Webcomic / Beware the Villainess!

After an accident, an overworked, modern-day college student awakens in a fantasy kingdom of one of the many trashy romance novels she consumed in her old life. Even odder, she's arrived in the place of the story’s villainess, Melissa Foddebrat. Given that this was the rare novel where the evil Duke's daughter does not get killed off in any of the routes, Melissa decides she's much better off avoiding the plot altogether and living a life of luxury.

Unfortunately, Melissa's plan hits a few snags. Melissa's fiance, the crown prince Ian Basillos, refuses to annul their engagement while also enjoying his playboy lifestyle. Meanwhile, the Duke and Melissa's brother Jake presume Melissa's sudden dislike for the prince is just another childish whim than a real issue with his character. With her reputation leaving her with no allies, Melissa must use her villainess skills in order to not marry the prince and enjoy her life of lazy luxury.

Melissa's attempts at self-interest might have more repercussions than she realizes as her attempts to find a quiet life draw more and more people to her...

Beware the Villainess! is a comedy Korean Webtoon written by Bbongdda Mask and drawn by Pureunkanna. The official English translation can be found on Tapas here, and the original on Kakao here.

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This webtoon provides examples of:

• Abduction Is Love: Apparently, Peacock kidnapped Yuri in the novel out of love.
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Jake finally sucks up his courage, tells Yuri how he feels honestly and directly with no hiding behind the scenes... and gets called a creep.
  • This is the best way to describe Yona's feelings toward being "beloved" by the world's Jerkass God.
• Adopted into Royalty: Yuri was a commoner, until she was adopted into the Elizabeth family.
• Ambiguously Brown: Jack Forton. His race is never specified, but he's darker than the rest of the cast.
• Ambiguously Gay: While Yuri very clearly adores Melissa, the nature of her affection is pretty ambiguous. While Nine assumes that she's already in a relationship with Melissa, there isn't actually anything explicitly romantic about anything she says or does.
• Animal Motifs: Birds for Peacock. His name, his messenger bird, he cages Yuri like a bird, and he even calls her his canary.
• Art Shift: Every now and then Melissa pulls a face that belongs more in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure as a reaction to her surroundings, and occasionally characters are drawn in a style that resembles chibi art.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: Ian does this early on and apparently has a history of actively inviting Melissa over just so she can catch him cheating with other women.
• Bifauxnen: Cartena has short hair and wears a plain white button-down and trousers.
• Big Damn Heroes: Subverted. When the monsters are unleashed Melissa rushes ahead to get into combat against overwhelming numbers while Nine stops several times to assist evacuees. The people trying to escape beg him to go help out the woman who saved them, Melissa Podebrat. He immediately rushes forward to go help her... and she's still fine and in the middle of killing a monster. She's visibly tired, but not in any particular danger yet.
• Brainy Brunette: Downplayed. Although Melissa is a great strategist, more emphasis is put on her temper.
• Character Development: The obnoxious and immature love interests actually start showing their better sides when their worse sides are called out and recognized as such: Ian's disrespect and sexism is bluntly called out when he shows he clearly considers being compared to a woman an inherent insult because he automatically considers women inferior to him. Jake also has it driven home that his behavior isn't romantic, it's stalking, and that the object of his affections is not an object and very much would like to take care of themselves, thank you. Melissa makes sure he gets the point by using up every bit of magic she has to put a perspective reversal in play and make him see things from the other side. It's heavily implied this is because Melissa is not originally from the world and therefore free from the constraints of the story, which in turn allows for the love interests to develop beyond their original characters thanks to her actions to throw the plot out.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: The original Melissa is this towards Ian.
• Cold Sniper: Jake is a loner and a sniper for the royal family.
• Companion Cube: Jake is utterly devastated when his gun breaks, and even digs it a grave.
• Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Melissa shoots Peacock down before he can propose this, pointing out that Yuri is a person and not a prize to be won.
• Curtains Match the Window: Jake, Jack, and Cartena have the same eye and hair color (blue for Jake and Cartena and dark red for Jack).
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Prettiest member of the cast? Nine Forton, hands down. He also has the cutest body language.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Yuri has blonde-white hair and is the center of an Unwanted Harem.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The sadistic Migen is Nine's identical twin. By extension, he is also very attractive.
