I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 26

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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 26
“Cassian. Please die. Just once. Please…….”
“If I die, that’s enough? Then Iris―”
When the child died, the world turned upside down.
The sky crashed into the earth and the ground rose to the heavens.
If Iris had lived, she would be ten years old by now.
But the child he held in his arms was barely five.
The fact that the child before his eyes was Iris shattered all reason, life and death crossing like swords.
Death is a realm no human can claim mastery over.
So it should be natural to feel terror at such an impossible thing.
But Cassian was anything but natural.
Any parent would understand.
To lose a child is to lose everything.
The world you inhabited crumbles, your life vanishes, your soul tears apart.
Cassian had spent years adrift after losing his daughter, abandoned to despair.
A war hero? What good was any of that?
Every title he’d ever earned was for Iris alone.
He had crossed countless battlefields to see her again, had become a hero to build her a better life.
Because he loved the child—loved her more than himself, more than his own soul, more than anything in existence.
So in this moment, Cassian’s grief came before his fear.
In his daze, he clutched the child to him in a desperate embrace.
Terrified that death would steal Iris from him again, that she would vanish before he could protect her.
His body trembled violently.
Without thinking, he held too tight, and the child whimpered in pain.
Yet he couldn’t speak.
Only strange sounds came from between his teeth.
“Uh, uh-uh. Huh…….”
This child was Iris.
She had a peach allergy.
She resembled him.
Her name was the same.
How had he not known?
His own child appeared right before his eyes, and he let mere reason blind him—let a dead girl walk the streets alone searching for her parents when resurrection itself was possible, all because he couldn’t see.
“Ah, ah, Iris…….”
He wasn’t the one who was wrong.
He hadn’t been projecting Iris onto this child.
She was his daughter, the child he’d loved with such abandon, and that’s why his eyes and heart kept finding her.
Even the joy he felt watching her eat was for that reason.
What father wouldn’t be moved to see his own child’s lips receive food?
His instinct had been right.
He wasn’t curious about how a dead child had come back to life.
He didn’t want to know such things.
All that mattered was that Iris existed at his side like this, alive.
The child he’d never held properly through all those war campaigns—Iris, whose mere existence could cast him from heaven into hell.
“Hhh-hh. Huh!”
Cassian pulled the child close and wept.
Iris, startled, asked if the man was crying, and though she tried to console him, he couldn’t hold back the flood.
Because the sun had risen again in a world that had been utterly, completely broken.
* * *
The man was a crybaby.
He suddenly started sobbing all by himself, so I had to comfort him.
Of course, I’m a crybaby too, so while I was patting his back to make him feel better, I ended up crying myself.
‘But I’m a kid and he’s a grown-up! So that means he’s the bigger crybaby.’
To comfort the man now that his crybaby secret was out, I tapped his back gently, pat pat.
By the way, the man and I were sitting side by side on the house steps.
“(It’s okay. Grown-ups cry sometimes, just like children do. I understand. Because I cry too sometimes.)”
“What are you talking about? I’m not a crybaby.”
“(But your eyes are all puffy, mister?)”
“Well, that’s…….”
Mid-sentence, the man pulled up his sleeve and grabbed my nose, saying something.
“Sniff!”
“(My sleeve’s going to get dirty.)”
“Never mind. Sniff! Go ahead.”
“(Don’t you have a handkerchief?)”
“I don’t have stuff like that. Hurry up and sniff!”
“Hnngh! Sniff!”
Ahh! Once one nostril cleared, I didn’t have to breathe through my mouth anymore, which was a relief.
Even if his clothes did get a bit dirtier for it.
‘He was already kind of messy to begin with, so I guess it’s fine.’
A glance.
As I was checking on him, our eyes met.
The man, who’d been gazing at me intently, suddenly pulled me into an embrace.
“(Waah! Let go!)”
Just like before, I thought I was going to be flattened like a sandwich.
When I struggled, instead of releasing me, he took my hand in his.
I couldn’t figure out why he’d been like this the whole time.
Was he scared of being left alone because I was going to find my father?
Maybe he was just as much of a coward as me—a crybaby, after all.
“(But sir, when are you going to take me to see my dad? I really want to see him.)”
