It's Time To Stop Looking For A New Family

Chapter 3

Leticia went up to Phillip with the candlestick in her hand and aimed for his neck.

When the tip of the candlestick accurately touched his carotid artery, he was scared out of his mind and only stared up at Leticia.

“Three.”

She began counting down. The candlestick’s shadow now loomed over Phillip’s neck.

“Two.”

Phillip’s eyes grew so wide, that it looked like it was going to pop out. All of the sword fighting and the martial arts that he had learned over the years now seemed utterly useless. It was because his younger sister was alarmingly aiming for the vital point in his neck.

“I—ack, I’m sorry! Forgive me. Please…!”

At the feeling of imminent danger, he apologized to Leticia with tears dripping from his eyes.

She silently gazed at Phillip with an indifferent expression.

Instead of taking off the sharp end of the candlestick from his neck, she pushed a little harder. On his woundless neck, a rivulet of red blood trickled from the small cut that she had just made.

She lowered her voice and warned him.

“Do not raise your voice in front of me. Do not even attempt to grab my hair. If you do so much as to try to utter the word “b*tch” at me one more time…”

Saying so, Leticia pressed the candlestick against Phillip’s neck even harder.

Press.

When he felt the sharp candlestick digging into his vital point, Phillip nodded urgently with a tear-stained face.

“That precious body of yours will be disposed of by the illegitimate child that you despise so much.” She said as her eyes narrowed while she said these things to Phillip.

“I-I’ll be more careful from now on.”

Phillip lowered his eyes first.

“I’m kind of disappointed. If you didn’t apologize, I was going to let you meet grandfather.”

“Wh-What?!”

Phillip’s mouth opened in shock. She made it seem like his still-living grandfather was dead already.

He swallowed some of his saliva with a face frozen with fear, realizing that Leticia was definitely strange today.

One year ago, this child was someone who had closed her eyes in fear at the sight of a dead rabbit. Her hands had even trembled with fear when she thought about all the animals that would be hurt by Phillip’s arrows.

Leticia finally let him go and Phillip pressed his hands against his neck.

Although blood was dripping out of his wound, he could only think about how relieved he was that he wasn’t dead.

Phillip glanced over at her and slowly made his way to the door. Until the moment he grabbed the doorknob, he couldn’t say anything for fear of triggering her again.

He held the doorknob with trembling hands. It was only when he had safely turned the doorknob that he was able to calm some of his nerves.

Creak—

Phillip felt like Leticia would stab him in the back when he wasn’t looking and flinched as he turned around to open the door. But, when nothing happened, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Around the room, ice was growing in various places. He hadn’t been wrong when he felt that something was weird.

It was summer, so there was no way that there could be any snow outside, but the door was covered with ice. Even more strangely, the blue ice crystal was very different from any that Phillip had ever seen.

“Th-The room seems to be a bit cold.”

When Leticia only stared at him, telling him to go away, Phillip grew scared again and quickly ran out of the room.

Clang—

She dropped the candlestick that she didn’t even know that she was still holding.

Leticia hadn’t noticed when she was still furious with Phillip, but there was cold ice growing on the candlestick as well. It’s true that the room was frighteningly chilly.

‘What is this?’

Something was off as she glanced around the room.

As Phillip had mentioned, everything in the room was stuck together with ice. Slowly, Leticia looked down at her body as she started to rub her hands on her arms for warmth, but when she did, she was shocked instead.

It was because she found white frost swirling around her hands.

“Is it this cold because I’m in the afterlife?”

It hadn’t been this cold when she had first woken up, but now white frost fully covered the inside of her room. The candlestick that had fallen onto the carpet, the metal windowsill, and even the old bronze decoration in her room were all frozen with ice.

“Ah…”

She tightly grasped her frost-covered right hand. Strangely, there was a white, misty whirlpool that was flowing from her right hand.

‘What’s happening…?’

Leticia widened her eyes in surprise.

In front of her, there was ice that had spread out like a ray of light. There was also an ice crystal in a weird shape on the wall that she had cornered Phillip in.

‘They didn’t even turn on the fireplace for me, so I used to be so cold when I was a child.’

Maybe she had been more upset about that than she thought since there was ice all around her even after she died.

Thinking so, she rubbed her hands against her trembling body and flung open the wardrobe. Leticia found a blanket that she had often used as a child and put it over her body.

“Haa.”

The air turned white as she breathed.

‘Is this supposed to be like an ice hell?’

Still, Leticia didn’t think much of it.

“So, I die by getting burned alive, so now it’s an ice hell, huh…”

Not long after Eli had shot that golden arrow into her heart, her consciousness had faded away into nothingness. So, she couldn’t remember anything that had happened after that.

Leticia moved closer to the windowsill to get better access to the sunlight.

Even though the sunlight was heavily streaming down on the windowsill, the deeply frozen ice on the windowsill didn’t melt one bit.

***

“Miss, wake up!”

She had only meant to rest for a short while on the bed, but it seemed that she had fallen asleep instead.

Leticia forced her heavy eyes to open. Her body felt very heavy as if someone had tied her down with heavy ropes. She was extremely fatigued because of unknown reasons.

