Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Leticia opened her eyes.

It took some time for her to wake up from her haze.

“Ugh…”

Suddenly, she came back to her senses and her eyes flashed open in an instant. She instinctively brought her hand in front of her eyes.

And… she had definitely burned to death.

However—

The hand that she had brought into her line of sight had a scratch on it but was otherwise unharmed. Although there was also a scratch on her arm as well, there were no scorch marks from the fire.

“Is this the afterlife…?”

Leticia quickly kicked away her blankets. Which was her next realization that she was lying on top of a bed.

Her calves, like her hand and arm, only had marks from what seemed like a beating. It was as if she had returned back to the time when she was young, when she would have scars all over her body.

Whenever her grandfather lost his temper, he always raised his hand against her. Whether it was her cheek, her hand, or her knee, there was no place on her body that was spared.

Leticia’s eyes widened as she inspected her hand a few more times.

‘My hands became smaller, too…’

Her slender arms and legs had become shorter, and her line of sight was pretty low as well.

With everything that was going on, Leticia was confused as to how she had returned to when she was a child again.

“Does everyone turn back to a child in the afterlife?”

Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.

Leticia didn’t want to think about it any longer and smooshed her face into the pillow. Then, she burrowed inside the shabby blanket.

The blanket was worn-out like the pillow, but it at least had a scent like a laundry that was parched out in the sun.

Lifting her head slightly, Leticia glanced around her room.

‘…This is the afterlife, but it looks exactly the same as the room I used to live in when I was a child.’

A shabby blanket, a wooden table with an unstable leg, a candlestick that was blackened from use, a moldy closet, and an iron drawer that contained her diary- they were all the same.

This room looked exactly like the room she remembered from the past. It was the room that she stayed in until she was eleven years old.

The room, which was a remodeled warehouse, was worn-out and narrow, and because the room faced the north, not a lot of sunlight came inside, making the room dark and damp.

It was only later that she was able to move into a larger room.

She was only able to move because her grandfather, who was going crazy over the fact that he couldn’t get rid of her, finally died.

The successor classes that her older brother used to get had now transferred over to her, and Leticia had been happy because she thought that she was finally getting acknowledged. However, the room she moved into was only suitable for a maid, so it wasn’t even something to be happy about in the first place.

Leticia stopped looking around the room. She already died once anyway.

‘I wonder why I sacrificed so much for that family.’

The lingering feeling that she had for her past life felt meaningless to her now.

She had been burned alive.

In order to kill his own biological daughter, her father had even obtained permission from the emperor to kill her with fire, which had been banned by the law.

‘Was there a reason he wanted to kill me so badly?’

At that, Leticia deeply buried her tired head into the pillow.

It was pretty funny to even wonder about the reason for her death in the afterlife.

Eventually, she chased away her thoughts with a sigh. A breath of wind came in through the open window and tousled her golden hair.

‘After I made up my mind to become the heir, there was not one time that I was happy…’

To break free from the stigma that came with being an illegitimate child, she tried her hardest to become the head of the dukedom and put her name on the family register.

From childhood, she had survived all the humiliation and contempt towards her with this thought in mind, but in the end, it had ended with death.

And now, after death, she had a peaceful morning for the first time.

The white curtains fluttered at the gentle wind blowing through the open window. The sparrows chirping in the distance calmed her heart. Leticia’s eyes were about to close again—

Clack.

Just then, the door flew open and someone stomped in without any permission.

“Leticia!”

Leticia’s eyes flew open at the sound of someone calling her name.

She got up thinking that it might be an angel coming to judge her. But, the person waiting for her at the door was not an angel, but a person who she had seen many times before.

Dark brown hair. Light grey eyes. The boy looked to be about thirteen years old.

‘…Philip?’

Her eyes widened at the realization.

The boy was Leticia’s older brother, Philip Maner.

Philip was the late duchess’s son, and through his mother’s family, the Wiston County, which was famous for their works of art, he had an outstanding family lineage.

‘Although family lineage won’t have much of an importance in the afterlife.’

Leticia swallowed a laugh rising from her throat.

There was no way an angel would have that stupid Philip’s face, so the fact that he was here probably meant that he was also dead.

Philip looked down on Leticia and also used her to boost his own ego.

The day he failed his knight test, he vented his anger by slapping her cheek and telling her “After you came to the dukedom, nothing works out for me!”

Whenever Phillip would raise his voice at her, whether the matter was great or small, the past Leticia would always flinch with fear. She didn’t know what her brother was mad about now, but he was absolutely seething with rage.

“Are you still being stubborn by not seeing grandfather’s face? They should tell a maid to deliver news like these. Augh, why are they being so annoying by sending me here?”

To think that she would have to see her dead grandfather even in the afterlife, she would be such a good granddaughter.

With that thought in mind, Leticia asked Philip something with a cold voice.

“When did you die?”

