Chapter 1

I Will Take Responsibility for the Welfare of the Male Lead

Lee Jiha

Chapter 1

“You idiot! What are you doing?”

It was about time for breakfast, so I prepared myself and went down to the dining room on the first floor.

Despite having the dynamics of soybean flour[1], this family emphasized the importance of eating breakfast and dinner together as a family, so those meals must not be missed even for a single day.

It was the rule of the house to attend unless someone was seriously ill or absent.

Currently, the voice of a boy that I was getting used to hearing rang out. I sighed when I heard it.

“Not an idiot but your elder sister, Adolf.”

But Adolf didn’t seem at all convinced by what I said.

Far from that, he was smiling and snorting even more triumphantly.

“Huh! Like you’re my sister.”

After saying so, Adolf tackled me.

However, I wasn’t one to fall for that.

“Hey!”

I counted to three inside and patiently sidestepped his tackle.

“Ackk!”

As a result, Adolf lost his balance and fell face-first on the floor. His pristine shirt and dainty cravat crumpled up badly.

It had been a week since Adolf’s challenge began. What I realized in the meantime was that Adolf’s tackle had certain rules.

So one day I would walk to the left, the next day I would walk to the right, the next to the left, and so on.

Even the timing was always the same. There was never an exception to this rule.

(e/n: Ahaha what an adorably stupid kid! <3)

(read only on www blackcattranslation.wordpress.com)

‘This future swordsman is so simple.’

Although he was so simple and ignorant, Adolf was surprisingly talented in swordsmanship to the point of winning prizes in all kinds of competitions. Perhaps the competition opponents he had met so far had not yet identified this regularity.

I didn’t want to create any more unnecessary disputes, so I swallowed that thought and walked toward the dining room as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, stop there!”

However, the incarnation of simple ignorance quickly followed me. I could see blood flowing from one of his nostrils.

(e/n: love this mc already ^u^)

“Laria… Laria, how’d you avoid it?”

“You can’t call your sister by her first name, Adolf.”

“Noisy!”

Adolf shouted a constellation of curses bitterly.

Oh, my ears ached.

“Tell me! What happened?”

“…When you play rock, paper, scissors, you always use the same type first, right?”

“What? What are you saying!”

You kept asking how I avoided you, but you got upset when I gave you hints.

I was too lazy to deal with him, so I ignored him and made my steps faster.

When I finally reached my destination, I saw a large, hall-like dining room with a very long table.

The seat of the Earl of Sherwood at the head of the table, the seat of my father, was empty, and on either side of it sat a woman in her mid-30s and a man in his mid-20s facing each other.

They were my stepmother and brother Norman.

My stepmother, who seemed to be having a conversation with Norman, looked at me and made a bitter face.

When I first saw it, I was a little scared. I wondered how a person’s expression could change so rapidly, but I got used to it after seeing it for a week.

“I thought you weren’t coming because you were late again. Do you have an arse for feet?”

My stepmother twisted her soft red lips up.

“Goodness, what kind of house would even take such a lazy and useless thing?”

It was ridiculous.

I definitely arrived 5 minutes before the scheduled time, even if Adolf interfered so annoyingly.

If it were the ‘real Laria’ hearing her words, she would have been crushed. She would freeze up speechlessly, eventually apologize to her stepmother with a sad face, then sit in her chair.

But I didn’t really intend to. I wasn’t even Laria in the first place.

“Yes. I am lazy and useless, so I can’t get married and be sent away. It’s all because I inherited the blood of my lowly mother. Everything Stepmother said is correct.”

I’d already memorized her repertoire, which I think I’d heard about 70 times in the past week.

Saying it the 71st time would be tiresome and would hurt her mouth, so I relieved her of all the trouble. Where else would they find this kind of filial piety?

(e/n; God, she’s such a riot lol i love her personality)

However, the atmosphere in the dining room had completely frozen due to my filial behavior.

“…Lowly blood? Did you call Laria lowly because of our mother?”

My brother Norman asked with a stiff face.

He usually remained on the sidelines, simply watching whenever Stepmother or Adolf bothered me, to the extent that I could never say he was on my side. But now, our mother was mentioned.

In other words, the insult our stepmother had directed at me, which mentioned our biological mother, was an insult to him, too.

And while our stepmother was not afraid of me, she was scared of Norman. Stepmother’s face turned paler than paper.

“Oh, no, Norman! I mean… No, I did not.”

“Tell me, Laria. Did Stepmother usually talk to you about our mother?”

Norman asked me, turning away from our stepmother. I’d never seen him pay this much attention to me in the past week.

I glanced at our stepmother, wondering what was going on.

