I Possessed As A Childcare Extra Chapter 6

Thud? Not a poke?

It wasn’t the sound of the Northern Grand Duke laughing—it was like a cotton puff dropping.

The light-brown teddy bear the young lady always carried had fallen over.

I stared at its jewel-made, pitch-black, empty little eyes… and realized.

Right. The young lady was tailing me.

From the bear to the young lady. I lifted my gaze.

The young lady had gone pale.

Her trembling lips slowly parted.

— My life has blossomed wide open…

Pitch.

Rhythm.

Even pronunciation—perfect.

“W-Where… did Annie learn… that?”

“Ah…”

“Annie, don’t tell me… you also…?”

“Aah…”

With the look of someone certain a fish would bite, the young lady cast her lure.

— Hey, you too?

My soul reacted.

— I can speak…

 

 

 

*****

 

 

This world was the romance-fantasy world of <The Contractor of the Spirit King>.

The main character, Serpin, was a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes, like an angel.

She didn’t know who her father was, but she lived happily with her beloved mother, Liet.

But she lost her mother to an incurable disease and was placed in an orphanage.

Even while being abused by a typical villain-type director, she never lost her kind heart or her hope.

Just like the title, Serphine was a genius spirit mage who would form a contract with the Spirit King.

Her power caught the eye of the Tricen Grand Duke, Aeon, who supported the orphanage.

Aeon immediately sensed that Serphine, who looked exactly like the only woman he ever loved, was his biological daughter.

The director was swiftly executed and removed from the story. Serphine became the young lady of House Tricen.

The family she found after 12 years was far from harmonious.

A father rumored to be a tyrant.

Siblings who didn’t approve of her.

But Serphine, being the protagonist, refused to back down and continued approaching them.

The Tricen household slowly warmed up to bright and spirited Serpin.

Except for one person.

Her younger sister, Delia. A daughter born out of wedlock, with darker blond hair and green eyes.

Delia and Serpin were in similar situations, but one was destined to be the villainess and the other the heroine.

Delia, the picture-perfect villainess, followed Serpin from the Tricen estate to the academy, even to the imperial palace, committing one misdeed after another.

Her motive was obvious. Serphine had stolen what she believed should have been hers.

The title of Tricen’s young lady, the beloved daughter, the beloved sister, the socialite’s darling, the crown prince’s fiancée, even the spirit-magic talent she herself lacked.

She had none of it from the start, but she believed that she could have had everything if only Serphine didn’t exist.

In the end, Delia joined hands with the Mage Tower to kill Serpin.

Of course it failed. The Mage Tower even threw her under the carriage afterward.

Her fate then followed the classic villainess route: she was executed by her own family.

Right before she climbed the guillotine, Delia clung to them.

“You can’t do this! I’m—I’m a Tricen too…!”

Aeon, who watched expressionlessly, declared,

“I have never once considered you a Tricen.”

Despairing, Delia clutched at her brothers’ trousers.

“Narkis! Leoni! It’s me, it’s me! Delia! Will you abandon your own blood?”

Narkis gave her a cold, indifferent look as if her fate meant nothing.

Leoni, face twisted with disgust, shook off her hand.

“Fool. My only sister is Serpin.”

It was a cliché ending.

Except it felt like another name should be in Serpin’s place.

“…You’re saying you were supposed to be that Delia, my lady?”

When I asked cautiously, the young lady nodded.

“Mhm.”

The young lady brought me to her private sitting room, dismissed all servants, and brought out tea and snacks.

She suggested making it look like a normal teatime, but there was no way a young lady + maid82 combination could ever be normal. I’d probably get summoned by Aeon or Narkis soon.

But what did that matter when a reincarnator from Korea was sitting right in front of me?

The young lady explained she had been a second-year civil-service exam student.

She suddenly died right before the level-9 government exam and reincarnated into a romance-fantasy she once read.

She realized it when her biological mother mentioned the name “Aeon Tricen.”

