IBDHD 2

I’d been at the orphanage just a moment ago…… Where was this place? Goddess, where am I?

I was so startled that tears welled up in my eyes, but I desperately held them back, determined not to cry.

The man who owned this house was the handsomest person I’d ever seen in my entire ten years of life.

And he looked overwhelmingly mean.

Snap.

Snap.

The man snapped his fingers right in front of my eyes.

“Hey, hey. Baby. Pay attention to what I’m saying.”

I couldn’t hear a single word he was saying.

That was because every single knuckle of the hand in front of me was covered in pitch-black tattoos.

“Hic! Hic!”

Even Uncle Michael, who was famous for being incredibly scary in our neighborhood, didn’t have tattoos like those…… If this man was even scarier than Uncle Michael, just how evil was he?

H-He might eat me!

That was what the witch in my fairy tale book had said.

Little children had soft, tender flesh, which made them taste even better.

“Why are you standing in front of my house? Don’t you know that kids who hang around here get eaten by monsters?”

“……”

“You haven’t been able to answer me this whole time. I’m not a scary person. Stop crying and hurry back to your own home.”

Our teacher in the Sunshine Wings Class always said the same thing.

Whenever something went wrong, we should ask adults for help before we started crying.

I looked around and spotted someone passing by, so I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“(N-Nooo! I don’t wanna! Help meee!)”

Pitter-patter-patter!

I ran as fast as I could and clung to the passerby’s leg.

“(Save meee! Waaahhhh!)”

After desperately calling out to the adults for help, the man who owned the house and I ended up at the security office.

“No. I’m telling you, I really don’t know this kid! I’ve never seen this little brat before today.”

“Come on, Mr. Cassian. No matter how angry you are, how can you deny your own daughter like that? She’s obviously your daughter. Anyone can see she’s the spitting image of you. She looks about five years old, too. I know because my own daughter is about that age~”

“She was standing in front of my house, so I simply advised her to go home! She started crying all on her own!”

“And another thing. Physical violence isn’t the only kind of abuse. Verbal abuse is abuse, too. Do you want to be charged with child abuse? What kind of world do you think we live in these days?”

“I’m an unmarried bachelor! Someone abandoned this kid at my house and ran off! Please, just listen to me!”

“You may not be married, but we all know you’ve dated more women than we can count. It’s hardly surprising that you might have gotten someone pregnant and ended up with a daughter this age. We all knooow that~”

“I’m going crazy! Waaah!”

The man named Cassian repeatedly pounded his chest at the security officer’s words.

“I know it’s not our place to interfere with how someone else raises their child, but when a kid makes a mistake, you shouldn’t just yell at them so harshly that they can’t even speak. You should comfort them, too. And even if children are quick to pick up foreign languages, their mother tongue should still be the Imperial language. She can understand Imperial but can’t speak it? That’s a serious problem, isn’t it? You’re starting her foreign-language education far too early~”

I couldn’t understand what the security officer was saying, so I instinctively looked for someone who could help.

Goddess, why don’t you come out here for a moment?

Come out and clean up this mess, please! You’re more than three thousand years old! You’re a very, very grown-up adult, Goddess!

But the Goddess was petty.

She’d granted my birthday wish, but she’d ignored my prayer when I was trembling in terror and desperately begging for help.

Isn’t a security officer supposed to catch bad people and put them in prison……?

Instead of taking anyone to prison, he just finished by lecturing the man who owned the house.

To make matters worse, when he sent us out of the security office, he even made us shake hands and reconcile before sending us on our way.

I remembered a word that the older sister of my best friend, who was five years older than us, had once taught me.

—Delin…… del…… delin…… What was it again?

Oh! I remembered!

The security officer and Mr. Cassian were both delinquents!

I hated those delinquent adults so much that, starting today, I was going to hate brushing my teeth, too.

Holding the man’s hand, I returned to the strange house I’d been at earlier.

The man’s house was such a mess that the teachers at the orphanage would have fainted if they’d seen it.

The floor was covered with sour-smelling clothes, liquor bottles, and cigarette ash. Even black clumps of dust were rolling around among them.

A monster…… A beggar monster?!

Suddenly, I felt a little sorry for the man who had seemed so terrifying earlier, and I looked up at him with pity.

I hadn’t noticed before, but now that I looked more closely, I could see that he had patchy stubble on his face, too.

H-He has beard baldness!

So the monster man had a reason to be so angry all the time.

