~Chapter 06~
*Eeeeeeng.*
*Eeeeeng.*
The blaring sound of an ambulance pierced through waves of darkness-like blackness.
*Plip, plop.*
What she felt on her skin was the cold touch of falling raindrops.
In her blurred vision, a scene of people huddled together flickered.
—…Is she dead?
—What do we do… It seems like she’s not breathing…
—Check the ID card around her neck!
“…Ugh…”
The ambulance siren and the murmuring of people grew fainter and more distant.
As she slowly opened her eyes, she heard someone calling her name with a desperate voice.
“Our princess, you’ve finally opened your eyes!”
“Little squirrel!”
“Are you awake?!”
“Bean!”
When Ivyn looked around, she saw Ron and the John-Hon-Dun gang clinging to the edges of her bed like barnacles.
“Are you all okay?”
Ivyn asked her brothers while holding her throbbing head, and a stunned silence fell over the boisterous group.
“Did she… just ask *us* if we’re okay?”
“Bean did? That wasn’t just in my head, was it? It wasn’t an auditory hallucination?”
Hon tilted his head in confusion. It seemed he thought hearing the youngest ask if they were okay was a hallucination.
“Those bastards… what on earth did they do to Bean?! Did they brainwash her or something?”
Dun, who had been happy that the youngest was awake, suddenly made a sad face and muttered.
“Let’s get her to eat something first. Once she comes fully to her senses, her mouth will go back to being properly nasty too.”
The triplets, taking the bewildered Ivyn, promptly led her straight to the dining hall.
The moment she was almost forcibly seated at the head of the table, as if they had been waiting, all sorts of delicacies began to arrive.
A whole roasted bull and turkey, fried poultry, smoked pork, lamb ribs, bacon, steaks, various roasted root vegetables, pudding…
“Um, is it really okay for me to eat all this…?”
Ivyn, her eyes wide as saucers at the feast laid out enough to make the table legs groan, cautiously asked her family.
But there was no answer.
The family merely stared at her silently with expressions as if they’d seen a ghost.
“Gasp.”
Second son Bill sucked in a breath and covered his mouth with both hands.
*Clatter!*
The eldest son dropped the fork he was holding onto his plate.
“…”
The triplets hugged each other tightly with terrified expressions.
The only one to launch an active reaction was hot-tempered Ron.
Unable to contain his anger, he shot up from his chair and began growling like a wild dog.
“Dammit, Father! This is truly unacceptable! They clearly cast a mental spell on our Bean! Those Holy Theocracy bastards, I won’t be satisfied even if I tear them to pieces!”
He looked ready to charge straight to the Theocracy camp right then.
“Sit down, Ron.”
“But Bean is…!”
“Tch, I said sit.”
At Dylan’s firm attitude, Ron had no choice but to sit back down.
Silence once again hung over the dining hall for a while.
*Clink.*
In the suffocating atmosphere, Ivyn, who had been sitting there just reading the room, finally opened her mouth.
Because, atmosphere be damned, she was simply too hungry right now.
“Shall I… start eating first…?”
Ivyn glanced around at her stiff, frozen family and cautiously moved her fork.
As she slightly bowed her head over her plate, a few strands of her wavy, lustrous purple hair cascaded down.
*Chomp!*
Ivyn opened her small mouth as wide as possible and took a hearty bite of a turkey leg.
*Munch, munch.*
Her cheeks puffed up roundly, looking no different from a hamster storing sunflower seeds in both cheeks.
Watching that intently, smiles of relief finally began to spread across the family’s faces.
“She eats so heartily, our daughter.”
“She’s a fairy, a fairy.”
“If that’s not an angel, then what in the world is an angel?”
The men of the Kinzell family looked at Ivyn with rapt expressions. If someone from Earth had seen this, they might easily have mistaken it for idol fans watching their favorite star’s mukbang vlog.
Meanwhile.
Ivyn was busy furiously wielding her fork in a storm of eating.
Was this the time to use the expression ‘her eyes are rolling back’?
Her taste buds were lost in a ‘taste bombardment of indiscriminate flavors.’
“Bean, eat this too. This too.”
“Have some pudding too!”
“Hoho. At this rate, she might chew up the plate too, our daughter.”
Dylan looked at Ivyn with a pleased expression.
At that moment, what flashed through his mind was the image of Ivyn from the past, throwing tantrums at the dinner table.
—I don’t want to eat this anymore.
—Bean, you need to eat a balanced diet to become a healthy princess, right?
—No! Green beans taste bad *and* they look ugly! Bean is pretty, so she’ll only eat pretty things!
—Come on, then just one…
—Just give more to my ugly-looking John-Hon-Dun brothers! They look similar to green beans, so they’ll eat them well!