• Face of a Thug: It's implied that Melissa's father badly wants to get along with her but hasn't the faintest idea how to do so and can't even say how he feels due to sucking at talking to his children. Melissa just sees his craggy face, seemingly cold attitude and unwillingness to support her against her brother and concludes the worst about him.
• Fantastic Racism: OG Melissa despised werewolves, though this story's Melissa doesn't share her sentiments. Later on it's actually shown that the previous Melissa may have had a point: They really do seem to be mostly assholes and their brand of magic is quite unpleasant and downright poisonous to regular humans.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Subverted. Martha, Melissa's nanny, is infamous for her poor cooking.
• Feminist Fantasy: The story centers around a smart, capable female protagonist that takes an introspective look at Double Standards of the romance genre, as well as wider fiction and even real life, and thus takes the story Off the Rails by refusing to play along with sexist tropes and assumptions. She out-maneuvers, out-wits (and sometimes even out-fights) the characters that repeatedly try to stop her, and does it while calling out their flaws and explaining why the things they want or believe are toxic/twisted. The story is not afraid to repeatedly mention that its female characters are not "things" to be rescued, admired or sought-after, but agents in charge of their own fates. To wit, by the end of the story, Melissa becomes the new Duke Foddebrat over her brother while Yuri is granted the title of Grand Mage instead of being the empress like her original counterpart.
• Formula with a Twist: Along the lines of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! and I'm In Love With the Villainess.
• For Want Of A Nail: Melissa saving Nine from the streets ends up playing a role in derailing Jack's events because this leads to Jack showing up at the Podebrat estate before meeting Yuri, leading to Jack developing an interest for Melissa rather than Yuri. This change of interest leads to Jack losing to Migen when he was destined to achieve an awakening and kill him during Yuri's kidnapping event.
• Fridge Logic: In-Universe, this is the basis behind the differences between the world of the books and the world Melissa finds herself in. In the books, certain things made sense if one didn't look too deeply into it and simply accepted the premise at face-value. However, the real, living version of it falls apart quickly.
• Freudian Excuse: The original Melissa originally comes off as a poorly written obsessive bully, much like many of the other characters. Conversations between the two Melissas in their dreams instead suggest that the story’s Melissa was actually profoundly lonely and believed that marrying Ian might have earned her the love her father failed to show her.
• Generic Cuteness: Melissa is typically considered to be either plain or even somewhat ugly, and while she has a more angular face than the beautiful Yuri, it's far from bad looking. She's also quite fit, doesn't seem to have bad skin, decent fashion sense and a figure that is feminine without going to extremes.
• Good Is Not Soft: Melissa calls out the male leads on their hypocrisy and unwanted advances, and she's definitely one of the ruder characters, not to mention that she doesn't have much against beating a lesson or two into the male leads.
• Grand Theft Me: One of Melissa’s dreams heavily implies (and later confirms) that the new Melissa isn’t just a reincarnation. She unwittingly took control of OG Melissa’s body, leaving the fate of the original Melissa unclear. She gives Melissa her blessing with a smile.
• Green and Mean: Peacock Melody, one of Yuri's unwanted suitors, has green hair.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Yuri has been forced to live through the novel's plot over and over again, including the annoying sub stories. That's why she's so delighted to see the new Melissa: She's charming in her own right, but she's also driving a wrecking ball right through all the plot shenanigans Yuri thought inevitable. Yuri doesn't even understand the appeal of the original story, at one point noting her confusion that in-story the slightly childish Melissa is always treated like a terrible monster.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Yuri has white-blonde hair and is one of the kindest characters in the series.
• Heir Club for Men: Melissa's father is very reluctant to skip over Jake to allow Melissa to inherit. However, her number of achievements coupled with Jake's disinterest and his own declining health causes him to reluctantly pass on the title.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Melissa wields a sword.
• Homoerotic Subtext: The nature of Melissa and Yuri's relationship raises a few eyebrows because it's a very friendly one indeed. While the thought clearly hasn't crossed Melissa's mind, Yuri's own perspective is a good deal more ambiguous.
• I Am Your Opponent: Melissa in Chapter 28, to Peacock.
