***
“Hah!”
She stepped back towards the door with her mouth shut. The heavy door counterattacked with as much force as she had hit her back on it.
“Huh?”
Pushing the door, she froze and after a second or two, she realised that she had to pull it open.
Meanwhile, Duke Kyron of Harpel was watching her as if he were to burn her back with her stinging gaze. She quickly pulled the door open and rushed out.
That heavy door was terribly heavy!
****
[For how long did I sleep?]
Arielsa flipped the blanket over her and walked out to open the window.The strong chilly night breeze blew in the room to hit her in her pajamas. Under the white-frozen half moon, she could see the castle wall of the outer castle, and beyond that, there was a coniferous forest that looked like a black and rough sea. It was a typical northern natural landscape.
“Wow.”
She closed the window as she shrugged in the chill of the night breeze and laughed, “Hahahaha! This dream is so vivid…”
No matter how vivid this chill felt, it was a dream. She could have had dreams like this; she had slept after reading ‘The Snowing Desert’ until dawn yesterday…
But her laughter ceased, and her mouth trembled. The ominous sensation seemed to grab her by her collar and shake it. She flung the window open again.
“Cold!”
She slammed the window shut and crouched down. Never in any dream had she felt so vividly the chills of the cold wind hitting her cheeks and the rugged texture of her fingertips holding the wooden window knob.
“It’s not a dream…”
She felt like she was sweating out of tension, and not from the cold anymore. She got up and looked carefully at Arielsa’s room.
The room was located on the upper floor at the end of the castle. It was a small but neat room, and far from being rich, but nothing seemed to be lacking. And George seemed to really care for her daughter. When Chaers said about him as a ‘silly dad’, he apparently meant ‘silly daughter’.
She felt a little upset, and again she thought it would be a dream. Because her dad never said she was pretty, or made her feel that way. For her father, her elder sister, who had good grades, was the best child. When she was a child, even when they went to an amusement park, her dad kept holding her sister’s hand and stroked her hair. She naturally belonged to her mom. However, her mother seemed to care more about the snack bag on her shoulder than her. Every time her mother did that, she did not feel like returning home, as she felt like she did not belong there.
So maybe she dreamed of having a ‘silly dad’ like George and her, being the daughter?
But when she stood in front of the mirror and looked at her body closely, she couldn’t deny the vivid reality. This couldn’t be a dream.
She is in possession of Arielsa’s in the novel.
In the mirror, her wheat-colored hair, unlike Georg, curled just enough to look good. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were slender, and it was a bit disappointing that her nose was a little low and round, but it gave a cute impression, so she decided not to complain. The fact that she did not have a square jaw like her father, it was a relief.
Thank you very much!
Her height was rather tall, her build was slim, but her body felt a little voluminous at places, and standing behind that self-illuminating Duke was not enough to get noticed by many.
“I am Arielsa Lockman…”
She now has to live in Arielsa’s body. Her role in the novel doesn’t even make up to one page in the entire novel.
Arielsa is the daughter of George, the training chief of Harpel, responsible for training the knights, and the Duke’s maid.
As a child, the young Duke Kyron treated girls as if they were invisible and only befriended boys.
Maybe because Arielsa was similar to his younger brother, he treated her like a human(?)
Because of that relationship, even now as an adult, Arielsa still served the Duke. Arielsa’s affectionate care for Duke Kyron was due to her filial piety to help her father get ahead and succeed. In fact, it was more like she did not know how to do such calculations.
She was gentle, friendly and sincere by nature. Enough for the feisty Duke Kyron to keep her by his side without any complaints. But Arielsa’s original scenes in the novel include serving tea to the Duke at meetings, giving him water when he goes on hunting, making snacks when he is stressed out.
Oh, if anything happens to Duke, she screams and brings Chaers in.
****
Arielsa was in any case a supporting role for the whole crew in this world.
She threw herself onto the bed and grumbled, staring at the plain ceiling.
“Why didn’t I become the heroine anyway?”
If she were the female protagonist, would her body glow such light like the Duke?
