A university student who has been obsessing over a popular otome game collapses from exhaustion while attempting its brutal hard mode, and wakes up as Penelope Eckhart, the game's hated villainess. Penelope is a stand-in adopted by a duke in place of his missing daughter, the game's true heroine. On this route every ending means death, and nearly everyone around her seems to want her gone, including her cruel adoptive brothers and a tyrannical prince. Relying on her wits and what she learned playing the game, she has to steer clear of the death routes by earning the affection of one of the male leads: the prince, a suspicious magician, a nobleman from a fallen nation, or one of her brothers. The result is a fantasy romance with psychological drama at its core.