  Melissa: I am the cutie villainess, the mighty unstoppable lady, who flaunts her power, wealth, and darkness around! I am... Melissa Podebrat! From now, I am your rival! I will be protecting Miss Yuri from now on. I won't let a rude guy like you approach her!
• I Call It "Vera": Jake's gun is named Monica.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Jake is a Cold Sniper with the eyes to match.
• Identical Stranger: Chelsea, Ian's illegitimate niece from his deceased half-sister, looks a lot like a younger Melissa with black hair that signifies the royal family, to the point she could be mistaken for her daughter. The household, including the former duke, assume she truly is her daughter despite her attempts to correct the misunderstanding.
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Melissa gets a number of these, the first of which is imagining bashing Ian's face in with a glass ashtray.
• Informed Attribute: One of Melissa's first indications that the universe isn't quite like the novel she read is that the likable characteristics of the main love interests quickly fall apart when examined in real life, outside the hands of a hack writer.
  • Ian Basillos is apparently portrayed as a Prince Charming Ladykiller in Love who treats Yuri like a princess but can't get rid of his annoying fiance. Melissa's quick to point out that its much harder to consider Ian The Charmer when you remember he's cheating on a woman who loves him and had been even before finally falling for Yuri. He openly and repeatedly kept having affairs with multiple women right in front of Melissa just to upset her, and had no consideration for her or for any of the women he was using, even claiming it as his right as the next King. Also he blames Melissa for not letting him break off their engagement when in reality she's been trying to do so since she arrived and he's the one holding on because of political reasons. It's heavily implied that he used the original Melissa's feelings in order to get engaged to her and win house Foddebrat's support, and only officially left her for Yuri once the latter had gained enough political clout in her own right that he could use.
  • Jake Foddebrat is a Cold Sniper who warms up to the sweet Yuri and keeps her safe from various threats. However, his ability to appear right when Yuri's in danger suggests that he's in fact watching Yuri constantly. This puts his romantic prospects in a much more sinister light than he thinks they do. Then there's his sister catching him secretly taking pictures of Yuri during the night festival...
  • The secretly psychotic Peacock Melody is a rich genius who outsmarts all his opponents easily. Unfortunately, he's only as smart as the author is capable of. That being, not much.
  • Melissa herself is held up as a terrible, clingy and jealous bitch, but her actual response to her fiancee openly cheating on her is far from unreasonable. Even Yuri finds the way people treated the original Melissa confusing as she considered her no more than a little bratty at worst.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Yuri, although the extent she can be called innocent is debatable.
• Instant Expert: To an extent. Melissa is terrible at magic, but she's phenomenally skilled with a blade. However, given that she's never really trained herself before this, she's only really to the point of being able to hold her own against the likes of Jack and her brother and can't really handle anyone stronger than that.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Nine assumes Melissa's declaration that she will protect Yuri is a declaration of love and resigns himself to living with unrequited feelings.
• Jerkass Gods: In Yona's own words, the god that created the world is a jerk and even prior to that, it's established the reason werewolves can't use magic is because they refused to worship said god. Considering said god seems to be the one forcing Yuri to relive the events of the novel and pushing her back from the changes Melissa made, it's an apt description. It later decides after Melissa's changes make the original story not salvageable to destroy everything and start again.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite her prickly and easily angered demeanor, Melissa proves to be far more empathetic than she lets herself admit. This, of course, gets her into even more trouble.
• Lady and Knight: After Melissa announces herself as Yuri's protector.
• Lady Swearsalot: Melissa swears more than most of the cast.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Nine has long hair he usually keeps tied back and is noticeably attractive.
• Love Makes You Evil: Peacock. According to Melissa, his violent behavior towards Yuri stems his love for her.
• Manly Men Can Hunt: The hunters in the hunting competition are mostly men, and someone even accosts Melissa on the count of her participation in the hunt.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Melissa is coarse, physically active, aggressive and fairly ambitious. She also isn't much of a traditional beauty. Nine, meanwhile, is the prettiest character in the series and is an extremely peaceful and gentle person, especially given that he comes from a race noted for their aggression. And when it comes time to wrap things up for these two, it's Melissa who gets down on one knee to give Nine a wedding ring, meaning he marries into the Podebrat family.
