“I’ve never heard of it happening anywhere.”

“Well, it is rare for someone to have a crossbow and bolts inside a prison.”

“In other words, only you! Only you would do a thing like this!” With a look of great displeasure, Elliott lowered his volume and said, “I’m led to believe that you told my great uncle that I haven’t been feeding you.”

“Yes, I do believe I did,” Rachel replied, happily popping a piece of salted duck meat into her mouth.

Pointing at her, Elliott said, “If I give you food, you’ll stop this nonsense, then!”

That’s the largest concession I can make!

Elliott was infuriated that he couldn’t bend this nasty woman to his will, not even in the slightest. But after all his great uncle’s hysterical shouting, he decided he was going to have to break the siege to prevent this from happening again—as much as it galled him.

Damn you, Rachel. You can say what you like for now. But when father returns, I’ll indict you for all your crimes, including all the selfish drivel you just spewed.

Elliott was starting to think he’d be okay with having Rachel executed at this point. What he didn’t know was that she hadn’t even gotten serious yet.

At first, Elliott had just wanted to force Rachel into a corner and make her submit to him, but when she started doing as she pleased, all the damage ended up being on his side, to his mental well-being in particular.

I’m going to have to settle with isolating her for now. If it keeps her quiet, some old bread is a small price to pay.

Prince Elliott had made a generous proposal—as much as it galled him. But after finishing her delicious meal, Rachel, who didn’t care how he felt, turned to him and said, “Food from you, Your Highness? Seeing as I have no way of knowing what you might put in it, I won’t be needing any.”

Chapter 4: Hello, Little Girl

17: The Girl Visits the Young Lady

The guard had gotten used to unusual visitors, but... This one is different, he thought.

A darling young girl with long red hair done up in pigtails had come to visit the prisoner in the dungeon. He’d seen the prince, spoiled noble brats, and delivery guys, but this was the first time a girl had come. Although, if you were to line them all up, maybe she was actually the least unusual of the bunch.

“I’m sorry, young lady, but this place is off-limits to anyone without business here,” the guard started to say, thinking, I know she’s just going to force her way in. But even as he opened his mouth, she raised a hand to stop him.

“I know! Please tell Miss Rachel that Margaret Poisson is here to see her!”

“Of course she doesn’t listen...” the guard muttered.

“What? Well, get to it!”

I have one kid after another bossing me around, he thought as he accepted that he had no other choice and began descending the stairs to the dungeon.

Margaret followed with alacrity.

“Miss, you do know what it means when you ask me to go tell her something, right?”

“Yes? Now, get on with showing me the way, please!”

“Oh, for the love of... It never ends...”

When they reached the dungeon, Margaret ran to the bars and exclaimed, “Miss Rachel, it’s Margaret! Long time no see!”

Some girl he didn’t know was cheerfully greeting the prisoner first thing in the morning. That alone was enough to make the guard break into a cold sweat. He didn’t know why, but lately his prisoner was a late riser. In fact, she was still in bed right now...and the girl was trying to force her to wake up.

He’d only known the prisoner for a short time, but that ridiculous young lady probably hated it when someone disrupted her routine. Although, since she was always the one in control of things, he’d never imagined it could happen. What would happen if someone forced her to wake up? Without realizing it, the guard started to edge away from the bars.

“Mnngh?” Contrary to his fears, Rachel woke up rather quietly. Poking her head out from under the down blanket, she rubbed her eyes, then sat up and looked at the girl calling her name.

“Miss Rachel! It’s me! Margaret!”

“Hm?”

Rachel stared at her for a little while, as if in a daze, but once her eyes focused, they snapped open and she jumped out of bed.

Margaret was energetically shaking the bars as she shouted, “Jeez! You’re finally awake?! You sleepyhead!”

Rachel ran right over.

Oh, she’s her friend, the guard thought, hopeful that he wouldn’t be criticized for letting her in here. He’d only let his guard down for an instant before it happened.

Afterword

Hi, nice to meet you. Or, alternatively, thank you for following the serialization.

Thank you very much for purchasing Prison life is Easy for a Villainess. I have a strong emotional attachment to this work, so I am very pleased I was able to deliver it to all of you as a “book.”

Prison Life is Easy for a Villainess was originally posted to the Shosetsuka ni Naro site from April to May of 2018. It was a short serialization, but it was very well received by the readers and was ranked number one in its genre that year despite only continuing for a month. That kind of success was unheard of for me.

In preparing the print edition, major revisions increased the size by half, increasing the overall volume by about seventy percent. I think I’ve kept the main line intact while fleshing things out more with side stories to the best of my ability. I tried to expand the world of the series, and I hope you’ll find it entertaining.

