Episode 1
The Blium family, one of the four great ducal houses of the Poltia Empire, ruled the south and was famed for its blood-based healing and support abilities.
I was the third child of that house’s head, the first and only daughter, and a sacrifice for my two older brothers.
That was my new life, and in a sense, it was even worse than my previous one.
At least in my first life, I had been little more than a botched accident born by chance. This time, I had been born as a sacrifice, someone meant to take on the curse that had been passed down through the Blium family.
No matter how anyone looked at me, I was plainly a child made because they needed one.
A child who would go to the family’s Forbidden Area a few days from now, on the exact day she turned ten, take on the ancient curse that had been sealed there for generations, and die.
And I didn’t have any particular feelings about that fact.
If anything, I was just bored that it had to take a full ten years.
Turning me into a girl was probably some divine punishment for killing myself under a truck, and yet why was I being given ten whole years?
Did the god in charge want to say: You could have saved your little sister and escaped, but instead you let yourself get crushed and splatter your organs everywhere, so now pay for that sin with a life on a timer?
Well, maybe.
But I had something to say about that, too.
Maybe people would argue that every life was precious and that if you could get away, you should get away, but that sort of talk only applied to people who had been born out of love.
People like me, who had been born by accident or raised because they were useful, only had to die for those who had been born for love. That was all there was to it.
I intended to do the same in this life.
To put it in sci-fi terms, I was a more disastrous designer baby than I had been in my previous life, so this time too I planned to die and sleep for the sake of someone born of love.
That was how I had lived, and how I meant to live for the next few days as well.
But the people in this family were somehow strange.
“Ahem... are you still lacking anything?”
“No, Head of the House.”
The head of the family, who had brought this body into being through an affair, came to visit once a week without fail. He would inspect the condition of the rooms in the annex where I stayed and the servants assigned to me, then the two of us would eat together without attendants, and he would always ask me that.
For an adult who had made a child out of necessity, it was a surprisingly warm thing to do.
At first, I’d suspected there had been some woman he loved, that he had made an unnecessary child by mistake and was now trying to use me somehow while feeling guilty about it.
But after I overheard the servants whispering that the duke had arranged a pregnancy contract with a slave woman to avoid the family curse, I had no choice but to dismiss that possibility.
From the beginning, he had made me because he needed me.
And yet he acted like this—had he created me to kill me, only to start feeling guilty now that the day of my death was approaching?
Given how leisurely his life must have been, maybe that really was possible.
Seen from that angle, he was a rather hypocritical man.
“...”
“Yes, if you should need anything, say so at once. I’ll make sure you get it.”
“Yes, Head of the House.”
Honestly, none of that mattered.
What did it matter if the man in front of me was a hypocrite when I was going to die soon anyway?
I only thought about these things to keep myself from getting bored.
And the reason I could think that way was probably because I was living so comfortably now—eating food I had never even touched in my previous life, studying nothing, and passing my days with ease.
A comfortable life.
So all I had to do was live like this until the day I turned ten, take the curse onto myself, and die.
That was the story.
But when I told the head of the family that, he behaved in an even more incomprehensible way.
Whether because of guilt or because he had developed paternal affection from watching me grow, he seemed to expect that I would call him Father before I died.
If I had been raised as a hostage in a foreign land, like some prince in the Goryeo or Joseon dynasties, then maybe I could have understood it.
If I were being prepared for an arranged marriage, or if I had to spend years as a hostage in another country, then a bond of loyalty to the family would matter. After all, if they wanted to prevent harm from befalling the Blium house, then binding someone by blood would be the easiest way to foster loyalty.
But I was a body meant to take the curse and die.
What meaning could there be in asking someone like that to call you father?
Maybe it was because of a curse tied to descendants and he needed me to live long enough to sustain it, so he was trying to make me attached.
Then again, shouldn’t he have clamped down on the servants’ mouths first if that were the case?
...I didn’t know.
If I thought of it as just the hypocrisy or meddlesomeness peculiar to rich, comfortable people who were praised for healing others, then maybe it didn’t need to make sense at all.
