The child parted her lips.
She tried to say ‘Hong Jangmi’, but strangely, whenever she tried to say that name, her voice wouldn’t come out.
“I…!”
“Good grief, what a frustrating child!”
The Baroness flared up again.
Her voice was slightly hoarse from shouting so much.
‘Why? Why can’t I say my name?’
That was the only time her voice wouldn’t come out.
Other words came out just fine.
The child pulled her chin slightly toward her body and frowned.
Meanwhile, the Baroness barked at her once more.
“Hey! Are you deaf? I told you to answer! Where on earth did you come from?!”
The child first tried to recall that. But nothing came to mind, as if a fog had settled over her head.
The only thing she remembered was being led by someone’s hand, shivering as she walked through the snowstorm.
‘Seriously, where exactly is this place?’
The child felt frustrated.
Her head was hot as if she had caught a cold, so her thoughts weren’t working properly.
And in that condition, a woman she had never seen before was frighteningly pressing her for answers and shaking her body violently, making it even harder to collect her thoughts.
The Baroness continued holding the child and bombarding her with questions about her background for quite some time afterward.
But she didn’t receive a single satisfying answer.
“Other than walking through the snowfield, I really do not remember anything.”
Because the child’s answer remained the same every time, the Baroness stepped back a little, though still suspicious.
Only then did she release the child’s shoulders that she had been gripping roughly.
“Until I call for you, don’t even think about stepping out of this room.”
The child slowly nodded.
When the Baroness left with the candlestick, the room without even a single window was quickly swallowed by darkness.
Once she was alone, the environment finally allowed her to think calmly.
The child lifted her head from her knees and closed her eyes.
After taking a small deep breath, she quietly thought about what things she could remember.
‘My original name is Hong Jangmi.’
She had been a somewhat unfortunate young woman in her twenties who lived in the Republic of Korea.
At fourteen, she lost her parents in a car accident and had lived while taking care of her grandmother, who suffered from dementia.
Struggling just to make ends meet, she gave up her studies and drifted from one part-time job to another.
That day, she was on her way home after finishing her early-morning convenience store shift.
The cell phone in her pocket suddenly vibrated, informing her of something.
When she checked, it was a notification that a new chapter of a novel whose serialization had been stopped for over a year had finally been uploaded.
Reading was her only hobby.
Since her living expenses were always tight, it was difficult for her to have any decent hobbies.
Music, art, crafts. Whatever she wanted to learn required money.
But reading novels was different.
She could borrow books from the library, and these days, thanks to the times, she could even pay a small amount per chapter to read them online.
‘What in the world! I have to read it right now!’
Anyway, delighted that the novel had resumed after being on hiatus, she had just pressed the new chapter.
Hooooonk—
At the crosswalk, a drunk driver’s car that ignored the signal and sped forward at an incredible speed struck her head-on.
Her body was flung up into the air.
Before the pain registered, the first thought she had was, ‘So this is how I die.’
Just like that, Hong Jangmi’s consciousness disappeared before her body even hit the ground again.
‘I definitely had a serious accident…’
And yet now, she was alive.
Instinctively, she realized that she had awakened not as Hong Jangmi but as someone else.
However, she couldn’t remember at all who she had been born as, what kind of life she had lived before coming here, or even what name she had been called by.
The child looked down at her hands with a confused gaze.
The small palms felt completely unfamiliar.
Suddenly, the thought surged through her that perhaps she had entered another body, just like in novels.
‘I still seem young, but how old am I now?’
She tried to recall who she was, but the memories didn’t come easily.
Each time she tried to remember something, the headache only grew worse.
It felt as though someone was relentlessly beating her head with a drumstick.
Thump thump thump thump.
A heavy sound also rang in her ears.
“Ahh…. My head hurts.”
The child covered her ears and shook her head violently. Soon after, she gave up trying to think.
It seemed that after entering another body on the day of the snowstorm, she had lost all the memories from before that.
‘Since I was reborn, the memories of living here should be more important.’
The child buried her head deeper between her knees as she thought.
‘Please, someone help me.’
Just then.
Ping—!
A clear sound suddenly rang out from somewhere.
— Do you know how long I’ve been waiting!
Soon after, a somewhat sulky voice that sounded strangely irritated could be heard.
“Huh…?”
The child stared blankly at the being visible beyond the sparkling dust that seemed to scatter light before her eyes.
It seemed the child wasn’t the only one surprised.
The suddenly appeared being kept letting out exclamations of admiration.
— Oh my, the one who called me is a baby?
The being completely forgot that it had been about to get angry and circled around the child several times with curious eyes.
After a while, it cautiously spoke to the child first.
— Hello, baby. Did you call me? I’m Sylph.
