IBDHD PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

The piggy bank I’d filled by bleeding Dad dry was already bulging with coins.

Without hesitation, I dropped it.

Thud!

If it had been an ordinary glass piggy bank, it would have shattered into pieces the moment it hit the floor, but the piggy bank Dad bought for me was different.

Since it was made for children, it had been coated with a magical substance that prevented it from breaking when dropped. But I wasn’t an ordinary child.

Hmph! This much is nothing!

I took a pair of scissors out of my bag, the one embroidered with a cat.

These scissors were magical scissors that only worked when the person using them genuinely intended to cut something. Dad had won them at a gambling house, along with enough money to buy me some snacks.

I plunged the scissors into the belly of the piggy bank.

The belly split open, and all the coins I’d saved up tumbled out.

Most of them were copper coins, though there were a few silver coins mixed in.

This should be enough for me to go see Mom!

Three years.

It had been a whole three years.

For all that time, I had taken care of my stupid Dad.

And that wasn’t all. Because of my short legs and our poor financial situation, I couldn’t go see Mom, even though she was living under the same imperial sky.

But I couldn’t ask Dad to take me, either.

I might be Dad’s daughter, Iris, but if I told him that, in truth, I was our mother’s daughter, too, Dad would get depressed again and might start treating people terribly.

Even if Big Uncle called him a stupid idiot and a piece of trash every single day, Dad had once been an incredibly powerful man who saved this country from destruction eight years ago.

Especially when it came to swordsmanship, there was no one who could beat him. He was a living legend.

If someone like that became genuinely furious, the country could be destroyed.

And if that happened, the whole world might be doomed, and I might never get to see Mom again.

But that ends today.

Indep—no, I’m going to become independent!

I’d already carefully placed a letter to Dad, my Declaration of Independence, on the desk.

I was eight years old now. I was all grown up.

Of course, compared to my actual age of ten, I was still technically a baby, but I wasn’t an ordinary eight-year-old, so Dad would understand.

He might even be proud.

His daughter was so smart that she’d already become independent!

Heh.

After wiping my nose, I stuffed so much money into my coin purse that it looked ready to burst, then firmly zipped up my bag.

Biscuits? One whole box, including the ones coated in chocolate!

Water? My favorite milk, plus cocoa powder!

Wallet? Heh! Stuffed full!

Everything was ready.

I carefully opened my bedroom door so it wouldn’t make a creaking sound.

Then I tiptoed down the hallway, making as little noise as possible.

Normally, Dad would be sprawled across the living-room sofa, yawning away, but today I’d deliberately asked him to make something that required a lot of work in the morning.

So he should be in the kitchen right now, struggling with all the ingredient preparation.

As I passed through the living room, I didn’t forget to grab the rabbit doll that was hanging on the drying rack.

Gasp! I almost forgot SomSom!

I hugged SomSom and opened the front door.

Click.

The doorknob made a sound, but since I couldn’t hear any reaction from inside the house, Dad apparently hadn’t noticed.

Phew. Thank goodness.

I was just about to take one step beyond the door when—

“Daughter. Where are you going?”

Gasp!

I was so startled that my entire body went rigid.

Creeeak.

A screw-like sound came from my neck as I turned my head to look behind me.

Only then did I realize that a dark shadow had fallen over me.

Dad was standing directly behind me.

I didn’t hear him at all?! Is this what happens when you’re a hero who saved the country?!

“Why’d you suddenly put your bag on? Going to the playground? Or are you going to play at Lia’s house?”

“D-Daaad.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

Dad was so tall that I had to crane my neck way back just to look at him.

Perhaps noticing that I was having trouble, he quickly crouched down so that our eyes were level.

And then I could see Dad’s face properly.

His skin was dark and tanned, and his half-curly hair was grown out roughly without any particular care. The older girls who were always following Dad around because they thought he was, what was it? sexy? handsome?—whatever it was they called him—seemed to like that about him.

There were pitch-black dark circles beneath his eyes. Combined with his deeply sunken eyes and gleaming golden irises, he looked terrifying, like some kind of carnivorous beast.

