IBDHD 11

Chapter 11

“Fuck. If I ever drink like I did yesterday again, I’ll change my damn surname.”

Cassian wiped his mouth and cracked his neck with a loud crunch.

His shoulders felt heavy with the grim determination he’d once reserved for the battlefield.

Today, when he arrived at the orphanage, he planned to shove his certificate proving he was sterile right into the face of the employee who’d glared at him last time as though he were the lowest scum on earth.

Then he’d give them a proper earful.

Didn’t I tell you she wasn’t my daughter?!

After that, all he had to do was hand over the little squirt and walk away.

He’d finally be free, and the kid would have somewhere to eat three proper meals a day and play to her heart’s content.

A happy ending for everyone.

With such profound intentions in mind, he’d even skipped breakfast and left the house early.

And yet…

“(Mister, where are we going?)”

The moment the little squirt looked up at him with those round, innocent eyes, the words caught in his throat.

“Your hand…”

It was all because of her hand.

Since it was Monday morning, the streets were crowded. Before they’d even stepped through the front gate, the little squirt had reached out and firmly grabbed his hand.

She was probably afraid of getting lost in the crowd.

I’m going insane.

What the hell had her parents been teaching her?

How could they raise a child who so readily grabbed the hand of an adult she barely knew?

The little squirt was so tiny, so soft, and so delicate that she reminded him of a crumb from a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.

She was barely taller than a chestnut, reaching only as high as his hip.

And the faint little breaths coming from beside him were so fragile that they hardly seemed real.

Cassian vigorously rubbed his face with his free hand.

His stomach churned worse than it did the morning after he’d practically drowned himself in a barrel of alcohol.

“Haah. This really isn’t easy.”

Dropping to one knee, Cassian brought himself to the little squirt’s eye level.

“Make a fist like mine.”

When he released her hand, the little squirt blinked her round eyes before obediently curling her fingers into a fist, just as he’d demonstrated.

Her fist was about the size of a bean.

So this is what people mean by a cotton fist.

Wait. Those things actually exist?!

His head began to ache.

Smack!

He slapped his own forehead.

“How the hell are you supposed to survive in this cruel world with fists that tiny?”

“(What’s wrong with my fist?)”

“Try punching my hand.”

“(Whaaaat?)”

“Come on. Hurry up.”

He held his palm out in front of her and even beckoned with his fingers, inviting her to take a swing.

But the little squirt merely stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

Cassian felt as though his mind was about to collapse.

When he’d been her age, he’d fought so fiercely with his twin brother, Zenovion, that he’d once bitten his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise.

Are all little girls like this?

Or was I just a particularly strange kid?

“I said throw a punch. Like this!”

Whoosh!

He thrust his fist through the air.

The force of the movement produced an audible swish.

The little squirt’s already round eyes widened even further.

Then tears began to gather in them.

“(But fwends are supposed to get along… Are you a bad grown-up? Are you gonna hit me?)”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! That’s not it! I’m not doing this because I don’t like you! Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

After hurriedly soothing the little squirt, whose lips had begun to tremble, Cassian pressed his fingers firmly against the corners of his eyes.

“I’m going crazy.”

If someone picked a fight with her, she needed to be able to knock their teeth out.

But this little squirt was so ridiculously innocent that she had absolutely no idea how frightening the world could be.

After his parents died, Cassian had spent some time in an institution himself.

Back then, he’d had his twin brother, Zenovion.

Cassian had been a fairly large child with a nasty temper, so he wasn’t the sort people usually went out of their way to provoke.

But whenever a group of children ganged up on him, Zenovion had always fought alongside him.

At the very least, he’d never experienced the misery of being completely alone.

But this little speck of a kid is going to have to fight all by herself.

They expected him to toss this tiny little thing into the cold, merciless world?

No, seriously. Is that even okay?

It made absolutely no sense.

The world was a brutal place!

But what was the alternative?

Was he supposed to take her in and raise her himself?

That would be like pushing a child off a cliff because he was afraid she’d catch a chill from the autumn breeze.

“What are you going to do if someone says something mean to you, makes fun of you, or hits you?”

“(I told you! Fwends are supposed to get along!)”

“Yeah! That’s it! Shout like that! And what else should you do?”

“(We gotta share yummy food, give lotsa compliments, and be nice to each other! That’s what fwends do!)”

“No! Shouting isn’t enough! You have to do this! Hook! Hook! First, go straight for the face! Then hit them right here, in the solar plexus! Bam! Got it?”

“(Mister really is a bad grown-up… But I’m a good little kid…)”

Her head drooped dejectedly.

The sight made Cassian feel as though the alcohol he’d drunk two days ago had suddenly turned sour in his stomach.

“S-Stalker syndrome! No, wait, stalker… Stockholm syndrome? Whatever! It’s a disease! A damn disease!”

Having recognized the alarming state he was in, Cassian pounded his chest before grabbing fistfuls of his own hair.

A silent scream erupted from within him.

