“Blast it, these short legs! Blast!”
I dug deep into reserves I didn’t know I had and ran for my life.
“I’m not going to hurt you, little one! I just want to ask you something!”
“…Huff—huff—how did I manage to forget her?”
Dorothy hadn’t had much narrative weight in the original story, but she’d had such an erratic personality that readers had nicknamed her Dotty. I used to curse her name while reading.
But of course it made sense that I hadn’t remembered her in time.
In the original story, Aisha’s first encounter with Dorothy came a full month after successfully infiltrating the castle.
Because I had announced that I knew where the daughter was and inadvertently rewritten the script, I was meeting her earlier than planned.
And I had learned something new since transmigrating into Aisha’s body.
Five-year-old legs are, empirically, very short.
I was running at full capacity—truly, my very best—but it looked like this:
Pat-pat-pat-pat.
To any onlooker, it probably resembled a toddler’s balance bicycle wobbling down a hallway.
The gap between Dorothy and me had started wide, but it was closing at a steady, deeply discouraging rate.
I burst through the corridor doors into a garden and threw myself behind the nearest hedge.
Running was impossible. Hiding was my only option.
I pressed into the greenery and scanned the garden in rapid desperation.
That was when I spotted them—a figure approaching in a black robe.
I couldn’t tell their rank from the robe alone, but I’d found my refuge.
“Excuse me!”
Rustle.
“……?”
Driven by pure survival instinct, I dove into the folds of the stranger’s robe without permission.
The faint recoil of their body told me they were startled.
________________________________________
