ITMLWKM 2

Chapter 2.

Pitch-black hair that didn’t let a single ray of light through, sharp red eyes glaring straight at me. There was a cut on his cheek, but for a ten-year-old he had an almost unfairly pretty face.

No matter how many times I looked, the boy standing in front of me was definitely Carsian Raumdisell, the male lead of the novel I had been reincarnated into.

The same boy I had bullied half to death!

I turned and checked my reflection in the nearest mirror.

Clean wheat-colored blonde hair, purple eyes, peach-soft cheeks without a single scar…

It was nothing like the filthy, worn-out version of me who had been dragged onto the execution platform after long imprisonment. Yeah. I really had come back.

So this was… regression? I reincarnated into a book, died, and then even went back in time? Then exactly when did I return to?

“Young lady…?”

Susan called me carefully.

Right. Susan was still here.

The people in our family hadn’t started bullying Carsian right after he arrived.

Or rather, they couldn’t.

Too many people were curious about “the foolish count’s son whose father had gone off on a reckless trading voyage across pirate-infested seas.”

That curiosity turned into money, so Father treated Carsian decently for a while. But once the interest and the money dried up, Carsian became nothing but a nuisance.

That had been about six months after he came to our house, if I remembered right.

Susan got kicked out for trying to protect him and being called a hypocrite for it.

After that, the bullying only got worse.

Since Susan was still here, it looked like we hadn’t reached the seven-month mark yet—the point where the abuse really ramped up.

What should I do? No, wait. What was there to think about? I needed to start apologizing to Carsian right now!

Right on cue, Carsian asked in a prickly voice,

“Why’d you call me?”

From the looks of it, past-me had summoned him to the room to bully him again.

If I were still the old me, I would’ve hurt him just to earn Mother’s praise. But now I knew the future. I knew Carsian’s father, the one everyone expected to die, would come home in glory. And I knew that would get me killed.

In other words, if I stopped bullying Carsian, I might actually live.

I cleared my throat and said,

“I… called you because I heard you got hurt.”

“……”

“So I wanted to give you some ointment.”

The second the words left my mouth, the maid standing behind Susan burst forward.

“What? Young lady, what are you talking about?”

“Huh?”

Her voice sounded seriously pissed, so I looked at her.

Freckles dotted across her cheeks, green eyes, dark red hair pulled tight—it was Betty.

In my previous life, after Susan got kicked out, Betty and I had stuck together like best friends and bullied Carsian. She had been beheaded before me, so a vague sense of missing her had started to rise.

I was about to greet her warmly when Betty snapped in a sharp voice,

“Young lady, are you in your right mind?”

“…What?”

“You’re going to waste expensive ointment on that parasite? Why are you suddenly acting like an idiot?”

Excuse me? Idiot?

My eyes went wide from the shock. Actually, thinking about it, it wasn’t that shocking. Before we bonded over bullying Carsian together, Betty had thrown insults like this at me from time to time.

A sharp chill ran down the back of my neck, like an ice pick had stabbed me.

So you knew too.

You knew I was an illegitimate child. That I never truly belonged in this family!

If a maid like Betty knew I was a bastard, that meant most of the household knew.

I had been nothing.

I spent my whole life believing I was real family, while everyone was laughing at me behind my back. The truth I only learned right before dying was suddenly choking me. I couldn’t even blink. I just stared at Betty.

Then Susan shouted,

“Betty! How dare you speak so rudely to the young lady! Apologize at once!”

Her hands were shaking with pure rage—at Betty’s words and the way she treated me. Looks like Susan really had been the only one on my side.

I gripped Susan’s hand tighter, stood up, and fixed Betty with a cold stare. Then I spoke as frostily as I could manage.

“Idiot? Did you just call me an idiot?”

The voice that came out was way too cold for a seven-year-old. Both Susan and Betty flinched for a second. But Betty recovered fast, eyes hardening as she said,

“Well, it’s true. Ointment? For him? Young lady, you’ve been stuck in your room so long you don’t know anything.”

She talked like she was lecturing me.

“Do you have any idea how precious the herbs for that ointment are? You can’t just hand them out to anyone!”

She glared at me fiercely after snapping that out.

Oh, is that so?

I let go of Susan’s hand and took a step toward Betty. Then I stared straight into her venomous green eyes.

Before we got close, Betty used to hit me in secret whenever Susan wasn’t looking. “Education,” she called it. Even now, my body still flinched whenever her hands moved.

But I couldn’t stay like this. I knew exactly how it felt when a blade came down on my neck. I knew that if things stayed the same, I would die again for sure.

I had to make it crystal clear, right in front of Carsian, that I was going to be on his side.

