I Possessed As A Childcare Extra Chapter 7

I get that this place is the world of The Spirit King’s Contractor.

But I couldn’t just think of it as a simple novel.

If Carter couple or Holly died tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to bear the sadness. This wasn’t something I was looking at through a phone screen.

As always, to me this place was reality.

And realistically speaking, the young lady was just someone I served.

We had simply lived on the same planet and in the same country in my past life—nothing like a special connection.

Unless the young lady ordered it, there was no need for me to step in and help her.

Even though I knew that wasn’t true.

“Usually in cases like this, the young lady is the protagonist.”

My mouth moved on its own. I felt bad watching someone who died studying for a civil service exam panic again in this life because she didn’t know when she might die.

“The protagonist can’t die after all.”

A bit of comfort wouldn’t hurt. I meant to tell her she would never die, so she shouldn’t worry. Even if her journey would be… a lot rougher than most.

“H-huh! I’m the prowtagonist?”

But her reaction was strange.

“N-no way! Th-this is a world where Serphine is the prowtagonist!”

The young lady clamped her tiny hands over her mouth and groaned.

After going through a childcare novel × villainess-reincarnation collaboration, she really believed that.

Well, realizing it would make it meta-fiction. Not knowing she was the protagonist—it was exactly what a protagonist would do.

“I-I’m a fictional character?”

I didn’t think that far!

How did “Young lady, you’re the protagonist! And protagonists don’t die! (wink)” turn into “Hahaha, you foolish fictional being! (rumble rumble!)”?

The young lady grabbed her fluffy-looking fist and pulled at her plump golden hair.

“Uwaaah…!”

Oh no! I think I broke her sense of self!

“I’m not a fictional character!”

I was about to correct her with: ‘The young lady is clearly a wonderful, living, breathing person! A real being through and through!’

“T-then how come… my life was so… bum-like! My ragged life was all prewritten? A factory for tragedy arcs?”

Where is she going with this?

“Th-this… f***ing hell!”

The young lady slammed her fist down and let out a loud curse in Korean.

No one here taught her how to curse. Well, I guess she’d be disposed of before she ever tried.

“Grrraaaah!”

From the roaring young lady, I felt a sign.

No way! Is she about to confront an unbearable “truth” and change?!

Before she could go, “Kukuku, so I was… a fictional being. Then I shall shatter this fictional world!” I quickly cut in.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fictional! I just meant your position feels like a protagonist! Everyone is the protagonist of their own life…”

“N-no! I c-can’t do protagonist stuff!”

Thankfully, the right hand’s black dragon didn’t revive nor did a second personality burst forth. The young lady buried her face in her adorable palm.

“I just wanted to live… feeding on taxpayer money… like an old trolley wheel that never gets replaced… My iron-rice-bowl dream…”

Listening to her specific wish made my throat tighten. I wanted to scrape by on other people’s money too. I suddenly felt close to her—the girl I thought was born a natural protagonist.

“Living as the youngest daughter of the Empire’s only ducal house, the black-haired Northern Duke, and doing nothing isn’t a bad life.”

Not “bad”? It was a red-diamond-spoon privilege.

For ordinary folks like us, being a protagonist only makes us scream “Help, somebody!” But if you hand someone red-diamond wealth, it becomes doable.

“Do nothing? What if they just execute me?”

A protagonist wouldn’t be executed, but caution never hurt.

“As long as you don’t do anything bad.”

More precisely:

“As long as you don’t mess with Serpin…”

Like villainess-reincarnation protagonists do. It would become something like ‘Why do you cling to me when I said I’d leave?’ or ‘The Fake Lady Will Now Disappear’.

No, this is a childcare novel. So it’d be ‘The Baby Lady Wishes to Survive!’

“They’ll kill me for lazing around because I’m a villainess!”

Her teary complaint blew away my rambling.

She seemed crushed by the fear that she might die one day, protagonist or not.

Truthfully, I wasn’t completely sure either. It wasn’t a regression story; protagonists shouldn’t die but…

Delia had become Edel.

And I, who never existed in the original, Annie, had gotten dragged into a childcare novel.

There was no text describing the future, no choices popping up at each branching point.

I reincarnated into a romance-fantasy world with a sword-master Northern Duke father, but only this part was realistic.

No—there was still one left!

Deus ex machina! The god themself!

“Young lady, young lady! Have you ever spoken with God?”

“N-no.”

“…Any reincarnation perks?”

“Uuum, my mental age didn’t get younger…?”

“…Anything else?”

“I don’t think so…?”

