Flirting With the Villain’s Dad

Chapter 5

Well, I naturally assumed things would go this way.

The same place names, the same people’s names, the identical appearances to the descriptions in the novel, the layout of the royal palace—I had died, and when I’d woken up, I was in a book.

Eight months later, I’d missed the timing to say anything about it—especially now that I had completely adjusted to living in this new reality of mine.

“I bet Brigitte will be really pretty. She’s going to take after you.”

“I hope she’ll take after my husband.”

“No, she’s going to look just like you…”

I sounded emphatic without meaning to. Theresia tilted her head, perplexed.

I smiled. “…probably?”

No, she would be identical, right down to the curly red hair and the sky-blue eyes of the Livovny royal family. Even the same lovable freckles would lightly speckle the tip of her nose. Brigitte would look just like her mother, just like the author wrote.

Sure. That’s fine, but… My gaze dropped to Theresia’s stomach again.

In the original novel, Brigitte had a rough time until her birth.

First, Theresia had been kidnapped by Bellecourt troops before Brigitte had been born, so there was no hope of normalcy there.

Her father, Duke Levan, had embarked on a campaign to recover his pregnant wife and had been killed in the process. Hearing the news from the faraway land made Theresia collapse in shock, and Brigitte was born weeks earlier than anticipated.

After that, because Bellecourt and Livovny couldn’t come to an agreement, Theresia and her newborn daughter had to live in the empire for ten years.

That was when little Brigitte met the future antagonist, the imperial prince, Dekalb. Brigitte only returned to Livovny with her mother after she was already ten years old, and Dekalb’s heartache and anger were insurmountable.

Dekalb de Bellecourt. I forgot his middle name because it was so long, but he was an evil dark mage who almost shattered the peaceful world of Brigitte Wants to Be Happy. A villain who used dark magic. He commanded dead souls from Hell!

How evil was he? Well, at the age of eleven, just after Brigitte had returned home, he killed his father, the emperor of Bellecourt.

Why? Because he had to become emperor to take over Livovny, where Brigitte was! That was the only reason he used his own father as a sacrifice for his dark magic. I recall that being the only gory description in all of Brigitte Wants to Be Happy.

Even though the emperor had been left unnamed and was never described, I still felt awful reading it. What more was there to say?

Meanwhile, after returning home with Brigitte, Theresia caught a disease when Brigitte turned twelve.

Was it that winter? Or maybe the winter after that? In any case, Theresia passed away. Considering this, Brigitte definitely had an incredibly difficult childhood…

But as you can probably tell from this short recollection, the parents’ generation made Brigitte’s childhood suffering look like nothing.

For starters, three people had already been sacrificed: Theresia, her husband—Duke Levan—and the current emperor of Bellecourt, the father of the villain Dekalb.

Then what about Alexio, the male lead’s parents? His family also had terrible circumstances.

Fernando—Alexio’s father and my guard—lost a leg and an eye in the same campaign Duke Levan was killed. There were multiple passages of little Alexio supporting his disabled father.

Thinking back on it, it was really ridiculous. I mean, their parents’ generation was seriously riddled with angst!

“Haaa…”

When I kept sighing, Theresia glanced at me with a puzzled expression.

“What are you sighing so heavily for, Yerenika? Is something on your mind?”

“On my mind…? No, it’s nothing.”

“If there’s something bothering you, you have to tell your big sister, okay?”

“Yeah. I told you, it’s nothing.”

“I’m only saying that if there is…”

Ah, my angelic sister Theresia. Since her mother’s temperament was like this, it was only natural that Brigitte would also be stupidly kind. Past Me deserves to die twice for saying she was frustrating for being too nice.

I forced myself to smile. I couldn’t make an expecting mother worry. I couldn’t, but…

There was no way I wouldn’t worry. I hadn’t slept properly in the past five days because I had no idea when the imperial troops would mount a surprise attack.

There really weren’t many days left before Bellecourt launched their invasion of Livovny. The suffering the parents’ generation would go through was right around the corner.

Damn it!

Goosebumps pebbled my skin. I already knew, but every time it popped into my head, I felt a chill run down my spine.

“Livovny’s knights had no choice but to kneel before the might of the Bellecourt Empire, the eastern powerhouse of Rhyger.”

I didn’t know why that passage kept popping into my head so clearly. The descriptions in the novel were unnecessarily vivid.

“Oh my. Are you cold, Yerenika?”

“Yeah… A little?”