But even though he looked like that, my Dad was kind of an idiot.

He once boiled my white dress together with a red ribbon and turned the whole thing pink.

And whenever he looked at some very expensive liquor he’d received as a gift, he’d sigh deeply before pouring every last drop down the sink.

Apparently, he couldn’t live the way he used to anymore or something like that.

Even now, instead of a newspaper, Dad was holding a ladle in his hand.

Grandma Mary said people became smarter by reading a lot.

“W-Weren’t you making lasagna?”

“Yeah, yeah. I was just in the middle of boiling it.”

That’s strange.

I was sure lasagna was supposed to be a dish that took a lot of work.

“You were sneaking around without making a sound, so I figured you were up to another prank. I thought you’d end up cracking your forehead open like last time, so I came out.”

“T-That was because I tried to surprise you and failed, so I ran away!”

“Oh, is that right? I thought you just got hit by a badly bounced ball, went flying, and smashed into a flowerpot.”

Grrrr!

You were supposed to pretend you didn’t see things like that!

Just as I tightly pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t show that I was sulking, Dad suddenly snatched SomSom out of my arms.

I could see tattoos covering every knuckle of the hand holding SomSom.

They said Dad had been a complete mess before I came along.

How bad was he?

Bad enough that Big Uncle had described him like this.

“A total waste.”

Apparently, a total waste referred to a war hero whose liver and lungs had rotted so badly from drinking and smoking that he could barely fight.

Someone who was a duke, yet constantly gambled and borrowed money from loan sharks until he’d blown through his entire fortune.

Someone who dated women by the dozen and was a piece of trash who lived entirely off his good looks.

That was the kind of person the word referred to.

“If it weren’t for you, your father would’ve been dead a long time ago. You turned this bastard into a human being.”

I thought Dad was going to die young if he kept living like that, but then I appeared at exactly the right time and saved him.

Actually, the reason I’d kept putting off the day I’d go find Mom was because I was worried about Dad.

I protected Dad and world peace at the same time.

Still, he’d gone from being a complete idiot to merely being less of an idiot.

Wouldn’t he be able to live just fine without me now?

“That’s my doll! Give her backkk!”

When I stomped my feet and threw a tantrum, Dad tossed SomSom far away.

Thump.

SomSom landed on the drying rack and flopped over limply.

“She isn’t completely dry yet, so she needs to dry some more. Otherwise, she’ll grow mold from the inside. Do you know what mold is? It’s really bad. It’ll make you all achy-achey.”

“I’m not a baby. I don’t use words like ‘achy-achey!’”

“Sure, sure. You’re not a baby because you can’t even brush your own hair yet.”

“Grrr……”

I’d only forgotten because I was so excited about going to see Mom.

My chest simmered with frustration over circumstances I couldn’t explain.

Dad clicked his tongue as he combed through my hair with his fingers.

“Daughter. If you go out looking like that, the neighborhood ladies are going to complain about Dad. They’ll say I’m a father who can’t even brush his own kid’s hair. And what’s with this outfit? That skirt is from the wrong season. And the color combination… Tsk. No matter how I look at it, my daughter really doesn’t have any talent for art.”

“That’s not true! I have lots of talent! Didn’t you see the picture I drew of you last time? The teacher recognized you right away!”

“You drew yourself cooking with a ladle, but your teacher thought the ladle was a bottle of liquor and asked to have a parent-teacher meeting.”

“……”

I puffed out my cheeks and glared at Dad, but he didn’t look the least bit intimidated.

Maybe you really did have to be someone like him to cut down demons, slice apart monsters, and save the world.

Grin. Grin.

“Anyway, let’s go inside and change your clothes first.”

Dad reached out to pick me up, and I suddenly snapped back to my senses.

“No. Not right now.”

“Why? Not in the mood? I’ve lived long enough to know that the world doesn’t work according to how you feel.”

“That’s not it! I-I am going to become independent now! There’s a letter and my Declaration of Independence in my room, so go check them!”

“You promised Dad you’d become independent when you were twenty-nine.”