IDIBC Chapter 2

The Day After Dying and Coming Back to Life

“What are you all doing right now?”

Even though I hadn’t raised my voice particularly loud, they could only stammer “uh, uh” sounds without being able to answer quickly.

“What are you doing, I asked?”

At that, Betty’s eyes widened as she jumped up from her seat.

“C-can’t you see? We’re lighting the fire.”

She was a maid with brown braided hair, a face covered in freckles, and a look full of spite. Being a year older than the other maids, she usually acted like their leader, and she seemed quick to grasp situations too.

“What’s the point of lighting a fire after someone has died? What kind of twisted hobby is that?”

The maids who had gotten up from the floor following Betty were looking at me like I was a ghost, given my strange words.

“Wh-what do you mean by that?”

Just as I was about to answer, I felt a hunger as deadly as death itself. There was no need to think about what I had eaten. For the past three days, I couldn’t recall seeing any proper food. So with my stomach completely empty, I couldn’t endure even this level of cold and lost my life. The moment I realized this, anger began to writhe within me, announcing its presence.

The blazing fire in the fireplace firmly set a wick in my eyes.

“You all… right now, I!”

Rumble, crash! Lightning flashed across my face through the pitch-black storm clouds and disappeared. Fear also appeared on Betty’s face, who had been holding her head high and talking back just moments before.

“Abused me?”

Rumble, crash! Thunder struck again, and simultaneously thick lightning struck down to the ground. Looking back, the past three days leading up to my death were truly terrifying enough to die from. It was too cold and lonely.

“Have you been slowly killing me all this time?”

At my repeated shouting, the youngest maid among them screamed “Ahhh!” and fell backward onto the floor. Not missing that opportunity, I rushed over and grabbed Betty’s braided hair.

“How dare you servants abuse the master’s daughter!”

With her hair caught in my hand, Betty’s scalp was pulled taut, causing her bloodshot eyes to show their whites, while the child who had fallen to the floor couldn’t even get up and just trembled.

“Do you really know what you’ve done?”

“M-Miss, please forgive us.”

“Go right now and bring something to eat. I’ll think about forgiveness later.”

Now that the lamp to drive away the pitch-black darkness and the fireplace to ease the deathly cold had been provided, it was time to satisfy my hunger. My hands were shaking so much I could barely stand.

After sending everyone out, including Betty whose hair had been caught in my skeletal hand, I returned to the bed and slumped down. The flames in the fireplace, which had been dancing fiercely after just being lit, calmed down and gave off a steady light.

While I was pondering what to ask the maids first, they faithfully carried out their assigned task and returned to the room.

“Miss Lienne, we’ve brought food.”

Looking around, there was only a shelf by the window meant for placing flower pots and such—nowhere suitable to sit and eat.

“You go get a chair.”

Thanks to one maid moving quickly, soon a floral satin chair that might be seen in a reception room was brought into my room. It was so out of place with the colorless room that it was almost laughable.

Actually, the meal had begun hurriedly even before the chair arrived. Fortunately, my starved stomach didn’t reject the food.

“B-but Miss.”

A trembling voice reached me, and I glanced at her menacingly.

“What?”

“Weren’t you… unable to speak?”

This was why the maids feared me even though nothing about the situation had changed. I hadn’t said a single word all this time. It wasn’t that I couldn’t. No, I was too frightened for my mouth to open. So I suppose I really couldn’t, right?

If Ricardo was the nameless child of the east wing, then I was the mute illegitimate daughter of the west wing.

So they must have thought they could do anything to me without me being able to tell on them.

“I wasn’t.”

I first came to this house when I was about five years old. For some reason, Count Fennel suddenly appeared and took me in. My mother was dead. Naturally, there were no warm memories.

Memories of crouching in a corner of the room, memories of being pushed by someone’s rough hands, memories of being hungry, memories of being in a lot of… pain.

“So be careful from now on.”

Except for the occasional visits from a tall man, no one came in and out of this room. It wasn’t that I was prevented from going out, but I rarely went outside the room. If I went out, I would have to face those who tormented me.

I had no standards for what was acceptable to do to me and what wasn’t.

“If the Count knew that I died because of you all, he wouldn’t stay quiet.”

