“…I’m sick and tired of being disappointed in you.”
At the cold voice of the man, hands and feet trembled.
“You are not my daughter. Even from the very beginning, you are nothing to me.”
As soon as this was heard, tears were shed, a heart pounded unbearably.
Despair. As if the world had collapsed.
While gasping, the chest was grasped tightly.
“Dad, no, Father. Please, I-I was wrong. E-Everything was my fault.”
So, please don’t leave. Don’t throw me away. I’ll be a good daughter.
It was muttered constantly, this plea of forgiveness.
Forgiveness… Forgiveness…
‘Why the hell am I pleading for it?’
Suddenly, she came to her senses.
‘…Huh?’
Doah noticed a beat late—that her hands were soaked in thick, crimson blood.
As soon as she looked down slightly, she saw that her chest had been stabbed, a dagger sticking out in front.
“……”
They say that shock could render one so speechless that you won’t even scream.
Doah stiffly looked around, the only part of her moving were her eyes.
The only source of illumination in this dark room were the candles that shook dangerously.
Beneath her seat was a round circle, a hexagram and unknown patterns that were drawn with blood.
It was such a strange thing to see, as if it’s a determined effort to curse someone…
“’Please let Ophelia die’. Did you make that wish?”
“……”
“I’m asking you whether this is true!”
“No! I-I only want to be O-Ophelia, I want to be your real daughter…”
Doah’s head hit the floor, and there, she prayed.
Then, as though he was pressing down on the anger welling up, a rough breath rang out.
Soon, a terribly subdued voice could be heard over her head.
“Even until the bitter end, you’re crossing the line.”
“F-Father…”
“Live as if you’re dead.”
“……”
“Otherwise, I won’t be able to endure your existence any longer.”
And, as if he had no regrets, the man turned his back and left.
Those footsteps were getting farther away.
At the same time, this body on the ground, which could not move as though it was being pressed down with sleep paralysis, finally moved.
The mouth, which had been talking about unfamiliar words and emotions, finally stopped.
Doah quickly wiped away the tears that covered her eyesight with the back of her hand.
Bang—!
However, the door already slammed shut with a loud sound as though it would break.
Dust rose sharply, filling the entire space between the ceiling and the floor.
“Cough, cough…!”
Doah looked around as she coughed in the heady air.
“What… What the hell is this…”
A space filled with only dust, spider webs and mold.
It was the place where she woke up, when she thought that she had died.
* * *
Park Doah was an orphan.
That’s why, when she caught the eye of a chaebol family, who everyone knew just by their name alone, she was very happy.
Because she had many dreams about having parents and siblings.
What was it like to have someone who would always be on your side?
What did it feel like to receive love and attention every moment?
Until she left the nursery and got into a luxurious foreign car that everyone envied, she was full of expectations.
She now had people who she could call her family. And yet, it was all without knowing that this was nothing but a trap.
“Sa-Save me! Please let me out! I was wrong! I’m sorry!”
In that dark abyss where she couldn’t see even an inch ahead of her,
Doah pounded on the door so hard that her arms started to bruise, scratched it until her nails had cracked and blood flowed from them.
Even so, the door never opened. Except for when meals were being delivered.
A hundred and twenty days later, a shaman opened the door and came in, giving Doah a cold look.
“Don’t even dare to breathe as you wish. You are here to receive the young lady’s misfortune.”
Only then did Doah come to know of her situation.
That she had been adopted only because she resembled the family’s precious daughter who was destined to live a short life.
She was trapped here only to be used to receive that daughter’s misfortune.
Ten years. She lived like that for ten years.
Trapped in darkness, taking away that bad luck.
It was not until she grew to adulthood that she could barely escape from this infernal household.
No, to be exact, it would be more accurate to say that she had been thrown out with all their might.
But she was happy. Finally, she would be free to live like others. Finally, she would not be a tool to be used—she would be a human being just like anyone else.
It was worth it to endure and be obedient all those years. However…
She was run over by a car.
The screeching of a vehicle’s brakes, the shouts and screams of a shocked driver, the car that broke through a guardrail and rolled down a cliff, the terrible pain that penetrated her abdomen, the breaths that were slowly escaping from her…
As she watched the series of accidents that took place in an instant, Doah was convinced.
Ah, the Park family’s finally killing her.
‘So it seems that after killing me, they’ll disguise it as a car accident.’
It was so unfair that she couldn’t even bring herself to cry.
If she were to die like this, she thought that she might just wander in the netherworld without even being able to move on to the next frontier.
But here she was. She didn’t expect that she’d become a ten-year-old child.
“I can’t believe it… I definitely died.”
Doah muttered as she denied reality.
She clearly remembered the very moment she stopped breathing.
However, as though betraying her conviction, unfamiliar memories flowed into her head.
It was the memories of this body’s owner, ‘Bunny’.
‘Bunny?’
It was ordinarily meant for rabbits, but surprisingly enough, it was her real name.
She was just an orphan born and raised in the slums called ‘garbage dump’.
However one day, she accidentally caught the eye of Grand Duke Credel, and so she was adopted.
It was because she looked similar to the Credel family’s youngest daughter, Ophelia Credel.
It wasn’t anything like a sob story of not being able to forget his dead daughter.
Ophelia was doing well in the family’s countryside villa.
There was a reason why the real daughter was sent off to a countryside villa and took a fake into the family.
‘What do you mean, avoid the curse of the sorcerer?’
One might wonder if these people were too far gone into some manic pseudo religion, but they weren’t.
In this world, things like ‘curses’ were real.
Magic users that used the forbidden arts for evil were called sorcerers.
One of them cursed Ophelia, and Bunny was adopted so that she could be a substitute for that curse.
Doah lowered the sleeves of the dress she was wearing.
Then, she saw the hidden black pattern engraved on her forearm.
This was the sign that she had received the curse instead of Ophelia.
‘No one ever told Bunny what this curse was.’
However, one thing was clear to her. The moment her 18-year-old mind took over, she knew what would happen after the curse would be complete.
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On the day the curse would be completely transferred to Bunny, everything would return to how they all used to.
The real daughter would return to her family. The fake daughter would return to the slums.