And it only truly hit her when she came to Moon-Mist Castle and faced the terrifying Aeon.

At this rate, she said, she was doomed to be executed.

“I don’t wanna die with my head chopped off…”

She murmured sorrowfully. I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

Hearing the actual plot of a real existing rofan, hearing her talk about reincarnation and possession—it all felt complicated.

A childcare novel where the young lady is the protagonist.

There must be a proper title; I’d probably never know what it was.

A villainess-reincarnation story.

Saw that coming.

Being a lovable child as a survival strategy.

Not surprising.

And yet I got careless and revealed myself. In such a humiliating way, too. Moping alone until the heroine “picked” me as a party member.

Even if I wanted to run away from this situation, I had no power to. We were still a young lady and her maid.

Now was the time to quietly point out the critical mistake.

“But my lady… you’re Lady Edel, aren’t you?”

Aeon’s daughter, Narkis and Leoni’s younger sister. Edel was the only one who could’ve become Delia—but the names didn’t match.

The young lady pursed her heart-shaped lips.

“It was… almost Delia.”

“And then?”

“Cecil picked ‘Delia’ from a dandelion and said we should name me that, but Father…”

The young lady glanced up at me and corrected her wording.

“Aeon said dandelions are too common, and he didn’t like how the seeds scatter…”

“So he named you Edel?”

“Mhm…”

What a pathetic reason.

The year the young lady was entered into the family register, an Edelweiss garden was planted in the Castle’s front yard.

They intentionally grew a flower native to the southern highlands because her name came from Edelweiss.

“Why did he like Edelweiss?”

I asked sourly. The young lady’s eyes darted around as she answered.

“Well… Aeon din’t tell me exactly… but Liet liked Edelweiss.”

So that was the backstory? He named a child born from another woman after the favorite flower of his first love? A replacement? He really was irredeemable trash.

In the original work, Aeon didn’t kill newborn Delia on sight either. He only said to throw her out because her constant crying was noisy. Rupert barely stopped him, and Cecil gave her the name.

Meaning the young lady became Edel because she basically risked her life to appeal.

That she was this lovable.

“…Disgusting.”

“Mhm?”

“I was talking to myself…”

I was insulting the great absentee father, that’s all!

“Sorry…”

The young lady suddenly apologized with her head down.

“Huh? Why would you apologize?”

The person who should apologize was someone else entirely. She hesitated before continuing.

“I’m… acting like a kid, like an idiot, right? Even the way I talk. I’ve lived like this too long… it became a habit…”

She misunderstood my mumbling!

“That wasn’t directed at you, my lady!”

It was directed at the great father figure who ran from responsibility!

“But still…”

The crushing disillusionment on her face didn’t suit a seven-year-old.

Real children don’t actually speak this clumsily.

But I couldn’t criticize the young lady for overacting her age. Her life depended on it.

“You’re doing it to survive, my lady. I would’ve done the same.”

Her large, deer-like eyes trembled pitifully.

“Do you… do you really think I can live?”

Delia died at her family’s hands despite having the same face.

How useful was knowing the future in a world where fate was set?

She didn’t even know the details—only the general story.

The first major episode was Serpin’s adoption at age twelve.

The current timeline was winter, just before Delia’s twelfth birthday.

Serpin, born in December, and Delia, born in January, became sisters with about a month’s age gap.

The joint birthday party for both of them—on Delia’s twelfth birthday—was the second episode.

Five years remained before the original plot began, and anything could happen before then. There were probably many blank spaces in the timeline.

As expected, a maid named “Annie” did not appear in the original story.

Unlike replaceable extras like me, the young lady was a main character—one at the center of events. Escaping the original storyline wouldn’t be easy.

But.

“Your name changed, my lady. Maybe you already escaped Delia’s fate.”

“That’d be nice, but…”

Her bowed head looked so pitiful. Did she not feel convinced?

In truth, something more important than the name mattered. And the young lady seemed to have overlooked it.

Should I really be the one to tell her?