• Meaningful Name:
  • It can't be a coincidence (could even be a lampshading of the series' inspiration) that the heroine's name is Yuri.
  • The original version of Melissa Foddebrat was quite a Royal Brat.
• Media Transmigration: Naturally. However, Melissa herself notes that her experiences don’t necessarily match the traditional reincarnation isekai narrative. While the world of “The Brats I Love” is rich and vast, it’s also poorly written and inconsistent. Despite being a unique world full of people the original novel never mentioned, it’s all still subject to the rules of the narrative, implying a Trapped in TV Land situation. Which turns out to be close to the truth as the world is being dictated by a god who follows the original author's will and forces Yuri to relive the events of the novel over and over again.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Werewolves have a tendency to be brutes, but Nine Forton is an extremely gentle person who never fit in with them.
• Mystical White Hair: Although the Elizabeth's hair toes the line between blonde and white, their magical skill is uncontested.
  Melissa: Simply being accepted into [the Elizabeth] family meant your magical powers were extraordinary
• Named Weapon: Jake named his gun Monica.
• Nerves of Steel: Yona, who appears unperturbed even when Migen injures Melissa in battle.
• No Social Skills: Jake doesn't understand why he should care about Melissa being upset until she threatens him.
• Not So Omniscient After All: The Jerkass God of the story's world can't restart the world without Dayoung aka Melissa's consent. As a foreign entity, Dayoung is immune to the God's influence. Something that Dayoung/Melissa realizes when the God tries to scare her into restarting during Chapter 85.
• Not What It Looks Like: Melissa initially mistakes some Assassin Guild members for stalking Chelsea as trying to kill her. It's quickly clarified they were hired by Ian to protect Chelsea, his niece from his deceased half-sister, until political circumstances following his ascension calmed down enough for Ian to take her in.
• Only in It for the Money: Yona's main motivation.
  Yona: How could you take in a beggar when you should be looking for a new dress? I just -
  Melissa: Quadruple raise.
  Yona: I just completely agree with you! How could I possibly stop you from helping those in need? You're truly the example of noblesse oblige!
• Parental Substitute: In the extra stories, Melissa and Nine become Chelsea (Ian's niece through his younger half-sister)'s legal guardians due to her growing attached to them both and even acknowledging the previous Duke as her grandfather.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Melissa and Yuri both wear elaborate dresses.
• Pretty Boy: Nine, no contest.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Yona, a collected maid, and Martha, Melissa's nanny, both have one.
• Primary-Color Champion: Downplayed. Melissa has yellow eyes and wears some red, Nine has blue hair, and Yuri has blue eyes and usually wears blue.
• Prince Charmless: As a result of the perspective flip and actually picking apart the internal logic of the story. In the book, Ian was cheating on his arranged fiancee because he considered her behavior obsessive and wanted nothing to do with her, which was portrayed as justified. In practice, his fiancee was mostly just trying to spend time with him and be affectionate the way couples generally do, and never actually did anything to harm him. Because she was temperamental and less powerful, however, she would always wind up taking the blame for getting angry at his blatant cheating and disregard for her feelings. And since Melissa would never blame him for cheating, she would attack the women she catches him with instead while Ian would act like it had nothing to do with him, taking no blame in the matter he started while the women around him were being hurt. Making it worse? When Melissa seemingly gets tired of it all and tries to break the engagement outright, suddenly Ian isn't having any of it; he may dislike her, but he still actually needs her family's political power.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Ian has black hair and pale skin, and is attractive enough to easily keep cheating on Melissa with multiple women.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A tactic Melissa loves to employ against the men around her. However, they’re often too self-involved to actually understand what she’s saying, and her words fall on deaf ears. Part 1 ends with Ian and Jake finally starting to process her insults and make steps towards self-improvement.
  • Yuri gives one to Jake about how being a Stalker with a Crush is not romantic and won't make her fall in love with him.
• "Reborn as Villainess" Story: The main character died and reincarnated as a childish villainess from a novel. She thinks all the male leads are trash and decides she needs to keep them away from the protagonist, who is a total sweetheart. Meanwhile, the original protagonist is sort of aware that she's a novel character and adores Melissa for making things so much better than they were.
