She's proposed a contract relationship with the only other commoner student at the Academy in order to protect herself from her ex-fiance, but the secret only she knows is that he's not actually a commoner at all but the lost noble heir to a ducal family. He already loved her in the og timeline, & he's showing signs of falling again very quickly in this one, so I'm betting all my chips that he's the ML. Edit: He's definitely the ML, he even noticed with minimal hints that she's struggling against something much greater than the bullying at school, aka the hidden mastermind behind the fake 'real daughter'. It's both angsty & heartwarming that after lightly brushing off all the bullsht & hurtful actions of her ex-family & friends, the heroine finally acknowledges how horrible her situation actually is - one weak 'commoner' against so many nobles - only when worrying about involving the ML in this mess.

Ironically, the only commoner at the academy is actually the fake white lotus btch, who's a powerful mage that changed her appearance with magic & faked the paternity test. Apparently, she did all this just to steal the tr*sh ex-fiance from the heroine, & there's Korean comments speculating that maybe she's much older than the rest of the cast since she was originally a mage from the magic tower. She's an expert at emotional manipulation magic & actually already once tried to brainwash the ex-fiance into loving her before being caught. Then, the hidden mastermind broke her out of magical jail & backed her on this whole paternity scam for unknown reasons of their own. She's been using emotional manipulation magic on the heroine's family, but it's not all-powerful & only works well on the idiot father & brothers who feel justified looking down on the heroine for being a 'talentless commoner', & it has no effect at all on the mother whose maternal instincts are strong. It's kind of ridiculous that she went through all this just for a man, but I guess it's a staple for s*upid white lotus btches to only want tr*shy men that are already taken. Currently the heroine can only win against her in potion making, but hopefully it doesn't take too long before they even the playing field more.