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Chapter : 6
Charlotte summoned a translucent window from under her blanket.
The transparent interface had appeared suddenly after her transmigration.
However, it only displayed content up to the parts she had already read.
If she hadn’t read it, only the novel title would appear.
“‘Your Majesty, Please Let Me Go’? Isn’t this the novel I was reading right before the bus accident?”
Your Majesty, Please Let Me Go was a 19+ forbidden romance fantasy about a cold, emotionless emperor and his half-sister who knew no love.
Well, she hadn’t cared whether the story was trashy or depressing.
She was going to transmigrate anyway as some insignificant extra.
So insignificant that even watching the protagonists was never an option.
But this time… for some reason, it felt oddly on her mind.
“Maybe it’s because I got transmigrated while sleeping every time before, but this time I came after being poisoned for the first time.”
Charlotte scrolled through the novel like a document.
“Of course… there was a reason that name felt familiar.”
Your Majesty, Please Let Me Go had stopped halfway through Volume 2.
Right at the part where Lacal Statua first appears at the royal palace ball.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes…—no!”
She instinctively answered, then flinched and turned her body sharply.
A penguin was blinking its round eyes beside the bed.
“Would you like morning tea?”
“What?”
“Morning tea, yeo.”
The penguin waddled toward a small trolley near the door.
Then it picked up a toy-like cute teapot.
“You… can talk?”
She had seen dragons or intelligent monsters speaking in fantasy novels, but a talking penguin?
The penguin nodded its round head up and down.
“Yes. I was going to tell you yesterday, but the young lady was sleeping so soundly I held it in. Hehe.”
“What were you going to tell me?”
The penguin pointed at the bracelet on Charlotte’s wrist—the late countess’s bangle.
“The Seal of the Owner, yeo. Because of that, you can understand my words.”
“Oh… I thought it was just a magical key, but it seems it has extra options. Do you know what other functions it has besides letting me understand you?”
The penguin shook its head.
“I don’t know, yeo. The late master only said it was something far more precious than a magical artifact.”
“I see. Still, it’s my first time being able to understand an animal’s speech. This is kind of refreshing.”
For testing purposes, Charlotte slipped the bracelet off.
“Let me introduce myself. I am… krrk.”
“Oh.”
She found it amusing and kept putting the bracelet on and taking it off repeatedly.
“My name is Lai… krrk… so… krrk. Don’t… krrk… tease… krrk me…”
The penguin’s round eyes soon welled up with tears.
Ah. It was supposed to be a joke, but she might actually make it cry like this.
“Sorry.”
Feeling a bit awkward, Charlotte put the bracelet back on properly. Then she gently soothed it.
“Alright, stop crying. Now tell me—who are you?”
The penguin sniffled and introduced itself properly.
Its name was Laila.
Although the name sounded feminine, she was apparently a proud maid who had served the late countess of this mansion. When she had sensed her approaching death, the countess entrusted both Laila and a sparrow named Luke to Charlotte.
Laila had assumed at the time that Charlotte would become the new mistress of the mansion.
But…
“You sound quite young. How old are you, Laila?”
“Nine years old, yeo.”
“Ah. Nine… that’s a bit young to be working—”
“I’m not young.”
Laila cut her off immediately.
It was obvious she hated being treated like a child.
Charlotte fell silent, noticing the complicated look in her eyes.
Fine, Laila. If you insist, I’ll accept that.
You can become my source of healing cuteness instead of doing work.
Grrr…
As soon as her shock from Laila settled, her stomach growled in protest.
She was hungry.
Since arriving in this novel world yesterday, she hadn’t eaten a single meal.
Whether animals could talk or not didn’t matter right now.
She needed to fill her empty stomach first.
Charlotte rubbed her flat belly.
“Laila. Instead of morning tea, can we eat first?”
The young penguin maid Laila was surprisingly competent.
Charlotte was hungry, but she also longed for a warm bath.
As if understanding her condition, Laila had already prepared the bathroom.
Warm water and fragrant soap in an extravagant bath.
It had been a long time since she felt this clean, and she was genuinely happy.
Refreshed, Charlotte followed Laila to the dressing room—and her eyes widened.
“Are all of these the late countess’s clothes?”
“No, yeo. The late master prepared them for the young lady.”
“R-Really?”
Wow. She couldn’t help but be impressed.
The late countess must have been extremely wealthy.
It was an absolute flood of clothes.
She could change outfits every day and still never wear them all.
After happily agonizing over it, Charlotte picked a comfortable daily dress and headed to the dining room.
“Wow.”
A long marble dining table, along with a carefully prepared breakfast.
It was touching.
From waking up in a soft bed to arriving at the dining table—this was the life she had always dreamed of.
“I absolutely must not die. No, I’ll live a very, very long life. I can’t leave this fantasy life behind to go to another novel.”