The thing that looked like a fairy was about the size of an adult’s middle finger.
‘W-What is this?’
The child’s eyes filled with a confused mix of shock and bewilderment at Sylph’s sudden appearance.
She had clearly only thought it in her mind, yet the being frowned and placed both hands firmly on its waist.
Its transparent wings fluttered busily.
— What do you mean ‘this’! That’s rude! I’m a wind spirit!
“What? A spirit?”
— That’s right!
As if pleased that she had finally recognized it, the spirit lifted its chin slightly and puffed itself up proudly.
But the child paid no attention to that appearance at all.
Her confusion only deepened.
‘Wait, if it’s a spirit…!’
Something suddenly flashed through her mind.
‘If it’s a spirit, then it must be that novel!’
She became certain that this world was inside the novel [The Love Left Behind by the Moon’s Girl].
It was also the novel Hong Jangmi had been reading right before she died.
‘Among all the novels I read, that was the only one about spirits.’
If that was the case, then her current situation was exactly that she had transmigrated into a novel.
Perhaps because she had read many romance fantasy novels in her previous life, the fact that she had died and awakened in this world didn’t feel all that unfamiliar.
— What’s a novel?
The child, who had been lost in thought, flinched in surprise.
She looked warily at the spirit floating before her.
“How… can you hear what I said in my mind?”
Sylph snorted proudly as if asking how she couldn’t know something so obvious.
— That’s because I’m your contracted spirit!
“Mine?”
— Yes!
The child realized something.
She possessed the power to handle a wind spirit.
“I’m sorry, but… I have no memory.”
At that, the spirit tilted its head slightly to one side and fell into thought.
— Hmm. That’s strange. If I’ve come out into the human world like this, it definitely means I made a contract with you.
“Then do you know who I am? You said we made a contract.”
— I don’t know! It’s not a contract made by looking at someone’s face!
At the spirit’s bright and cheerful answer, the child’s eyes narrowed, and a look of distrust appeared in her gaze.
“Is that even possible?”
— Well, if I came out, doesn’t that mean it could be possible?
The spirit fluttered its wings lightly as it looked the child up and down from every angle.
— But baby, what’s your name? What’s your name? I’m curious! Tell me!
The wind spirit spun around in front of the child’s eyes as if excited.
The child, whose head was already a mess, furrowed her brow.
Then she suddenly grabbed Sylph’s transparent wings, which were fluttering around annoyingly in front of her eyes, like catching a dragonfly.
— Aaah! Hey, let go! Let go! That hurts, I said let go!
“…You’re loud. Stay quiet for a moment.”
— How rude! Rude human!
Like a newborn kitten crying loudly for milk, the spirit was noisy.
The child tightened her fingers around the butterfly-like wings and said,
“I’ll let go if you go back inside somewhere until I call you again.”
— Okay! Let go! Let me go!
Only after hearing the spirit’s answer did the child release its wings.
The spirit fluttered up again, glaring fiercely at the child with narrowed eyes as it shouted,
— Hmph! How dare you treat me like this! Even if you call me again, I won’t come out!
With a pop, it disappeared in an instant.
Sparkling dust gently drifted down from the place where the spirit had been a moment before.
“Whew, it’s finally quiet.”
The child let out a long sigh.
After realizing the existence of Sylph, she went over the things she had learned one by one.
In the novel [The Love Left Behind by the Moon’s Girl], the ‘Moon’s Girl’ was unusually the second female lead.
She was also the former fiancée of the male protagonist, Varon.
Varon was immature even for a typical male lead.
The original author had even personally added a warning tag saying “male protagonist warning.”
One day, while patrolling the border by the King’s order, he met the female protagonist, Jenis, a commoner, and fell in love at first sight.
Varon, who had been born with the highest status, often clashed with Jenis, who had lived at the very bottom of society.
However, as he learned about the lives of the common people from her, he gradually awakened as a leader.
Unable to suppress his growing feelings for Jenis, Varon unilaterally declared the annulment of his engagement to his fiancée Clarissa.
Clarissa left for a monastery in sorrow, and her older brother Teren, who cherished her dearly, became furious with Varon.
He decided to take revenge, but his plan was discovered, and he was executed by hanging for treason, causing the Ducal House Estes to be destroyed.
She had roughly figured out where she was, but the frustration hadn’t completely disappeared.
“What’s the point of remembering only the original novel’s title?”
The child sighed while enduring the headache.
“I need to know who I am to make any kind of plan…”
Her identity was still completely unknown.
From outside the door, the frightening woman she had met earlier could still be heard shouting.
Reality was different from a novel.
Without knowing anything about who she was, her future felt overwhelmingly bleak and hopeless.
The child pulled her knees in even closer.
“Just who am I…?”
That question would soon be answered.
