Chapter 49
How much time had passed?
“…Ugh.”
Within a haze of fading consciousness, I slowly opened my eyes.
‘…What happened?’
My entire body ached as if I had tumbled down a flight of stairs.
Barely managing to lift my head, I looked around.
‘…This is.’
It was the vast snowy wilderness I had been staring at endlessly for the past several days.
As though everything that had happened before had been a lie, peaceful clouds drifted overhead, and soft puffs of breath escaped my lips.
I lay there blinking for a moment before suddenly jolting upright halfway.
“…Where’s Sion?!”
‘What happened to Sion?!’
Right before the snow had crashed down on us, Sion had pulled me into his arms and practically wrapped himself around me.
He had been trying to shield me from the impact.
Yet despite that, I had still lost consciousness.
Which meant that Sion must have taken an even greater shock than I did.
‘No way…’
The original story surfaced in my mind.
In the novel, Sion had also met his death alone in a lonely white snowfield just like this one.
Fear and panic instantly gripped me.
I scrambled to my feet and shouted with all my strength.
“Sion! Where are you, Sion?!”
‘Please.’
At that moment, something bumped against the back of my head.
“…!?”
Startled, I spun around and saw something buried in the snow.
It was Sion’s hand.
“…!!!”
I immediately flew over and frantically dug through the snow with both hands.
Sion’s hand, then his arm, and finally his face with his eyes closed came into view.
Brushing the snow from his face, I called out desperately.
“Sion, wake up!”
But the cold, rigid Sion did not move at all.
My heart sank.
‘No matter how strong Sion is, he’s in danger if he’s unconscious!’
Even in the original story, several people who could use aura, like Sion and the male lead, possessed tremendous resistance to extreme cold.
But the moment they lost consciousness, they could no longer circulate aura through their bodies, leaving them vulnerable to hypothermia.
I hurriedly touched Sion’s face.
‘…He’s so cold.’
My hands were frozen too, yet I could still tell how cold his face was.
More importantly, his complexion was deathly pale and his lips had turned blue.
I slapped his cheeks repeatedly.
First, I had to wake him up.
“Sion, get up! Open your eyes!”
But there was no response.
“Ugh, what do I do…?”
Tears welled up in my eyes from anxiety.
Meanwhile, snow continued piling onto Sion’s face, so I spread my entire body and wings over him to shield him.
‘No… We’ve only just begun changing Sion’s fate! I can’t let him die another lonely, miserable death like this!’
Grinding my teeth, I tried with all my might to lift him.
Naturally, it was useless.
“…Ugh… sob…”
A crushing sense of helplessness and frustration made tears spill out.
Since becoming Sion’s fangirl fairy, this was the first time I had truly hated my current form.
“What kind of fangirl fairy is this… What do you mean changing someone’s fate…?! If this was going to happen, you should’ve made me into something that could protect Sion instead of a tiny useless fairy…!!!”
I shouted angrily into empty space.
And then—
Ding!
You have acquired the fangirl skill <Devotion That Transcends Species>!
A system message appeared before my eyes.
“Devotion That… Transcends Species?”
It was the first new fangirl skill to appear in what felt like a million years.
Staring blankly, I read the description below.
<Devotion That Transcends Species>: True devotion transcends even the limits of one’s species! My sincere feelings toward my favorite can never be restrained by any limitation. With unwavering devotion, surpass the limits of your species for the sake of your favorite!
“…!!!”
My eyes widened.
I didn’t fully understand it, but it seemed that my desperate desire to save Sion and my frustration at being unable to do anything in this form had given birth to a new fangirl skill.
“In that case…!”
Pulling myself together, I looked at Sion and activated the new skill.
“<Devotion That Transcends Species>…!!”
At the same moment, a brilliant light burst forth from around my heart.
Flash!
“…!!!???”
The light instantly expanded and wrapped itself around my entire body.
‘W-What is this?!’
A warm, fluffy sensation spread through me.
And just as I began to feel something strange about my sense of balance—
Tap.
My feet touched the ground.
Feeling something was off, I looked down.
And a sound escaped me before I could stop it.
“…Huh?”
Instead of the stubby little legs of a fairy that barely counted as three heads tall, I saw long, ordinary human legs.
“…Huh?!”
Reflexively, I looked at my hands.
Likewise, instead of my tiny fairy fingers, I saw long, slender human fingers.
Only then did I fully realize what had happened.
“Whoa… I turned into a human?”
Apparently, this new fangirl skill temporarily transformed me from a fairy into a human.
‘Then…!’
Moving my limbs around to test my new body, I examined myself.
Fortunately, the sleepwear I had been wearing as a fairy, the pink coat Sion had made for me, and even my warm winter boots had all naturally resized to fit my new body.
Otherwise, I might have ended up freezing to death beside Sion completely naked.
Approaching him, I declared,
“Good! Don’t worry, Sion! I’ll figure something out somehow…!”
I quickly brushed away the snow covering his body.
Then I lifted his upper body and carefully draped one of his arms over my shoulder.
“Up we go…!”
I hurriedly looked around.
‘First, I need to find somewhere to shelter us from the snow and cold!’
Not only for my sake, but I had to keep Sion warm until he regained consciousness.
Just then, I noticed a rocky cliff nearby with a crevice large enough for two people.
“…Good.”
I decided to get Sion there no matter what.
Taking a deep breath, I gritted my teeth and hoisted him onto my back.
“Hyaaah…!”
And immediately collapsed face-first into the snow.
Sion’s tall frame was far too heavy for me.
‘Damn it.’
Groaning, I wriggled out from beneath him.
“Huff, huff… What’s the point of turning human if I’m still this weak?!”
Despite becoming human, I apparently had absolutely no strength and the constitution of a fragile weakling.
‘But I can’t give up!’
If I stopped now, both Sion and I would freeze to death together.
‘Just ten meters. Let’s make it ten meters.’
Getting back up, I looked down at Sion sprawled across the snow.
This time, instead of carrying him, I wrapped the edge of his robe—fastened beneath his shoulder armor—around my body and pulled with all my strength.
“Hyaaaah…!!!”
Scrape.
‘It’s working!’
Thanks to the freshly fallen soft snow, Sion’s body began moving little by little.
Although I was basically dragging him around like a sack of rice, I continued forward one exhausting step at a time.
At last, I reached the crevice in the cliff.
“Haa… haa…”
The space inside was narrower and darker than expected, but it was enough for two people to escape the blizzard.
Using the last of my strength, I dragged Sion inside before collapsing onto the ground.
“…Haa… haa… haa…”
As I caught my breath, I glanced beside me.
Sion was still lying there with his eyes closed and his face pale as ever.
‘I need to warm him up…’
Staggering to my feet, I approached him.
Then I carefully pulled his upper body into my arms and covered both of us with my coat.
But even after a considerable amount of time passed, neither of us showed any sign of warming up.
“…Ugh, it’s so cold.”
Shivering, I tried to cover Sion’s legs, which were sticking out from beneath the coat.
My hands and feet had already gone numb, and the growing drowsiness made me uneasy.
‘This won’t work…’
I needed another method.
With my mind growing hazy, I dug through the vast database of romance fantasy novels I had read.
‘What do protagonists usually do in situations like this…?’
Then an idea struck me.
‘Right. That’s it.’
Half-delirious, I gently lowered Sion’s head onto my lap.
Then I shrugged off my coat and sleepwear.
Wearing only lingerie-like undergarments, I snuggled up against Sion again and covered us both with the coat like a blanket.
Pressing myself as close to him as possible, I closed my eyes and murmured,
“Please warm up soon…”
