The Harvest Mouse Exits the Fairytale Together with Cinderella

‘A rat beastfolk? Kill her?’

Elodie had died of old age.
In other words, she had survived among humans who would try to exterminate any rat they saw until her death.
Before she could even understand what was happening, Elodie moved.

With a flash, she transformed into a rat and darted between the piles of things in the warehouse.
Once she had turned into a human, shifting back and forth between rat and human had become as natural as breathing.
She was free.

It felt like she had been bound tightly and was now breaking free.
“Don’t let her escape! If you miss her, you’ll die with her!”
This was a matter of the family’s fate.

The butler raised his voice in anger.
“What are you doing! Get away from Elodie, now!”
Seraphina cried out in a pale, frantic voice, but no one paid her any attention.

The butler, along with the knights he had brought, were determined to kill the rat.
Elodie dodged the feet that came crashing down on her, hiding in a rat hole.
The warehouse was full of crevices and gaps, so it was possible.

“Damn it! Tear down the wall!”
“Yes!”
Tear down the wall?

Would they really go this far to kill one rat beastfolk?
‘How did they even find out I’m a rat beastfolk? Why do they want to kill me?’
She couldn’t make sense of it.
But one thing was certain.

‘If I get caught, I’ll definitely die.’
That was the only thing she knew for sure.
Elodie desperately climbed up the wall using her long tail and claws.

She needed to find an escape route.
Crash—
In that moment, a knight’s sword blade pierced the wall right next to her.

Elodie sucked in a breath and moved in the opposite direction.
Crack—
But another sword blade pierced the wall in the direction she had been heading.

The knights weren’t letting up.
Even if their swords broke, they kept struggling to drive them forward in a straight line.
They were determined to tear the wall apart.

“We have an axe!”
“Good, use that!”
Elodie instinctively closed her eyes.

‘Can I survive here?’
She had finally reached a point where she could help Seraphina.
‘I can’t die here and leave Seraphina behind!’

And then, in that moment.
“What are you all doing, stuck to the wall?”
A voice rang out.

It wasn’t too thin, nor too deep—a voice that could easily be described as soft.
As soon as he spoke, the surroundings became eerily silent, as though no one was there.
Footsteps, light yet deliberate, came closer.

“Were you fighting with the wall?”
“Y-Your Highness.”
“Pathetic. You look more like a madman from a novel charging at a windmill than a knight.”

The voice, clearly mocking, carried a chill so intense it felt almost freezing.
The cold gaze of the young boy swept over the knights struggling with the wall before landing on the butler.
More precisely, it landed on Seraphina’s wrist, which the butler was tightly gripping to prevent her from escaping.

Seraphina, struggling to break free, yelled, her face flushed red.
“Let go!”
In response to her cry, the boy tilted his head slightly and pointed at Seraphina.

“She said let go.”
“It’s a misunderstanding. I was just teaching this impudent servant a lesson, nothing more.”
“I see.”

“This lowly servant is not worth Your Highness’s attention.”
“She said let go. Are you deaf?”
“...”

The butler had no choice but to release Seraphina, defying the orders of Count Bluewood.
The reason was simple: the boy in front of them was none other than Edmund, the heir to Duke Valkyrisen's family.
As soon as Seraphina was free from the butler's grasp, she immediately knelt.

She didn't know who this boy was, but she knew he was the only hope for saving Elodie from the brink of death.
“Please, Lord Edmund, save Elodie.”
“Elodie?”

“She’s my friend. A harvest mouse beastfolk. They’re trying to kill her...”
“No! That’s not true!”
The butler, pale and drenched in cold sweat, interrupted her urgently.

He desperately denied it.
“Such slander! Why would we try to kill anyone in this situation, especially when you, Lord Edmund, are here to investigate the missing beastfolk!”
“I’m curious about that too.”

Edmund’s golden eyes, which had been gleaming brightly in the dark, narrowed instantly.
He quickly scanned the glass orb in his hand and then turned his gaze back to the wall.
“That’s not it. This child is mistaken. A rat... a rat came out, and...”

“A rat?”
Edmund moved toward the butler.
The butler flinched in surprise, backing away as Edmund approached.

He quickly scanned the surroundings and blocked the rat hole with his heel.
The situation was escalating, and he had decided to block the only exit.
While there had been signs of the knights trying to tear down the wall, at least there was no hole big enough for the rat to escape through.

He thought he could cover up the truth.
The one who was exposed wasn’t the Duke but the young Lord Edmund.
“While we had mobilized all our servants to find the harvest mouse beastfolk, the rat came out, and we tried to catch it. This child, misunderstanding the situation, jumped to conclusions when she saw us.”

Seraphina’s face twisted with disgust.
“No! They—”
“Quiet! What makes you think you can shout like that! Don’t you have the decency to step back?”

Seraphina gritted her teeth.
This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened.
The Bluewood family, whether master or servant, had always treated her like a mere servant and dismissed every claim and argument she made.

She was used to it.
So much so that it now felt like a natural state of affairs.
No matter how much she was the Count’s daughter, as long as he didn’t see her as his child, she wasn’t.

Unlike her sisters, who had gained his affection, she had always been treated like a servant, which seemed to be the way things were supposed to be.
She had learned resignation. She had learned obedience.
“This is wrong.”

But that child had told her it was wrong.
“That’s strange. It’s wrong. You know that, don’t you?”
She had been told it was wrong, that it wasn’t right.

The child had even said, “Let’s run away together.”
So...
“My name is Seraphina Bluewood. I am the youngest daughter of the Bluewood family.”

This time, no matter how crazy she was labeled, she couldn’t back down.
“They definitely tried to kill the harvest mouse beastfolk, and that child is on the other side of the wall.”
“Ha, you’re completely mad! How dare you impersonate a young lady and lie like this!”

The butler shouted, cutting her off.
Inside, he was in complete panic.
Whenever important guests arrived from outside, Seraphina had always been locked away.

Even if she accidentally encountered a guest, she had always been introduced as a servant, and Seraphina had never once resisted—she only bowed her head in silence.
But now, at this moment!
“Seraphina Bluewood. I’ve never heard that name before.”

Edmund’s muttering caused both Seraphina and the butler to react differently.
Seraphina’s face filled with despair, while the butler’s expression softened with relief and joy.
“Of course you haven’t heard of it! She’s a mentally unstable child, so don’t listen to her, please, come to the reception room...”

But Edmund’s words didn’t end there.
“However, at least the next thing she says isn’t a lie.”
“What... what do you mean by that?”

The boy raised the glass orb in his hand to his eyes and stared at the opposite wall.
Through the transparent orb, tiny lights flickered and blinked, signaling a specific location.
“This magic orb marks the location of a certain person. Specifically, it shows the location of the only daughter of the Ratson family, Lady Ratson.”

“L-Lady Ratson?”
“But Lady Ratson was cursed into becoming an animal due to an unfortunate accident. Because of the curse, she couldn’t be tracked by magic, as she had transformed into another being. But for some reason, today the curse lifted, and Lady Ratson’s location was pinpointed exactly to the Bluewood mansion.”
Thanks to that, he was able to directly pinpoint her coordinates and use magic to move there.

His voice remained steady as he continued.
“Of course, the Ratson family, due to the peace treaty, couldn’t step foot on human land. So, two years ago, they specifically requested my family’s help. They asked us to find their lost Lady Ratson.”
It was then.

As he calmly explained, a brief flash of deadly intent flickered in the boy’s eyes.
“Now, the location of Lady Ratson overlaps with yours. What’s going on here?”