A heavy atmosphere lingered, and the man’s brows slowly drew together.
Wow, when a really handsome person makes such a scary face, it becomes twice as frightening.
“This is your house? Kid, are you… do you live here?”
“Yes, I do?”
“…Who do you live with?”
The man’s reaction was suspicious enough to send my carefully buried wariness surging to the surface.
People don’t normally ask who you live with, right? Most kids live with their parents.
So… asking that question means…
“Why are you asking…?”
“Your parents… No, what’s your mother’s name?”
Just as I thought! This guy is after my mom!
My mom was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman in this village.
Even with me—an extra baggage—clinging to her, many men had proposed to her. Of course, I chased them all away with everything I had.
“Hmm…”
I glared up at the man, studying him carefully.
Flawless pale skin, a high-bridged nose, lips neither too full nor too thin with a rosy hue. His eyes slanted quite sharply to the sides, which made him look a bit mean…
Still, out of all the men who ever confessed to Mom, none had such perfectly aligned features. At least in terms of looks, he was exactly my type.
But—
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Argh…!”
Nope, despite the looks, his nasty temperament is a deal-breaker. He’s done nothing but scowl since earlier.
He gritted his teeth and frowned hard, clearly annoyed at my refusal.
“You’re not getting an answer!”
As if I’d just hand over my mom’s info to some shady guy who won’t even say who he is!
The man ran a rough hand through his hair, glaring at me in frustration.
I flinched at the sharp look in his eyes but stuck out my chin defiantly to hide it.
“Bratty little kid.”
When he suddenly insulted me, I glared at him. He sighed deeply and finally spoke.
“I am…”
Thud.
Just then, a loud noise rang out—something had fallen.
Both the man and I instinctively turned toward the sound.
Standing there was my mom, frozen in place, staring at us with wide eyes, her grocery basket dropped on the ground.
“Mom!”
I was about to run over, overjoyed to see her—wait, why does Mom look like that?
She looked like she had just seen a ghost. I’d never seen her with that expression before, and it shook me too.
“Mom…?”
“…”
The man’s face, as he looked at Mom, twisted even more fiercely than before.
Sensing the strange tension in the air between them, I stopped mid-step and returned to my spot.
“Adeline…”
Why is this guy whispering a weird name while staring at my mom like that?
“Chloe! Come here!”
Mom rushed over and pulled me behind her.
I felt the shaky tremble in her back as she completely blocked my view.
Moments later, the man’s low voice rang out.
“So this is where you were hiding. Ha… I was searching all the wrong places. You were this close all along!”
His calm and indifferent tone from earlier had vanished, replaced by one that trembled with rage.
“Don’t shout in front of the child.”
“So I was right… That child…”
“She’s not your child!”
Holding onto the hem of Mom’s dress and listening to their conversation, I turned my head slightly, sensing something familiar.
I’ve seen this kind of scene somewhere before…
The man stared intensely at Mom, then removed a ring from his middle finger.
As he did, his hair and eye color began to change.
“Uh…?”
Now, he had the same red hair and golden eyes as me.
What was unfolding before my eyes—the man turning into someone who looked just like me after removing his ring, and Mom treating him like an enemy—
The man looked between me and Mom with eyes full of a crazed glint, then let out a scoff as if he couldn’t believe it.
Mom, what is this? Is something straight out of a novel really happening in front of me right now?
I’d wondered before if I might be a special child.
After all, in a countryside like this, it’s rare to find someone with such a pretty face like mine.
Sure, my mom’s insanely beautiful, but we looked nothing alike.
She had wavy silver hair and sky-blue eyes—a soft-toned beauty overall.
In contrast, I had striking red hair and golden eyes.
The conclusion I had come to on my own, based on how different I looked from Mom—
I must take after my dad completely.
And I used to imagine that the dad who passed on these good looks to me must be incredibly handsome too.
Turns out, he is.
The man claiming I was his child was really good-looking—his sharp features and bold lines made him undeniably attractive.
But his smooth forehead was still scrunched up from earlier.
“You’re joking, right? If you were going to hide her, you should’ve at least hidden the parts that look like me.”
“…”
Mom was speechless, likely because his sharp words had hit the mark.
“You had a child and ran away?”
“She’s not your child.”
“The hair, the eyes.”
“…”
“How can you deny something so obvious? That’s just insulting.”
Mom’s clenched fists trembled.
“Hiding the child was a terrible choice.”
“…Ugh!”
“What if she had experienced side effects from her powers?”
“That…”
Powers? What is he talking about?
Mom lowered her head, her hand still shaking, as the man—no, probably my dad—pressed her for answers.
“Mom…?”
I took her trembling hand and looked up at her with concern.
Her sky-blue eyes, glistening with unshed tears, turned to me.
“Chloe, Mom’s okay. Sweetheart, why don’t you go inside? I’ll come in soon.”
“Go inside? After I’ve found you, this place is no longer your home.”
“This house is mine—I bought it with my own hands. My child and I have nowhere else to go!”
“Our child?”
The man echoed Mom’s words with a raised eyebrow. Realizing her slip-up, she gasped and covered her mouth.
“I-I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean our as in you and me, I just always call her that out of habit…”
“But she is our child. It’s a miracle nothing’s happened yet with her powers.”
“Then… this child really is…”
“Young children can’t control their powers perfectly yet. If she ever loses consciousness from a fever or something, forget this house—this whole area could be wiped out.”
The powers-obsessed man kept explaining how dangerous these abilities were.
He was fully convinced that I had these so-called powers.
Come to think of it, I have felt strange bursts of heat from deep inside me now and then… Was that it?
“You don’t want to see this place turned into a pile of ash by a lightning strike, do you? It’s not just you and her living around here.”
Oh… it’s lightning, not fire.
Feeling a little embarrassed at the wrong guess, I scratched my nose with my finger. That’s when the man’s golden eyes turned to me.
“But… this really is fascinating. A child this young shouldn’t be able to control emotions well… So how hasn’t her power gone out of control yet?”
If powers are triggered by emotions, I was pretty sure I was safe—at least ever since I got my memories back.
Nothing emotionally intense had happened before, and after regaining memories from my past life, I’d mastered the skill of letting insults and scoldings roll off like water on a duck’s back.
“Maybe… maybe Chloe was just born without any powers?”
Mom said it like she was wishing for it to be true.
“Hah, as if. A child of Ereighton—and my blood at that—not having powers? Impossible.”
At that, Dad scoffed and immediately rejected her theory.
Ereighton? Ereighton, Ereighton…
I’ve definitely heard that name somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember exactly where.
Just as I mulled over the name with a weird feeling in my gut—
The sound of galloping hooves and rising dust rapidly approached us at high speed.
