The Bread That Fell to the Floor
Donghee reflected on a past she herself couldn’t remember and slowly turned to face the mirror.
Anna quickly wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her hand, then scurried over and began skillfully tending to Chloe’s hair.
The ribbon she’d been clutching—a thing that had only irritated her moments ago—now twisted and turned in her fingers, forming a fantastical shape. In the blink of an eye, she braided Chloe’s hair into several neat strands. Her hands moved so fast they were almost impossible to follow.
“Wow, Anna! You’re incredibly talented.”
Donghee ran her fingers through the freshly styled hair and let out a genuine sigh of admiration. She had rarely visited salons back home because she hated spending the money, so having someone else touch her hair still felt unfamiliar.
“Th-thank you.”
She had been so nervous that morning that she’d made more mistakes than usual and worked slower, yet somehow she had still earned praise.
Anna curled her still-trembling fingertips into her palms and, for the first time, smiled brightly.
With her freckles scattered across her round cheeks, Anna’s whole face transformed when she smiled.
When she had first entered the room looking ready to cry, she had seemed like the most miserable person in the world. Now she looked like a mischievous neighborhood rascal who spent her days running around causing trouble.
“Thank you. Go rest now.”
Donghee glanced at Anna’s still-puffy eyes as she spoke.
“Yes! Thank you!”
Anna bowed deeply and was about to leave the room when—
“Anna.”
Chloe called her back. Anna stopped and lifted her head.
Her twin braids slipped neatly over her shoulders with a soft rustle.
“Get some bread from Delma before you go. Do your siblings live nearby?”
“Yes, they live in Condal.”
“Ah, Condal!”
Donghee had no idea where that was, but she nodded as if she did.
“Yes. While I work at Grace Castle, I moved them inside the castle walls. It’s safer than outside, so I feel much more at ease when I’m working here.”
Kind Anna somehow knew exactly what Donghee was curious about and answered without being asked. It seemed Condal was the name of the village inside the Grace Castle walls.
What a sweet girl.
Donghee recalled the village inside the castle walls that she had seen on her way to Morta Village. The scene had been just as desolate and bleak as Morta itself.
So Anna’s siblings live there too.
Her heart suddenly felt heavy. She wanted to finish the Morta Village mission quickly and then take care of Condal Village as well.
“Delma, give Anna some bread. A generous amount. Enough for the children to eat until tomorrow.”
The moment she had opened her eyes that morning, she had gone back and forth to the convenience store out of habit—and now it had come in handy right away.
“Yes!”
Delma looked delighted by her lord’s command. She took bread from the box she had left in the room and held it out to Anna. It was a generous amount, just as Chloe had said—more than enough to last until tomorrow morning.
“Th-this is…”
“His Lordship is giving it to you especially, so take it quickly and share it with your siblings.”
Delma kept sneaking glances at Chloe, worried she might have taken too much. She lifted the edge of Anna’s apron and began filling it. She had only meant to put in a few pieces, but when she pictured the hollow faces of the children who looked just like Anna, she couldn’t bring herself to be stingy.
Anna’s worn apron was soon overflowing with soft, sweet-smelling bread.
“Is it really all right for me to accept something this precious?”
Even the paper wrapping the bread seemed to have special magic cast on it; the contents were clearly visible. Colorful pictures and unfamiliar letters were printed across it.
It was surely something only the highest nobles could eat.
“We’ve already eaten plenty because His Lordship gave us some. So hurry and take this to your siblings. It’s very soft, so even Jake should be able to eat it easily.”
Jake was Anna’s youngest brother, who had just turned three.
Because their mother was ill, Jake had never eaten properly. His nose was always runny, and he had been sickly his entire life. The only thing he could do was whimper in a tiny mosquito-like voice from the moment he woke until he fell asleep again. For the past three years, people had been saying he wouldn’t make it through the month.
“Thank you. Thank you so much, Your Lordship!”
Anna hesitated for a moment, then shouted her thanks and bowed deeply.
She bent so low that the bread wrapped in her apron tumbled to the floor with a soft thud.
Anna quickly gathered the fallen bread, carefully rewrapped it in her apron, bowed once more, and hurried out.
The sound of her footsteps moving away from the room felt unusually light.
“By the way, Your Lordship… where exactly do these breads come from? And those jewels you sold to Gold Rich—where did they come from?”
