I Raised Cinderella Preciously

Chapter 1- I entered the body of the stepmother

There is a famous fairytale. A kind girl whose father and new mother got married and with her new elder sisters became a family of five. But one day, the father passed away and poor Cinderella was abused under her ill-tempered stepmother and sisters.

“Cinderella lost her parents while she was young and was scolded and beaten by her stepmother and sisters”

I was on the couch, humming the nursery rhyme that everybody knew from where I lived. The old desolate grand mansion was empty and still. In the distance, only the constant sound of someone using a broom was heard.

If there is a God, I want to say something.

“Fork- Fork- Ai[1], Fork, aren’t you being too mean?”

I have seen many stories, in novels, dramas and even historical characters but most of them are the main character, the main character’s rival, the villain, the main character’s sister, the brother-

Let’s take a break. Hekhek

I stopped enumerating about absurd things and took a rough breath. If there is a God in this world then he must have no conscience.

I’m not even younger.

There are also the side characters of the protagonist so why?! Why only me?!

“Oh wait, Let’s not get carried away”

Hu, I’m so agitated that I’m about to have a fever. I’m afraid I will die because of my clothes here.

Fortunately, there were no corsets, but that doesn’t mean the clothes aren’t uncomfortable. I jumped up, pulled the clothes on my body and grumbled again.

“Even if it’s real, it’s too much.”

Over the past few days, I’ve been screaming and jumping and did not have the strength to feel angry anymore.

There are a lot of cases like this but how can you even do this? Even if it’s true, it’s just not possible. I raised my middlefinger to God whom I didn’t know even existed once more.[2]

The enemy of all protagonists in a fairytale. An unrelenting existence. The stepmother. That’s me.

“Fork….”

I’m going crazy. I’m sighing. I yelled at the sky once again.

“Ai, Fork!”

See? I can’t swear because it’s a fairy tale. Oh, Fork.

Cinderella’s house is very big. No, it’s my house now.  I’m Cinderella’s stepmother, and my husband-Cinderella’s father- is dead.

Fred Barnes. He was a considerably rich man. He went aboard a ship two years ago saying he would trade. And, as it was, the ship went missing.

It was two days after I woke up in this body that I received a letter saying Fred’s body was found.

The owner of this body, Mildred- married twice at the age of thirty-seven, widowed with her second husband- certainly did not love Fred. She married him because he was rich and handsome.

And it’s hard for a woman to manage her property along with raising her two daughters alone.

But this man died and left her two years ago saying he would do business with half of Mildred’s wealth. Oh, Fork.

And that was a week ago.

For a week, I kept denying, saying that this was a dream and was angry at what happened to me. I jumped up and down spitting and screaming out curses at nobody.

And of course, the curses were all fork, shirt or whatever it was. It was ridiculous. Oh Fork.

Anyways, I was forced to accept it in the end.

I’m a 37-year-old stepmother whose husbands already died twice. I’m Mildred Barnes.

This was real harsh, wasn’t it? (alt: Wasn’t this too much?)

Originally, I was a 27-year-old office worker. I cannot say that it was a good environment but the world I lived in was a world with air conditioning, washing machines and microwave ovens.

No air conditioning, no washing machines! Can’t you have put me in a 17-year-old-body?!

Thirty-seven is too much! My ten years! What are you gonna do with my ten years!

Oh, I was agitated again. I clenched my fists and held it back. Inner peace, inner peace.

There’s nothing I can do about it. I easy to calm down—-not! I’m still angry.

Now that I’m in this body, the God of this world must exist. Or the bastard that made me do this.

When I meet him, I’ll make sure to show him a three-punch corn![3]

I threw a punch at the dough as hard as I could. My fist went into the soft dough made of flour, water and yeast.

I feel a little relieved.

I didn’t know my hobby in the original world would be useful here.

Mildred was originally a daughter of nobility. Mildred Murphy. That was her name before she married. The Murphy house was an old aristocratic family but not a wealthy one.

Fortunately, Mildred was quite a beauty. Although, I am now using this body, it is still beautiful enough to be stunned every time I look in the mirror.

Black hair and exotic green eyes. I only saw these kinds of beauties from the classic Hollywood photos on the internet.

“Oh, Internet”

I groaned, clutching the dough tightly. I want to use the internet. I can hear the sound of a text message saying “Katok!” on my phone somewhere.

I’m feeling better now, but a week ago it was really bad. It wasn’t just once or twice that I reached out my hand to find my phone because I felt the vibration of it.

Cellphone. Uh, I really want to touch it. Flat and hard, an enchanting figure in one’s hands. Alas, cell phone. Do you know how much I love you?

When you press your finger on the home button, it sparkles and the LCD lights up. I feel a little happy when I think that each icon has the notification sign on it.

This dirty world, of course, has no cellphones, let alone the internet. Te! Le! Phone! In my world, that thing has become an old-fashioned relic!

From where I used to live, the babies born these days didn’t even know what a telephone receiver was. To some extent, babies were even told to hold a mirror to make a phone call, not the telephone receiver that we know of.

But here?

If you ask me if I knew how to talk in real time with someone far away, I will ask you if I am a witch. Damn it.

