STVWDTD Chapter 2

Even a Sunfish Wants to Live

Diana couldn't bring herself to speak. Despite the vitality flowing through her body, her thoughts went deep.

Death and regression. A castle under advanced magic. Waking up imprisoned. A half-sibling she'd never had contact with.

In the middle of this premonition that something was seriously wrong, questions circled endlessly.

How does this kid know? Why were you trapped here in the first place? Were you here even before I died?

"Sister?"

When she stared at him with suspicious eyes, Noel blinked his huge eyes and tilted his head.

"Bwoop. Sister. What's wrong?"

Diana pressed down on his chubby cheek. His lips popped out like a goldfish.

His speech patterns and behavior weren't childlike, which bothered her. But if she worried about everything, there'd be no end to it.

This might be a novel, but to her, this world was reality.

She released the kid's cheek and ruffled his gray curls.

"Because I'm grateful. Thanks to you, I found a clue to getting healthy. Thank you, Noel."

When she grinned, Noel stared blankly at her, then broke into a blooming smile. Like he was genuinely happy. Now he finally looked like a kid.

"Can you see it too?"

"Yes! I can see it!"

Noel moved his eyes precisely, following the mana dissipating like smoke. His ruby-red eyes gleamed strangely.

"So this is my cure?"

"Mm, it's not the doll itself—it's the curse channeled through mana that becomes medicine. You have to absorb curses. Even poison becomes good for you if it has the right intent."

Poison. Curses. Absorbing these sinister things—it felt wrong.

"How do you know all this?"

Are you some kind of wizard or something? Haha. Diana threw out the question carelessly, then swallowed when she saw Noel staring at her.

"Really?"

"A wizard is someone who can use magic, right?"

"Right?"

"Then I guess I'm a wizard!"

Noel spread his small hand and made a round light bloom above his palm. The firefly-sized light gradually grew larger.

Diana's jaw dropped. In this era, mages used mana stones to cast magic.

A few generations ago, mages had used internal mana for spells, but now, without mana stones, they couldn't even manage basic household magic.

And mages were already rare enough.

"Noel!"

Diana pulled Noel into a tight hug with moved eyes. A lifeline had descended in front of her.

To have such a precious existence by her side. Maybe her luck wasn't completely terrible after all.

She had to embrace everything for survival. She was that desperate.

She'd tried every medicine to stay alive. Done everything she could think of.

Dying once was enough.

She never wanted to die again like that—a living corpse suffering endlessly.

Whatever. Cursed dolls? I'll absorb as many as you've got.

"Does this place have a lot of cursed objects?"

"Yes! There's tons in the storage room!"

She should have realized then. What it meant for there to be so many cursed objects.

How pointless her plan was—find a cure, recover her body, then escape.

The corridor leading to storage. The moment she came face-to-face with that thing—twisted and distorted in damp, clammy dread—Diana instinctively turned and started running.

"KYAAAAA—!"

Who could've known? That she'd be filming a horror survival story with her young half-brother.

"Eeeeek! What is that?!"

Diana ran down the corridor for her life, carrying the five-year-old with her barely-recovered stamina.

A monster was chasing them from behind at terrifying speed.

How long did she run? Diana ran to her absolute limit, and the moment she entered the safe zone, she set Noel down and collapsed.

"Sister. Sister, are you okay?"

No. I think I'm dying. Diana clutched the wall, gasping for breath, breaking out in cold sweat.

Her heart felt like it would leap out of her mouth.

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be a toxic romance? When did the genre change to horror?!

On the way to storage, she must have stepped on something wrong—a magic circle activated and a ghost with melting skin and wild hair lunged at them.

Fortunately, the ghost couldn't follow them past a certain point, as if blocked by a wall.

"That ghost chases you more if you run away."

Kid. Could you maybe mention things like that earlier? Her hands trembled.

If there was one thing Diana feared in this world, it was formless ghosts. Absolutely.

Noel just giggled mindlessly, not a thought in his head.

"Noel, from now on, you need to tell me these things in advance. Understand? This sister has shit stamina."

"What's 'shit'?"

Oops. She had to use only nice words in front of kids. Diana frowned without meaning to.

"Sister, are you angry?"

True to being the youngest of a villain family, Diana had sharp eyes. When expressionless or frowning, she looked angry.

"No? I'm not angry."

When Noel started tearing up, Diana panicked and comforted him. Then he smiled brightly like he'd never been upset. Fooled by fake tears, Diana laughed helplessly.

Ugh, cunning little thing. Too cute to scold. She ruffled Noel's hair and resumed exploring.

The wizard's castle had as many trap spells throughout as it had powerful barriers. What were they even for? The traps were beyond imagination.

Ghosts jumped out, and various weapons shot out threatening their lives.

She carefully examined the castle interior while avoiding traps as much as possible.

Like Noel said, they couldn't leave. Every door leading outside was firmly locked.

The magic Noel could use wasn't omnipotent, so he couldn't break the barrier.