I was cold, freezing cold, because the impending future was so vivid. If I kept waiting around like this, I knew I would end up facing the imperial army without being able to do anything.

No, this wouldn’t do.

Okay, then. First, I have to hide my sister and Brigitte!

* * *

But, well, where exactly was I going to hide Theresia? The only places I knew in Livovny were the royal palace and the duke’s estate.

So, I hunkered down in the duke’s estate starting that day. There was nothing I could do to prepare for the future but stick to Theresia’s side like glue, so I didn’t have any other options.

Since I was at the estate, Fernando naturally ended up at the estate as well. It was killing two birds with one stone—I would protect Theresia and also keep Fernando close.

Fernando was my precious personal guard, but most importantly, he was the future father of the male lead. I absolutely wanted to keep Alexio’s father safe.

But, to that point, there were so many people I wanted to rescue.

Of course, there were Theresia and Fernando, and then Brigitte’s father, Duke Levan, too. But there was also the emperor of Bellecourt, who had died so cruelly at Dekalb’s hands.

I guessed this was just my fate now. I had to tear the whole story apart to fix it, twenty-one years before the story even started.

What will happen to the original story if I change things now?

Then again, the novel was so happy-go-lucky anyway, so I doubted a little tweaking would make it angsty…

…probably?

* * *

“What are you doing here instead of the palace, anyway?”

During the days I spent at the estate, Yerenika’s childhood friend and Duke Levan’s little brother, Sergey Levan, visited my room almost every day.

I hugged the cushion as I rolled around the bed, giving him halfhearted answers.

“What would you know about my deepest thoughts?”

“You know what deep thoughts are?”

“Shut your mouth, my dear friend.”

I very kindly chucked the cushion at him. Of course, the cushion fell pitifully short, landing well before it got anywhere near Sergey. Sergey shook his head.

“Somebody has always been this way, but in the last couple months, she’s turned into a complete tomboy. Who’d think of her as a princess—?”

“Want help shutting that mouth of yours?”

Sergey was a handsome boy with black hair and deep green eyes. The novel also mentioned in passing that he had been friends with Yerenika since she was very young.

The truth was that Yerenika almost didn’t appear in the novel at all.

She’d been mentioned once when Theresia was being kidnapped by the emperor of Bellecourt and once when she was wailing at Theresia’s death. There were a couple of lines about how she looked at Brigitte with loving eyes, but that was all.

There was nothing about her personality, her looks, who she married, and what her life was like. Nothing like that appeared in the novel because Yerenika was a side character in Brigitte Wants to Be Happy. She played no particular role.

“An unimportant side character…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Anyway, I was very lucky that Yerenika’s original personality seemed very close to my own, judging by how the people around her didn’t seem that fazed. Or, maybe I had just adjusted well?

I rolled across the bed one more time. It would have been nice to be some random extra character instead. How did I end up here…?

Sergey was examining me seriously now. I lay on the bed and spoke dryly. “Hey, Ser. You know.”

“Hmm?”

“You better make sure to get your timing right when you come to rescue me!”

“What?” Sergey looked bewildered. “Why would I need to rescue you? You’ve got Sir Cardona.”

“You’ll see… You will.”

That’s what the author wrote in the first scene of Brigitte Wants to Be Happy.

I rolled over again. It had been the one and only time Yerenika had said more than two lines of dialogue. It was the scene right before Theresia was kidnapped. The scene passed through my mind like someone had drawn it.

“Theresia yelled. She had to yell with all her might over the clashing of metal and screaming around her. ‘Sergey, take care of Yerenika!’

She could see her sister’s face contorting.

‘Theresia! But, Sis—!’

Theresia shook her head. She would inevitably get caught because of her heavy body, and it was the royal family that the Bellecourt soldiers were targeting.

Yerenika was the only princess of Livovny now that she had become Duchess Levan. After their parents, Yerenika was the next highest priority to evacuate.

‘Theresia!’ Yerenika cried as she stretched her hand out.

‘Yerenika, you have to go!’

‘Let go of me, Ser! Theresia!’

Sergey’s face was a mess as he dragged Yerenika away. Her sobbing face grew distant.

Theresia bit her lip. She had to focus now, for the child in her belly if nothing else.”

Yes. That was how Yerenika was safely evacuated without so much as a hair on her head being harmed.

I made Sergey swear it to me.

“I’m counting on you, Sergey.”

“There you go, saying weird stuff again.”

He seemed a bit unreliable, but that was surely just anxiety on my part.