To tell you the truth, the story I’d imagined before I began writing and the story I actually ended up with are different, and it came to all of you in a very much altered form.

I only started posting on Shosetsuka ni Naro in October of the year before last, yet, possibly thanks to beginner’s luck, my first short story took second place in the daily rankings and got over three thousand review points. Those are some impressive numbers, I thought to myself, pleased. I went on turning the plots I came up with into words and posting them, but nothing surpassed that first work, and I watched as I pitifully dropped further and further down the rankings. It was especially bad the next year. Nothing I wrote last year reached one thousand points, and I was feeling really dispirited.

As I was sorting out my next plot, an idea that was more interesting than the two or three short stories I had planned came to mind. As I wrote, I just kept on coming up with new ways the protagonist (who would later come to be called Rachel) could harass people. That gave birth to side characters, and a story grew up around them. Without really planning to, I ended up with something fairly substantive. Rachel tells Sofia, “When your characters take on a life of their own, they do all the moving for you,” and that’s exactly what it was like for me.

Speaking from experience, when a plot is born this way, it gets written fast. You can tell it’s sure to be entertaining.

Also, because the work competes on its initial concept of enjoying life in prison, if someone else had put out a story about a young lady living in prison before I did, it wouldn’t matter how my work turned out. People would’ve seen it as a rehash, and it would’ve lost all impact. That’s why, if I was going to make a product out of this plot without knowing if I would have any rivals, I was in a race against time. I jumped on my flash of inspiration and prioritized writing the idea I’d just come up with. I was hopeful that it might be my first to hit two thousand points in a while.

Once it was out, it garnered a reception beyond my wildest dreams, and I was more surprised than anyone. It was at the top of the daily rankings in its genre for maybe three days. I’d suddenly received a trophy I’d longed for but had been convinced I would never get. Let me repeat myself: I was more surprised than anyone.

In my original plan, I was going to put out one story per day until I reached the end of the prologue with the fifth. Then I would switch to a weekly pace. At this point, the plot was simply, “Rachel enjoys a hedonistic life in prison, ignoring the prince’s intentions.”

But now it was well received. I wanted to run with it while the ratings were good, so I switched to a daily-release format on the fly that allowed me to continue the story. Mysteriously, when I put myself on the spot like that, I got a sort of runners’ high, you could say. I was writing from night until morning, so in that odd state of excitement, new ideas and ways to take the narrative forward popped up one after another. That gave birth to a new story and the new characters I needed, and the world kept expanding.

Here’s the result: The initial plot had about fifteen stories, and it more than doubled to thirty-one. More than half of the cast didn’t exist yet when I wrote the initial scene at the night party. Many scenes and characters that people enjoyed during the serialization wouldn’t have been born without everyone’s support.

It was a short serialization of just a month, but I brought it to a conclusion and was able to write everything I wanted without any regrets. Then, thanks to all the attention it received, Kadokawa arranged for it to be expanded upon and improved so it could be released as a book.

Now, while I had written everything I thought I wanted to in the web version, when they told me, “Write some new stuff for the book too,” I got ambitious. Because of the rush of the serialization, maybe I’d focused too much on just following the main thrust of the story? Weren’t there other stories, not just in front of the prison, that I should tell? With that thought, I wrote the missing stories about memories, and stories with characters other than Rachel, adding a total of fifteen stories. I think I’ve used the web version as a skeleton to flesh out, and this version is fit to be called a complete edition.

If I had only been satisfied with the kind of story I’d been thinking about before I showed my writing to anyone, I wouldn’t have been able to expand on the work or find this opportunity to publish it again.

I’m very happy that people enjoyed what I wrote, and since I write novels as a hobby, having my work on shelves as a proper book is like a dream.

Now that I’ve had my publishing dream granted, I feel keenly that it was thanks to the support of a great many people that I was able to reach this point.

Everyone who supported me on Shosetsuka ni Naro.

Everyone who bought the book in stores, or clicked that buy button online.

The people at Hina Project, who provided a place where I could post the novel I would otherwise only have shared with my friends.

Mr. Tetsuhiro Nabeshima, who took the formless images I described and turned them into beautiful illustrations.

Mr. Kiba of Balcolony, who did a wonderful job with the packaging, page design, and more, so that this book would look its best.

And finally, my editor, Mr. Hayato Kiyomizu—and all the others at Kadokawa—who made me the offer and supported me until the book could be published.

If any of these people had been missing, things wouldn’t have worked out like this. Thanks to the strange connections we’re able to form online, Prison Life is Easy For a Villainess was able to become a book.

I cannot possibly thank all of you enough.

Now, feeling pathetic that, despite being a writer, I lack the words to properly thank you all, I lay down my pen.

In the last year of the Heisei Era,

Hibiki Yamazaki