Chapter 1087 – #258_귀로(4)
#1081
1.
There was no fear.
A tragic beginning, a dreary, repetitive dance of a wretched life.
For Linne, emotions like fear had long been worn away.
Even when facing a formidable foe.
Even if that foe’s magic pushed right up to her throat.
Linne wouldn’t even blink!
“……”
Yet, Linne’s complexion was now deathly pale.
“Papa~ Give Dorothy some allowance~”
Because, before Linne, stood a threat more powerful than ever.
Dorothy, clinging to Siwoo’s arm, shaking it like a spoiled child.
Her appearance, at best, was that of a middle school girl, at an age where she should be growing up with her father’s love.
“Hehehe.”
Dorothy watched Linne’s expression change in slow motion: recognition, shock, despair, and then frustration.
Linne, who was more stoic than a doll, showed quite a variety of expressions when it came to matters involving Siwoo.
Of course, to a third party, it would just look like her usual blank face.
“Husband. What happened?”
“Papa, is that scary-looking lady with the blunt bangs~ someone? Gasp! Is she perhaps Papa’s… ‘friend’?”
“As you can see, I’ve returned safely. Dorothy, Linne, please stop teasing her.”
Linne, who had recently recovered from her injuries and risen from her sickbed.
Dorothy, who was teasing Linne with her theatrical antics.
Siwoo, mediating between them.
It was the same trio as always.
Linne had also heard the general situation.
As a person of a static nature, Linne found Dorothy, who was annoyingly mischievous, irritating, but she had still grown fond of her, and was sad when Dorothy had to leave.
Now that she had returned safely, she was planning to swallow her awkwardness and say a simple ‘Welcome back.’
Depending on the atmosphere, she was even considering subtly expressing her longing and joy at their reunion with something like, ‘I might have been a little lonely without you….’
“What happened~? Well, the witch known as the ‘Witch of the Path,’ the top arms dealer in the public world, became a 15-year-old middle school girl, was adopted by a super-handsome, muscular new dad, and got raised by him~ that’s what happened.”
But seeing Dorothy, who was clearly having fun teasing Linne, made her welcome greeting disappear down her throat.
“Right~ Papa~?”
“Don’t call me Papa.”
“Why? Are you perhaps upset that you lost the title? Surely, you’re not jealous of a friend who barely made it back from the Sanzu River for such a trivial reason, are you?”
“Ugh…!”
That was exactly it.
The title of Papa suited Dorothy better than ever now.
Her soft, plump cheeks, her wide, round eyes, her vibrant, youthful energy.
She was the perfect petite Dorothy, fitting the image of a ‘daughter’ perfectly.
A dry, even parched, upbringing, resulting in a lack of familial affection, and the fantasy of how happy she would have been if someone like Siwoo had been her father.
This was the essence of Linne’s Electra complex.
The distant ideal that Linne desired but could not reach was now being realized right before her eyes.
How could she not be jealous?
“You cannot be… not the husband’s daughter.”
“Why?”
“Your hair color, eye color, and race are different.”
Linne tried to deny the pseudo-father-daughter relationship between Dorothy and Siwoo with her own logical reasoning.
She glared with her black eyes, like Siwoo’s, and flaunted her glossy black hair.
It was a truly pathetic struggle.
The immovable Linne and the thousand-year-old fox, Dorothy.
It wasn’t for nothing that the two were each other’s human nemesis.
If Linne maintained her immovability, there wouldn’t be a problem, but…
When Siwoo was involved, she would sway and waver like a mobile phone store’s promotional balloon, wouldn’t she?
To Dorothy, who boasted a nine-tailed fox-level of slyness, Linne was an easy target to tease, only able to huddle and use her ‘Get Harder (F-rank skill)’.
“Hmm~ It’s okay. Instead, Papa and I aren’t connected by blood… but by something else~ something sticky~ Papa, we’re going to get a little stickier today, right?”
“Mnyahbaeyahumnyahumnyah!!!”
Linne finally lost her reason and lunged forward.
Siwoo grabbed Linne by the waist, stopping her like a spectator being pulled off the ring.
“Heeing~ Papa, this auntie is scary, sob sob….”
While Linne’s hands and feet flailed wildly in the air like a cat, Dorothy kept up her relentless teasing.
It was a peaceful day.
2.
A dessert cafe known only to those in the know.
Dorothy, wearing her school uniform (spring and autumn), reluctantly munched on the ice cream that Siwoo was spoon-feeding her.
Even then, the navy cardigan tied around her waist looked very good on her.
“Haaam~ Um, delicious! It’s even more delicious because Papa is feeding me!”
“……”
Next to Siwoo, Linne sat with her fists clenched, as if her insides were boiling.
Even Linne couldn’t bring herself to slap Dorothy, who had just returned.
Instead, she had stubbornly inserted herself into the two’s date, which she would have normally yielded.
It was Linne’s petty revenge.
“……”
But seeing Dorothy, who was flirting without paying her any mind, made her feel a little disillusioned.
