The Superior Orphan Chloe (1)
The mysterious tape began with a rather shocking confession.
…It’s been so long since I last told a story that I’ve completely forgotten how to begin.
Ah, maybe I should start by fixing my tone and pitch first?
Everyone has their own preferences, but there are certain ways of speaking that most people dislike.
Ahem, ah, aah— Like this? Is this better?
That seems like an appropriate volume.
I understand, but I’m not entirely sure if this process is even necessary.
Oh, you say my polite speech feels awkward? Understood. From now on, I’ll tell the story properly using casual speech.
Right. I am currently recording my own story.
It’s going to be a long, long tale, so I hope you’ll listen until the end.
This is also my letter of reflection.
It’s the story of how I was reborn as a proper human being, and at the same time, the story of how I received a proper education.
It’s a bit embarrassing, but I was a person with twisted tastes.
If, after a very long time, someone discovers this recording, please call me Chloe.
I’ll try to restrain my polite speech from now on.
The strange tape had begun with a shocking confession.
I met an utterly insignificant death.
A late-twenties black company employee who had been diligently working until 5:30 in the morning, fueled by five energy drinks.
That was me.
I collapsed in front of my keyboard with a sudden pain in my chest and never got back up.
I closed my eyes.
Slowly, I reflected on the days gone by.
I had lived an ordinary life.
…Except for one desire. A very dark and insidious desire that I kept hidden.
I want everyone’s attention!
What’s the easiest way to get attention?
I spent quite a long time researching ways to receive attention.
Pretending to be sick, impersonating a celebrity’s SNS account, mentioning myself with an alt account on online communities…
I once changed a pure romance novel into an NTR story right before its ending. It got me flamed for nearly a week, but it was incredibly satisfying.
During my school days, I even entertained the childish idea of committing suicide in front of the person I liked.
I thought that might finally make my mom see me differently.
Ah, seriously.
I feel like crying.
It really was a life full of regrets.
If I had known I’d die this early, I would have committed suicide in front of other people.
At least then I could have savored the expressions on their faces as I fell.
…But still, life is too precious. No matter how good their faces look, my own life comes first.
Just to clear up any misunderstanding, I am not a masochist.
Getting hurt scares me. Dying scares me too.
I don’t want to leave any scars on my body if possible.
In other words, what I pursued was sustainable schadenfreude and attention!
I don’t get hurt, I definitely don’t die, but I still get the attention!
This was the best.
That’s what I thought, and as I kept thinking, I began to wonder why my thoughts were still continuing.
I hadn’t died.
To be precise, I had been reborn.
When I opened my eyes again, an extremely bright light assaulted my vision.
It was a blue lamp hanging from the ceiling.
I heard an unintelligible language, and someone was holding me.
Having devoted part of my life to reading web novels and light novels, I easily realized this was what people called reincarnation in another world.
If I had one complaint, it was why I had to start as a newborn baby…
Having to live my life from the beginning again, and with all my memories intact!
If it had been a regression, I could have at least started with some coins and become rich, but judging from the scenery and the language, that seemed impossible.
A language I had never heard before. Objects I had never seen.
After some time passed, the man I assumed was my father held me in his arms.
My vision wasn’t clear yet, but instinctively I realized he was my father.
Even if a child’s eyes are blind, the bond of parent and child does not fade.
…Unfortunately, that seemed to be only from the child’s perspective.
The world turned black.
Someone placed a cloth over me.
It was a blackout. Pitch darkness.
That scene was also the shape of the future that awaited me.
.
.
.
Wrapped in thin layers of swaddling cloth, I was thrown at the front gate of the Winterland Orphanage on a cold winter day.
Fortunately, the orphanage director found me just before I froze to death and gave me the surname Winterland.
Looking back now, perhaps my bad relationship with winter began from that moment.
I wanted to talk more about this orphanage, but unfortunately my memories are hazy.
Have you heard of infantile amnesia?
It refers to the phenomenon where the hippocampus, the brain’s memory storage, is immature and cannot convert information into long-term memory. As the brain grows rapidly, new neural cells overwrite existing memories.
In other words, the reason I remember my newborn days is purely by chance.
My memories from arriving at the orphanage until I turned four are hard to recall.
Even after turning four, most of my time was devoted to learning.
My real memories begin around the age of ten.
I realized I was a girl before that, but it truly sank in around that time.
The orphanage director had embezzled all the support funds from the capital, so there wasn’t even a single mirror in the place.
What kind of orphanage doesn’t even have a mirror?
If not being able to see my face was the problem, couldn’t I have used a window or something else that could reflect my image?
…Yeah, there was absolutely nothing.
Because of some bizarre law that imposed taxes on windows, all the orphanage windows were boarded up.
Silver or iron utensils had all been requisitioned as war supplies.
Clean water clear enough to reflect a face? I had never even seen it.
And so, ten years after I came to this world.
Quite a lot of time has passed.
Ah, right now you’re probably wondering two things: how I confirmed that I was a girl, and what I’m doing wandering around at this late hour.
I confirmed I was a girl around the age of five. Probably.
Memories from early childhood aren’t very accurate, after all.
I simply reached between my legs without thinking and… what the hell, there was nothing there!
To be honest, it was quite a shock.
Once I passed ten, the way the other kids looked at me started to change too.
The realization hit me hard then.
