I Raised Snow White!

“What…?”

What did this woman just say?

Edrick Snow White?

I grabbed her by the collar and looked carefully at her face once again.

Her face was paler than in the portrait, and her drooping limbs were so pale they seemed devoid of life.

Her once-red eyes, now dull and clouded, made it impossible to tell where she was looking, and her black hair was rough and stiff, as if it hadn’t been brushed in ages.

However, even though she looked different from her portrait, I knew. The woman whose collar I was holding was indeed the First Queen, ‘Aurora Snow White.’

‘Has she lost her mind from loving her husband too much?’

Suddenly, a theory came to mind.

A theory where someone loves so deeply that they want to become that person.

Could Aurora be thinking of herself as ‘Edrick’ because of this?

…But, right now, that theory didn’t matter.

Right now, something else was more important.

I lifted Aurora by the collar and shouted.

“Speak, Aurora. Why are you here, when you were said to have committed suicide? Why are you alone in the room the King is supposedly sequestered in? Explain yourself properly!”

“Aurora…?”

As I shook her by the collar and yelled, Aurora looked at me with her pale, vacant eyes.

She muttered something, then ran her bony fingers over her face and let out a scream.

“Ah—! Aurora! Aurora!! Where are you! Ah—!! Ah!!!”

“Crazy…!”

“I can’t see…! Ah…! Ah!!! Aurora!! Aagh!!!”

Shocked by her cracked, shrieking voice, I threw her onto the bed.

Seeing Aurora writhing on the bed sent shivers down my spine.

Her legs were so thin she couldn’t even stand on her own, so she crawled across the bed, moving toward the ‘canvas’ she had been sitting on.

Climbing onto the chair with trembling hands, she ran her hands over the large ‘mirror’ before her, nearly the size of a person’s torso. Then, something began to appear in the mirror.

Like an old TV screen.

In the noise-filled image, Aurora was seen running through a flower field, wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

Aurora gazed at this scene in the mirror with an enraptured expression, lost in a trance.

‘Wait, Aurora. What if you fall?’

‘Hehe, in that case, Your Majesty will carry me, won’t you?’

The mirror kept showing that scene over and over again.

The sight of Aurora running through a flower field, repeatedly, through someone else’s eyes.

Watching that scene, Aurora raised her brush.

As if etching the scene in the mirror onto her canvas, she slowly began to paint once more.

No matter how I looked at it, Aurora was not in her right mind.

“What on earth…?”

I felt chills throughout my body from the madness Aurora displayed.

No matter how I tried to understand, I couldn’t.

Why was the ‘Aurora who was said to have died’ the only one in the King’s room?

And why had she introduced herself as ‘the King’?

“…This is really driving me crazy.”

I turned my head to look at the mirror that reflected Aurora.

I realized that this ‘mirror’ reflecting Aurora was actually Ainsel’s ‘true body.’

It was smaller than the mirror in my room, but its appearance was exactly the same.

However, for some reason, Ainsel hadn’t reacted at all even though I had entered the room.

Didn’t Ainsel say she would be waiting here?

Could something have gone wrong with the ‘contract’?

At the moment I reached out, thinking I should at least take Ainsel’s true body with me, an overwhelming, terrifying sensation crept up my back.

The moment I reflexively turned my head to look behind me—

I could vaguely make out the ‘situation’ of this room.

-It would be wise to take your hands off that mirror, Vivian. And get away from ‘my Majesty,’ you wretched woman.

“You…”

The ‘woman’ who spoke to me wasn’t touching the ground with her feet.

Wearing a fluttering white dress, she descended from the air as if stepping on invisible stairs, then stopped right in front of me. She growled, her voice dripping with malice, telling me to leave immediately.

Her black hair was as dark as the night sky, and her red eyes, vertically slit, glared at me as if to kill.

She looked just like the woman in the portrait.

And she looked just like the woman painting in front of me.

Swallowing hard, I asked the floating Aurora if my understanding of this situation—if what I suspected—was actually true.

“Did you… devour your husband?”

With vertically slit pupils and a fluttering white dress.

The Aurora before me now had ‘that kind of appearance.’

And, as if drawing an artistic picture that others would also find beautiful, ‘His Majesty’ was putting the pieces of the puzzle together in my mind.

There were still many questions…

But now, I could understand what this ‘Aurora’ before me truly was. A fairy that grants artistic talent to others in exchange for consuming their blood and vitality.

If this fairy were ‘Aurora,’ then it would explain why the King was secluded, focused solely on painting, and why her body was shriveled up, like an empty paper shell.

But…

‘How… how did a human like Aurora turn into a fairy like the Leannán Sidhe…? And why is the King wrapped up in Aurora’s body?’

Now, I felt like I had to accept that the Aurora painting behind me was indeed ‘His Majesty.’ Could it be that the real Aurora became a fairy and drifted away, leaving her shell to be possessed by the King?

-Devoured, you say… That sounds rather unpleasant.

Aurora replied, her voice icy.

-Why not say that His Majesty and I are ‘merging’? Becoming one body, so we can always be together. Look, ultimately, His Majesty has become ‘me,’ right? Isn’t it romantic?

With a giggle, Aurora’s expression twisted, and I couldn’t help but frown.

I already knew from the Queen Dowager’s story that Aurora wasn’t in her right mind, but this was too much.

Besides, the putrid smell—one I’d never encountered before in my life—kept clogging my nose, making it impossible to focus on the conversation.

My head was spinning, and I wanted to get out of here as fast as I could.

Noticing my distraction, Aurora shot me another icy look and continued in a lowered voice.

-Look, Vivian. Even though you’ve ‘become just like His Majesty,’ you haven’t shaken off that condescending attitude. So, do memories of the body remain? I wonder, will His Majesty eventually become just like me?