Phillip, who was about to lash out at her again, suddenly went blank. It was to the point where he was openly staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

“For a knight, you used to always take such good care of your own health and safety… you died pretty early, too.”

Her brother had taken care of his own safety to the point that she couldn’t believe that he was actually an appointed knight.

Philip only stared at Leticia as if she was a crazy person.

He was still a thirteen-year-old squire. He would only be able to become a knight when he became an adult four years later. In addition to that, she had referred to him as ‘you,’ which made Phillip’s face distorted with rage.

[ TL/N: The ‘you’ in this case is informal. Normally, to older people and strangers, people use formal speech. ]

“‘You’? Did you actually go crazy? Where did you get the guts to call your older brother ‘you’?”

Phillip walked up to Leticia and made his body look as threatening as possible. Seeing so, she got out of bed and leaned on the headboard as she faced him.

“So what? Do you want me to still call you ‘young master’ when you’re dead?”

The golden-haired young girl cocked her head up and stared at him.

The person that always lost and turned away in these confrontations was Leticia. Because of this, Philip, who was flustered at seeing her cold eyes for the first time, yelled at her with a shocked face.

Three months earlier, Philip had been absent from the dukedom for knight training. After he completed his training and came back to the dukedom, lots of things had changed.

Leticia, who he had despised for being an illegitimate child, was now getting successor classes, and the grandfather that he had especially cherished had succumbed to old age and was now in a life-and-death situation.

When he heard that Leticia was now receiving the same successor classes that he had been receiving, it hurt his pride. He knew that his father normally recommended etiquette lessons, so Leticia wouldn’t be able to choose what classes she could take, still, he was mad.

He already hated just seeing her, but now his grandfather who was going in and out of consciousness was demanding to see Leticia.

To be honest, it was funny to see his grandfather, who at one point abused his own granddaughter, demanding to see her to ask for forgiveness.

But now, the stranger thing was Leticia.

Just yesterday, she couldn’t even meet his eyes as if she was some kind of sinner, but now, she was staring at him with eyes that seemed to be ridiculing him.

Though Philip was starting to feel uncomfortable, he decided that he had to stomp out her confidence while he was here.

“Hey, did you forget that you’re an illegitimate child? Even if you receive the classes that I used to get, did you think that you would become the heir rather than me?”

“Even after death, you still say the same pathetic thing…”

Leticia held in a sigh.

Her hard-earned peace that she had finally gotten after death was now being broken apart by a rude intruder.

“You nagged father for those lessons, didn’t you? How dare you eye my rightful position?! What right do you have to get the classes that I used to get?!”

Philip smirked and pushed his finger forcefully against Leticia’s head.

When there was no response, he grabbed her hair, wanting to teach her who the superior one was.

At that moment, she reached out her hand and grabbed the hand that was pulling on her hair. Then, Leticia reached out her other hand towards a nearby table and grabbed a candlestick. When she wrapped her hands around it, she swung it with all her might at Phillip.

Phillip narrowly missed the candlestick and tried to step back a few steps, now, shocked how things were unfolding.

His hand, which had been clenching Leticia’s hair, was yanked off.

“It seems like you want to die twice.”

She got up from her seat with the candlestick still in her hand, sweeping back her now-messy hair with her other free hand.

“Ack! Ah! This crazy b*tch wants to kill her older brother! If I had bad luck, I would have gotten hit!”

“It’s a shame that I didn’t.”

Leticia stared at Phillip with an indifferent gaze. As she ran her hand through her hair, the golden strands fell through the spaces in her hands and fell softly on her shoulders.

“Did you know that without a sword, a knight is pretty much done for?”

It was only then that Philip gazed down at his hand. In this narrow and worn-out room, there was nothing that he could grab to use as a weapon.

“Would it be faster for me to kill you? Or would it be faster for you to just run away? I wonder…?” She said, smirking as Leticia walked up to Philip.

He had always used violence against her, who was already being physically abused by her grandfather.

Now, it was her turn to teach Phillip a lesson.

She was going to show him that she didn’t care about his flimsy strength and the small amount of power that he had.

‘I’m already dead anyway, so I’m not going to hold back.’

Leticia tightened her grip on the candlestick.

“W- What are you trying to do…? Are you crazy? Have you finally gone mad?!”

He slowly backed away until he reached a wall.

Even though it was a hot Summer’s day, the wall was still freezing cold, which scared Philip.

Leticia turned the candlestick to hold it by the bottom and easily lifted it to aim it at him. Looking at the scene, the way she was holding it reminded Philip of someone holding a rapier. She moved in such a way that he could not believe what he was seeing.

When she saw how surprised her older brother was, she let out a relaxed smile.

“Hm, what to do—I forgot all my etiquette lessons after I died.”

In her past life, she had learned sword fighting until she was sick of it. So, even though she was only good enough for self-defense, it would be enough to take on this flimsy thirteen-year-old.

“I’ll give you a painless death. Since you’re the precious legitimate son, I, the illegitimate child, will do my best to send you off comfortably.”