It was a mystery how the kid who'd been imprisoned before Diana had even survived in this place.

"This isn't enough."

Diana patted the dejected Noel's head.

The cursed objects they'd found throughout the castle were numerous, but the curse concentration was too thin to fully restore Diana's body.

"It would be nice if there was a human under a really terrible curse."

At the kid's chillingly un-childlike mutter, Diana responded carelessly.

"If someone was cursed that badly, wouldn't they have died already?"

"That's true too. Hehe."

Noel's laugh confirmed he definitely wasn't a normal kid.

The Beatus bastard. A kid who didn't appear in the novel and whom she'd never met before dying. Growing attached to him happened in an instant.

In this bizarre castle full of traps, having someone to share warmth with was comforting in itself.

How many days passed like that? They couldn't escape the castle and barely scraped by living inside it.

If there was anything fortunate, it was the pile of bread in the kitchen to solve their meals.

But bigger than hunger was the problem of cursed objects in storage gradually disappearing.

She became a sunfish body again, unable to move from the bedroom.

I need to get out. There's no method.

She'd hoped whoever imprisoned them might come, but she couldn't find even the shadow of a person.

And she didn't think her family would come looking for their missing daughter either.

Even when she'd been dying, no one had come to find her. She couldn't expect help from the family.

I need to find a solution.

Diana grabbed her dark purple hair and groaned, then looked beyond the wide-open window.

The corridor definitely seemed about three stories high, but when you entered through the door, you were at the castle's peak.

Shaaaa— When wind blew, the trees of the black forest—stretching endlessly like the ocean's horizon—swayed like waves.

This is the Monster Forest. When Diana learned that fact, she swallowed a groan.

Whatever lunatic locked us in here, just wait till I get out. Whoever's behind this, I won't let them off easy.

Diana's pink eyes flashed as her gaze moved to the hand axe on the table.

"A hand axe won't even come close to working."

Striking the entrance hall door with the hand axe didn't even scratch it, just made her hands numb.

It only wasted her already insufficient stamina.

Caw—

How should she escape from here? Lost in thought while staring blankly out the window, a crow appeared before her.

"Huh?"

Even though the bedroom was located at the castle's peak, the crow flapped precisely in front of the window, looking inside.

"A bird?"

"A scout bird?!"

Noel tilted his head, but Diana, who'd been staring blankly, urgently got up from bed.

"Wait!"

The crow confirmed Diana's face and turned its head emptily.

"Hey! Don't! Don't go!"

Could it understand? The crow looked at Diana indifferently while flapping again.

What, so what? Its cocky expression seemed to say that. Was that just her imagination?

If her memory was correct, that was a scout bird used only in the North.

There are people nearby! She couldn't miss this opportunity.

What would be good? She needed to send a rescue request to the crow's owner.

While Diana frantically looked around at objects, Noel held out a jewel.

"Sister, this. Crows like shiny things. I read it in a book."

"As expected, Noel! You're a genius."

What else could you call a kid who learned to read with no one teaching him but genius?

Plus, this kid had figured out magic on his own.

Noel removed a jewel from a doll and cast a spell on it. Diana wrapped her hands around Noel's small ones.

"I don't have strength right now, so I won't reach that far. Will you throw it for me?"

"Yes!"

At Diana's request, Noel nodded with a determined expression. He took a running start and threw the jewel with force.

"Hup!"

No! How can you throw with your eyes closed?! An internal scream burst out.

The jewel arced beyond the window in a pathetic parabola and plummeted downward. Our lifeline!

Caw—

As if mocking Diana's desperate expression, the crow skillfully caught the falling jewel in its beak.

Haa. I thought my lifespan shortened.

The crow flew back up to her eye level, snorted dismissively, and disappeared.

"It'll deliver the message properly, right?"

Diana watched the retreating crow and slumped down. The feeling of strength draining from her cost-ineffective body.

"KRAAA!"

The heart of the Black Forest, source of all monsters. Not just monsters but densely rooted trees had been swept away, creating a massive clearing.

Monsters that had been crying out wildly fell in an instant before a predator more terrible than themselves.

Truly wondrous speed and movement. In the wide space that had become flat ground, monster corpses piled up one by one.

When the man standing alone in the one-sided slaughter stopped moving, silence fell everywhere.

Languid blue eyes under black hair.

A man who looked like he'd embodied a sleek beast.

The overwhelming presence emanating from him prevented any subordinate from opening their mouth or approaching. They just watched the scene with familiar eyes.

"Haa."

The man tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and suppressed the boiling blood curse.

Caw—

In the space where not even an insect chirped, a crow's cry rang out loudly.

The crow spat something out—ptoo—and a subordinate caught it.

The jewel blinked with red light in his palm, then went dark. It was a standard distress signal.

"Captain!"

The man pulled off his soaked black leather gloves with an expressionless face and tossed them.

Taking out clean black leather gloves from inside his coat, the man shifted his gaze indifferently.

"It's a rescue request!"