasn't asked for this.

Just when she was starting to reconsider the way she should treat her from this day forward, she literally slipped out of her grasp and fell right where she could no longer reach. It was then that she realized that everything she had done for her up until this point was all in vain. If she's not even here anymore, there's no reason for her to keep the act up.

Lady thinks that everything is her fault. Then again, she's the one that Glenn was supposed to go for.

"Look at what you've done, you bitch!" he hollered as he roughly yanked her hair once more, pulling her close enough that her ear was right beside his mouth, and with that, she let go of the staircase railing, which she did not know she was clasping the whole time. 

Glenn keeps shouting, but Lady stays quiet. 

She's too focused on her inner thoughts – on the surge of anger that rushed within her, stirring her to take action. Even the throbbing sting brought by his tight clutch has failed to produce a sound from her. She readies for a comeback instead, glaring at him through the corners of her eyes.

"You'll pay for this! You'll pay for what you did to her! You'll pay for-"

"Shut the hell up, you scumbag."

That's when the unprecedented happens – on Glenn's part, that is.

Gathering all her remaining strength, she quickly grabs him by his arm before swerving around with incredible speed. She then lifts him up and flips him over her shoulder, causing his back to land flat on the floor, which earns a loud cry from him.

Lady has just toppled a guy over. Glenn is shocked beyond belief.

As he cusses underneath his breath, still writhing in pain, she settles down on top of his back. His eyes went wide, then. She's far from done, it seems. While he tries to squirm around to break free, she pins him down with her weight and wraps her hand around his nape. 

"Hey, Glenn Valentin…" she called - like his name was a death sentence, and he gulped in fear. 

"Wanna play a bidding game again?"

And now, she's bringing up that stupid, stupid date auction. It's when their paths first crossed – the first time he felt extremely humiliated, so he curses that night with every fiber of his being. 

"Say, why don't you bid for your life right now?"

He's beginning to feel overwhelmed, sure – but more than that, he's confused. How she suddenly turned from simply shouting to full-on fazing him, he has no clue. He can't help but be threatened with every word that comes out of her mouth – with every little squeeze on his neck, and with every graze of her nails on his skin. 

Though he can barely see Lady from this position, he can tell that her wide, crazed eyes are flaring – blazing, even. Glenn feels the same wretchedness he felt towards her at some point yesterday, and it's so daunting that he starts tearing up just like back then. 

"I have no idea why you've become the way you are now, but regardless of the cause, you don't just go around grabbing people's hair and pushing them off the stairs…" Lady muttered in a low, harsh tone. 

"If anyone here has to pay, it will be you."