The Little Baby Snake of the Vermilion Bird Family - Chapter 45

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 45
The next moment.
Before the small snake could react to the light, a round sphere of radiance shot toward her at blinding speed.
‘Oh!’
“Yeoni!”
Doeui and Hwaryeong both reached out at once to shield the infant serpent, but their hands fell short of Baeksa.
The Boundary stood between them—a gulf that kept the child and the two boys apart.
The small snake started in terror, eyes clenching shut, mouth opening into a tiny O.
Whoosh!
Then, inches from Yeoni’s face, the light came to a complete stop.
Slowly—so slowly—it seeped into her body.
The infant snake, who had squeezed her eyes shut in fear, opened them again as she realized the light meant her no harm.
‘……Huh?’
What Baeksa saw was a shape like a small bird made of light.
With the gentlest of motions, it pecked at the bridge of her nose once, twice, then slowly began to dissolve into her body, being drawn inward through Absorption.
She couldn’t discern what it was. She had no idea where it came from.
But one thing was beyond doubt.
‘It’s so warm…….’
A warmth unlike anything she had ever known from birth—different from what Ju Jeokseo and Hwaryeong and Doeui and Sirang had given her.
Like being held close by the softest of hands, cradling her small body with gentle heat.
At that strange sensation, the baby snake’s round eyes blinked slowly.
‘It’s like mother’s touch.’
She had never felt a mother’s touch, but if she had a mother, would it feel like this?
Baeksa wanted to feel that light a moment longer, tilting her small head upward when—
Flash!
The light was completely absorbed into Baeksa’s body, and the surroundings erupted in brightness.
And in that instant.
‘……Huh?’
Everything tilted.
Baeksa’s vision spun sharply to one side.
Drowsiness crashed over her like a wave, and her eyes began to close of their own accord.
Panicked, she tried to fight her way back up, but it was no use. All strength was draining from her body.
‘No, this can’t happen!’
If she collapsed like this, they would surely worry. Hwaryeong and Doeui would be frightened.
“Yeoni!”
“Baeksa!”
Through her tilting vision, she could see Doeui and Hwaryeong’s panic-stricken faces.
Before she could stop herself, Baeksa’s eyes screwed shut as she thought urgently.
‘You mustn’t cross over…….’
If you crossed the Boundary, your body might be harmed.
But she couldn’t tell them that.
Baeksa fell unconscious.
***
“Father, Father!”
“Family Head!”
Doeui and Hwaryeong came rushing to Ju Jeokseo in a frenzy.
In Doeui’s arms, Baeksa—now shifted into human form—hung limp and motionless.
The two boys stared up at Ju Jeokseo, their faces drained of color.
“Yeoni collapsed all of a sudden!”
“There was a flash of light in the Detached Villa, and then suddenly Yeoni just——”
“What? What are you saying? Slowly, now. Tell me properly!”
Ju Jeokseo soothed the boys and took Baeksa from Doeui’s arms. The small child fell into his embrace.
Hwaryeong and Doeui took a moment to steady their breathing, then recounted everything they had witnessed.
He listened to their account while examining Baeksa’s condition.
Thankfully, she had no fever, and on the surface, she seemed to be merely asleep from exhaustion.
‘But the Physician will know for certain.’
Carrying Yeoni, he strode purposefully toward her Residence, saying:
“Doeui! Go and fetch Physician Son at once.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Hwaryeong, you——if something happened in the Detached Villa, you should have left the child and come to fetch me. Why did you bring her with you?”
“I, I was startled. I didn’t think——”
“I’m not reproaching you. You did well to come to me immediately.”
Ju Jeokseo hurried toward the child’s Residence, Baeksa still in his arms.
He left the shocked Sirang behind and gently laid the small child on the soft bedding, then examined her condition closely.
Outwardly, there was nothing obviously amiss. Upon closer inspection, it remained the same.
‘But why did she suddenly fall asleep?’
Moreover, according to the boys’ account, some sort of ‘light’ had approached Yeoni here in the Detached Villa.
‘And after she absorbed that light, she collapsed suddenly.’
Yet he couldn’t identify what the light had been. In the first place, the Detached Villa had been off-limits to almost everyone before Yeoni’s arrival.
