The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House - Chapter 1

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

The Villainess Princess Wants to Live in a Cake House
Episode 1

“The roof repairs are finished!”
A lean, nimble figure leaped down from the roof with a light bound.
The woman wiping sweat from her brow, dressed in a threadbare shirt and patched trousers, was Asha’s mother, Irina.
Asha handed over the linen cloth she’d been holding to Irina—the softest fabric in their meager household. Though even that was rough as burlap.
“Oh, Asha. Did you come to meet me?”
Asha wondered whether sitting on the front steps while her mother worked on the roof could really be called “meeting her,” but before she could finish the thought, Irina scooped her up effortlessly.
“Irina, you’ve worked hard.”
As Irina carried her daughter inside, Asha’s father Yuri emerged from the kitchen, ladle in hand.
Today’s cooking was Yuri’s responsibility.
The ladle he held was so worn at the bottom that by tomorrow it would likely strain out nothing but solids. The old wooden table, used for a dozen years, had taken on a burnished shine from age.
With a pleased expression, Yuri set three bowls of stew and a hunk of rough bread on the table. Asha gazed down at the clear broth studded with potato pieces. A few bits of meat floated there too—meat that the harpist Arten Jubanne, whom her parents had invited to perform weeks ago, had brought as a gift to enrich their modest household.
‘Tonight’s dinner is quite lavish.’
After sitting down, Yuri lifted Asha onto his knee. This was half his doting love for his only daughter, now ten years old, and half the practical fact that they had only two chairs in the house.
“Arten gave us such fine meat! Shall our little princess have a taste?”
Yuri scooped a generous spoonful from Asha’s bowl—small though it was, it held the most meat of all three.
“Aah.”
“My goodness, what an appetite.”
While Asha finished her entire bowl of stew, every piece of bread went into her mouth. She tried a few times to offer some to her parents, but it never worked.
For dessert, Irina fed Asha dried fruit she had obtained from a neighbor, watching Yuri as she did.
“But soon Asha will need to undergo the Spirit Ceremony. With just the two of us, it will be…….”
“Maksim said he would help, so please don’t worry too much.”
“Then Asha would go along with Dmitri……?”
“Ah, no. Dmitri is…….”
Yuri’s words trailed off, and Irina seemed to understand from that alone. Asha, who had been quietly listening to her parents’ conversation, tilted her head in puzzlement.
“Father? What is the Spirit Ceremony?”
The name Maksim, which had come from Yuri’s lips, Asha had heard a few times before. He was a man who often helped their struggling household. Dmitri was probably his son.
‘Thank goodness that man isn’t a fraud.’
Until two years ago, her innocent parents had been duped by merchants spouting nonsense more than once. But there hadn’t been any incidents since last year, when Asha had slipped a laxative into a new merchant’s stew and chased him away.
“It means our little princess is getting a new friend coming to stay, dear.”
“A friend? I don’t need friends.”
Asha was quick to protest at the word “friend,” but she was a moment too slow. Her parents’ eyes had already begun to glisten.
“I—I really don’t need friends!”
“Our little princess…….”
On the outskirts of this rural village stood a dilapidated Cottage—shabby beyond measure, unmistakably the poorest dwelling in the area, and yet its inhabitants carried themselves with a quiet grace. Yuri and Irina stood apart from their neighbors in this incongruity.
The disdain their neighbors showed them naturally extended to their only daughter. Because of this, Asha had reached her tenth birthday without a single proper friend her age.
Yuri and Irina never broke under the weight of poverty or hardship, but on days when they thought of how they had made their daughter lonely, they would wet their eyes like this.
“Father, I’m really fine! I truly don’t need anything. The Spirit Ceremony? I don’t need to do that either!”
Not knowing what it was but sensing from her parents’ concern that it cost money, Asha hastily shook her head. Yuri lifted her up and pressed his cheek against hers.
“Never say such a thing. We must give our little princess the most beautiful Spirit Ceremony.”
“Then white dandelions would be nice.”
“A hundred white dandelions woven together to make our little princess a crown? And we’ll match it with a ring, too.”
At Asha’s words, Yuri promised to make both a crown and a ring, kissing her cheek. And in the very next moment, without warning, even as their only door shattered and fell from its hinges, Asha did not yet know.
That there was not a shred of falsehood in the way Yuri called her “princess.”