The monster man casually nudged the things on the floor aside with his feet, sweeping them left and right to clear a path.

When we finally reached the living room sofa, I saw plates of moldy food scattered all over it.

If it had been me, I would have cleaned everything up right away, but the monster man didn’t seem to care at all. He simply flopped down onto the sofa.

“I’m dying. I haven’t even had a chance to sober up, and now this happens.”

The monster man looked at me, still standing there nervously.

“Hey, little brat. Where’s your mom? Your mom.”

Mom? My mom was in the empire.

I’d been good at speaking the Imperial language until I was five, but after I went to the orphanage, I started speaking another language.

That was why I could understand at least some of what the man was saying, but when it came to answering him, the words wouldn’t come out easily.

As I moved my lips, trying to speak, the man asked again with a frightening expression.

“You have a mom, don’t you? What about your dad? Where do your parents live? Where’s your house?”

My mom lived very far away, and I’d never had a dad in the first place.

When I couldn’t say anything, the man let out an exaggerated sigh right in front of me.

He had a frighteningly handsome face, but he looked so obviously exhausted that my shoulders instinctively hunched inward.

The man waved his hand dismissively and said,

“Forget it. If your parents don’t show up by tomorrow, I’ll send you to a facility.”

After saying that, the monster man promptly began snoring loudly.

I wiped the corners of my eyes with my sleeve and went to the bathroom.

The director of the orphanage had told us that after coming in from outside, we should wash our hands first.

But when I tried to wash my hands……

“Huhhh?”

I couldn’t reach the sink.

I hopped up and down and caught a faint glimpse of my reflection. That was when I finally understood what had happened.

I’d been the tenth tallest kid in the Sunshine Wings Class, but now I’d turned into a baby!

Goddess, you idiot!

Zero points! Pig! Monkey! Crayfish!

I’d asked for a dad, but instead, the Goddess had turned me into a little sibling who was much shorter than my original self and sent me to the monster man’s house.

The Goddess must have gotten zero points in language arts!

I was clenching and unclenching my tiny hands, insulting the Goddess for being an idiot, when—

Knock, knock.

A faint knocking sound came from the front door, followed by a cautious voice and the appearance of another man.

“Boss? Are you asleep? It’s me, Baron.”

The man who called the monster man Boss had a buzz cut, a flashy shirt, and several gold necklaces dangling around his neck.

I peered out from behind the bathroom door, showing only my eyes, and glared at the man named Baron.

“Oh. He’s still asleep.”

As though he were used to this, Baron began cleaning the house.

He shoved all the clothes on the floor into the laundry basket in one corner of the living room and carried the liquor bottles outside.

He even gently swept up the dust and cigarette ash with a broom before thoroughly wiping the floor with a rag.

Whoosh! Whap! Bam!

After quickly cleaning up the filthy house, the man headed toward the bathroom to wash the rag. That was when our eyes met!

We both screamed at the same time.

“Eeeeeek!”

“A-A-A-A ROBBER!”

Baron, startled and worked up in an instant, thrust his tightly clenched fists forward, punching the air again and again as he shouted.

“C-Come at me! I-I’m not scared!”

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

I could hear my heart pounding.

I’m not scared at all. I’m not scared one bit.

No, I am! I’m scaaared……

If I’d still been ten years old, I could have escaped as quickly as a flying squirrel!

I was trembling in the bathroom when—

“Shut up. Why can’t you ever sit still when you come to someone else’s house?”

“Ah! Boss! You’re awake? A-A robber broke in!”

“He’s not a robber…… Haah. Hey, little brat. Get out here. Now.”

I ignored the monster man and stayed huddled inside the bathroom.

A moment later, a huge hand suddenly shot through the gap in the door, grabbed the back of my neck, and lifted me dangling into the air.

“(Waaaaah! Put me downnn! I said put me doooown!)”

Whoosh!

The monster man practically tossed me over to the buzz-cut man.

Scratching his head roughly, the monster man spoke in a deeply hoarse voice.

“Baron.”

“Yes, Boss!”

“Keep an eye on that little brat. I have an important appointment today, so I need to head out. If her mother comes looking for her, make sure you tell her firmly never to abandon her kid at someone else’s house again.”

“Understood! Yeeeees? Boss, isn’t she your daughter?”

“I don’t know about anything else, but I was damn thorough about contraception. What makes you think she’s my daughter?”

After saying that, the monster man left the house without even sparing me a glance.

Ugh…… Goddess! Why on earth is this my birthday present?!