She waved her hands with a very pale face behind Norman, pretending to cut her neck with her hand.

‘Is that a threat?’

I couldn’t tell if that meant “Be honest, and you’re dead to me” or “Be honest, and I’m dead to Norman.”

If it was the former, I would have accused Stepmother of being guilty and told Norman all the insults I’d heard so far, but it wasn’t easy to do so now.

Because today was the day my week’s plan came to fruition.

I didn’t want to disrupt my plans for the past week by raising the issue for nothing.

“Um…”

Should I tell him or not? It was when I was deliberating.

Bang! The door of the dining room opened with a loud noise. Adolf appeared behind the door.

He was probably late because he had to clean up his nose after the nosebleed.

The commotion seemed to sound like an angel’s trumpet to his mother.

“Goodness, Adolf! Aren’t you late!”

Stepmother welcomed Adolf with an exaggerated  response.

“What, what’s all this fuss about? You’re embarrassing. Go away.”

Adolph, who was an adolescent, pushed her away as if his mother’s overwhelming behavior was embarrassing..

Norman glanced at our stepmother with suspicious eyes, but he seemed to have decided to postpone the topic for later.

Adolf sat next to Stepmother, and I sat next to Norman. Earl Sherwood was away on a business trip, so the four of us started our breakfast.

After breakfast in the awkward atmosphere, I went back to my room.

Then I lifted the carpet and removed one of the marble tiles covering the floor.

Then, the luggage I had hidden under it appeared.

‘I need to get out of this soybean flour of a family.’

I put on an outdoor coat after picking up my bag.

‘This is my chance now that the Earl isn’t here.’

I set the floor back and sneaked out with my bag hidden under my coat.

Of course, the Earl of Sherwood had a private carriage, but it could not be taken because it would leave traces.

I walked all the way to the city and rode a hired carriage.

“Go to the Grand Duchy of Blackwell, please.”

The restraint of ordinary aristocrats was that they did not receive pocket money. This was because if they had something to buy, they had to charge their family for the expenses.

But I couldn’t hire a carriage and charge it to House Sherwood without leaving a trace.

So instead, I took one of the rings off my fingers and gave it to the coachman.

“I don’t need change.”

The carriage set off toward Blackwell Grand Duchy.

I settled inside the uncomfortable hired carriage and looked out the window, enduring the pain in my hips.

Large plazas, shopping streets, stalls, farmers who came out to sell agricultural products, and women who came to shop in the market. Ladies in gorgeous dresses…

Scenery that I just couldn’t get used to.

The view of the city outside the window was reminiscent of Europe from the 17th to 18th centuries.

Yeah, I’m saying this because of course I’m not a part of the world.

It had only been a week since I became a person ‘here’.

My original name, before I was called Laria Sherwood, was Nam Joo-hyun, an ordinary office worker in Korea.

What was unique about me was that I loved romance fantasy novels.

When I opened my eyes as usual, it was shocking and frightening to realize that I became Laria Sherwood, the villainous daughter of Earl Sherwood.

I actually experienced the ridiculously unscientific and unrealistic situation that I’d only ever heard of, which was ‘transmigration’, but…

‘Why did I have to be a wicked woman who’ll be killed in two years?!’

That’s right.

‘If I was going to possess someone, a female protagonist would’ve been better!’

I had a two-year time limit.

The moment I first heard the name Laria Sherwood, I realized where I was.

I couldn’t help but know.

Laria Sherwood was my own name. A name chosen after scouring the name dictionary!

Having read only romance fantasy novels for eight years, I was tempted to have my own work.

So I wrote a romance fantasy novel. It was self-indulgent trash.

It’s hard to say it myself, but its popularity on the serial site was pretty good.

However, my passion quickly ran out, probably because I had no prior experience writing novels or anything.

I realized that my talent was in reading rather than writing.

So I threw away my old novel and left it unattended for about half a year. The last time I logged onto the website, the comments section were filled with the cries of the readers who were looking for me…

What could I do if I couldn’t think of anything more for it?

In that situation, I transmigrated into my old novel. And the supporting villain at that!

‘Is this divine punishment given to the sinful writer who wrote that old novel?’

I had no choice but to worry about it.

‘Did the readers’ grudges become a curse and return to me like a boomerang?’

I shouldn’t have done it all year, but I didn’t know it.

So the price for the crime of causing so many people to agonize and suffer was this!

Notes:

[1] “Soybean flour” (콩가루) is a slang meaning “discord or disharmony among family members”. It apparently stems from the way soybeans don’t clump together.

Special thanks to Aii and Dusk for helping me out!