It was only when the child had expressed her desire to absorb the Contamination there that Ju Jeokseo had agreed to open it partially for two hours each day.
So he had no way of knowing what had occurred inside, or what lay within those walls.
As he kept himself occupied with rubbing the child’s small limbs, trying not to worry, the flustered Physician Son burst through the door at news of the baby snake’s collapse.
Naturally, Doeui and Hwaryeong followed close behind him, their faces grave.
***
Yeoni dreamed.
In the dream, she lay swaddled in warm, silken Swaddling Clothes, blinking slowly.
It was different from the dreams she usually had—not the kind where Yeoryun and Songra appeared to berate and despise her.
This dream was longing, and kind.
‘What dream is this……?’
The baby snake wiggled her tiny fingers, trying to move, when——
A voice so gentle it could barely be heard spoke from above her head.
“My precious little one.”
She had no way of knowing whose voice it was. She had never heard it before.
Not during her time as Baeksa the princess, not now in the Vermilion Bird Family—a voice so small and warm as a gentle Flame, one she had never heard.
“You are a very special being. I will always protect you.”
Only then did the baby snake understand something she had been too young to grasp.
In all her earliest memories, there had been no one to speak to her with such tenderness.
From the moment she could remember, Baeksa had been a headache in the Imperial Palace, despised by all.
An abandoned child, a defective half-breed who couldn’t even become a dragon—that was precisely how this baby snake had been treated.
So perhaps this dream was not truly hers.
Dreams don’t only show what one has experienced; sometimes they reveal what one has longed for.
“Mother will always be with you…….”
But when she heard the next words.
Yeoni felt her throat tighten.
‘Why is this happening?’
Her small heart raced. It felt as though her heart was pounding at the base of her tongue. Yeoni blinked her eyes.
‘It really sounds like mother’s voice.’
The child thought this within the dream.
I have never heard mother’s voice, so how could I dream like this?
How could I steal such a tender voice and pretend it belongs to my mother…….
Yet this voice truly seemed as if she had heard it before.
As if this had truly happened.
As if mother had once held her this warmly.
A tear fell from Yeoni’s eyes.
And in that moment, a small Feather that gleamed pure white seemed to drift down and touch her brow.
***
“Is the child well?”
Hwanya, who had arrived at Baeksa’s Residence after the fact, asked this question. Ju Jeokseo, Doeui, and Hwaryeong were all preparing to return to their own quarters.
Ju Jeokseo nodded.
“Physician Son says she collapsed from nothing more than fright. Since it’s merely sleep, she’ll wake soon enough.”
The relief on Physician Son’s face when he declared there was nothing amiss, that she was simply asleep, had been unmistakable.
As he was saying this, Hwanya hesitantly opened his mouth.
“……May I stay here with the baby snake?”
“You?”
Ju Jeokseo’s brow furrowed slightly in surprise.
“You may, though do not stay long lest you disturb her rest.”
“I understand.”
He quickly gave his assent and stepped into Baeksa’s room.
At the center of the chamber, a small girl lay fast asleep in thick, plump bedding.
She was tiny as a dandelion seed, pale and light as though she might drift away and vanish at any moment.
‘She looks just like Aunt Ju Myeongyeong.’
The resemblance to Ju Myeongyeong was truly striking. Hwanya leaned closer to examine Yeoni more carefully.
He had not been in the house when the girl Ahee was there, but had he been present, he never would have been swayed by her.
How could he have been drawn in by a mere counterfeit with the same face, when the real thing existed?
‘I didn’t want to admit it at first.’
Hwanya, sitting at the head of Baeksa’s bed, gazed at the sleeping child and murmured softly.
‘She’s truly identical to Aunt Ju Myeongyeong…….’
Was this how his aunt had looked in childhood?
Lying in the Residence she had once occupied, the infant seemed even more like a young Ju Myeongyeong.
Just as Hwanya reached out absently toward the baby snake’s soft, pale cheek——
“Shh! You’ll wake her!”
Hwaryeong stood rigid at the doorway, his voice lowered to barely a whisper, glaring at Hwanya.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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