I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 25

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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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Chapter 25
Before I became a baby, I was already ten years old, and there were no bad adults around the Orphanage.
In fact, there were only kind adults.
When we greeted them, they’d wave back happily, and if we fell while playing and scraped our knees, even strangers would gently apply medicine to our wounds as tenderly as if we were their own children.
That’s why I didn’t understand what the man was saying.
“Are there really bad people in the world?”
“What, what?”
“Aren’t they all kind people? You’re a little bad because you don’t get along with friends, but everyone else seems like such nice adults.”
The man fell silent, staring at me intensely.
His sharp golden eyes were so keen that I found myself swallowing and fidgeting with my fingers.
“But that’s the thing—I went out to find my father. Some older boy even said he’d take me to my father’s house.”
“That’s a bad adult! How would that person know your father’s address? Don’t you know what happens when you follow just anyone? You won’t get to eat delicious meat, you won’t get to wear pretty clothes, you’ll have to work until the day you die! Do you understand?”
“I… I didn’t know.”
I couldn’t believe such wicked people existed in the world.
Was the man just trying to scare me?
But it didn’t sound like a lie.
The pretty sister from earlier had said the same thing when she bought me cake—that I shouldn’t follow strangers.
Was the Empire really a place full of bad adults who lied carelessly?
But my mother had never told me such things.
“My mother said my father is a very famous person.”
Tears poured out.
Whimpers and sobs came too.
“Sniffle! Sniffle-sniffle!”
I wiped my eyes roughly with my sleeves.
But more tears came.
This wasn’t because I was a coward.
It was because I missed everyone.
I missed my mother the most, and after her, Teacher Annemarie, Enrique, and my friends.
I missed Michael too, and though I didn’t know what he looked like, I wanted to meet my father.
If I couldn’t go back to Teacher Annemarie or my mother, I at least wanted to go back to the Orphanage.
But the Empire was so far from the Orphanage that I couldn’t get there by myself.
My sniffles turned into tears.
I wished the man would hold me, but instead he just stared at me with a hard, rigid face.
I felt so lonely.
Deep, wrenching sobs came out.
My mother would have held me and bounced me gently, and patted my back.
“Sniffle-sniffle! Wahhh.”
This man clearly didn’t love me.
Maybe that was natural, since he wasn’t my real father.
A friend at the Orphanage had said so.
Adults don’t like children who cry.
That’s why their uncle got annoyed every time they cried.
Remembering my friend’s words, I turned away and cried harder.
Then the man turned me back around.
“Don’t cry. I’ll find your father for you.”
And with those words, the man picked me up.
He held me in his arms and gently patted my back, tap by tap.
It felt like the man was crying too.
“So stop now. Stop. If you keep crying, I won’t be able to find your father.”
“Sniff-sniffle-sniff. D-do-do stop!”
“Yes, that’s it. Stop.”
The man held me like that and stood still for a long time.
Even though I wasn’t a baby crying all day long, he rocked me gently up and down, patting my back tenderly and stroking my head.
I thought the man didn’t like me, but I was mistaken.
His embrace was so warm that my fear melted away and my heart found peace.
So I stopped, and the whimpers that came in fits and starts began to fade.
“Have you finished crying?”
“Yes.”
“I got angry and worried when you suddenly disappeared from home. I don’t dislike you.”
“In my dream, I saw my mother, and I remembered the name of my father that she told me, so I went to look for him. Sniff!”
She wanted to speak clearly, but her nose was stuffed up, making her words come out thick and nasal.
On top of that, her eyes wouldn’t open properly, so she had to strain just to keep them cracked.
The man asked, his voice calmer than before.
“Do you miss your father?”
“(I miss my mother most of all, but I don’t remember where she lives. But Father’s famous, so if I find him, I can ask him to take me to Mother.)”
“Smart little thing. What’s your father’s name? I’ll help you find him.”
Because he was holding her, her legs dangled in the air.
When she lifted her head, their eyes met—his gaze had been watching her.
She found herself thinking that his golden eyes looked like hers.
She’d only thought his eyes were yellow, never that they were the same shade as her own.
Did her father have yellow eyes like hers too?
Her mother had said so—that she looked exactly like her father.
She spoke to the man whose pupils now held her entire reflection.
“Cassian Calypso.”
* * *
Cassian didn’t dote on the little one the way people spoke of love—as though they couldn’t survive without someone.
But if something went wrong with the child, his heart would stop; when tears welled up, it hurt deep in his chest.
He’d thought it was only that much, but when she said she was going to find her father, he felt a sharp sting and found himself at a loss for words.
He knew the little one didn’t understand that the world was full of wicked people, and that it was only natural she’d want this. But……
‘Why does it feel like I’m being robbed?’
It was worse than mere disappointment—it was heartache.
He was angry and sad all at once…… and he wasn’t old enough for a midlife crisis.
Had longing for Iris driven him mad, then and there?
Was that why he’d learned this strange language, why the little one had become so precious to him?
He’d wanted to comfort the weeping child, but he knew that if he held her and soothed her now, it would only shatter his own heart when they parted. So he clenched his fists and held back.
Then she turned away, crying alone so mournfully.
Why did his own heart ache as though it were melting?
He couldn’t think straight.
And without meaning to, he found himself comforting the child anyway.
…… Was it really true that he didn’t want to?
The truth was, another thought had crossed his mind.
That he was already a grown man, so even if his heart ached later, it didn’t matter—he just wanted this little one not to cry.
‘Don’t cry.’
Why couldn’t humans reach adulthood as quickly as animals did?
Why did the young need an adult’s protection?
Why were human children so much more dependent on their caregivers than any other animal?
The small body in his arms was too tiny; it made his chest ache.
How could parents abandon a child who wrung their hearts like this and still swallow their food?
‘I wanted to die when Iris died—I just wanted to die.’
Did he want only to die, or did he wish for someone to kill him?
If he could trade his own life for Iris’s, he’d die a thousand times over.
He knew well, having grown up an orphan.
Just as a child is their parent’s entire world, a parent is the child’s entire world.
Cassian didn’t want to rob this child of her world.
“What’s your father’s name? I’ll help you find him.”
You look so much like me—I wish you were my daughter.
Perhaps the goddess had counted that fleeting thought as a prayer.
“Cassian Calypso.”
Time stopping was a sensation he hadn’t felt since Iris’s funeral.
Cassian didn’t register what the child had said.
It was as though someone had struck the back of his head.
So for a long moment, he rolled her words around in his mind before asking the most foolish question in the world.
“Pardon?”
“(My father’s name is Cassian Calypso. Mother says I look exactly like him.)”
What is this? What is she saying?
There was another Cassian Calypso in the world besides him?
Panic seized him, and he asked again.
“And—and your mother’s name? What’s your mother’s name?”
“(Henrietta Balduer. My mother’s name is Henrietta Balduer.)”
……
“(Mother had yellow hair, all coarse and frizzy. And such beautiful brown eyes—she’d kiss me every day. Her skin was pale, and she always wore a wooden ring around her neck.)”
Cassian’s eyelids trembled.
Before he’d left for war with nothing to his name, he’d carved wood and given Henrietta a ring as a gift.
It had been their betrothal ring. Its appearance matched Henrietta’s exactly.
He examined the child’s fingers.
A breath escaped him.
Just as Henrietta had once said, her pinky finger bent in precisely the same way his did.
His heart pounded—thump, thump!—violent and overwhelming.
Iris was dead.
She was certainly dead.
Five years ago, at five years old, she’d succumbed to fever and departed.
And yet that child… had come back alive, now five years old again?

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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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