I tamed the female lead

Chapter 17- Astéria's POV

Poehina trusted Orange wholeheartedly. She still didn't confide in her in hard times but she said I was the only one she needed. I got so shocked by that that I thought I was dead. Poehina just laughed and ran away but she had no idea how long those few words played through my head after that morning. I couldn't focus on anything and started hallucinating seeing Poehina say those words everywhere. I thought I was going crazy but I soon had to put all of this aside when I noticed the way people were behaving around Poehina. She didn't tell me about her bullying of course. Neither Orange nor Astéria. She would never confide in people and even less if she really needed help. I wanted her to let me do everything for her but I couldn't force her. We would get there.

I trusted Poehina and I knew she would manage without help but I didn't want her to have to. I knew she would make her bullies cry and I knew she would destroy them if needed but I really wanted her to let every difficult task to me. If I could I would have killed every single person in our class but I couldn't forget about her terrified look when I killed the two maids in front of her eyes. I had to find another way. I couldn't kill them. In my past life I did everything with schemes and lies but it was way harder to control myself when it concerned her. I had to be patient but every time someone whispered about her I had to use all my strength to hold back from pulling their tongues out.

I thought I would lose it when I saw the letter. It wasn't enough that they were bullying Poehina, now they were using me to hurt her as well. Fortunately Poehina didn't read the letter. The latter was full of disgusting sentences about the pseudo Astéria who wanted to touch Poehina everywhere. I knew that the person who wrote the letter was Iris immediately. She was the one who hated Poehina protecting me so much and I hated that she imagined such sentences. I needed to erase those images from her mind. I needed to erase everything from her mind. I wanted Iris to become an empty vase and live the rest of her life that way. I knew how to do it but I had to calm down. Poehina was really smart and she would immediately know it was me if something were to happen to Iris.

I went to her house and did my best to calm down on the way. I couldn't kill her. I couldn't kill her. I couldn't torture her. I couldn't torture her. She had to be in one piece. Once in front of her window I knew what to do and easily infiltrated her dreams. I turned the latters into horrible nightmares filled with all the horrors I wanted to do to her. Iris couldn't sleep more than an hour per night after that and I was satisfied. I didn't hurt her. She was just having nightmares. That was the weight of her guilt torturing her every night. That was enough to stop Iris from bullying Poehina anymore and I was glad because that meant Poehina wouldn't notice the dark circles under Iris' eyes if she stayed away. Of course I started doing the same for everyone else who dares so much as glare at Poehina.

This wasn't enough of course but I felt better after doing something. Poehina heard about the little speech I made of course and she confronted me about it. I didn't know why she seemed so puzzled that Astéria would help her. She didn't want to accept that I had no ulterior motives which I predicted. I didn't know how Poehina knew that I didn't send her that letter. The letter said how much I wanted her and she said she knew Astéria would never send her such a letter. I would never send her such a badly written one but if only I had the courage, I would have sent her that letter years ago.

Poehina didn't believe in Astéria's good intentions at all and I had to do something about this. Therefore I started really sending her letters saying that I couldn't stop feeling about the false letter and didn't want her to stay on that bad image of me. I started writing to her about how bad I felt and how much I wanted to fix things before telling her about my day. I wrote thousands of letters before finally settling on this one and I regretted it as soon as I sent it. Nothing seemed good enough for her but because of all the stress I had no idea what to write about anymore. I told her about my day because I had no other idea but thought I would die of embarrassment thinking back to it.

Fortunately, Poehina didn't seem to mind. As soon as she got the letter she came to Orange and showed it to her:

"Look who sent me a letter for real this time. Astéria."

I acted surprised and Poehina stared at the envelope a bit more, puzzled:

"Why would she send me a letter?

-To apologize again?"

She didn't wait anymore and opened the letter. But she didn't read it immediately staring at the letters for a bit:

"I knew her handwriting was gorgeous. Look at this. I never saw such letters in my entire life. I almost want to hang this in my room."

I couldn't blush. I had to control myself. But Poehina noticed and smiled:

"Don't worry. Your letters are even better. Astéria can't compare to you in any aspect."

I had no idea how to take this. Poehina read the letter and I had to refrain from hiding in shame. The minute she spent reading felt like an eternity and I couldn't feel my throat anymore. Did she hate it? Did she hate me? Did I say something wrong? I wanted to die.

"She is so nice. She apologized again."

I signed more loudly than ever.

"I don't know why she is so worked up about this letter incident but she sent me another letter to erase the first one from our memories. I really don't understand her but that's cute."

Poehina answered immediately and we exchanged banalities for days after that. I preserved all of her letters in my mansion's treasury but I started getting paranoid and would come back to read them again every day. I came back so often that I decided to just take them with me and keep them in a magical pocket.

Seeing another letter arrive Poehina smiled:

"It's Astéria again. We have been talking quite a bit lately. She is really nice.

-I am happy to see you get along.

-We really do. We don't really talk about anything important but everything just feels cozy. I like it.

-But?"

I felt that she wasn't telling me everything. I was starting to get used to it but it was still driving me insane. Was she still puzzled about the reason why Astéria was being nice to her?

"Nothing, it's just... I don't understand why she is sending me letters. Azore said that she never talked to anyone else at school but she is really nice to me. Why is that?

-Because you are adorable and deserve it.

-I know but... I don't know. Why would she be mean to everyone and nice only to me? It doesn't make any sense. But even if there was an ulterior motive it's still nice having someone be nice only to me. As long as it's letters I can have my own imagination take over and imagine whatever I want. It's not every day that a perfect human writes you letters.

-Perfect?"

My heart skipped a beat.No it just stopped completely.

"Isn't she? At least physically. She is just gorgeous. She has glowing skin, her eyes are sparkling and her hair looks impeccable. She looks exactly like my type."

I froze. Why did I change the color of my hair? I fI looked like Poehina's perfect type then I should have stayed exactly the way I was. This was the first time in my life that I regretted changing my appearance. Usually it was the other way round. Feeling me all puzzled, Poehina thought Orange was being insecure and she smiled:

"Don't worry. You are way better looking than her."

Was I competing against myself? Would I win if Astéria was Poehina's type? Or would I win if it was Orange? I had no idea what to do with this information. I knew that Poehina preferred Orange to Astéria but it seemed like every possibility was bad.

I thought about it all night and realized how good things were. Orange was Poehina's best friend and the only person she trusted and it seemed despite being really on edge around Astéria, the latter was Poehina's crush. I had to dig into this. Once at school, I immediately went to Poehina as Astéria and greeted her warmly. She seemed surprised by this but maybe if I did it every day she would finally get used to it. So I greeted Poehina every morning in addition to sending her letters and slowly she started getting used to it without knowing. She wouldn't be so tense anymore and would even turn to me as if waiting for me to say something.

I needed to get her guard down even a little and for this I needed her to get used to me as much as possible before passing to the next step. Everyone at school noticed how warm I was towards Poehina while I completely ignored the others. I wasn't trying to hide this and even if Poehina thought it was weird I was only being nice to her, I wasn't going to change and would slowly make her understand how different she was in my eyes. I didn't want to lie or play a role and pretend to be nice. I needed to stay myself as much as possible.