The gods really are heartless.
They say that after hardship comes happiness.
What a load of crap.
If you’re the eldest daughter in a Korean family, hardship doesn’t end—it just gets replaced by even worse hardship.
Just like my life.
I was born the eldest daughter of a family that was anything but ordinary.
There are all kinds of eldest daughters, but I came with the girl breadwinner feature installed.
In other words, I was playing life on the hardest difficulty.
My mother died.
My father lost his job sank into alcoholism and gave up on life.
My younger siblings cried themselves to sleep every night, terrified.
At the tender age of twenty, the most cliché three-hit combo of tragedy imaginable crashed down on my family.
Someone had to keep it together.
There wasn’t time to blame anyone or wallow in resentment.
If we wanted to keep food on the table, I had to do whatever work I could find.
I took a leave of absence from college and got a job at a factory.
The paycheck barely covered a family of four.
I couldn’t justify spending two thousand won on an Americano, so I survived on instant coffee instead.
I’d agonize for days before buying myself a pair of twenty-thousand-won pants.
Every single won mattered when I still had to buy my siblings’ school uniforms, backpacks, and sneakers.
Did I never resent that life…?
Yeah, right.
Every time I looked at those bottomless money pits, I felt my blood pressure shoot up.
I was only human.
I wanted to spend the money I’d earned on delicious food and pretty clothes too.
Still, I endured.
I kept telling myself that one day my father and my siblings would finally get their lives together.
But years passed, and my father never came to his senses.
He turned into the dictionary definition of a deadbeat. It was almost like he’d taken an introductory course on How to Be Human Garbage, because he started making everyone’s lives miserable.
He flipped over the dinner table.
Smashed furniture.
And the moment he raised his hand at my siblings…
…….something inside me snapped.
Calmly.
“Dad. Sit down quietly. It’ll hurt more if you resist.”
I sprang into the air and drove a perfect flying side kick straight into his ribs.
Come on, Dad.
You really shouldn’t forget that I’m a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo.
Someone who’s so drunk they can’t tell friend from foe isn’t exactly difficult to subdue.
That very day, my father was admitted to the white building on the hill.
Peace finally returned to our home.
But apparently God had no intention of letting me enjoy that peace.
A brand-new disaster arrived instead.
“Noona, stay out of my life. You’re not my parent, so quit acting like one.”
“Unni! I told you I wanted Golden Goose sneakers, not these cheap knockoffs!”
My younger siblings had entered full-blown teenage rebellion mode.
For the first time in my life, I cursed those above .
People always said raising kids was a thankless job.
Turns out they were right.
I skipped meals.
I went without new clothes.
I spoiled those little brats and gave them everything I could.
And what did I get in return?
The Triple Summons Combo.
Summoned to school.
Summoned to the police station.
Summoned to court.
Being called to the school hurt the most.
I couldn’t even look the victim’s family in the eye.
“I’m so sorry… I failed to raise my siblings properly…”
When I got called to the police station, I felt completely numb.
I wanted to give up on everything and run away somewhere far, far away.
But if I abandoned them, they’d only spiral even further.
So I grit my teeth and endured.
The day I was summoned to court…
…I watched my siblings shedding crocodile tears in front of the judge.
That was the moment reality finally hit me.
They’re not human.
They’re demons.
I made up my mind.
Before those demons could do any more damage to society…
I would reform them.
No matter what it took.
The first thing I did was quit my factory job and re-enroll at a Taekwondo gym.
If I was going to carry out my Rehabilitation Project, I needed strength.
I’d already tried tears.
I’d already tried love.
All they ever gave me in return was even greater betrayal.
The only thing that could save these delinquent hellions was the language of force.
To keep them from inflicting any more damage on society, I remodeled the house.
I removed the doorknobs from my siblings’ bedrooms and reinstalled them on the outside.
I sealed the windows shut.
I even lined the walls with soundproofing material.
That way, no matter how much noise they made, they wouldn’t be able to bother the neighbors.
Once everything was ready, all I had to do was wait for them to come home.
They only came back about once a week—to steal money.
That was my golden opportunity to put the Rehabilitation Project into action.
A few days later, my younger sister came home first.
My younger brother showed up the following day.
The moment my sister stepped through the front door, I quietly locked her inside her room.
Apparently, she’d learned the hard way that there was a considerable weight-class difference between us—and my well-trained thighs had made the lesson unforgettable.
As expected…
Might really did make right.
My brother, on the other hand, wasn’t so willing to surrender.
So I met him head-on with a perfectly fair opening move.
A flying side kick.
The satisfaction of grinding the sole of my foot into the mouth of that brat—who never shut up about “the strong devour the weak” whenever he got the chance—was beyond words.
After a fierce battle…
I emerged victorious.
There probably weren’t many little brothers in the world who could beat an older sister armed with both a black belt in Taekwondo and the Rod of Loving Discipline.
“All right. Your turn. Go sit quietly in your room.”
Once I locked the defeated beast back inside his cage…
Peace descended upon the house.
It was the calmest I’d felt since my mother passed away.
About ten days later…
My siblings finally dropped to their knees, sobbing as they begged for forgiveness.
It seemed they’d realized that, if they kept going down this path, they’d end up just like our father.
I knew perfectly well those were crocodile tears.
Still, I decided to forgive them.
I even returned the phones I’d confiscated.
Of course…
I’d already installed a GPS tracking app on both of them.
For their safety, naturally.
Then I handed them the Ten Commandments for Becoming Decent Human Beings.
Don’t hit people.
Don’t steal.
Sleep at home.
Basic common sense, really.
“Hold out your fingers. Time for your fingerprints.”
