The Baddest Villainess Is Back
Chapter 65
‘It hurts, it’s so hot…’
Her whole body was burning.
She was certain she had untied her wrists from behind her back, yet the pain of being bound still lingered.
Roselyn groaned in agony.
She had excellent patience and a decent tolerance for pain, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t feel it.
Her head throbbed.
She was so feverish that even the breath she exhaled felt painful.
Was this the kind of heat one felt in the pits of hell?
“…but why isn’t it going down?”
Voices hummed and vibrated.
Feeling as though she were submerged underwater, she slowly opened her eyes to the echoing sensations.
Her vision was blurred.
“We are doing our absolute best… Oh, My Lady. Lady Roselyn, have you regained consciousness?”
At the sound of an unfamiliar voice, Roselyn instinctively recoiled.
‘Who is it?’
She was burning up with fever, and for no reason, her eyes felt hot and stinging.
“Roselyn, are you awake?”
The voice that reached her was quite familiar.
It was familiar, yet somehow much more youthful than she remembered.
‘…Am I dead?’
Roselyn’s lips parted slightly.
‘Has the fever spiked again?’
Her mind wasn’t working properly, but she could tell her body was far from normal.
“Ah…”
Her voice was hoarse and barely came out.
“Ah…”
“Roselyn, are you alright? Speak to me.”
“Fath… er…”
In an instant, Cherti’s eyes widened as he looked down at Roselyn.
“It hurts, please hold me…”
Having never been able to act like a spoiled child when she was young, Roselyn felt a pang of regret and tried to lift her trembling arms, only to freeze.
‘…A child’s hand?’
The small hand moving according to her thoughts belonged to a child of about five or six years old.
That is to say, it was her hand, but it looked incredibly small.
‘…Have I finally gone mad?’
Thinking this through her hazy consciousness, Roselyn drifted back to sleep.
* * *
She had suddenly become younger.
Roselyn didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about this situation, which could be defined in a single sentence…
Well, of course she knew.
She wasn’t happy or sad; she was simply dumbfounded by the absurdity of it all.
“…This is crathy.”
Roselyn muttered softly, knitting her brows. Her tongue felt short, making her words come out with a slight lisp and heavy stress at the end, but she decided to focus on the fact that she could speak at all.
Her head was swimming with fever. Roselyn leaned against the headboard, exhaling hot breaths as she struggled to clear her mind.
Despite the absurdity, her mind was strangely calm. It was partly because she had already visited a parallel world once, and partly because she possessed an Abyss that allowed her to live another life.
‘Why did I end up here?’
Roselyn pondered. There were three main possibilities.
First, she had been safely released from the kidnapping but died after fainting, moving to another parallel world.
Second, she was insane or dreaming.
Third, it was related to her Abyss.
All three were plausible enough that she couldn’t immediately point to one as the definitive answer.
‘The third one is the most likely.’
Exhaling another hot breath, Roselyn began to crawl toward the edge of the bed to get down. The bed was high and her height was small, so it was a distance she had to navigate by clinging to the sheets.
‘I was like this when I was little.’
Perhaps because she was often sick, she had been smaller and weaker than her peers—so much so that lifting a single piece of silver cutlery was a struggle.
Roselyn dragged the neatly folded blanket down and slid along it to reach the floor. She stood before the full-length mirror in the corner of the room.
Having not seen the sun, her pale cheeks were flushed red, losing their natural color. Seeing her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes from the severe illness, she could only sigh.
Roselyn reached up and pinched her cheek hard. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes.
‘Well, it doesn’t seem like a dream.’
It was too vivid for a dream, and her senses were fully intact.
‘And I seem too sane to be mad. First, I need to figure out the situation.’
This level of pain was familiar to her, so it wasn't anything new. Roselyn stood on her tiptoes, reaching to turn the doorknob.
That is, if the doorknob hadn't turned first.
“…Roselyn?”
“Father.”
“…Who gave you permission to move around as you please? I’ve told you time and again, you are…”
“A worthleth brat who’th jutht a nuthiance if I move, tho I thouldn’t move? I underthtand.”
Cherti flinched at the young Roselyn’s biting, excessively harsh words. Roselyn looked up at her father, who was much younger and more youthful than in her memories, yet even darker and more gloomy.
“…No, I didn’t put it quite like that,” Cherti added, frowning as if taken aback.
“I know. That you love me, Father.”
At the child’s youthful voice, Cherti lowered his gaze to look at Roselyn. Her eyes, which were usually dull, depressed, and lifeless, looked exceptionally clear today.
Cherti stared into the child’s ruby-like eyes and clamped his mouth shut.
“…I.”
“Father, did you often come to thee me thecretly like thith whenever I wath thick?”
“…I didn’t exactly come secretly. I just happened to be out on business, and it occurred to me while passing by, so I stopped in as an afterthought.”
“You thaid that every time, tho I thought you hated me.”
At Roselyn’s words, Cherti’s shoulders stiffened. He looked down at her with a trembling, bewildered gaze.
“I don’t hate you. It’s just…”
“That’th why I thought about jutht running away from home.”
Roselyn clicked her tongue inwardly, thinking that the 'yo' ending was quite difficult with her short tongue. Cherti’s pupils dilated significantly at her words.
“Even if you left…!”
“I know I’d only be a nuthiance, but if I’m going to be a nuthiance anywhere, I thought it might be better if I weren’t here.”
Roselyn gave voice to words she had never been able to say before.
‘If this is some kind of Abyss rampage, what kind of parallel world is this?’
Roselyn rolled her eyes indifferently and continued.
“Tho, I thought about leaving.”
“…”
When no response came, she looked up again. Cherti was frozen as if in shock. Roselyn shrugged at the bewildered look in his eyes, which were shaking like an earthquake.
In the past, she hadn't been able to see that, so she hadn't known. No, it was impossible for her to know.
“Father.”
“…”
The man, draped in all sorts of jewelry, could only part his lips without a word at the shocking statement from his young daughter who barely reached his knees.
“…Do you regret that I wath born?”
And then, Roselyn dropped another bomb she had wanted to ask since she was a child.
“…What?”
As Cherti lowered his gaze, the child was staring blankly at a small doll on the nightstand beside the bed. The doll in her memory, which had a burst seam, looked almost new now.
In the parallel world she had moved to after dying as a criminal, that doll hadn't existed. In other words, not every Roselyn in every parallel world had received that doll.
But Roselyn had a vivid memory of receiving that doll on her fourth birthday.
‘Could this world be…’
Roselyn paused for a moment before finishing her thought.
“It’th nothing, I jutht always wanted to athk. Of courthe, I can’t exactly die for you, and I know being born ith jutht thomething that happened.”
“…”
“If I weren’t here, maybe you could have lived happily with Mother.”
“…”
The man remained silent even at Roselyn’s unchildlike words. When his silence became long and heavy, Roselyn gave her small shoulders a light shrug.
“I’m going out for a bit to check thomething.”
As Roselyn tried to brush past Cherti, he started in surprise and scooped her up. Roselyn, dangling as she was held under her armpits, was forcibly sat back down on the bed.
“…”
Roselyn scowled with dissatisfaction.
“Did you always…”
Cherti sat Roselyn on the edge of the bed and knelt on one knee before her, meeting her eyes as he asked.
“Did you always think such things?”