• Red Is Heroic: Melissa, the main character, usually wears at least some red.
• Red Is Violent: Jack has red hair and eyes, and by fair the most aggressive member of the cast. Downplayed with Melissa, who also has her threatening moments and often wears clothing at least accented with red.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In-Universe. Melissa considers all the novel love interests to be rather contemptuous individuals and gets paired off with a character who probably died before the story began. However, her attitude towards the book love interests causes them to stop and reconsider their own behavior, leading them to start maturing. She even ends up becoming friends with two of them and forms a slightly odd sibling bond with a third. She continues to despise the fourth, but his behavior may have also improved by the end, though given his significantly lower starting position he doesn't improve nearly to the extent of being worth interacting with.
• The Rich Have White Stuff: Peacock, a billionaire, is often seen wearing white.
• Royal Brat: The original Melissa is known for being one, to the point where she's nicknamed the Podebrat Bitch.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: Peacock Melody has green hair.
• Shrinking Violet: Nine, Melissa's soft-spoken and meek butler.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Nine is a male example. He has blue hair and is very soft-spoken.
• Slasher Smile: Migen sports one when he tells Nine to kill Melissa.
• Stalker with a Crush: Jake. Deconstructed.
  Yuri: Normally, people like to think they should protect cute and weak things. The problem is, they never ask said weak things if they want protection.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Melissa attending a political meeting while wearing pants has her constantly mocked and ignored by the nobility until she gets a surprise assist from both Jake and Ian. Surprising for her, at least, because the readers have paid much more attention to their character development while Melissa stopped expecting anything from them long ago.
• Stepford Smiler: Yuri appears as a Stock Shoujo Heroine, with angelic features and overwhelming kindness. However, it slowly becomes clear that she finds the possessive and clingy ways of the male characters exhausting and is just too polite and passive to remark on it. She's revealed to be even more broken than she lets on when it becomes clear she knows she's trapped in a romance story with terrible love interests.
• Stylistic Suck: The romance novels that compose Melissa's world from the summaries alone are blatantly poorly written with paper-thin characters based around broad archetypes with no heed given to the implications they present. Melissa spends as much time critiquing the flaws in the writing as she does actually trying to address them in her new reality.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Averted. Although Melissa has gold eyes, she has no aptitude for magic.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome :
  • So Yuri is a kind, beautiful and talented young woman with a supportive family etc etc wanted by all the hot dudes. That's fine. But! Would such a person actually like any of these handsome men back? One repeatedly cheats on his fiancee, whom she considers at worst immature. Another stalks her under the premise of protecting her while a third pretty blatantly wants to abduct her, even setting aside his arrogance and condescending attitude. Meanwhile, the last of them is perhaps the least offensive of the bunch in comparison, but could charitably be described as highly incompatible given his interests, not being bright, and the fact that their special magics are poisonous towards each other. Which is why she always dreads having to get stuck with one of them regardless of her own opinion and loves Melissa so much.
    • In general, the serious flaws of Melissa's suitors are what happens when real-world consequences are applied to poorly thought-out romance archetypes. A playboy in reality wouldn't know how to value true affection towards a woman, a man devoting himself to constantly swooping in to save the object of his affections would be seen as a stalker, a man who only knows aggression would be too reckless to be trusted with protecting anyone, and an archetypical Yandere would be an active threat to whoever he had his eyes on.
  • Melissa points out the problems of someone like Ian showing such complete disregard for the people around him when he's going to rule said country. She also mentally notes because Ian's mother was a maid unlike his younger half-brothers being born from the current empress, the latter two have a good chance of being able to snatch the crown prince position away from him if he doesn't show he's capable of being the next ruler. By Ian beginning to take his duties as crown prince more seriously from that point onward, it's evident he does acknowledge she's not wrong about what she said.