With firm determination, she picked up a soft piece of bread.
Crunch.
She took a big bite—and froze.
Then she glanced sideways at Laila.
The penguin’s eyes sparkled, waiting for praise.
But…
Is a penguin’s sense of taste normally this… disastrous?
It tasted awful. Not just bad—absolutely terrible.
A complete disaster.
So even perfection didn’t exist in this world after all.
Even this fantasy life had such a fatal flaw.
Still, she remembered how starved she had been as a fortune-teller witch.
Right. Food should be appreciated.
She didn’t want to be hungry again.
Forcing herself, she finished the meal and tapped her mouth with a napkin.
“Thanks for the meal.”
“Hehehe.”
Laila balanced the empty plates on her head and happily waddled out of the dining room.
Charlotte watched her cute waddle with a strained smile.
“You might be happy, but I feel like I’m dying, Laila.”
She felt bloated.
She suddenly missed the digestive medicine she had once made as a witch for selling.
“Actually, this works out. I might as well take a look around the building while helping digestion.”
This mansion had only been seen from the outside while riding Lacal’s carriage.
And once she had come inside, she had fallen straight into bed and slept, never getting a proper look.
“I’ll be back.”
She called loudly toward the kitchen area.
Laila quickly rushed back into the dining room.
“Where are you going, yeo?”
Charlotte pointed downward.
“Just to look around here.”
“The lower floors, yeo?”
“Yes. I became the owner of this building yesterday. Don’t you think I should check every part of it properly?”
Charlotte glanced sideways.
Laila was waddling behind her with her small flipper-like hands stretched out.
Hmm… if she were displayed at an aquarium, she’d cause a sensation.
Kids would be squealing.
Charlotte originally planned to explore the mansion alone.
She wanted to walk around feeling deeply moved, thinking, This is mine.
But Laila insisted on following her.
Even though it was just a casual inspection, the penguin refused to be left behind.
“You shouldn’t go around alone yet, yeo.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t met the tenants yet, yeo.”
It was a strangely persuasive argument.
As if there were suddenly rules that the owner of a building had to be cautious inside her own property.
“Since when did a landlord need permission to walk inside her own building just because she hasn’t met the tenants?”
“There’s no such law, yeo.”
She answered brightly, but still stubbornly led the way.
In the end, there was no point in forcing her to leave.
So Charlotte gave in.
Thus began the mansion tour…
Which turned out to be almost nothing.
Each floor had little more than locked doors, staircases, and narrow hallways.
Since she couldn’t illegally enter private residences, she gave up on seeing the interiors.
In the end, the entire tour was just the first floor.
Charlotte strolled leisurely across it in step with Laila’s waddling.
The first floor consisted of a large office space that seemed long abandoned, living quarters for staff, and a storage room behind the stairs.
The tour was short, but her joy was twice as strong as yesterday.
Maybe it was because she could finally confirm the reality of owning this place.
A grin spread across her face without her noticing.
She tapped the wall lightly, imagining the rent money filling her pockets.
Then—
Crackle.
Debris fell from above her head.
“…Huh?”
Charlotte looked up—and her expression immediately stiffened.
A large crack ran all the way up to the ceiling.
The interior looked newly renovated, but it was still an old building.
“This is going to need an expert’s attention.”
“Why, yeo?”
“If you leave cracks like that, any building will deteriorate quickly.”
It could collapse.
“Ah…”
“Even if it’s not a full renovation, it needs repairs before it gets worse.”
With visible cracks already present, there were probably more hidden ones.
She should inspect more carefully.
Better to check now before things got worse…
“Still, it’s small damage because the explosion wasn’t that big, yeo.”
“…What? Explosion?”
Charlotte flinched in shock.
“You’re saying this isn’t just a crack from age, but from an explosion inside the house?”
“Yes. Only the first floor wall cracked and a few parts of the hallway were damaged, yeo.”
Laila recited the damage report cheerfully.
Charlotte was stunned.
Explosions inside a house? Not a battlefield?
“What kind of accident was it? A gas explosion? Or was there a bomb hidden in the basement or storage room?”
“No, no, yeo. Sir Pierce does research and causes explosions sometimes.”
“….”
“But it’s not every day. When the explosions are really big, stairs break and doors fall off. Oh, and the floor even sinks in.”
Charlotte felt her mental state cracking instead of the walls.
“Don’t say it like it’s fine just because it’s not every day!”
How often was “sometimes” supposed to be?!
“That Pierce guy—whatever his name is—he needs to be kicked out immediately.”
“Why, yeo?”
“If someone like that stays, this mansion is going to collapse sooner or later.”
The tenants will run away in fear.
No—forget tenants. Even finding tenants would become impossible.
And that would ruin her peaceful life plan.
