I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 16

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 15
The monster of an uncle was tall and fierce-eyed as monsters ought to be, and just meeting his gaze made my own eyes roll clean out of their sockets.
There are two ways for adults to get angry.
One is to cry from fear, the other to laugh it off and smooth things over.
This moment felt like one where laughter might do the trick.
“Hee-hee-hee!”
I laughed cheerfully and bounced out of bed, and the uncle hung his head low.
“Nothing but a mite…”
A sigh.
He sighed and unceremoniously scooped me up, hurling me out of the room.
Bang!
The door slammed shut roughly.
I hadn’t gotten a real scolding, but somehow that made it worse—I felt my heart sink at being such a bother.
So I clenched my fists tight and huffed through my nose.
“Hmph! Hmph!”
I’d never back down to that uncle. Never.
Tomorrow, the day after, every single day I’d greet him!
* * *
“Little one. Since it seems you understand what’s said, I’m going to tell you something. It’s very important, so listen carefully.”
In the late morning, over a meal that was part breakfast, part lunch, the uncle handed me a withered piece of bread and spoke with gravity.
“I am not your father. So don’t call me that.”
My mother had said so.
Our father was terribly handsome, she’d said, and fun too.
But this uncle, while handsome, looked frightening—with dark rings under his eyes, black hair, no humor to him, and shabby clothes that made him nothing like a prince at all.
‘There’s no way this uncle could be our father.’
So I answered him.
“Yes!”
Once I grew tall, I’d save up money somehow and go find my mother.
Of course I didn’t know where she was, but Michael had told me so.
Hope could call forth miracles that never existed before.
‘I can’t give up on finding Mother just because I don’t know her address!’
Even if I couldn’t remember now, with time in the Empire I might suddenly recall it one day, or pass by the neighborhood where we used to live.
Someday I’d find her, have a tearful reunion, eat chocolate together, and curl up in Mother’s arms for a gentle nap.
“But do you know your mother’s and father’s names?”
“(I know Mother’s, but not Father’s.)”
“Sigh. How can I ask anything when we can barely understand each other? Anyway, listen carefully one more time. I’m about to tell you something very important.”
The uncle spoke again with gravity, and I held my breath, tensing up alongside him.
“I have an appointment now, so I need to go out. If you get hungry, there are leftover Sandwiches you can eat, and you stay quiet inside the house.”
Pshhh.
The air leaked out of my shoulders.
This wasn’t important at all.
“You’re probably about four years old now? Five? Anyway, if you can walk, you’re practically grown, so don’t make trouble, don’t cry about being alone, just stay and watch the house. Understand?”
“Yesss!”
“Good. Then I have business to attend to.”
That was how I came to be left alone to guard the house.
* * *
“Stay and watch the house. Understand?”
“Yesss!”
Leaving a small child alone in the house felt uncomfortable, but he was not the guardian of this nameless little one.
‘Not my child, after all.’
“(I’m all grown up anyway. Look, I’m already ten inches tall. Hee-hee!)”
“Well, I’m heading out.”
Cassian left the house without hesitation.
Behind him, the little one called out.
“(Come back safe, mister!)”
“Right.”
No doubt it was a wish for a safe journey. Cassian gave a perfunctory reply and stepped out the front door.
The time was one o’clock in the afternoon.
Leaving the house at this hour was a slightly unusual experience.
He passed through the sparse garden, where nothing grew but dust.
In a corner far off, a tuft of grass pushed through the ground.
When he’d lost the Mansion to gambling and moved into this house, he’d planted everything himself—so pristine not a weed existed anywhere in the Garden except for this one wild blade of life.
“……It’ll flower soon.”
Now that it was spring, the leaves grew thick; by early summer, it would surely bloom.
Monster blood runs black.
Human blood is red, and no matter how one dies, there comes a stench of rot at the end.
During the Seongma War, when he staked his life in combat every single day, summer was without question the most terrible season.
Wounds festered easily, and from every direction came the reek of decomposing corpses.
Watching raindrops patter into pools of blood, he’d harbored countless thoughts.
Vows that he must survive and return, the face of the one he loved, the life of happiness he’d build with her after the war ended.
It was during one such summer that he found the Iris Flower.
How stunningly beautiful that brilliant violet had appeared in a battlefield thick with death—he couldn’t say.
Iris’s birthday was early summer, when the Iris Flowers bloomed.
Cassian, who’d hated summer for its oppressive heat, came to love it after meeting Iris.
