IJSMC 05

Chapter : 05

Sirius was someone who would go on to accomplish something as grand as conquering the world.

Once he was swept up in countless events, he would quickly forget something as trivial as another person’s small dark past.

That’s right. Of course he would.

“Ugh……”

Elena let out an unidentifiable sound and burrowed deeper under her blanket.

She should have realized it the moment she was told she’d been assigned the lowest-ranked room, but at the time, all her attention had been focused on escaping.

And her father, Duke Rode, was truly heartless.

She was still his daughter, yet he had shamelessly given the room next door to an unrelated man.

Then again, if he actually cared about her, that in itself would be terrifying.

Elena sighed at a reality she could barely even imagine.

Earlier, Courtney had complained that it was unfair the duke had ordered Sirius not to be touched.

But that merely meant he was forbidden from life-threatening abuse.

To the duke, Elena was nothing more than a being who only needed to possess properly attached golden eyes.

However, Elena hadn’t been treated this way from the very beginning.

Surprisingly, she had once been the daughter most doted upon by Duke Rode.

Elena clearly remembered how much the duke had cherished her on the day she was born.

“Waaah!”

Childbirth was an incredibly difficult and burdensome process even for the baby.

Elena was born in a daze and finally laid down in a cradle.

The cradle was warm and soft, yet she continued crying loudly.

She had definitely died.

Then, while drifting through darkness with blurred memories, she had been reading a book—only to suddenly be shoved out and born.

‘I hadn’t even finished the ending!’

The book was a novel with a man named Sirius Hyperion as its protagonist.

As befitting a male lead, Sirius was perfect—but unfortunately, the genre was a typical power fantasy.

The virtue demanded of such protagonists was catharsis, and Sirius faithfully embodied it by smashing everything in his path.

There was no female lead. Sirius was far too ruthless for romance.

His sole goal was to become the strongest being in that world, and every family that tried to bind him through marriage was wiped out.

Among them, the Duke Rode family was annihilated after attempting to use him by engaging their fourth daughter to him.

Though this occurred very early in the extremely long novel, it was the most important part to Elena.

‘And I was born as the youngest daughter of that family?!’

In the book she’d read, Duke Rode had only six children. Yet she had been born as the seventh.

The maids beside her were chattering about her becoming Lady Elena of the Rode family, so there was no doubt.

What in the world was going on?

Elena burst into tears, crying loudly like a newborn should.

“His Grace the Duke is entering.”

At the sound of people bustling around, Elena finally stopped crying.

Still, she couldn’t completely suppress it and began hiccupping.

She had been born into the absolute worst family.

Even if the ending was tragic, the process could have been happy—but not here.

The Duke Rode, who would become her father, was a man who had expertly raised Sirius into a madman, meaning he himself was no less insane.

No matter how she thought about it, her fate was far too cruel.

She summed up her complicated feelings in a single sound.

“Waaah…”

Her emotions were desperate, but as a newborn, this was her limit.

Though she possessed an old soul, it had firmly settled into an infant’s body.

As Elena lamented her fate, a shadow fell over her.

At the same time, she heard someone say that the duke was looking at the newborn baby.

‘This man is my father?!’

Elena stared warily at Duke Rode.

The black-haired man was undeniably handsome, but he looked so cold that touching his face might freeze one’s fingertips.

“Perfect.”

Suddenly, his icy expression cracked, and he smiled.

It was a flower-like smile that suited his handsome face.

Elena forgot even to whimper in surprise.

The duke, infamous for his cruelty, was smiling happily at her.

At the same time, a pure white mist of light spread out as if it were an illusion.

“This child shall be named Elena. Give her a room with an eastern garden. Care for her with utmost devotion and allow her to lack for nothing.”

Strange. He was supposed to be a man who treated his children harshly.

‘Why am I the only one being treated specially?’

As days passed with devoted care, Elena pondered deeply.

There had to be a hint in the fact that she had been born as a character who never appeared in the book.

It felt like a revelation telling her to change something.

After long consideration, Elena suddenly recalled a familiar type of story.

You know the kind.

A near-tyrant father gains a cute daughter, goes through a healing process, and is eventually reformed—a touching tale.

She thought she might be that story’s protagonist.

Judging by how the duke, indifferent to his other children, had already fallen for her, it seemed certain.

But that was Elena’s misunderstanding.

“Da-da.”