What kind of bliss was she hoping to experience by joining a date that was making her insides churn?
Envy.
Envy.
She was so envious she could die.
Her husband didn’t seem to see Linne as a daughter, but Dorothy was being treated like one just because her appearance had changed.
Linne was even the one who had first discovered and used the term ‘Papa.’
It wasn’t meant for a sly fox like her.
“Papa~ After Dorothy finishes this~ she wants to eat tteokbokki too.”
Moreover, there was one more thing Linne didn’t like about Dorothy.
She wasn’t using her cognitive-impairment magic on this date.
She actively stopped Siwoo from using it as well.
“Oppa, where are you looking with all that drool?”
“…Heeheehee.”
“Oppa! Where are you looking! No, Oppa! Are you crazy? Are you an animal? Do you want to look at a girl in a school uniform like that? Fine, I’m leaving!”
“…Hehehe.”
“Wait, what’s that! The guy next to her is crazy! He’s so sexy, hoeeeng!”
A witch’s beauty was a kind of magic in itself.
She was capturing the attention of not only the two or three couples around them, but also the staff.
“Anyway~ they know what’s pretty~ right, Papa?”
“I find this attention overwhelming, can we use magic soon?”
“Uung uung~ No no~.”
This was clearly Dorothy’s plan.
Linne, who dreamed of being the best wife and mother, was a Confucian girl who was passive about public displays of affection.
Bound by the Eastern sense of chastity, she was restricted by the gazes of others.
A virtuous woman should be ashamed of the gaze of a strange man, but the harlot before her didn’t care, making her attacks even more one-sided.
“Is that a witch? Then even if she’s wearing a school uniform, she’s not a minor….”
“But the other one is crazy too….”
“What’s the relationship between the other one and her? Are they lovers?”
Linne’s extremely developed senses picked up on a conversation between a couple.
It was clear from the context that ‘the other one’ referred to Linne, who was sitting there like a stone statue.
“…I don’t think so.”
“She’s just sitting there blankly, isn’t she?”
“Then the witch in the school uniform and the handsome guy are a couple… and the one next to them is just a tagalong?”
Linne felt pressure from the surrounding reactions.
She had to do something!
What?
Something that would make them look like lovers!
“Papa~ One more bite, aah~ Ugh! W-what is it!”
“Eat this.”
Linne took a big spoonful of ice cream and shoved it into Dorothy’s mouth, which was open like a baby bird.
What should she do here to look like a lover?
What should she do to look like the best wife and mother, while still looking virtuous and not too much?
Linne’s eyes shook wildly.
And then she had a great realization.
No.
Virtue was not necessary.
Hesitating because of the gaze of others was a high wall blocking true love.
She would overcome the wall.
The wall of old-fashioned chastity that had been hindering Linne’s displays of affection.
“Papa.”
Linne wrapped her arm around Siwoo’s waist, acting coquettishly.
She put the ice cream in her mouth and then pressed her lips to Siwoo’s.
“Chuuup….”
Linne’s mouth became the bowl, her tongue the spoon, in a sweet, cool, and shocking kiss attack!
-Clatter
“Wow….”
“That’s so bold….”
The sound of spoons dropping and gasps of shock could be heard from the surroundings.
Such a passionate display of affection was not common in the Eastern land of courtesy, making the already intense gazes even hotter.
Linne’s face also flushed as if it were on fire.
Her body, which was always upright as a master of swordsmanship, was now so shrunken that it looked like she wanted to hide.
“Is it delicious?”
“Y-yes, yes.”
Siwoo, who had been dazed by the unexpected attack, belatedly nodded.
“Which is more delicious, Linne’s lips or the ice cream?”
Linne, who was usually so rigid and stoic.
The sight of her acting coquettishly with a nasal voice and using honorifics made the hearts of all the men watching melt more easily than ice cream left out in the summer heat.
“Your lips are more delicious.”
Siwoo answered dazedly, as if he were hypnotized.
Then, Linne licked her lips slightly, as if to make sure everyone around could hear, and launched an additional attack with her moist eyes.
“Linne’s insides are more delicious than her lips….”
Linne, who had been trapped in traditional views of women, had broken down the wall!
Dorothy, flustered by Linne’s unexpected barrage, jumped in.
“What? Are you kidding me? You’re ruining my special school uniform date like this!”
“Shut up.”
Siwoo, unable to watch any longer, deployed a sound-blocking magic to hide their conversation.
“……”
“What did I just see….”
The audience was dumbfounded by the surprise that the love triangle before them was actually a harem.
-Clang!
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Kim Seomgot, the part-time worker who had been watching the subtle catfight, threw a plate onto the floor in frustration.
3.
After that commotion.
Since Linne and Dorothy were together, Siwoo brought up a topic he had wanted to ask about for a while.
“Dorothy, Linne. Do you know anything about Las Wherphanas?”
It was about Las Wherphanas, the legacy left by Lydia.