Bang!
At the sound of the door bursting open, Irina snatched up a sword that lay on top of the dresser. But the ones who had broken down the door—those dressed in uniforms that gleamed with gold and silver thread—did not grow sharp-edged even as they saw her blade.
“We’ve come because we have something to tell you. We are…….”
Even as they softly contained her, merely restraining themselves before her sword’s tip, they were about to speak in bright, measured tones when Yuri moved first.
“Hup!”
Yuri, cradling Asha in his arms, bolted straight toward the back door.
“F—Father?!”
In that moment, Asha discovered for the first time in ten years that her father possessed a talent for violent sprinting that rivaled his skills in drawing, calligraphy, flute-playing, and cooking.
The back door, struck hard by Yuri’s shoulder, crashed to the ground in one swift motion, and the startled soldiers froze just long enough to let Yuri and Asha slip through their grasp.
But it didn’t take long before the two of them were caught again. People in gleaming uniforms had already surrounded the cottage, leaving no gap for escape.
Asha held her breath and gripped Yuri’s collar tightly.
‘What—what is this? The military? Police? Knights?’
“Father, this… what is this? Huh?”
“Oh no. Asha, our princess…”
“Father…”
Yuri gasped for breath from the sudden flight, yet he pulled her into his arms with a voice raw as though he were bleeding.
‘Are we being arrested? Has the Emperor finally decided to purge the dissidents?’
Asha swallowed hard, her throat dry.
Yuri was a gentle soul who never raised his voice even within the house, and he was sensitive enough to have gathered musicians and commissioned musical performances by scraping together what little jewelry they possessed, meager as their circumstances were.
But there was exactly one moment when that same Yuri would raise his voice in a fury hot as molten iron—and that was whenever the Emperor came up in conversation.

The Emperor is mad! I won’t breathe the air in the direction he stands!

On the rare occasions when her father, who despised alcohol, acquired some wine from somewhere and took a sip, he would lose himself entirely. Words poured forth, refined only in vocabulary but profane and vicious in substance.
Considering her parents’ graceful way of life and the poverty that accompanied it, ever since her reincarnation Asha had harbored a persistent suspicion: ‘Father must have been a child of nobility who fled after participating in something like a revolution.’
‘What do I do? What should I do? No matter how many times I’ve been reborn, I have no idea how to handle this…!’
There seemed to be no escape. While Asha fought to suppress her trembling and held her breath, Yuri pulled her even more tightly against him.
Then the man who had first burst into the cottage pushed through the wall of people surrounding them, and behind him stood Irina with an expression of resignation.
Just as Asha was about to call out urgently to Irina, he spoke first.
“I have come to escort the Imperial Granddaughter, Asha, Your Highness!”
The tears vanished from Asha’s eyes in an instant.

* * *

“We shall now commence the Spirit Ceremony for the direct imperial line. Imperial Grandson Ilya, Imperial Grandson Dmitri, Imperial Grandson Vladimir, Imperial Grandson Luzian…”
In the depths of the Imperial Palace stood a small, isolated palace. Known as the Shutaden Palace, it was a place used solely for the Spirit Ceremony of imperial boys and girls.
A straight water channel ran across the entire floor of the hall, and ice-cold water flowed in from outside, causing cold moisture to shimmer in the air. In the very center stood a small chamber that resembled a confessional.
Before that chamber, children of about ten years old huddled together, and among them stood Asha.
They were all her cousins, every one of them seen by her for the first time in this life.
“C-cold…”
“If you can’t bear this much cold, how can you call yourself a grandson of the Emperor, Ilya?”
At those words, Ilya—a small, slight boy who had just complained of the chill—shrank back, his spirit dampened. Meanwhile, the other boys began to whisper among themselves.
“What kind of Spirit will we end up contracting with?”
“The Spirit King of Earth and the Spirit King of Water are still available, so if we do well enough…”
“If I mess this up, my mother said she won’t let me back in the manor.”
“But who is that one?”
“If she’s here, she must be some kind of relative of ours.”
“I’ve never seen her before, though.”
“She looks like a stick. Skinnier than a twig. Even smaller than Ilya? If you poked her, wouldn’t she break?”
“Then she’ll probably end up contracting with the twig Spirit. Heh heh.”
But the snickering of the boys her age concerning Asha never reached her ears at all.
‘This is a lie, isn’t it? A lie? A lie?’
Asha was too busy swallowing her silent scream and anxiously pressing down on her collar with trembling fingers.

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