Chapter 4

The place the monster man took me to was an orphanage.

The Sunshine Orphanage where I used to live was as bright as a temple, and it had an enormous playground.

It also had a beautiful garden where birds chirped and a little stream babbled.

But the orphanage this man had brought me to looked terribly gloomy. Instead of a playground, there was nothing but an empty patch of dirt, and hardly any sunlight reached the place.

Is this really an orphanage?

If I stayed somewhere like this, I would miss my mother and Miss Anne-Marie, the teacher who had looked after us at the orphanage, so much that I would end up bawling my eyes out every day. That would be unbecoming of a ten-year-old big girl like me.

To make matters worse, the orphanage teacher wore a pair of glasses with sharply pointed frames that seemed to shoot up toward the sky. She looked like the kind of person who would scold me for even the slightest bit of mischief.

I-I’m scared.

Without even realizing it, I hid behind the man and clutched the hem of his clothes tightly.

The orphanage teacher came outside and asked the man,

“What brings you here?”

“This kid. I don’t know her, but someone abandoned her in front of my house a few days ago.”

“Did you report it to the security authorities?”

“I tried to report it… but they wouldn’t accept the report.”

The orphanage teacher narrowed her eyes as she noticed me hiding behind the man.

“Are you perhaps going through serious financial difficulties? If money is the problem, the government can provide some assistance depending on your circumstances.”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.”

“Do you have a job, too?”

“Uh, yes. Well, sort of.”

“And yet you smell so strongly of alcohol this early in the morning…?”

The orphanage teacher’s eyes shot upward, just like the frames of her glasses.

“Ahem. Excuse me. Could I speak with the child alone for a moment?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

The orphanage teacher gave me a bright smile and led me somewhere the monster man couldn’t see us.

“Sweetheart, let me ask you something. Has your daddy been hurting you?”

My daddy wasn’t mean-looking like that man over there.

And it wasn’t as though the monster man had hurt me, either.

When I shook my head, the orphanage teacher asked again.

“Has your daddy ever hit you or said anything nasty to you?”

There are bad people in the world who hit children?

Startled by the thought, I vigorously shook my head.

The orphanage teacher studied me carefully through her glasses, then nodded.

After that, she approached the monster man and spoke sharply in a very stern voice.

“Excuse me, sir. I understand that raising a child can be difficult, but there are things in this world that are acceptable and things that are absolutely unforgivable. How can you even think of abandoning your own child?”

The monster man’s eyes widened in shock at her words.

“But I’m an unmarried bachelor!”

“Anyone can see she’s your biological daughter! Her father is alive and well, so why should she grow up in an orphanage?”

Her eyes swept up and down his body.

The look she gave him was filled with contempt.

The monster man seemed so shocked and wronged that he pressed a palm against his chest and took several deep breaths.

“No, how does this kid look anything like me…? There’s no way I could have a child! I told you, she was abandoned in front of my house a few days ago. I know it sounds like a lie when I put it that way, but I’m telling the truth!”

“That’s what they all say.”

“I’m serious!”

“Sir.”

Hoo…

This time, the orphanage teacher let out such a tremendous sigh that even her bangs seemed to lift into the air.

Then she tried to reason with him.

“I understand that things may not have ended well between you and the child’s mother. However, abandoning your child simply because you don’t want to become a single father is against the law. Go and have a proper conversation with the child’s mother. If you truly cannot raise her, come back with the necessary legal documents. All right? Do you understand?”

Her tone grew more aggressive as she continued, but I hadn’t heard the imperial language in such a long time that I couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying.

So surely the thought that the man was being scolded was just my imagination, right?

BANG!

The orphanage teacher left us standing outside the gate and went back inside.

The iron gate closed, hiding the dirt-covered ground and its scattered stones from view.

I looked up at the monster man.

The thought of having to live somewhere without a playground or a garden frightened me so much that my lower lip stuck out in a pout.

Don’t leave me here…

I quietly grabbed the hem of his clothes.

Then our eyes met. His fierce, sharply slanted golden eyes glared down at me.

His gaze was so frightening that my shoulders instinctively hunched.

I miss Teacher Anne-Marie…

After my mother, Miss Anne-Marie had been the kindest and most caring person in the world.

“Hey. I was just looking at you, so why are you cowering like that? You’re making me— Haaah. You’re driving me insane.”