Not join Betty in bullying him—help him instead.

“Betty.”

I spoke in a freezing voice.

“You think I don’t know those herbs are expensive? How much more do you know than the eldest daughter of a marquis that you feel the need to teach me?”

Betty’s eyes wavered at the sharp words.

“Watch your mouth.”

“W-watch… what?!”

Betty yelped in disbelief, but I answered calmly.

“I’m the young lady of this household. I could have you dragged out and fed to a pack of wolves right now if I wanted.”

The corner of Betty’s mouth twitched.

She looked like she was sneering, thinking, ‘A bastard like you? You really have that kind of power?’ It made me furious, but I kept my face blank and continued.

“Betty. You know as well as I do that if I handed over just one of the jewels on my vanity, there are plenty of people who would make a marquis household maid disappear without a trace.”

Even if I was a bastard, on the surface I was still the eldest daughter of a very respectable marquis family. I did own a few jewels. I stepped even closer to Betty.

“If you want to live a long life, know your place when you open your mouth. This kind of warning won’t come twice.”

At my cold warning, Betty looked around like she was searching for someone to back her up. But the only people here were me, Susan, and Carsian. In the end her stiff posture crumbled. Cold sweat covered her face, and she looked completely thrown. Kneeling to a bastard she used to look down on must have felt humiliating.

I looked down at her and said,

“Now that looks more like the right position for you, Betty.”

“……”

“From now on, when you serve me, staying like this will be better for your health.”

I grabbed her shoulder tightly. My hand was so small it was basically just pinching, but Betty’s face went white.

“Understand?”

She bit her lip hard and slowly nodded.

“Yes, Young Lady Latia.”

She ground her teeth as she said it. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to let this slide quietly.

Well, that was a problem for later.

Right now it felt pretty satisfying.

“Get out.”

I kicked her out of the room and looked up at Susan.

“Susan, go get the ointment for Carsian’s wound.”

Betty had delayed things, but Carsian was still my number-one priority.

Since the whole world already knew I was a bastard, and this family was doomed to be wiped out anyway…

There was no real reason to keep clinging to this place. But even if I ran away with my nanny, there was still a problem. Our entire family would be sentenced to death and destroyed.

Father used to collect nobles’ weaknesses, and he ended up touching people he should never have touched. Running an illegal fighting ring and abusing the hero’s son made the perfect excuse.

In short, no matter how well I hid, I was still going to die.

The only way for me to survive was to get Carsian to say, “She was actually pretty nice,” when Count Raumdisell returned, and earn a pardon that way.

Thinking that, I decided the first step was taking care of Carsian’s injury. But then—

“What’s your scheme this time?”

After getting bullied a few times already, distrust had clearly settled deep in Carsian’s heart.

“What are you planning to do to me now?”

Yeah. Watching the man who used to treat him kindly—his father’s friend—suddenly turn around and hit him must have left a deep scar.

“What, do you need to drag me to another charity party or something?”

Having figured out his situation inside the household, Carsian spoke coldly and mocked me.

I just looked at him for a moment and said,

“Nothing.”

“…What?”

“I’m stopping.”

“…Stopping what.”

Carsian frowned like a wary cat. I just shrugged once.

“You already noticed, didn’t you?”

“……”

“That this family never really accepted me as one of their own.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “bastard.” Even a maid like Betty treated me that way, so after six months of living here he must have seen and heard plenty. Judging by his silence, my guess was right.

From now on I was going to stick close to Carsian’s side.

It would be better to let him know we shared a common enemy, right?

“Mother told me to do it.”

“……”

“If I did, she wouldn’t hit me and she’d treat me nicely. Or at least, that’s what she said.”

“……”

“But I’m just going to stop.”

I tried to smile as harmlessly as possible.

“Susan said that kind of thing isn’t real love.”

Right?

I looked up at Susan, and she nodded with a moved expression. But Carsian still spoke coldly to the harmlessly smiling me.

“Disgusting.”

“……”

“Mother told you to do it?”

“……”

“What a load of crap.”

He chewed the words out between his teeth.

“Cut the nonsense. I wouldn’t put on any ointment from the likes of you even if you got down on your knees.”

And before I could grab him, he stormed out of the room.

Yeah. He wasn’t going to come around that easily.

But it wasn’t completely hopeless. Carsian had given me a hint. He said he wouldn’t put it on even if I knelt… which meant if I bowed my head, maybe he would?

Whether it was my knees or my head, I was ready to lower them as many times as it took.

Because I wanted to live.

I looked at Susan, who was approaching with a worried face, and started thinking about how I should apologize to Carsian.