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Starlight of Dawn.
A romance fantasy novel he had skimmed through only because his little sister had all but forced it into his hands and told him to read it.
Three days had already passed since Kim Hyunsuk found himself reincarnated into that very novel.
And, astonishingly, he was not the only one who had been dropped into its pages.
"Still, though, Dad… that… how do I put this… it's kind of…"
"…………."
"Pfft—ahahahahaha!! Honey! That right now is just—pfft—pfft—oh my god, I can't—ahahaha!!!"
"Um… dear, you're going to hurt my feelings…"
The family had all been reincarnated into this extra villain household—and among them, Kim Hyunsuk, forty-six years old, had landed in the body of the countess, Freyja Evergarden.
The man of the house, the father, Hyunsuk, had become a lovely countess draped in frills and lace. After sharing half a lifetime at his side, Darian could hardly be blamed for bursting into laughter.
"But honestly, even though you don't really look like Dad, it kind of… suits you? Pfft!"
"Sweetheart… if you keep that up, Dad's going to cry…"
Beside them, his daughter—now the eldest son of House Evergarden—tried desperately to hold it in, only for the laughter to explode out of him anyway. Tears streaming, Felix howled with mirth, while Freyja stared into empty air with a hollow, lightless gaze and an expression of pure desolation.
"Mom, on the other hand, suits it perfectly."
"You think so? This body is comfortable! No more of that godawful back pain, and I'm strong as hell! I like it!"
Felix offered his impressions of their mother's new form, and Darian grinned, flexing an arm for show.
Darian had been a formidable woman even in her previous life, so the newly acquired male body seemed very much to her liking.
Though watching that sharp, taciturn face break into such a goofy grin did feel a little… off.
"But our daughter is somehow… hmm, uh…"
"You don't have to force a compliment. Even I can tell I look shady as hell."
Felix cut Darian off with a sigh before the man could scramble any further for something that wouldn't wound him.
"I hate this kind of sly, scheming male character… Aah! If only I'd reincarnated as someone like the Northern Grand Duke! Or the crown prince, even!"
With his hair parted and that peculiar upward slant to his eyes, Felix looked for all the world like the classic scheming courtier straight out of every creative cliché.
"Still, big bro's got it pretty good, right? Never had a girlfriend once, and now you're that gorgeous of a woman."
"You wanna die?"
Felix turned to Rosaria, seated beside him, and she twisted her face into a snarl as she spat the words back.
"I was a guy, okay?! And now I'm stuck in these frilly skirts out of nowhere… this is disgusting and uncomfortable!"
If Felix had the face of a scheming retainer, Rosaria had the face of a pure villainess.
Those sharply upturned eyes, the long lashes framing them, the overall cut of her features—it was the face of a venomous villainess, through and through.
"I've never even dated a girl once… damn it all."
A single tear rolled down Rosaria's cheek as she mourned her junior, which had vanished after a lifetime of nothing but self-service, never once put to real use.
"Dad… I get it. I really do… yeah."
"Ah, son…!"
Rosaria came over to the thoroughly ridiculed Freyja, draped an arm over her shoulder, and comforted her with the air of someone who understood that pain completely.
"When I woke up in this woman's body, you have no idea how shocked I was…"
"I know, right? It was a real shock… waking up and finding my chest this heavy…"
Boing—
"…I wouldn't really know about that… huh? Why does hearing you say that all of a sudden feel so weird?"
She had stepped up so readily to console the father who had become the family's punching bag—but when Freyja pulled a gloomy face and cupped her substantial chest from below, lifting it, Rosaria felt something she couldn't quite put into words.
They were big.
Ridiculously big.
Just days ago, Rosaria had still been living in an army barracks crawling with nothing but men. To someone fresh out of that environment, a pair of breasts that size—no, that violent size—held a magnetic pull that drew the eye without permission.
It was the beautiful face of a noble lady with abundant charm, paired with a chest of almost aggressive proportions. Knowing that the contents of that body were her own father left Rosaria with a thoroughly complicated tangle of feelings.
"Seriously, though, why are these tits so huge? It's pissing me off for no reason."
"Ow, ow ow ow ow!! H-honey!!"
"Ugh… I wish I had a chest like that. Why did it have to be Dad of all people…!"
"Daughter?!"
Watching the scene, the two—once mother and daughter, now father and son—grumbled with what could only be described as petty jealousy.
Darian, thoroughly worked up, grabbed Freyja's chest with both hands and yanked, hard enough that tears pricked at the corners of Freyja's eyes from the sheer agony.
"W-wait! Let's talk first! Can we finish the conversation?! Please?!"
Freyja's outburst finally settled the family down. They took their seats again and collected themselves.
"Ahem. All right, then. Our family has been reincarnated… ha, honestly… something like this… Anyway. I think we need to start by sorting out what kind of world we've been dropped into, and what kind of house this Evergarden family actually is."