You know that unique gaze that kids in puberty, or just before it, have?
A lewd, insidious look that evaluates and scans a person’s body.
The orphanage kids hadn’t received proper family education, so they lacked manners, which made it even worse.
Getting attention was nice, but…
The boys would desperately try to talk to me at least once, while the girls would glare at me with jealousy and harass me.
In the end, the only time I could be comfortable was when the children were asleep.
In other words, only in the early dawn.
This body has an abnormally hard time falling asleep at dawn.
Well, thanks to that, I can wander around like this even at this hour.
Creak. Creak.
The sound of old floorboards groaning echoed.
This orphanage had a peculiar trait: every time an adult walked down the hallway, it would make strange noises.
It was probably due to the building’s age, but when light-bodied children stepped on them, the boards would go eerily silent.
Thanks to that, the kids would bet on who could jump higher and make the loudest noise.
The stakes were naturally things like the clothes I wore, the blankets I used, or my pillow.
As I mentioned earlier, orphans who never received proper family education usually behave in predictable ways.
If they can’t have the girl they like, they’d rather take at least a part of her.
Or destroy her so no one else can have her.
That was roughly their mindset. That was their level.
Well, if that counts as attention, I did enjoy it quite a bit, but they eventually crossed the line.
—As expected of orphans.
…Ah, if I say that, does it include me too?
Anyway, it’s quite suspicious that adults are walking down the hallway at this late hour.
The ten-year-old me still had my male ego and child ego fighting each other.
The me from my previous life would have simply ignored it, but I had a tendency to obsess over things unnecessarily.
The ten-year-old me carefully walked down the long hallway and approached the director’s room, where faint light was leaking out.
I slowly moved my ear close to the door, and I could hear some voices from inside.
The director’s voice, and the voice of a government-appointed caregiver.
The first voice I heard was the director’s.
“She’ll sell for a high price, right? Chloe, I mean.”
“Well, of course. Can we start selling her from age fifteen?”
“I suppose so.”
“There are perverts who get excited over ten-year-olds, but the highest prices start from fifteen. The peak is around seventeen.”
…What the hell are these people talking about?
By the way, Chloe is my name.
A silver-haired little brat who had just turned ten. Chloe Winterland.
You might wonder what surname an orphan would have, but orphans usually receive their surname from the region where they were found or from the orphanage itself.
The Winterland region. The Winterland Orphanage.
The orphanage director’s surname was also Winterland.
It meant that the man currently discussing when my price would be highest had been in the same position as me several decades ago.
An orphan selling another orphan. Do these people have no hearts?
I focused my ears again.
The director’s voice came once more.
“So what do you plan to do?”
“Well, when the conscription officer comes, we’ll sell off the kids over fifteen first. The ones with decent faces can be sent to the brothels.”
“What about Chloe?”
“That child… she’s top quality, so a low-ranking noble might buy her. If she’s lucky, she might even become a concubine.”
Concubine. A concubine, huh.
Disgusting.
The ten-year-old me at the time immediately felt nauseous.
I had lived as a man for over twenty years in my previous life. And now I was supposed to be pierced by a man?
I like attention and affection. But I don’t want to be pierced.
I’d rather die.
I’d rather go back to the military.
I genuinely thought so.
Of course, I could understand the director’s position to some extent.
For an orphan with no connections to become the concubine of a low-ranking noble was quite the promotion.
It was a much better deal than being conscripted, wasn’t it?
Let me say this in advance: at the time, I had underestimated the war.
The sense of reality and knowledge I had accumulated over twenty years as a man had become quite faint after living ten years as a bullied girl in an orphanage.
It was like my ten-year-old child ego and my late-twenties young adult ego were thoroughly mixed together.
…To put it simply, it meant I made a foolish decision.
I can say with certainty that it was the worst decision of my life.
After reading so many novels like ‘Yu■Jeon■’ or ‘The Soldier’s Frontline■’ in my previous life, I still chose to enlist!
Even now, I can’t understand it.
Ugh…
Yes. To correct myself, it was also the best decision at the same time. Is that good enough now?
Anyway, let me defend my childhood self for a moment.
During the aptitude test at enlistment, if magic talent was discovered, one would receive education in a safe rear position.
My childhood self had taken that into calculation.
After all, the conscription of women up to age fifteen had only begun in the late stages of the war.
Even for volunteers, boy soldiers were the last line of defense.
Ugh… Excuse me, could you move your hand? You’re interfering.
Anyway, if I hadn’t had any magic aptitude back then, I wouldn’t have been able to join the military.
…What? You’re saying my childhood appearance looked like it could benefit from a multi-child support policy? Are you insane?
Ahem—.
Anyway, let’s continue the story.
.
.
.
Five years had passed since I overheard the director and the caregiver’s wicked and insidious plan. I had turned fifteen.
At the same time, a man who introduced himself as the conscription officer visited the orphanage.
My childhood self judged this to be a golden opportunity that would never come again, and half of that judgment was correct.
With tears welling in my eyes, I grabbed onto his clothes and said,
“Please let me take the aptitude test.”
The conscription officer looked at me.
Ah, what a great expression.
Much later, when I reunited with him after he had become the conscription officer, he recalled that moment like this:
A child with an eerily expressionless face was pretending to shed tears that didn’t suit her at all.