Around the time Elena was just beginning to speak proper words, Duke Rode once dismissed everyone else and remained alone with her.

“Elena.”

Strangely, that day, the mysterious white mist was nowhere to be seen near her father.

Instead, suffocating black smoke was leaking from him.

Every sense in her body screamed at her to run away, but she forced herself to ignore it.

Until now, her father had only shown her affection.

Elena continued smiling brightly at him right until his hand reached her.

“Ghk!”

The moment the duke’s hand began to tighten around her neck, Elena panicked and struggled violently.

Her vision flickered black, and her heart felt like it would burst.

Just before losing consciousness, she faintly remembered the duke’s words.

“…I don’t understand. If she inherited the golden eyes of Rode, she should have dodged first.”

That voice was still vivid enough to plunge her into fear in an instant.

Trying to shake off the memory, Elena rubbed her head hard against the pillow.

Her fingers, now cold, trembled slightly.

It really wasn’t good to think too much before sleeping.

Bad memories resurfaced with unnecessary clarity.

After that, Elena was threatened multiple times by her father, Duke Rode.

His behavior felt like he was testing her.

“With such vivid golden eyes, she should be more than capable of piercing human hearts… How strange. Do these perfect golden eyes truly have no ability at all?”

At first, Elena didn’t understand his muttering.

In the book she had read before being born, there was not a single line stating that the golden eyes of Rode could read emotions.

So until she realized the true nature of her ability, Elena merely clung to the duke without understanding.

The being who had once poured boundless affection onto her had become an object of fear, yet Elena was afraid to accept that her father had always been that kind of person.

So despite the continued threats, she only kept smiling brightly.

Meanwhile, her room was gradually downgraded—from one with an eastern garden, to a smaller room, then to one with no sunlight at all.

Now, she had been relegated to a miserable attic in the western tower.

It was the complete opposite path of her siblings, who earned their father’s approval and were rewarded with better rooms.

The duke no longer smiled at her. At most, he occasionally looked at her with contempt.

At first, she had felt a betrayal so painful it tore her heart apart—but now she wondered if he had ever betrayed her at all.

Duke Rode had never loved her as a daughter from the beginning.

He had only cherished the golden eyes attached to her.

As his treatment of her slowly changed, her siblings—who had envied the favor she’d received from birth—began to torment her.

Born with ordinary moral values, Elena could never adapt to the ways of the Rode family.

She didn’t want to reveal her ability and be thrown into a brutal succession battle.

The entire Rode family was horrifying.

May you fall exactly as fate dictates—at Sirius’s hands!

“Haah…”

Elena sighed and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

She didn’t know why her father continued to let her live despite her refusal to reveal any ability.

But thinking about it was pointless. She didn’t want to think about such things anymore.

It would really be best to stop recalling the past altogether.

Then she thought it might be better to recall today’s embarrassing incident instead.

The brief burst of multicolored light that had erupted from Sirius.

She’d completely humiliated herself in front of him from start to finish, but that one thing was worth remembering.

Lights born purely from joy were extremely rare here.

Was she really that funny?

“Heh.”

Come to think of it, if she were Sirius, she would have found it hilarious too.

For the first time in a long while, Elena let out a short laugh.

Feeling better, she murmured to herself.

“Ah, I should’ve realized back then.”

Courtney had said Sirius was assigned the lowest-ranked room.

And earlier that day, Sirius had mentioned that her room looked similar to his.

She hadn’t known what he meant then—but the room he was comparing it to was right next door.

Elena had been inside that room before; it was exactly the same as hers.

Separated by a single thin wall, the rooms were identical in size.

‘Somehow, I ended up neighbors with Sirius.’

It would be a bit suffocating to live quietly and carefully for a while, but he would soon satisfy the duke’s expectations and be moved to a better room.

She could endure that much time.

‘Still… what is Sirius doing right now?’

Though it was already late at night, Elena pressed her ear against the thin wall beside her bed.

No, she wasn’t being a pervert—she was just curious whether he was awake like her.

Then, she heard something she had never imagined.

“Hhk…”

Elena jolted upright in shock.

…Crying?

Amid the intermittent, ragged breathing, there was unmistakably the sound of a boy crying.

Sirius was crying? Why would he cry?

Sirius—who hadn’t wavered even when the duke openly pressured him, who had only seemed mildly annoyed when Courtney provoked him—was crying beyond the wall.