Under the weight of her family's gazes, Freyja cleared her throat and opened the discussion.
"That, I know inside and out!"
As if his moment had finally arrived, Felix sprang to his feet with vigor, straightened his collar, and struck a self-important pose.
"Right! Starlight of Dawn. What's this novel about… Basically, the worldbuilding itself is your typical romance fantasy that only pretends to be medieval while being stuffed full of author convenience settings. Then magic gets layered on top and the fantasy elements kick in hard, so magic ends up a bit more advanced than technology. Easiest way to think of it is—"
"Uh… huh?"
"…What are you even saying?"
"So it's just a fantasy world with magic, right?"
"No! You don't get it at all! There is magic, but the framework is different!"
"…And that means what, exactly?"
Felix stood there confidently muttering away, but the rest of the family—who knew nothing about romance fantasy, let alone web novels—could barely make sense of a word he was saying.
Still, by peppering him with questions here and there, they managed to piece together a reasonable picture.
Starlight of Dawn.
The story was set primarily on the great continent of this world, the Obina Empire, and began with a young girl in a remote countryside village on the empire's farthest fringe receiving a revelation of starlight.
The Obina Empire had unified the continent through a war of conquest a thousand years ago and had maintained peace ever since.
But the moment that country girl received her revelation, the demonkin of the Demon Realm—long cut off from the continent—began openly pursuing their ambition of world conquest and launched an invasion of the empire.
The novel Starlight of Dawn chronicled the growth of that girl, Ailen, as she entered the imperial academy and everything that followed.
And the Evergarden family, into which this household had been reincarnated, held the rank of count among the five noble ranks—duke, marquis, count, viscount, and baron—placing them rather high among the aristocracy.
"And big bro and I are the punching-bag extra villains who harass the protagonist early on after Ailen enters the academy and then get thoroughly wrecked for it."
"The whole 'How dare a lowborn like you set foot in this place!' kind of thing?"
"Yep. Straight-up stereotype villainess."
"I… do that? I mean, looking at this face, it does look a little fierce…"
House Evergarden was, in short, the early-arc villain family that oppressed the protagonist and then paid for it.
"So what happens after that?"
"Um… honestly, they barely reappear after that… they show up in tiny scraps later on, but… the family itself gets wiped out for treason, I think?"
"Hold on, sweetheart. What did you just say…? Treason? The family gets wiped out?"
"Uh… isn't that kind of a big deal?"
Getting thoroughly chewed out by the protagonist was something they could have lived with.
But Felix's follow-up turned Freyja's blood to ice, and Darian—catching her husband's reaction—broke out in a cold sweat of his own.
"Wait. So we all die?"
"Uh… probably…?"
"You lunatic! How can you drop something that important like it's nothing?!"
"N-no! I mean… don't we just have to not harass the protagonist? In these reincarnation-into-a-romance-fantasy stories, you always get dropped into people who die in the future, but they always find a way to dodge it!"
"You don't even know why the family gets wiped out!"
Rosaria, equally blindsided by the sudden news of their future deaths, rounded on Felix in a fury.
She had finally gotten out of that miserable army, only to reincarnate into some bizarre novel on the very day of her discharge—and now she was being told the family was about to vanish. Her reaction was only natural.
"Wait… it's on the tip of my tongue—ah! I remember! The academy! The crown prince sneaks in to help the protagonist, and without knowing that, they harass her like usual and get tangled up in it!"
"Ah… so that's the treason? Then we really just have to not harass her, right?"
"Whew. My heart nearly stopped. It's nothing major, then?"
Felix's recovered memory drew sighs of relief from Rosaria and Darian as they settled back down.
"Right? So there's no need to worry that m—"
"Wait."
Freyja, who had been listening in silence the whole time, cut Felix off.
"Is that really all there is to it?"
"…Dad?"
"These past three days… haven't the people in this manor seemed a little strange?"
"The people?"
"Almost every servant freezes up as if one wrong move will get their head cut off."
"Uh… isn't that just because the original owners of these bodies were terrible people who tormented them constantly?"
"Seems that way. They were trembling even though I hadn't done a thing."
"Yeah, today the person brushing my hair dropped to their knees in a full kowtow of apology just because a few strands got slightly tangled…"
At Freyja's words, each of them cast their minds back over the past three days and the servants who had attended them.
And just as she said, they realized that everyone—noble household or not—treated them with an excessive, almost terrified deference.
"As our daughter said, the core problem may well be harassing the protagonist at the academy… but I suspect there's a more fundamental cause underneath."
"…*Gulp.*"
"Uh… I don't really know anything beyond that…"
"So what do we do?"
The easygoing eh, it's nothing atmosphere collapsed in an instant. Everyone swallowed hard and waited for Freyja's next words.
"I think we need to pay a visit to the study first."
At last, Freyja commenced action.