She was an immature young daughter who threw fits at every mealtime…
*’When on earth did she become so sensible…?’*
Dylan wiped his moist eyes with the back of his rough hand.
“I’m done, thank you.”
And so, the heartwarming mealtime ended.
The Kinzell family gathered in the drawing room.
It was to hear the story from Ivyn, who seemed to have recovered some vitality after receiving such a grand feast.
*Crackle, crackle.*
The bonfire blazing in the center of the drawing room warmly illuminated the faces of the Kinzell family members, reunited after overcoming a crisis.
The first to speak was Patriarch Dylan, who was wetting his lips with dessert brandy.
“It’s truly a relief that we can all gather in one place like this again.”
Dylan’s profile, cast in the firelight, looked like a rugged cliff, his bones starkly prominent. It seemed he hadn’t eaten or drunk properly while his daughter was missing.
“I still can’t believe it. The fact that Alberto was a spy… Because we took his words at face value, we almost lost our Bean for good…”
Dylan said, heaving a deep sigh.
Alberto was a man who had served as a butler for the Kinzell family for nearly 30 years.
“What happened to him?” Ivyn asked.
“As soon as interrogation began in the dungeon… he died.”
“Died?”
“Yes. It seems someone had placed a prohibition curse on him.”
A shadow fell over Dylan’s face as he recalled that moment.
—Aaaagh! I-I’ll tell you…!
It was the moment Alberto, unable to withstand the severe torture, was about to confess who was behind him.
—The, the person I served was…!
*Squelch!*
Suddenly, his head burst apart like a watermelon.
Wiping the blood that had splattered on his face, Dylan looked down at the enemy’s headless corpse with a somewhat hollow expression.
—Could it be that those who use dark power are involved in this incident?
—Don’t speak recklessly, Bill. Nothing has been properly revealed yet.
Dylan had cut off Bill’s speculative remark, but in truth, he himself harbored similar suspicions.
Because placing such a curse on a living person’s soul wasn’t something just anyone could do.
Placing a prohibition curse on a human soul was a task only top-tier mages, and even then, only those who borrowed dark power, could manage.
“…”
As the heavy mood from Dylan began to sink into the drawing room atmosphere…
“Dad…”
Ivyn, who had been watching the situation all along, rose from her seat and slowly walked toward Dylan.
Then, she placed her small hand on top of his large one.
Feeling the warm, soft touch on the back of his hand, Dylan, who had been lost in deep thought, suddenly came to his senses and turned his gaze to his daughter.
“I’m okay.”
Ivyn looked straight at Dylan.
It was because of the newfound realization that Dylan Kinzell was such a soft-hearted character.
*’I only thought he was a terrifyingly scary, patriarchal man who ruled over six sons…’*
Was this what you’d call a behind-the-scenes scene?
Perhaps not only the characters appearing in the original work, but also the omitted parts not described in it, were quite numerous, she suddenly thought.
But isn’t that what novels are originally like?
The pages are limited, and readers’ interest is also limited.
How many readers would truly be curious about the detailed circumstances of supporting characters or extras?
But since she transmigrated into the original story, the situation had begun to change bit by bit.
She was getting to see the hidden sides of originally superficial extras.
And she was weaving new, unprecedented story threads with them.
While Ivyn, caught in a strange mood, looked at the head of the necromancer family, Dylan’s warm voice was heard again.
“That this father didn’t teach you necromancy, nor even basic magic, and hid you away tightly within the castle… it was all to protect our youngest princess…”
Dylan Kinzell, whose build was as large as a bear but whose insides were soft, had moist eyes again.
“…I realized too late that it was merely my own selfish desire. How stifled you must have been all this time to think of sneaking out of the castle…”
At Dylan’s self-deprecating confession, the jaws of the John-Hon-Dun triplets crumpled up. Seeing their father, who usually felt as big as a mountain, show a vulnerable side seemed to make their own hearts ache in sympathy.
Looking at the Kinzell family huddled together, embracing each other, she suddenly recalled her past life.
To her, family was an existence as heavy as a pressing stone on top of a jar.
The father who abandoned the family and ran away.
The immature mother who used her eldest daughter as an emotional trash can.
The sibling going down a crooked path.
The tiresome inheritance of poverty…
But she was different.
No, she *tried* to be different.
She gritted her teeth and worked hard, vowing at least not to become like her parents.
Thanks to that, she succeeded in moving to Seoul around a year ago after getting a job and was able to win her independence.
Perhaps because of that bitter past…
Ivyn felt a lump in her throat as she looked at the Kinzell family.
“I came back perfectly fine like this. So please, everyone, don’t cry anymore.”