But then he looked at the little squirt’s dejected face again.

For some inexplicable reason, his heart gave a painful squeeze.

His chest felt unbearably tight.

“Y-you… You’re probably not going to get beaten up anywhere. Yeah. That’s right.”

With that uncanny ability to make people’s hearts ache, she’d probably turn everyone she met into an ally.

She’d eat well, live well, and get along just fine wherever she went.

Right. Who the hell am I to be worrying about someone else?

His resolve strengthened once more.

Cassian took the child’s hand again, just as he had before.

Perhaps it was because her hand felt so soft against his palm.

For a brief moment, his own heart softened as well, and the conscience he’d thrown away long ago began to ache.

And so, on their way to the orphanage, he bought the little squirt an entire cake.

After all, if he sent her off with a cake, she could share it with the other children.

And if she shared something delicious with them, surely they’d be less likely to bully her.

That was all there was to it.

“(Where are we going?)”

“Uh, well… You’ll find out when we get there. Yeah, when we get there.”

Hmm.

Haven’t I heard something like this before?

My friends had told me about it a long time ago.

They said that when grown-ups told children they were taking them somewhere to eat something delicious, it was usually a lie.

Apparently, grown-ups were the sort of people who promised to buy you lemon candy and then took you to the dentist instead.

So I stopped walking and stood perfectly still.

The mister immediately grabbed me by the back of my neck and lifted me off the ground.

“You’re already rebelling against me when you’re this tiny?”

“(Waaah! Put me doooown!)”

He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

And the place he carried me to was…

“See?! I told you she wasn’t my daughter!”

The cave orphanage.

The one place I absolutely, positively didn’t want to live.

I’d gone straight from my home to Sunshine Orphanage, but some of my friends had passed through several other orphanages before arriving there.

That was why I’d heard so many stories about what other orphanages were like.

“The place I used to live only gave us slop every single day.”

“Yeah! And we never got any allowance, so we couldn’t even buy cloud candy.”

For someone like me, who ate a balanced diet of meat, vegetables, and fruit, the idea of having to eat nothing but slop without ever getting to enjoy cloud candy was almost impossible to believe.

It was as unbelievable as Uncle Michael greeting us without giving us any candy afterward.

I-I don’t wanna eat slop.

I like yummy food!

And I didn’t want to play in an empty dirt lot without a single piece of playground equipment, either.

“I’m telling you, there’s no way she’s my daughter! What was that you said? That she looks like me? Give me a break.”

“Oh, goodness. You’re right. It’s quite remarkable how much you resemble each other, though.”

“Do you have any idea how many people in this world have black hair? For fuck’s sake.”

Does the monster mister hate me?

Or maybe he doesn’t know how to get along with children because he isn’t a good grown-up?

“(Misterrr. I’m a really, really good kid. I’ll teach you more about how to be a good grown-up.)”

So can’t you let me live at your house just a little longer?

Sure, his house smelled funny and was dirty, but the mister gave me meat.

I could eat egg sandwiches there, too.

And he even had an enormous bar of milk chocolate!

“Yes, well, I’ve checked the documents you provided. But I’ll still need you to fill out this form. We have to keep a record of where and how you found the child so we can locate her biological parents later.”

“Ah, right. Sure. Mister’s busy, so you just sit there and eat your cake.”

While the mister filled out the paperwork, one of the older girls at the orphanage cut me a slice of the cake he’d bought.

I was hungry, so after glaring at the mister for a while, I began shoveling cake into my mouth.

The sweet taste of soft, juicy peaches spread across my tongue.

Somehow, it made me feel a little less sad.

“All right, then. Thank you for going through the trouble of bringing the child all the way here. And for looking after her these past few days. It must have been difficult.”

“Oh, you have no idea. It was a hell of a lot of trouble.”

The mister nodded before glancing down at me.

I immediately threw my arms around his leg and clung to it with all my might.

Does the Goddess not like me being with the mister?

For some strange reason, my throat had started feeling terribly itchy.

My whole body itched, too.

It was almost unbearable.

But I refused to let go.

I clung tightly to the mister’s leg.

When he tightened his grip on the back of my neck, I only hugged his leg harder.

“(Misterrr. I’ll make you dance every single day! I’ll give you lotsa compliments, and tell you you’re pretty, pretty, and-and… I don’t wanna stay here. Sniff.)”

“H-hey! What’s gotten into you? Hey! I’m telling you, I’m not your dad!”

The mister swung his leg, trying to shake me off.

But the more he shook it, the harder I clung.

“It seems the child has grown quite attached to you.”

“Look, I know I’m incredibly handsome and amazing, but this is going too far. I’m a man who believes in living the single life.”

“(Misterrrr.)”

“Come on, let go already. Shoo! Shoo!”

He even started waving his hands at me, trying to chase me away.

A terrible feeling of sadness washed over me.

Maybe that was why it suddenly became hard to breathe.

And I felt like I was about to burst into tears.

But before the tears could come, my nose started running.