The monster man sighed repeatedly and roughly swept his hair back, messing it up in the process. Then he lifted me into the air.

Thump!

Once again, I was slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

“Is that person a quack or something? No. Don’t even think about something that horrifying. A child? That’s ridiculous!”

The yellow-eyed monster man continued muttering to himself all the way home.

I want to go back to the orphanage…

After being carried home, dangling from the man’s shoulder, I lay facedown on the sofa and sniffled.

I was exactly one second away from bursting into tears.

So I quickly clasped my little hands together and prayed to the Goddess.

“(Goddess, I wanna go back home! Now that I think about it, I don’t think I need a daddy!)”

After becoming a five-year-old baby, even my pronunciation had turned childish and whiny.

But I had been such a cool ten-year-old big girl…

It was just too sad. And I didn’t want to go to the orphanage the man had taken me to earlier, either.

There was no garden or swing there, I hadn’t seen a single flower, and it didn’t look like the sort of place where anyone would give me delicious candy.

“(I wanna go back to the orphanaaaage! Waaah! I don’t like it here! And this isn’t that thing! That, that… what was it?)”

What was it called again?

It was one of those common plot devices in the novels my friend’s older sister used to read so enthusiastically. It meant that time had gone backward.

“(R-Retruuurn! This isn’t a retuuurn! If it were, my mommy would be right beside me!)”

Come to think of it, there was another incredibly cruel and terrifying plot device besides returning to the past.

The one where a ghost entered someone else’s body. That was called—

—This isn’t possession.

“Huh?”

At the sound of a woman’s voice coming from somewhere, I turned my head and looked around.

Then the voice spoke again.

—I get a hundred points.

Huh? What? Eh? Gasp!

The voice was definitely coming from inside my head.

As I stared with my mouth hanging open, I heard laughter from somewhere.

It was an extremely strange voice. I couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman, or whether the speaker was young or old.

G-G-Goddess?

Could it be you, Goddess?

Wait, are you really the Goddess?!

But no answer came to my questions.

My wish had been to get a daddy, yet the Goddess had abandoned me in the house of this strange monster man. The Goddess was a crayfish, a freshwater fish, a pig’s eyelashes, and a horse’s hooves!

As I lay facedown on the filthy sofa, sniffling, my body suddenly floated into the air again.

It was the monster man.

“Whoaaaa…”

I stupidly left my mouth hanging open as I admired his face.

Honestly, despite being around the age of my youngest uncle and living like a beggar, the man was incredibly handsome.

He was much, much, much more handsome than my youngest maternal uncle, who had been the most handsome person I knew.

But unlike my youngest maternal uncle, this man looked terrifying.

Especially his eyes.

They were as frightening as the eyes of the muscular, sharp-toothed carnivorous beasts I had seen in fairy-tale books.

On top of that, his skin was dark, and the even darker circles beneath his eyes extended all the way down toward his nose, making him look like someone who did terrible things every night.

The moment the man saw me, his face twisted into a deep scowl.

“Eek!”

I was so frightened that tears immediately welled up in my eyes.

I was a good child, so why was he looking at me as though he were about to scold me…?

“Where’s your mother?”

His fierce eyes narrowed, and wrinkles formed between his brows. He looked as terrifying as a bed monster that would bite into a child and swallow her whole at any moment.

“(I-I used to live at Sunshine Orphanage…)”

“I asked where your mother is! What’s your mother’s name? Do you know your home address?”

“(I woke up suddenly, and I was hereee. Please find my teacherrr. Sniffle…!)”

“I’m going crazy. What country’s language is that supposed to be? Still, at least I know for certain that I’m not your father. I don’t date foreigners, after all. Of course, language isn’t necessary for an adult conversation, but I’m still a human being, you know? We have to be able to commuuunicate.”

The man’s expression grew even more frightening.

Sniff…

My shoulders began trembling uncontrollably because I was so scared.

“Hic!”

I started hiccupping.

His brows were furrowed tightly, and his bright yellow eyes stared straight at me.

“Hic! Hic! Hic!”

I clenched my tiny fists and tried to think.

I’m a brave child! I always greet Uncle Michael politely, I’m so smart that I remember my mother’s name perfectly, and I can also…

Ah!

At that moment, a stroke of genius struck me.