Chapter Text
Chapter 1
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Athanasia—no, Lee Jihye is tired.
She might have always been tired since even before her reincarnation. The current events just simply reminded her that she pushed herself too far, and it only just worsened her already tired heart.
Playing as a cheerful daughter might be fun (and at times, heartwarming because deep down, she always wanted to keep the familiar warmth the people around gave to her), but it never really felt right to her.
She was never a child. She had never been a child even back in her previous life (a survivor—a weapon to fight of monsters, that was all she ever could be).
She only managed to keep on her act because she wanted to live.
(A scarred man always stood in front of her, carrying the mantle of surviving against all odds because someone once said, "Living is the best," and another person also muttered as his last words, "I'll leave it to you.")
She needed to live, so she continued to be Claude's only lovable daughter.
But the man had forgotten her—the plainly slow yet dear bond they had gone in a blink.
He made her kneel in front of everyone and denounced her heritage. He chose already. He's now peacefully having tea with someone else in the table they once had tea together.
She liked Jeanette. She honestly did, but seeing them together like how the Lovely Princess novel depicted them to be a great father-daughter duo never failed to break her already broken heart.
"If this keeps up, I'm just going to end up like how OG Athanasia was in the novel," she choked, terrifying thoughts overflowing her mind.
She looked around the room that her lovely 'sister' provided her and wondered what she should do now.
She couldn't keep on staying at Jeannette's room forever, and there was no progress in finding a way to restore the emperor's memory. Lucas wasn't here yet, too.
Her sapphire eyes dimmed in hopelessness and frustration.
The runaway princess put a hand on her face and glanced again at the room. She focused on the recent newspapers that Jeanette gave her at her request, and determination flared up to her whole being.
She needed—no, she's making a new plan.
(Lee Jihye wasn't a planner. She mostly followed her Team Leader's order to fight against aggressive monsters.
But she still was under his care. It wasn't strange for her to adapt his habits.)
Reading all the current happenings within the continent, a slight weird article caught her narrowed jewel eyes.
[Henituse Count's Trash Becomes Our Silver Shield Hero!]
'Henituse? Trash?' Athanasia frowned deeply, sensing familiarity from that description. Her tired hues began to sparkle in childlike hope as she continued to read on.
She didn't want to dare wish an impossible possibility. She didn't even like the implication, but what if?
Lee Jihye died overdosing her pills. It was always something she knew could happen to her as soon as she started taking them. She wasn't even surprised to this fate.
Yet she had been given a chance to live again. She was reborn as Athanasia, the forgotten princess in the novel she was reading.
Dying and reincarnating to a world one read about, even just transporting to another world...wasn't that a growing trend to the fantasy novels she and that person were fond of reading?
Kim Rok Soo.
Team One's presumably cold and uncaring team leader.
Successor of Lee Soo Hyuk and Choi Jung Soo's claimed dongsaeng.
Only publicly known survivor of original Team One.
(Her Team Leader—her one and only living guardian.)
Athanasia told herself to get a grip. Reincarnation wasn't a normal situation, especially being reborn with one's memories.
Kim Rok Soo might have been reading a novel where he once mentioned a Henituse family household. She couldn't remember everything he narrated to her about 'The Birth of A Hero' novel (she had never been one to have the greatest memory), but she did know one event.
Cale Henituse, the count's trash son, was beaten up by the protagonist in the first chapters of the novel.
So, how was it that this article narrated how the supposed trash used his Ancient Power to shield the people from a bombing terrorism?
(And how he then proceeded to smile and say 'he's fine' as he bled from the recoil?)
The Korean in her wanted to cry. She already got let down for all the years spent wasted with Claude in her new life. She didn't think that she could handle another thing to go wrong.
Her grip on the newspaper tightened, threatening to tear the piece of paper to shreds.
Was it too much for Athanasia to hope?
Cale Henituse was preparing for a war. It's been the second day since he had been waiting for the invading wyverns that Clopeh Sekka were controlling.
He wasn't expecting a golden-haired teenager to suddenly teleport in his room.
Nor was he prepared for the unknown girl to glance at him with such a heartbreaking hope in her familiar jewel eyes and call out tearfully, "Team Leader?"
Widened scarlet orbs immediately recorded everything about the girl and compared it to another child in his mind.
"Jihye?"
(Looking at the defiant and glaring baby dragon who's talking about his freedom, Cale—no, Kim Rok Soo briefly recalled eyes from a small yet unwavering sapphire-eyed kid and tried not to focus on the pain and regret of leaving her behind...just like how they did.)
Sometimes, people would go in different paths but then again, sometimes these same people may meet again. This time, without anymore separation.