“What nonsense is this, you lunatic…?”

-That mouth of yours is the same as ever. Reminds me of old times, doesn’t it? What was it you first called me back then? Ah, yes. A bitch, His Majesty’s leech, a heat-driven mongrel in heat, wasn’t it?

It’s all completely different now.

Holding my nose, I decided I needed to open a window, so I headed towards it.

If I stayed here any longer, I’d suffocate from the stench.

Pulling aside the blackout curtains, sunlight filled the room, revealing the true state of things.

A disgustingly filthy, chaotic, waste-ridden room. No wonder the rotting smell was overwhelming.

As I looked around the room, something seemed to be under the blanket on the bed, forming a bulge.

It was the same bed where the King had been struggling earlier, as if something was hidden beneath the covers.

…An ominous feeling crept over me.

As I hesitated to approach the blanket, Aurora gave me a sly grin and warned.

-Oh? You’re really going to look? If I were you, I wouldn’t.

Her warning only made me more certain that my suspicion was right.

But I slowly approached the bed, hoping against hope that I was wrong.

‘Please, let it not be,’ I thought as I reached for the edge of the blanket.

As I slowly lifted it—

“Ugh…!”

-Ahahaha!!

A ‘man’s’ corpse, dried and shriveled like a mummy, lay there on the bed.

As I recoiled in disgust, Aurora laughed hysterically, clutching her stomach as if she found it amusing.

Floating up, Aurora drifted over to the ‘man’s’ corpse and, as if showing off, spread her arms wide and presented it to me, her radiant smile an added touch.

-Ta-da! His Majesty’s ‘shell’! I told you, didn’t I? If I were you, I wouldn’t have looked.

“What on earth did you do?!”

-What did I do?

Aurora cut off her laughter abruptly and replied.

-If His Majesty remained alive, I couldn’t ‘become him,’ could I? So, His Majesty needed to die once. And for him to become me, he also needed to ‘become me.’ You think His Majesty is dead? Just look.

Aurora slowly approached the body of the ‘woman’ who was painting, gently stroking her face.

But the ‘woman’ seemed unaware of Aurora’s presence or was simply ignoring her, lost in her painting.

-He’s alive, safe within me, isn’t he? And now, it won’t be long.

Running her fingers along the face of the seated ‘woman,’ Aurora gazed at her own body with a rapturous expression.

She licked her lips and looked at me with those red, vertically slit eyes.

-His Majesty will be with me. He wants it too. So, won’t you stop interfering with our love? There’s really… not much time left now. Just as ‘that person’ said…

‘That person…?’

As Aurora’s expression turned heartbreakingly sorrowful, a wave of nausea rose within me.

No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t understand this “love” the two of them kept talking about.

Killing each other in order to become one?

And then merging into a single being? Insanity.

I sighed deeply, deciding that it was best to withdraw from this place for now.

There was no way to communicate with them, so I was at a loss for what to do next.

“All right. But I still need Ainsel back. I’ll take Ainsel, and you won’t be disturbed in your time with His Majesty. What do you think? Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?”

-Sorry, but that’s not possible. As you can see, His Majesty is quite fond of that mirror.

“Oh, really?”

I let out a small sigh.

Then, I immediately kicked over the King’s canvas and grabbed Ainsel from where she hung on the wall.

I ran straight towards the door I had come in through.

With just one dried-up mummy and a single fairy to worry about, I figured I could easily escape with Ainsel’s true body.

But as I turned my back to run, I found myself falling to the floor.

In an instant, Aurora lunged at me, wrapping her hands around my neck.

“Gah…!”

-I told you not to take it. His Majesty likes it!

I tried to grab Aurora’s hands, but for some reason, I couldn’t touch her.

Until now, I’d been able to touch beings like Undine and the Banshee, so why not Aurora?

I frantically flailed my hands, but it was no use. My hands kept passing through Aurora’s arms, yet the grip on my neck remained tight.

-Put down the mirror if you don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill anyone other than His Majesty, you see.

“Guh, ghhh…!”

As my breathing grew increasingly shallow, I struggled to focus.

Maybe I should release the mirror to survive, but would this madwoman really spare me if I did?

Still, her grip on my neck tightened, and as my vision blurred, I couldn’t help but feel the terror of death closing in.

No matter how hard I tried to think of a way out, nothing came to mind.

For some reason, Ainsel, who usually helped me, was unresponsive.

Though I had learned witch’s magic from Ainsel, it required concentration, which was impossible in my current situation.

So, what could I possibly do now?

As my throat was strangled, each breath became more painful, but with the last bit of air I had, I called out to ‘her,’ the one I had made a promise with.

She was, without a doubt, the wind.

“Syl… ph…”

With a faint gasp, I called her name, and a storm blew through the room.

The paintings attached to the walls and ceiling began to fly around wildly, and the sound of thin, dry paper shredding filled the room.

As Aurora’s arms twisted in the gust, she finally released her grip on my neck.

Collapsed on the floor, I clutched my sore neck, coughing dryly.

-I thought you’d forgotten our promise since you hadn’t called on me for so long.

Sylph appeared out of nowhere, gazing at me with a gentle smile.

She turned her back to me and, with a low voice like a growl, issued a warning to Aurora.

-Leave, you rag doll draped in the corpse of a Leannán Sidhe. I don’t know who crafted you this way, but unless you want those disgusting corpse-patched clothes stripped off, it would be best to disappear from her sight.

At Sylph’s words, Aurora vanished with a blank expression, showing no emotion.

The room was in shambles from the wind, but lying there, I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to still be alive.

Sylph fluttered over to me, landing on my chest and resting her chin on her hands with a playful smile.

She looked like a puppy, as if waiting for praise for a job well done.