Reincarnation god, what in the world…

Fine, forget me—shouldn’t you give at least one overpowered ability to the protagonist?!

Couldn’t you share Serphine’s spirit arts or something with my young lady?!

“What should the ducal house’s youngest daughter do to avoid being treated like a villainess?”

Having run out of options, I asked in defeat. The young lady answered smoothly.

“What else is there? Just live sucking up like a mascot doll and get married someday.”

The Northern spring sunlight spit out such brutal lines that my mind went blank.

If someone overheard, we’d be doomed! Sword Masters must have insanely good hearing!

While I scanned the surroundings nervously, the young lady muttered gloomily.

“Marriage is the only escape…”

Before I could stop her, she buried her face in her arms.

“Noooo!”

No! If she starts crying now, we’re really doomed!

I half-rolled across the table to reach her and wrapped my arms around her.

“Y-young lady! Please calm down! It’s okay, it’s okay!”

“It’s not okayyy!”

What a tantrum-thrower! How did she even hold it in until now?

I hugged her tightly to muffle the sound and desperately soothed her.

“Listen! What matters most is that the young lady survives, right?”

To become ‘The Baby Lady Wishes to Survive!’, one must pass this stage!

My life-plan, protagonist version!

“You don’t have to stick with them forever, right? You were born the youngest daughter of a ducal house—so even if your master… I-I mean, the lord is, um, a little scary! Even if he doesn’t seem human! If you keep sweet-talking him like now and stash away a huge fortune, we can run away!”

“Run…?”

The young lady, trapped in my arms, looked up at me with teary eyes.

“H-how…?”

Her face twisted again. No!

“H-how do we run from here…?”

“I don’t mean cutting ties completely!”

I know! You can’t run from the Tricen men!

Before she burst into sobs again, I sharply clarified.

“A quiet vacation villa or another country! There are plenty of places where nobles just laze around! Let’s move to one and live independently!”

The young lady pressed her lips together, trying not to cry.

Staring into her heavy green eyes, I talked to her gently, like comforting a real child.

“The first goal is to make this family your slaves—metaphorically. Get the Tricen men to listen to you. And at the right time, take a massive pile of money…”

“Take a money…?”

“And leave.”

“Leave…?”

“To take back your life!”

“My life…?”

“That’s right—an easy life where you can be lazy without being called a villainess!”

“Be laaazy…”

“A life where you don’t have to get married if you don’t want to!”

“I don’t wanna marry…”

I felt like a hypnotist. Finally, I brainwashed the true young lady completely.

“You can do it, young lady.”

“I can do it…”

“Of course. You’re the protagonist of your own life.”

“Protagonist… sniff…”

“N-no, wait!”

What did that trigger?

Her big green eyes grew shiny again.

Her small nose and round cheeks trembled.

Her round, rosy lips puckered with tiny wrinkles.

And her candy-like fingers fidgeted.

Watching her, I felt the fondness rise again.

Of course she’d be sad—she might die.

I silently patted her back. The young lady murmured tearfully.

“Thank you, Annie…”

“No need to thank me.”

“Annie, you…”

Her lips moved awkwardly, then:

—What’s your… Korean name?

In stiff but accurate Korean, she asked.

The answer slipped out naturally.

—…Go Joo-eun.

For over twenty years—basically my whole life—I had used that language. It wasn’t easy to forget.

As time passed, more words and sentences would fade. I would slowly forget.

—So you’re Joo-eun. I’m Park Miri.

Even if she spoke haltingly like reading from a Korean textbook, she still remembered our language.

—Nice to meet you, Joo-eun.

The young lady smiled with tears in her eyes.

It wasn’t my imagination—she really was dazzling.

Northern spring sunlight indeed…

After telling her not to cry, the tears gathering in my own eyes were ridiculous. Like I could ever forget how to cry. Uwaaah.

 

 

****

 

 

“‘Psycho’… what does that mean?”

Narkis  wasn’t a possessor or a reincarnator, yet he pronounced “psycho” perfectly.

Standing in the same spot as last time, I quietly bowed my head.

It had been several days since the young lady and I started having “survival and Tricen escape meetings” under the excuse of tea time.

Since we had no grand plans to prepare before the original story began, it naturally turned into “sugar-charging and venting time.”

In a huge castle—no, a vast world—being the only ones who could share our true feelings with each other made us desperate. I could finally understand obsessive male leads.

The young lady fully agreed that Aeon was a “crazy bastard” and Leoni was an “anger issue.”

But she was surprised that Narkis was a “psycho.”