Of course, I couldn’t be certain if this was true even myself, but it seemed appropriate for threatening the maids as their mouths snapped shut.

“Where is the Count?”

“The Count went out three days ago, saying he was going to inspect the merchant guild.”

A man with silver hair and blue eyes, a man with the same coloring as me. He was rarely at home.

“What about the Countess?”

“She is in her bedroom.”

His wife and my stepmother—I actually don’t remember her face very well. Only the fleeting memory of her drooping mouth and eyes full of melancholy looking down at me comes to mind.

After some time had passed, the room was modestly but sufficiently furnished.

It still didn’t match the floral satin chair, but a long-legged desk was also prepared.

Feeling the discord between my small body and mature behavior, I sat down and tapped the desk with my finger in a steady rhythm: tap, tap, tap, tap.

If the Count and Justin had left three days ago, they wouldn’t return to the mansion for a while. I didn’t know how long that period would be, but it was certainly an opportunity for me.

I pressed my clasped hands to my lips and closed my eyes briefly.

‘Where and how should I start?’

Ricardo and I actually had almost no connection. I had seen him only a handful of times before he left the Fennel family.

We were acquaintances who only occasionally encountered each other on the hill in the garden. Even then, we had never had a proper conversation.

‘First, I need to meet that child.’

Thinking of Ricardo, who used to bristle with sharp thorns like a well-honed sword, I felt overwhelmed.

Anyway, I’d need to become somewhat close to him to protect him from Justin or do whatever else needed to be done…

The anxious and frustrated feeling didn’t easily disappear, so I stretched my head left and right and shook it lightly.

Right, what more could I fear when I had experienced both starvation, freezing and death?

On the desk was a mirror with a diagonal crack. It was so small that my entire face wouldn’t fit in it, but I sat close and grabbed a handful of the hair that had been covering even my eyes. When I picked up scissors and cut it off without hesitation, the blue eyes that were like a symbol of the Fennel family sparkled brightly.

The face I encountered was completely different from my childhood self in my memories. What exactly had changed? Then I suddenly realized.

Fear.

The very terror that had gnawed at me and ultimately led me to death had completely disappeared.

Only that one thing had changed, yet everything around me began to appear clearly.

“Right, don’t be afraid. I can do this.”

I spoke words that no one was listening to and looked out the window. The rain was still pouring heavily, and the outside was still invisible even an inch ahead.

****

Come to think of it, it wasn’t just the disappearance of fear that had changed.

“Give it here!”

“…What?”

Seeing this girl with dangling brown hair throwing a tantrum, demanding the book in my hand, seemed quite ridiculous.

Since I died and came back to life, was this a natural result?

“That book. How do you have a book?”

“This is…”

The day after dying and coming back to life, the weather was clear, making the torrential rain that had seemed ready to pierce the sky seem like a lie. As soon as I woke up, I looked for the tall man who used to visit me occasionally. After meeting him, I learned that he was a retainer of the Fennel family and the head butler of this household.

His eyes widened when I said I wanted to see books. He seemed to ponder what to do with me for a moment, but he personally took me to the family library.

“I borrowed it directly myself. If you need one too, go find one and read it.”

Only then did bright green eyes turn toward me, realizing something was wrong.

“You… you can speak?”

“At least better than you can.”

“Wh-what?”

Sabrina Rowe Fennel was the same age as me. That was the problem. We were the same age without being twins. Even Justin wasn’t the biological son of the current Countess. There was also a younger brother named Jonathan, but his face wasn’t properly retained in my memory.

In that world, it wasn’t a problem for a man to bring home a child from outside. I had heard that there were several other illegitimate children besides me.

The problem was that Countess Fennel loved her husband. In this reality, a woman who loves her husband inevitably becomes unhappy.

Countess Fennel could hate me as evidence of her husband’s infidelity, but she couldn’t drive me away. Begging for love from one’s husband was not considered virtuous in noble society. So she destroyed herself instead.

A mother suffering from depression as an illness, a father who was always absent.

Somehow, the child in front of me seemed a little pitiful.

“There’s no way someone like you could be better at anything than me!”

I looked at Sabrina, who was throwing a tantrum, with briefly pitying eyes.

“Why, why are you looking at me with those eyes?”

She’s quick to notice.