And the person I understood even less than the head of the family was someone else entirely.
“According to the Blium family records, curses can be overcome.”
“...Is that so?”
“Yes. It says that the younger sister of the third head overcame that power and went on to live a peaceful life.”
In the head’s case, he had used his own seed to create me, so perhaps some paternal feeling really was possible.
But what about this woman in front of me?
The duchess was a completely incomprehensible existence.
To her, no matter how I put it, I was just “the illegitimate child her husband had made behind her back.”
She was a woman born to a marquess family, and not only that, a woman of both intellect and martial skill who had graduated top of her class from the most prestigious academy in the empire, proving her worth even without leaning on her family’s power.
How would a woman like that treat a bastard child?
I didn’t know for sure, but wouldn’t she want to kill me, just for being infuriating?
Wasn’t I, after all, a human being with a predetermined use?
A human being who only needed to take the curse and die.
No one would point a finger at the duchess no matter how badly I was mistreated, so why was she working so hard to investigate the curse and tell me about its progress?
Was it guilt?
But even that was hard to believe, because if that were the case, she should have hated the idea of using me as a curse shield and tried to stop it. Yet the woman in front of me never changed the purpose I had been given.
And probably, even if I reached the Forbidden Area, her thoughts wouldn’t change.
When the duchess was drunk, she had slipped into my bedroom and asked me to curse her.
What had she said again?
“No matter how much it is for my child’s sake, curse me for the cowardice and pettiness of doing what is wrong. I will suffer for my child’s share as well, so please, curse me.”
If I took her words at face value while she was drunk, then this woman had meant to kill me.
And yet, seeing her speak to me this way—saying that curses could be overcome, or speculating about the nature of the curse—made her impossible to understand.
With the head of the house, I could at least think he was simply pouring affection onto a child he had made out of necessity, as a way of protecting his own sense of self.
But why was the duchess looking at me like that?
We weren’t even connected by blood, so why did she look at me as though I were her child—and not with the same belated attachment the head showed, but with a gaze tangled up in both necessity and affection?
It wasn’t as though we shared any bloodline, so she could have just killed me and been done with it.
Was it because of her child?
In a world with temples and priests, maybe she believed in an afterlife and was doing everything she could so her child wouldn’t go to hell?
I didn’t know.
Truly, more than the head of the family, more than anyone I had ever seen in either of my two lives.
I didn’t understand her at all.
“So you must come back alive.”
“If I do that, I’ll only bring shame on the Blium family.”
“No, that will not happen. Come back alive, and then your father and I will each grant you one wish.”
“...Yes.”
I didn’t understand the purpose of saying things like that, either.
Were they simply trying to deceive me? Or justify using me as a sacrifice?
I didn’t know.
My head hurt, so maybe I should just sneak into the Forbidden Area myself?
Three thousand six hundred and fifty days, more or less three thousand six hundred and fifty days—it probably wouldn’t make much difference.
...No, thinking about it properly, that wasn’t realistic.
Except for the head of the house and the duchess, everyone else seemed to regard me as nothing more than a sacrifice, so compared to the attention those two poured on me, I wasn’t being treated properly at all. If I tried to leave my room, I’d be caught immediately.
So the only thing to do was stay put and be taken there when the time came.
Fortunately, there wasn’t much time left.
After living ten years as someone else’s daughter, that should be punishment enough for my suicide, shouldn’t it?
Please, let me die this time.
With that thought in mind, I lay down on the bed, and time passed quickly until the day came for me to enter the Forbidden Area that held the curse. Wearing an absurdly fine outfit, I stood before the great doors.
“Thank you for everything all this time.”
After bowing my head in thanks, I looked at the head of the house and the duchess, both of them wearing complicated expressions.
Then I turned my gaze to the brothers from this life, hidden among the servants gathered behind the couple to assist them. Perhaps because they felt guilty, they immediately looked away, and I stared at them for a moment before turning on my heel and walking deeper into the cave.