“Mother”

Someone entered the kitchen door and called for her mother. I was staring at the dough thinking how good it would be if it were a cellphone.

“Mother”

I don’t know who she is, but if she has a mother, she will answer. I was pounding the dough with my fists while thinking that.

“Mother”

The girl who came into the kitchen called, clinging close to me. I was startled and shouted, clutching the dough tightly with both hands.

“What? What did you say?”

“Mother, I’m done cleaning”

A girl with brown curly hair stood beside me. The mother she was calling was me.

Oh, I always forget. I looked at Iris and sighed. Oh, Iris Barnes. Originally it was Iris Rivera but I married Barnes seven years ago so it became Iris Barnes.

“A, yeah, good job. What about Lily?”

Lily is Mildred’s second daughter. Iris is nineteen while Lily is eighteen.

Isn’t that great? Mildred is only thirty-seven and her daughters are already nineteen and eighteen. Women in this world can marry when they turn seventeen.

By the way, for men it’s nineteen.

Thanks to it, Mildred had reached thirty-seven. She was a beautiful woman and at the age of seventeen, when she had her social debut, had received countless of marriage proposals. Among them, the man chosen by her father was the wealthy Baron Rivera.

Mildred seems to have been thankful to her father. I feel that way when I looked through her memories. Earl Murphy was an old house but it wasn’t very wealthy, so it was good to marry the wealthy Baron Rivera.

But the biggest drawback of the rich and good man was that he was ugly.

“I’m putting away the cleaning tools”

Iris said and began to add water to the large kettle. It looked like she was trying to boil water. I looked at Iris with brown hair and brown eyes and threw my fists at the dough again.

Mildred’s only mistake was that she met the wrong guy. Her first husband, Baron Rivera, was nice and rich but ugly. What’s wrong with that? It’s because her daughter looks like her father.

It was difficult to describe Iris and Lily as beautiful even in flattery[4]. Of course, in Mildred’s eyes, they were pretty.

But I’m not Mildred. Of course, they were not pretty in my eyes.

The situation would have been better if Barnes had been as great as Mildred knew him to be before she had her second marriage.

No, it would’ve been better if he didn’t die doing business with half of Mildred’s fortune. Then Mildred wouldn’t have been a bad stepmother.

Now Mildred must raise three daughters, who are old enough to marry, in this big, old mansion. God must hate me right?

“Mother!”

Lily came in after Iris had boiled the water and left. Lily looked exactly like Iris but her eyes resembled Mildred’s. She looked at me and asked, rolling up her sleeves

“What can I do to help?”

“I’m fine”

My hands were full, and I needed to get something. I pointed to the cupboard with my chin and said

“Can you get me a bowl over there? Also, the cotton cloth.”

The dough must be fermented. The aroma from the oven began to spread. Lilly took out the bowl and soaked the cotton cloth in water.

“It smells delicious”

“It’s almost baked”

I put the dough in the bowl, covered it with the wet cotton cloth and put in the warmest place in the kitchen. I slipped on my oven mittens and opened the oven.

Lily came to my side. The bread was deliciously cooked in the oven. There was no swelling nor were there any burnt places. Watching me turn the bread around with a skewer, Lily exclaimed

“I didn’t know Mother knew how to make bread”

I’m sure you didn’t know. The real Mildred has never tried frying an egg before, let alone baking bread. I pulled at the oven door so the bread wouldn’t burn inside.

“I’ll tell you how to do it soon. Knowing something like this should be useful”

I didn’t know that knowing how to make bread would be so helpful. Besides that, ironing, washing the dishes, doing the laundry. Knowing all of that was helpful.

And surprisingly, Mildred didn’t know how to do any of those.

Looking at Mildred’s memory, it did make sense. She had been an Earl’s daughter, even if they weren’t wealthy, she had become wealthy when she married the Baron. The food was always served at a certain schedule and was appetizing, other things such as dishes, laundry and ironing were also done by the maids.

What Mildred only needed to do was to manage the maids and the house. Wow, all of a sudden Mildred’s life is kind of envious.

Someone else preparing the meals and doing all the cleaning. Was it not the dream of every woman in my old world?

But Fred, who was married for the second time, found out that his business was not only doing bad, it was also failing. Mildred didn’t even know. She was only thirty-seven but she couldn’t believe she had to raise three daughters, two of her own and one who was her second husband’s child.

Maybe Mildred was telling God what I was saying now, something like:  ‘Isn’t this too much? Why are you doing this to me?’.

“Mother”

While taking the cooked bread out of the oven, Mildred’s third daughter came into the kitchen. No she wasn’t Mildred’s, but Fred’s daughter from his ex-wife.

Cinderella.

[1] Original says ‘shaba’, but she is trying to say ‘shibal’ which is a curse word in korean meaning fuck so going with that, I went and copied the good place –>  fuck=fork

[2] Raw: 이렇게 경우의 수가 많은데 하고많 은 것 중에서 어떻게 하필이면, 하 필이면 이럴 수 있냐고. 나는 한 번 더 존재하는지조차 모르는 신을 향 해 가운뎃손가락을 내보였다. I’m not sure of the translation.

[3] Raw: 원펀치쓰리 강냉이를보여 I’m not sure of this too.

[4] Empty words