‘Even this pain is better than never having met you at all.’
Cassian gazed down at the pale green leaves of the Iris Flower growing in the corner of the Garden, then squeezed his eyes shut.
When the sorrow that had seeped into his eyes was hidden away, his scarred chest tore open with pain once more.
Five years had passed since Iris died, yet he still lived inside a nightmare.
“Damn it.”
He should have just walked straight to the gate—but no, he had to look at this.
His heart ached as though someone had wrung his conscience in a tight fist.
Cassian turned and went back inside.
He couldn’t fathom why he kept thinking that little one was his daughter.
The only things they had in common were her name, her face, and an allergy.
His mind drew a line and said no—but deep in his heart, a strange, fierce joy bloomed at having met his dead child again.
Bang!
As he opened the door and stepped inside, through the bathroom doorway left wide open, he spotted the little girl standing on a chair, straining to turn on the faucet.
“What kind of parents abandon a bundle of flesh this small right in front of my house?”
Heat flared in him.
And of all people, it had to be him.
A madman who did nothing but guzzle liquor every day, chain-smoke, juggle lovers like tentacles, and gamble.
If you were going to abandon a child, shouldn’t you at least find someone whose life wasn’t in shambles—someone strict enough with children that he wouldn’t suffer the delusion she was his own daughter?
Swallowing down the roiling fury in his gut, he strode straight into the bathroom.
Click.
The moment he turned the faucet, water gushed out. The wide-eyed little girl looked up at him.
“Washing up?”
“(Y-yes. No. Um…….)”
The little girl hesitated, thinking hard for a moment, then spoke.
“Yes!”
She’d had to turn over the gears in her head to recall the Empire Language.
Cassian, with his massive hands covered in callus, scrubbed the face smaller than a fist.
“Blub-blub!”
“Look at this little bit of dough trying to wash herself like a proper person. Unbelievable.”
Water-soaked hands swept past her furrowed forehead, scrubbed her tiny, endearing nose and her plump cheeks.
Against his hands supporting her, he felt the perfect roundness of her small head and shoulders so fragile they seemed to disappear.
That’s right—how would something this tiny survive in an Orphanage?
She’d need him to make it through. So bringing her here was the right choice.
‘But first, there’s one thing I need to check.’
Cassian hoisted the child onto his shoulders—thud!—and set out.
* * *
The moment he walked through the Mansion’s door, his nephew came bounding out of the corridor and rushed toward him.
“Adrian! Yuck! You smell like liquor!”
The little girl holding her nose was Adrian.
He was the second son of Cassian’s older brother.
“I didn’t drink today. Where’s this alcohol smell coming from?”
“Huh? Wait—why don’t I smell it? Uncle, are you sick?”
“You’re getting more and more ridiculous by the day!”
Cassian ruffled Adrian’s hair half-heartedly and peered closely at his nephew beside him.
Adrian had yellow eyes.
Many people had seen Iris’s yellow eyes and insisted she was his daughter, but sadly, this boy had undergone surgery long ago.
Cassian asked.
“Where’s your father?”
“He’s probably sleeping. Uncle, play with me! Let’s have a sword fight!”
“Ask your brother to play with you.”
“He never plays with me. Never.”
“Too bad. Then play with her instead.”
Thud.
Cassian set Iris down.
The girl, who had been draped over his shoulder like a flour sack with her legs dangling, now stood with wide eyes, turning slowly to take in the Mansion around her.
“Who is she? Your daughter, Uncle? Or one of your subordinates? Did you kidnap her?”
“Yeah, I did kidnap her, so keep a close eye on her. If she escapes, you’re no nephew of mine anymore.”
“You got it! Leave it to me!”
After confirming that Adrian had clenched his fists, Cassian made his way to his brother’s room on the first floor.
Bang! Bang!
Cassian knocked out of courtesy, then opened the door before any answer could come from inside.
A ceramic vase flew out at him.
Catching the vase mid-air in the pitch-black room, Cassian made out a man rising from his bed in the darkness.
Genovion Karsein.
Cassian’s brother.
“This isn’t worth twenty million Gold, is it? You really do throw money around.”
“Why are you still alive?”
“How much did you spend trying to kill me this time? They said you paid three hundred million Gold total.”
“It was three hundred and fifty million.”
“Damn it. They only asked for a hundred million per job to let me live, and I should’ve squeezed them for more. What a waste.”
There existed no one who wanted Cassian dead more than he did.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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