Without much resistance, they signed a written pledge stating that if they broke any of the commandments, they’d willingly accept being locked back in their rooms.
The looks on their faces as they pressed their thumbprints onto the paper were… peculiar.
I ignored it.
I’d never expected demons to keep their promises in the first place.
Sure enough…
It wasn’t long before they staged another dramatic escape and went right back to causing trouble.
I calmly checked their GPS locations…
…and launched the retrieval operation.
“You can run all you want.”
“You’re still in the palm of my hand.”
Everything after that happened like clockwork.
I’d catch them.
Lock them up again.
They’d beg for forgiveness.
I’d forgive them and let them out.
Then I’d catch them again.
After repeating the process roughly seven times each…
They finally surrendered.
Completely.
Every last shred of rebellious spirit had been beaten out of them.
Just like that, their teenage rebellion came to an end.
The two black dragons from hell finally put on human skin and started acting like people.
The Rehabilitation Project cost me every penny I’d saved throughout my twenties.
My savings.
My retirement pay.
Gone.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.
But I never regretted it.
It was the most worthwhile money I’d ever spent in my life.
Around the time I enrolled my siblings in a cram school to prepare for the high school equivalency exam and started looking for a new job…
I received word that my father had recovered.
For the first time in years, we were able to have a normal conversation.
There was focus in his eyes again.
That alone felt like a miracle.
I gave him the short version of everything that had happened—my siblings’ delinquency, the court case, and the Rehabilitation Project.
His fingertips trembled from the lingering effects of alcoholism.
“M-my eldest… I think I’ll just stay here for the rest of my life.”
“Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to be discharged? You seem perfectly fine now. Get out there and start supporting the family.”
He tried to say he wasn’t confident.
I dragged him out anyway.
Every day, I marched him up a mountain.
A healthy body houses a healthy mind.
Ever since he became capable of holding a one-minute plank, my father stopped talking like a defeated man.
Not long afterward, both of us found work.
I got a job as an accountant at a small company.
My father became an apartment security guard.
My younger brother balanced studying with a part-time job.
Granted, he did end up at the police station once after getting into an argument with a customer…
Fortunately, it ended with a settlement instead of criminal charges, and he actually walked away with a decent compensation payment.
That was progress, all things considered.
My younger sister nearly got swept up in a reckless romance with a guy she met at the study café.
I’d been this close to shaving her head and locking her up again…
Thankfully, she came to her senses before I had to put that plan into action.
That year’s birthday became the happiest one I’d had since my mother passed away.
My family gathered around with cake and presents.
Then they said the words I’d wanted to hear for the past ten years.
“U-Um… Unni. My brother and I talked it over.”
“Once we both pass the equivalency exam… why don’t you go back to college?”
“Noona.”
“We’ll pay your tuition.”
“You can quit working now.”
“M-my eldest!”
“If I take on a second job, I can cover the living expenses!”
“So don’t worry!”
It was the day I truly felt that all the effort of turning wild beasts into people had been worth it.
From that day on, I quit my job.
For the first time in my life, I lived off the allowance my family gave me and devoted myself entirely to studying.
Who would’ve thought living on someone else’s money could feel this comfortable?
I didn’t discover that until I was twenty-nine.
Using the phone my younger brother paid for, I binged web novels and webtoons to my heart’s content.
Even when he grumbled that my phone bill had climbed past a hundred thousand won, I couldn’t stop smiling.
Life isn’t so bad after all.
Maybe things are finally going to get better.
It was the very first day I’d ever allowed myself to think that.
And that…
…was the day I died.
A damn dump truck.
The rest is exactly what you’d expect.
I’m already dead…
…but somehow I still feel like I could die from how unfair it all is.
I thought I was dead.
Then I woke up.
The first thing I saw was a ceiling so extravagantly Rococo that there was no way it belonged anywhere in South Korea.
My ears rang.
My body was stiff.
I couldn’t move so much as a finger.
For what felt like an eternity, I stared at a ceiling mural of cherubic angels hunting demons.
Then the painting began to warp.
At the same time, a flood of foreign memories poured into my mind.
They belonged to someone named Ariel Valienor.
As those memories were forcibly crammed into my head, a piercing whine rang through my ears.
Beeeeeeep—
My fingertips twitched.
Then my toes.
Violent spasms spread through my body.
My back arched off the bed as every muscle shook uncontrollably.
Then, as though someone had pulled the plugs from my ears, sound rushed in all at once.
An unfamiliar language.
Unfamiliar voices.
Everything was strange…
Yet somehow familiar at the same time.
The strangest part was that I understood every word of a language I’d never heard before.
“Mage… is… is my daughter truly alive again?”
“F-first, we need to stop these convulsions.”
“Ariel… can you hear me—”
BEEEEEEP—
The memories of Ariel Valienor that had filled my mind were swallowed into pitch-black darkness.
It was a bizarre sensation, as though those memories had completely fused with my body.
I don’t know how much time passed after that.
When I finally opened my eyes again…
I realized where I was.
Inside the novel I’d read not long ago—
I Saved a Cat, and Now It’s Obsessed With Me (ISCO).
I’d transmigrated into the body of the eldest daughter of the House of Valienor, the shadowy mastermind family that lurked behind the scenes in ISCO.
According to the original story…
The eldest daughter of House Valienor was supposed to have died yesterday.
“…Damn it.”
“I’m the eldest daughter again.”
After surviving life as a Korean eldest daughter…
My life as the eldest daughter in a fantasy romance novel had just begun.
PS:
the author actually used a shortened version for the original name I saved a cat and it became obsessed with me . so it will be ISCO going forward.