“Your father. Cassian Calipso.”
“Yes.”
“I know him well.”
“(Really? You do? Are you friends?)”
My mouth fell open wide.
As I covered my mouth with one hand and looked up at him, he scratched his cheek with an awkward expression.
What was that about?
Wouldn’t it be good if I was my father’s friend’s daughter?
“Well, that’s…….”
“(Where does my dad live? Does he really look just like me? Is he handsome?)”
“He, he lives nearby. Handsome……? I guess he just looks like a person?”
What? Why’s he avoiding eye contact?
The way his eyes were darting around made me wonder—could my father be ugly?
“(Is it maybe that really handsome blond man from back then? So I’m really that man’s daughter?!)”
“What? What’s handsome about him! And you don’t look like that guy one bit!”
“(But my mother said my dad was really handsome. She said I was pretty because I looked like him.)”
At my words, the man stared at my face.
Then he smiled in a pale, wistful way and nodded.
“It’s strange. How a face like this could ever come to be.”
So it really is true—he’s ugly.
‘It’s okay. Even if he’s not handsome, he’s still my father.’
I was confident I could love him even if he turned out to be a bad man.
“(When I meet him, I’m going to kiss him every single day, and ask him to read me Fairy Tale Books, and go sledding with him on the mountain behind the house.)”
“Sledding?”
“(Yes! Sledding! Luana was always bragging about it. She said she went sledding on the mountain behind the house with her dad and it was so much fun. I never had a father, so I never got to ride on someone’s shoulders like Enrique does. I had nothing to brag about.)”
“So that made you sad?”
“(A little.)”
The man’s eyebrows shot up, and then he drew in a long, deep breath.
Why was he doing that? Had he misunderstood something I said?
“(Enrique is my cousin. And a shoulder ride is when you ride on someone’s shoulders.)”
“I know.”
“(Let’s go see my dad. I want to see him soon.)”
“Your…… your father.”
A glance. Another glance.
The man was suddenly watching my face carefully.
Could it be that he’d forgotten the address too, just like me?
Worry made my palms sweat, but then the man confessed, throwing the words out like he was discarding something.
“I’m your father.”
Huh?
Wait, what?
But why?
Why?!
“(……You’re lying!)”
“I’m not.”
“(Our dad is handsome and cool and amazing, but you’re scary-looking and dirty and a bad adult!)”
“……No. Your dad’s actually pretty clean.”
“(You’re not our dad! Don’t lie!)”
Slap! Slap!
I struck his arm to punish him, but the man seemed unfazed, only wearing an aggrieved expression.
“I’m Cassian Calipso. Your……father.”
When did he ever say he wasn’t our father?
And when did he get upset at being compared to that Mr. Baron, saying he didn’t resemble him at all?
‘I hate the goddess. She said our dad was handsome.’
Even if he’d been handsome once, now that I’d seen that blond man, the eagle-eyed man could never be handsome to me.
Was this why she kicked me out of the Orphanage?
This was a betrayal. A betrayal of my prayers.
My lip jutted out and my chin trembled. As my nose began to run, the man asked with a wounded expression.
“Is it so terrible that I’m your father?”
“(…….)”
“I’m sorry. I never should have failed to recognize you.”
“(…….)”
“Are you upset? Tomorrow we’ll do Carriage Play together, and when winter comes, we’ll go Sledding.”
“(……I want Doll Play. I don’t want Carriage Play.)”
“Yes. That too. I’ll do all of it. Everything. Just don’t ask for another father.”
“(……Okay.)”
Was I glad he was our father?
The Bed Blanket had black holes worn through it everywhere, he drank every day, ran from the witch like a coward, the house was filthy, and everything reeked of tobacco?
I already missed Mother.
* * *
A month had passed since he became our father.
Many things had changed.
“Hey! You hit my little sister? Want a punch?”
“Adrian, bite him!”
When a tall boy hit me at the Playground, my brothers came rushing over to avenge me.
“Lady! Why are you scolding my kid! The boy’s already a crybaby coward, and if you scare him like that, I’ll make you pay for it!”
As the children’s fight became an adult’s fight, the man—no, Father—turned red in the face with anger.

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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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