CHAPTER 02.
The dining room of House Ricayon.
A vast hall split by a massive table—yet only two children sat at it: a boy and a girl.
Clink, clatter.
The only sound that echoed through the strangely empty space was that of utensils gently colliding.
The silence was finally broken by the girl, Chloe, who was slightly taller than the boy.
“How many days has it been?”
She asked indifferently, elegantly tossing back her long silver hair as she sliced her meat.
“It’s been two days.”
A maid standing beside her replied. Chloe’s cutting motion stopped abruptly.
She muttered coldly, clearly displeased with the situation.
“She must really be trying to starve herself to death.”
It had been exactly two days since Irene last ate.
Even before, they’d both avoided eating together whenever possible, so her absence wasn’t entirely surprising.
But to skip meals for this long? That was a first.
“Pfft, who cares if she starves?”
The boy sitting across from Chloe—Dietrich—grumbled, furrowing his brow.
“Let her starve for all I care.”
Then he sliced into his steak and stuffed it into his mouth.
The piece was far too big for his small mouth; he chewed with difficulty.
Chloe stared at him with a steady gaze.
“How disgustingly he eats.”
Under that silent judgment, Dietrich flinched and quickly swallowed the meat.
Chloe resumed cutting her steak, this time with slow, graceful movements.
She placed a delicately sliced piece into her mouth—as if to demonstrate the proper way to eat steak.
Even at age nine, one could sense the refinement in her every motion. Dietrich, flustered, flushed red and tried to mimic her slicing.
But no matter how he tried, the meat didn’t cut cleanly.
“Ugh… why can’t I do this right?”
As his hacking began to resemble butchery more than dining, Chloe’s gaze turned even icier.
—Bang.
The door to the dining room burst open.
“Who is it during mealtime?”
Dietrich, wrestling with his steak, turned toward the noise, his face full of irritation—only for his eyes to widen in shock.
“Crow?”
It was Irene. The girl who had skipped meals for two days was now showing up during their mealtime?
Chloe also glanced at her silently, then turned away and resumed eating.
Irene wasn’t particularly hurt by the coldness.
Chloe had treated her like she didn’t exist for as long as she could remember.
‘So why did you show up that time, then?’
Before the regression—when Irene had collapsed from the poisonous fog in the Black Forest—Chloe had appeared.
“I’ll stay here, so could you get rid of that useless baggage over there?”
She had passed Irene off to another knight and stayed behind to face the demons alone.
“Oh, and by the way—don’t let my stuff get damaged. I hate that.”
With those words, she had disappeared into the forest.
Later, the news came: Chloe had died in battle there.
Meanwhile, Dietrich now found Irene’s crimson gaze unsettling.
‘What’s with that look? Is she planning revenge or something?’
A chill ran down his spine—and then he gasped.
Irene had suddenly taken a seat beside Chloe.
“Hey, are you crazy?!”
Dietrich slammed down his fork and knife.
“Why are you sitting there?!”
Irene ignored him and spoke to a nearby maid.
“I’ll have the same.”
The maids exchanged troubled glances.
But as soon as their eyes met Irene’s piercing red ones, they scrambled to obey.
“R-right away!”
Something in Irene’s gaze carried an oppressive pressure. The maids quickly served her the same dish.
Normally, the “Crow Princess” would appear rarely—just to nibble on bread in silence at the edge of the table before vanishing again.
But now? The air around her had clearly changed.
The maids sensed it instinctively.
Something had happened. The parasitic noble girl… had changed.
“Hey! Are you ignoring me?!”
Dietrich’s face flushed red with anger as Irene continued to disregard him.
How dare she ignore me?
“Hey! Crow!”
“Irene.”
She responded for the first time.
“If you’re not going to call me ‘sister,’ at least use my name.”
Dietrich let out a breath like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Has she lost her mind?’—his eyes clearly said it.
Irene just shrugged and began slicing her steak.
‘The quality of this meat is terrible.’
The Ricayon family’s dire finances were no secret—even a lowly fostered daughter like her knew it.
But back before the regression, when she was younger, she’d barely eaten meat. She hadn’t realized how bad it really was.
‘Well, it makes sense.’
Ricayon was located far from the capital—its lands were barren.
With little population and weak internal markets, what the region lacked most was:
‘Economic management. Entrepreneurial drive.’
All they cared about was protecting the empire.
And nobles on military frontiers were always in danger—
Especially if they had real military strength.
That’s why Ricayon became Kim Tae-heon’s target.
‘If you can’t bring them to your side—eliminate them.’
He had said those words before. Ricayon was no exception.
And to hunt wolves, you needed bait.
‘I became that bait.’
Irene coolly analyzed the situation and bit into the meat harshly.
She was deeply annoyed that someone outside the family had so much control over it all.
But her thoughts didn’t last long.
—Crash!
Her plate of steak went flying, food and shards clattering across the floor.
“Go sit in your own damn seat.”
Dietrich had stood up and thrown her plate, unable to hold back his anger anymore.
Irene stared coolly at the ruined dish, then calmly took a sip from her water glass.
The cold liquid helped cool her burning head.
“Still the same shitty temper.”
“…What did you just say? Say that again.”
“I said, your temper’s like a dog’s.”
Irene retorted smoothly.
Even Chloe, who had always treated Irene like she didn’t exist, briefly turned to look, surprised by the outburst.
“You done running your mouth?”
Dietrich grabbed her by the collar roughly.
But to Irene, it was nothing more than childish bravado.
She quietly grabbed his hand.
“Aaagh!”
He shrieked, wincing in pain from her unexpected strength.
“I barely even squeezed. Don’t be such a baby.”
Even if they had sacrificed themselves for her before the regression, she wasn’t about to live like a punching bag again.
She had to change the dynamic—by force, if necessary.
“Are you crazy?!”
The words coming from a 9-year-old’s mouth were incredibly arrogant.
“Does it piss you off that I outshined you?”
Irene stared straight at him.
In the two days since she’d returned, she’d come up with a solution: conversation.
More precisely—a conversation with swords.
***
Under the midday sun, the training yard became an unexpected stage for entertainment.
Knights, practicing swordsmanship nearby, began to murmur.
“You hear? The Young Master’s fighting with the girl from the fifth floor?”
“That fifth-floor girl who’s always quiet? What’s gotten into her?”
Irene’s nickname came from her isolated room on the fifth floor—unlike the other siblings who lived on the third.
“No idea, but we already know how this’ll end. Not even worth watching.”
It was a match between an illegitimate child who’d never received formal training and a young noble who had walked the elite path.
Naturally, the family knights all bet on Dietrich to win.
“Silence.”
A gravelly voice cut through the chatter.
The knights immediately shut their mouths at the sharp glare of the man beside them—grey-haired and severe.
“Don’t gossip like a bunch of old women.”
“S-sorry, Sir!”
Erika, the only female knight in the order, scowled at the man’s arrival.
The man was Cairon, captain of the knights—known for his belief that women were unfit for swordsmanship due to their physical inferiority.
‘Who challenges whom to a duel?’
Cairon didn’t like this situation one bit.
Setting aside her illegitimacy, the girl didn’t even know how to hold a sword—and yet she dared to challenge someone?
‘Doesn’t even know her place. Let’s see how ridiculous this gets.’
A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