She finally picked her body up and stared aimlessly at a servant who was in charge of the cleaning.

It was a familiar face.

‘Kara.’

Kara had been Leticia’s main servant until Leticia turned sixteen, so she remembered Kara very well.

She was someone who acted only as she pleased. If she got scolded by the head maid, she would come and take out all her anger on Leticia.

“How could you skip lunch and just sleep all day? I’m going to get scolded by the head maid because of you!”

“They even give you meals in the afterlife?”

Kara pretended that she didn’t hear what she said. She was usually as quiet as a ghost, but now, when she was very busy, Leticia was just spouting ridiculous things.

“Look at all this ice. Where did you even get all this ice? Why would you use precious ice in the summer like this?”

At Kara’s words, Leticia turned her head towards the windowsill.

The ice crystals reflected some red light and sparkled. They were still there, unlike the ice in the other places, which had melted a long time ago. They melted as soon as Kara put her hands on them.

“The whole room is full of water. It’s so annoying.”

Although the servant was talking to herself, Leticia was able to hear every single thing.

Maybe this place wasn’t the afterlife after all? With that thought, she slowly took a deep breath. There was no evidence that absolutely confirmed the fact that this was really the afterlife, and things were too similar to the events in her past to say that this was all a dream.

Thinking so, now, a question came into her mind.

‘Then, I wonder where this is?’

The place where she had woken up was the room that she had lived in until she was eleven.

Phillip’s selfish personality was exactly the same as well. His deformed voice and the way that he was easily angered were also the same.

Leticia looked down at the ice that had formed on her fingertips. The ice on her hands had a blue glow to them. They were more beautiful than a jewel made by a master craftsman.

No matter how she looked at them, they didn’t seem like normal ice crystals. It was strange that ice would form in the summer, and it was even stranger that the ice had formed in the middle of an indoor room…

‘I didn’t have a power like this when I was younger…?’

She wondered if this was all just a coincidence.

Perhaps Phillip had brought an ice-making machine. Leticia looked around the room to look for it, but it was nowhere to be found.

‘Maybe this isn’t the afterlife… but, a dream?’

Perhaps she could use magic because this was all a dream.

…But, what if this wasn’t a dream?

With everything that had happened, Leticia asked herself that question. The ice growing at her fingertips was cold enough to bring someone with a hazy mind back to their senses.

“What are you doing, just sitting around aimlessly? The priest is coming tomorrow!”

At the servant’s words, Leticia widened her eyes in surprise.

“Why would the priest…”

If this wasn’t the afterlife, nor a dream, she wondered why a priest would be coming to see her.

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ The priest is coming to talk to you because you said that you wouldn’t forgive the former Duke.”

While it was said that the priest was coming to ‘talk to’ Leticia, when Kara had eavesdropped on their conversation for a bit the last time he came, the priest’s words were almost harsh enough to be called verbal abuse. However, since this wasn’t her problem, the servant decided to keep quiet.

“This is already the second time the priest is coming to meet you. Do you know how hard it is to clean and sweep this old room every time he comes? I even have to clean the drawing room that is rarely used!”

“….”

She didn’t reply right away and suddenly recalled something from the past.

Until she was eleven, she had lived in the renovated warehouse, and the servants hadn’t even given her meals properly, let alone clean the warehouse. When she was given food, it was food that was leftover from Phillip’s meal.

Although she had a main servant, Kara had never been there, so cleaning the room had always been Leticia’s job.

Though there was that one time.

There was that one time when the servants had cleaned the warehouse in a hurry. It was the day when a priest was coming from the main temple.

“…A priest is coming to see me? Because he wants me to forgive my grandfather?”

As she realized what was going on, Leticia felt cold sweat drip down her back.

When Kara heard Leticia’s questions, she looked at her as though Leticia was stating the obvious and nodded her head.

“You won’t be able to hide this time just because you don’t want to meet the priest.”

At the servant’s words, she let out a long sigh.

‘Everything’s the same.’

Everything was the same as what she had experienced in the past.

During the summer when she was eleven, a priest from the main temple had come to see Leticia.
His name was Gamal. He had had a connection with the dukedom for a long time, and he was called to come see Leticia because her grandfather wanted to gain forgiveness from her.

As a Brunehilde (someone who followed the Great Saintess), her grandfather hadn’t just been faithful, but he had been devoted to the religion to the point where he would risk his life for it.

In one of the laws that the Great Saintess had left behind, there was a verse that had caused this whole situation with the priest.

[ Do not harm young children and animals. If you dare to disobey this command, you will be sent to the deepest depths of hell, and your soul will burn for all eternity. ]

Her grandfather was terrified of going to hell for disobeying the Great Saintess’s laws. He was so scared that every time he finished beating up Leticia, he would go to the oratory and pray a prayer of repentance.

It was only when he felt himself nearing death that he asked Leticia for forgiveness out of extreme fear. Still, even in a situation like this, he had never formally apologized but asked for forgiveness through a priest.

‘Maybe…’

Although she didn’t know where she was for sure, if this was the start of a new life, Leticia was going to make sure that she didn’t live like the way she did in the past.

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────