Delma finally asked the question that had been bothering her since yesterday. She really hoped she wouldn’t hear that they had been stolen.
They had never been made in the kitchen, and there were no records of food being brought in from outside. The bread had simply appeared out of thin air in the room. Yet everyone who had eaten it—including herself and the servants—had been perfectly fine, so it clearly wasn’t spoiled or poisoned.
Moreover, the origin of the jewels that had sold for 1,100 gold each was also unclear. Even if they sold every last one of the late madam’s belongings, they wouldn’t have fetched that much. At the very least, these jewels were not from the madam’s collection.
“It’s a secret.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ll keep letting you eat them from now on, so just look forward to it.”
Donghee turned her head this way and that in front of the mirror, admiring the hairstyle she quite liked, and answered with a confident voice.
It was her second day in a row heading to Morta Village, but because they had left at a different time than yesterday, the scenery looked completely different.
“Are we really going to the same village as yesterday?”
Donghee, who had been staring absently out the carriage window, finally couldn’t hold back her curiosity and asked Scrooge, who was once again nodding off in the seat across from her.
He had been dropping his head several times when Chloe’s voice startled him awake. He jerked his head up.
“Yes, we are on the road to Morta.”
His voice was still thick with sleep as he answered slowly. His gaze lingered for a moment on the scenery rushing past the window before quickly dropping again.
Even with Scrooge’s answer, Donghee couldn’t shake her uneasy feeling.
No matter how bad she was with directions, she could tell that these were trees she hadn’t seen yesterday.
Yesterday had been her first time on this road and her first time leaving the castle, so she had stared out the window with fascination the entire way to Morta Village. She remembered almost every scene.
“Ah! Is it because of that tree? You asked the same question last year as well.”
“Yes. That tree. That tree definitely wasn’t there yesterday. Those leaves weren’t like that.”
“We took a different route yesterday.”
“No, it’s the same road, isn’t it?”
Donghee pointed out the window, speaking with conviction.
But Scrooge shook his head and answered in an even more confident tone than hers.
“They may look similar, but they are different. This path is slightly narrower than yesterday’s, and the direction of the visible mountains is a little different as well.”
“Is that so?”
Donghee stared hard out the window, trying to recall what had been different yesterday. But no matter how long she looked, she couldn’t spot what had changed.
Scrooge continued his explanation.
“There were reports of a herd of wild pigs appearing on the road we took yesterday, so we chose a different route. Since there is nothing to eat in the village, it seems they have begun attacking travelers on the roadside.”
“Wild pigs, not boars?”
Donghee whipped her head toward Scrooge.
“How nice it would be if they were boars. We could hunt and eat them. But wild pigs are far too dangerous. It’s best to stay far away from them. In the worst case, they could destroy the entire carriage.”
“Are wild pigs really that dangerous?”
At Chloe’s question, Scrooge let out a deep sigh and muttered under his breath.
“She really needs to study more…”
Donghee had no idea what studying had to do with wild pigs, but she kept her mouth firmly shut.
She took back what she had thought about growing fond of him.
Delma was one thing, but there was no reason to grow fond of Scrooge, who was secretly quite naggy.
Donghee pointed at a tree thick with long, needle-like leaves and exclaimed,
“What is that!”
The leaves looked so prickly that just looking at them hurt. Some of them were as large as a person’s forearm.
The tree resembled a pine, but unlike pines whose needle-like leaves grew in clusters, each individual needle-like leaf sprouted evenly from every branch. It almost looked like a person with green hair.
“It is a needle tree.”
“A needle tree?”
“Yes. The leaves are shaped like needles, and the villagers actually use them as needles.”
“The leaves? Are those leaves really that hard?”
“They are nowhere near as sturdy as real needles.”
“Then why do they use them?”
At Chloe’s innocent question, Scrooge shook off the last of his drowsiness and answered.
“Because real needles are too expensive for the villagers to afford.”
As he looked directly at Chloe, Scrooge’s eyes held both sorrow and frustration at the same time.
“They don’t even have money to buy a needle?”
No matter how many times she heard it, Donghee couldn’t understand. Just how poor did someone have to be to not even afford a needle?
All of this seemed to be the fault of the original owner of this body, Chloe Grace. A wave of guilt washed over her.
“One needle costs more than one bronze.”
“That’s considered expensive?”