She saw Kyron in the daytime, and the image of the duke filled her mind completely. He was just sitting at his desk and holding a pen, not a sword, but his masculine charm came out with his aura.
It was such an energy that her heart seemed to be pounding when she still thought about it.
It seemed that she was the only one who could visually check his aura. Only her, the outsider of this world.
For others here, it would be perceived only as a charm such as an absolute presence, or a sense of pressure felt in secret.
His personality was tough, but that’s because he hasn’t met the female protagonist yet, so she could look at him.
<The Snowing Desert> was a wonderful story to think about. However, it made her feel depressed to think of the content of the novel that she finished reading early yesterday morning.
She concluded that it was fortunate that she was not possessed in the female protagonist’s body.
‘The Snowing Desert’ was a novel where the female lead’s part was rolled and dragged for too long from the beginning, to an extent where they started calling her as ‘the wasteful female lead’.
There was a comment from a reader, asking if the author has a deep hatred for the female lead. It became the top comment and gained popularity.
Arielsa really liked the consistent determination for the female lead he has shown in the process, but anyways, the main part finally came towards the middle and late half of the novel, where Duke Kyron had ended all his hardships, so that he could have a peaceful conversation with her.
If you think about it, wouldn’t it be better to be a maid, whose eyes can be blessed every day rather than a heroine, who can’t meet the hero?
[Yes, I will see Duke Kyron tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow… ]
First of all, she is in someone else’s body. If Duke Kyron has glow magic, she has the weapon of knowledge of the novel. With it, she can make Kyron much more special than George or Chaers.
[Can I be a special person here, too?]
Her heart was beating faster and faster.
Here, in this world of this novel, she could have a father who would love, fall for her and care about her. And he could have been a great man; a wonderful man she would never meet in real life.
She felt a little sorry for her real dad, but her heart was swayed by the affection and love she received recently. She did not know how to get out of here anyways… So it was a better choice to stay here and find a way to live.
“Let’s try it…”
There was a firm knock on the door when she muttered.
“It’s dad.”
Like a guilty person, her heart pounded violently. She tried to clear her throat and replied, “Come in.”
George entered the room and looked at me with a rather serious gaze.
“He said you ran away from the office. The Duke just told me that!”
“Ah…” She gently pulled the blanket.
[Even in the novel world, you hear your dad’s nagging!]
“You! When you saw your dad, you screamed. Did you do the same thing in front of the Duke?”
“No, no.” She shook her head urgently.
George brought a chair and sat down by her bed, pushing out his pillar-like arm
“There is no fever.”
“I’m okay.” She stuttered a little because of the warmth of his palm, which touched her forehead again, which was pretty awkward.
“But why did you do that?”
“Oh, I thought I had to make an apple pie…”
It’s an excuse that she came up with for a moment, but it was good!
George seemed to be trying to keep his calm face, but his eyes were shaking violently. He seemed to panic over what would have happened to her head as she fell from the ladder. It was very pitiful to see the big man showing off his sincere fear.
“But after I got out, I realized I didn’t have to. I just came back because I was ashamed to go back to the office, Dad.”
“Oh…” He sighed and dropped his shoulders as if relieved when I called him ‘Dad’.
His eyes were full of worries and fears. It was evident the concern that came out of love. It seemed that she could know how unhappy this man would be if something happened to Arielsa, even if he didn’t say it.
He was a tsundere father of a foolish daughter, who was embarrassed to hear his daughter’s foolishness and grumbled only with his mouth.
Somehow she couldn’t make eye contact with him, so she looked at the wall.
Then his big palm fell over my head.
“The only thing that’s good is strong. Don’t make me worry.”
She answered, as timidly as she could, whispering under the covers, “It’ll get better little by little, Dad.”
Then he smiled broadly at her. Watching it now scares her for other reasons. The fact that she’s not really Arielsa is probably the first thing she fears about.
She could imagine being suffocated by George grabbing her by the collar with that huge forearm, shaking her, threatening her where her daughter was
As I grabbed me with that forearm and shook me, I remembered that I was threatening where my daughter was, and I choked.
[The hero’s unrequited love was me…]
***