  • While Ian, Jake and Jack can be considered recyclable, Peacock's personality flaws are the kind that don't just get better somehow because he's a Yandere Control Freak. Rather than being disrespectful, selfish or insensitive, his behavior coupled with his fortune makes him downright dangerous and Melissa ultimately has to let herself get poisoned by him to secure his arrest to keep him away from Yuri for good. Not to mention no matter how wealthy he is, the fact he poisoned a duke's daughter in the view of multiple witnesses, including the servant he blackmailed into being an accomplish, while he is technically a commoner, is a serious crime he can't bribe his way out of.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Werewolves are capable of achieving an awakening under emotion duress, which makes them more powerful. In the novel, Jack undergoes one and kills Migen when Yuri is kidnapped. However, the changes from the novel leads to Nine being the one to awaken in response to Melissa being critically injured by Migen instead.
• True Blue Femininity: Yuri has blue eyes and is often seen wearing blue. Averted with Cartena, who has short hair and dresses in a plain button-down and trousers and is anything but feminine as an ex-knight and sword teacher.
• The Un-Favourite: Melissa, at a glance. In the opening scene, her father doesn't even look at her when he greets her, and it becomes clear that he favors Jake. However, little cues in his behavior indicate he really wants to get along with her and just doesn't really have any idea how to interact with her. When they finally do improve their relationship, a part of him senses that it isn't his real daughter he finally managed to talk to openly and he's lost the chance to reconcile with the original Melissa forever.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Story Melissa is in love with Ian, who holds her in contempt even though her "terrible behavior" is being at worst sorta clingy and, from her perspective, just trying to get along with her fiancee. Actual protagonist Melissa does everything she can to drive him away and break the engagement, confusing him quite a bit. He doesn't actually fall for her with this but rather when he realizes her strength of character when actually calling him out on his flaws. Melissa, for her part, is completely baffled by the change in his behavior. You can even pinpoint the exact moment he realizes what the situation has become and that it's his own fault. At first she doesn't get it, but latest thinks to herself that even if it is true, he already burned his bridges, so she doesn't care.
• Unwanted Harem: Yuri has four suitors she could be paired off with, but they all start the novel pretty trashy once you look past their stock character facade. Prince Ian constantly engages in affairs simply to harass a girl that loves him, Jake is a rude stalker, Jack is a dumb brute and Peacock is a smug and "actually dangerous yandere". Thanks to Melissa's involvement in the plot, three of them improve significantly and with the exception of Peacock, two of them gain genuine one-sided crushes on Melissa during the course of this story while the third, who is Melissa's brother, stops being a jerk to her.
• Wham Line: While Yuri already demonstrated Stepford Smiler tendencies, the end of chapter 35 reveals that she knows more about her role as a romance heroine than she lets on.
  Yuri: Every day is so much fun thanks to lady Melissa. That's why I'm hopeful. Hopeful that this time I just might be able to escape from this hellish curse.
• What the Hell, Hero?: While Melissa has cursed at her supposed fiancee before, the occasion that really stands out happens when they attend a festival together. She beats him in a contest and puts a toy tiara on his head as a joke, which he considers very humiliating and whines about how she has basically emasculated him. Annoyed by his sexist comment, she blows up at him, pointing out that it is this condescending attitude is exactly what makes him so obnoxious in the first place. He deliberately makes Melissa upset by having affairs blatantly in front of her, then has the hypocritical gall to be mad at her when she hangs out with Nine. He considers being put in the role of a woman to be beneath him because he doesn't really respect women at all, which is extra insulting because that's "half of the population of the kingdom he's about to rule over that he's degraded" and she wonders what that says about the kind of leader he intends to be. And lastly, while he goes off having fun and ignoring his responsibilities as Crown Prince, he refuses to even see the harm he causes to people with his entitlement or make an effort to better himself, choosing only to see Melissa as a bratty villainess and Yuri as the embodiment of purity who he expects to have feelings for him while he carries on as he is: a spoiled, selfish, irresponsible womanizing jerk who won't even let go of Melissa, the very same woman he demonizes for the simple crime of wanting to be his fiancee, yet who he also doesn't set free from their engagement when she asks, even though he wants that as well. The point sinks in and he actually starts shaping up, much to Melissa's confusion.
• Yandere: Invoked. In the original novel, Peacock kidnaps Yuri out of love. Melissa uses this to her advantage because she knows that he acted out of love.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Melissa is a heroic example. She has yellow eyes, is cunning, and is more than a little rough around the edges. Ian, a chronic cheater and a hypocrite, also has yellow eyes.

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