Chapter 1
God is so indifferent.
They say after hardship comes happiness. What a joke.
By nature, the life of a K-eldest daughter is one where more hardship awaits after hardship—just like my life.
I was born as the eldest daughter of an unusual family in South Korea.
There are many types of eldest daughters, but I had the “youngest head of household” option loaded on me. The most hardcore difficulty level.
My mother died, my father lost his job and fell into alcoholism.
At the tender age of twenty, a painfully obvious triple combo of misfortune struck my family.
My father sank into the bottle and gave up on himself. My siblings cried every night trembling in fear.
I had to pull myself together. There was no time to blame or resent anyone. To put food on the table, I had to do whatever it took.
I took a leave of absence from university and got a job at a factory. The salary was barely enough to feed our family of four.
I drank instant coffee instead of a 2,000 won Americano to save money. I agonized over buying a single pair of pants that cost 20,000 won for days. Every penny was precious to buy my siblings’ school uniforms, bags, and sneakers.
I wasn’t resentful about that life… or rather, I was burning with anger every time I saw those money-eating hippos.
I’m a person too. I wanted to eat delicious food and wear pretty clothes with my own money.
I desperately held on, hoping that someday my siblings and father would become decent human beings.
But even after several years, my father never came to his senses. He became a reckless hooligan, as if he’d learned “Hooligan 101” somewhere, and began to wreak havoc.
He flipped the dining table, broke things, and just as he was about to lay hands on my siblings, my calm eldest-daughter instincts kicked in.
“Father, please stay calm. If you resist, it’ll hurt more.”
I lightly jumped up and delivered a side kick straight to his ribs.
Father, don’t forget I have a 3rd-degree black belt in Taekwondo. I can easily take down anyone too drunk to recognize friend from foe.
That day, my father was admitted to a white house on the hill. Peace finally came to our home.
But as if God would never allow my peace, a new disaster came.
“Don’t interfere in my life, sister. You’re not our parent, so don’t act high and mighty.”
“Sis, I told you to buy me Golden Goose shoes, not these cheap sneakers!”
My younger siblings, high on their middle school rebellion phase, started to run wild.
For the first time in my life, I resented God. They say raising children well is useless, and indeed it was. Raising money-starved, poorly clothed kids carefully only earned me a triple combo of summons.
Summoned to school, summoned to the police station, summoned to the court.
When called to school, my heart ached so much I couldn’t even raise my head. I apologized profusely to the victimized students.
“I’m sorry. I failed to raise my siblings properly…”
When summoned to the police station, I felt dizzy and wanted to give up and run away far. But worried my siblings might go astray, I grit my teeth and endured.
The day I was summoned to court, I saw my siblings shed fake tears in front of the judge, and my mind cleared.
‘They are demons, not humans.’
I made up my mind to rehabilitate them before these demons bring more harm to society.
First, I quit the factory and re-enrolled in Taekwondo. To execute my rehabilitation project, I needed strength.
No amount of tears or love would bring anything but greater betrayal. Only the logic of strength could save the hooligans who declared themselves evil.
To isolate the hooligans from society, I remodeled the house.
I removed the doorknobs from my siblings’ rooms and reinstalled them backward, blocked windows, and installed soundproofing materials on the walls. No matter how much noise they made, neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed.
After all the preparations, I waited for my siblings to come home.
They broke in once a week to steal money. That was the golden timing to put my rehabilitation project into action.
A few days later, my younger sister came first, and my younger brother the next day.
My sister, upon entering, quietly got locked in her room. She must have felt the weight difference from my trained thighs.
As expected, only the logic of strength was light, truth, and life.
However, my younger brother did not yield easily. So I fairly threw a side kick to his face.
The thrill of stomping the mouth of the brother who always talked about “survival of the fittest” was indescribable.
After a fierce fight, I won. There aren’t many younger brothers in the world who can beat a Taekwondo black-belt sister armed with love’s discipline.
“Now, you quietly stay in your room too.”
After locking the defeated beast in the cage, the world was peaceful. It was the most peaceful day since our mother’s passing.
About ten days later, my siblings knelt down, crying their eyes out, begging for forgiveness.
They seemed to realize they might end up like our father if they continued.
I knew their tears were crocodile tears, but I forgave them for now. I even returned the phones I had confiscated.
Of course, the phones had tracking apps installed for their safety.
I gave them ten commandments for becoming new people: Don’t hit others, don’t steal, sleep at home—common sense rules.
“Hold out your finger. Let’s seal this.”
They willingly signed a pledge promising to be locked up again if they broke the commandments. Their expressions while sealing it were strange, but I didn’t care.
I never expected these demons to keep their promises.
Sure enough, my siblings blatantly escaped and fell back into delinquency. Calmly, I checked their locations via GPS and launched capture operations.
“No matter how much you run, you’re still in my palm.”
What followed was quick and smooth. They were caught, locked up, begged, forgiven, released, caught again, and locked up.
After about seven repetitions each, they finally surrendered, completely losing their will to resist.
Thus, their adolescence ended, and the two black dragons disguised themselves in human skin.
The savings and retirement fund I spent in my twenties on this rehabilitation project vanished.
It wouldn’t be a lie to say it wasn’t worth it, but I had no regrets. It was the most valuable money I had ever spent since birth.
When I locked my siblings in a GED academy and looked for a job, news came that my father had recovered.
After several years, I met my father and had a normal conversation. His eyes had focus. That alone was a big improvement.
I summarized my siblings’ misbehavior, court trials, and rehabilitation efforts to him. His fingertips trembled from the aftereffects of alcoholism.
“Big daughter, I’ll just live here for the rest of my life.”
“You said you wanted to be discharged. You seem fine now, so come out and feed us.”
Dragging my weak father who said he had no confidence, I climbed the mountain every day.
A healthy mind dwells in a healthy body. Since my father could plank for one minute, he never spoke weakly again.
Soon, my father and I both got jobs. I as an accountant in a small company, and he as an apartment security guard.
My younger brother studied and worked part-time. He even went to the police once after a fight with a customer at work, but luckily only had to pay a settlement.
My younger sister fell into a reckless love affair with a man she met at a study cafe and almost had her hair shaved and was nearly confined, but thankfully she came to her senses before it was carried out.
That birthday was the best since our mother died.
My family gave me cake and presents, and said the words I had wanted to hear for ten years.
“Sis, I talked with oppa. If we pass the GED, will you go to college?”
“Sis, we’ll pay for your tuition. You can quit your job now.”
“Big daughter, dad can work two jobs for living expenses! Don’t worry!”
It was truly a day that made me feel my effort to make beasts into people was worth it. I quit my job that day and devoted myself to studying with an allowance.
I realized at twenty-nine how comfortable life is when living on someone else’s money.
With the phone paid by my younger brother, I freely read web novels and webtoons. Even when I was scolded for a 100,000 won phone bill, I felt good.
Life wasn’t so bad. I felt like better things were going to happen.
That was the first time I thought so—then I died.
The damned dump truck, and the rest is omitted.
I’m already dead, but I feel like I could die of injustice.
I thought I was dead, but I woke up again.
The rococo ceiling I saw as soon as I opened my eyes was so foreign, I couldn’t even imagine where in South Korea I was.
My ears were ringing, and my body was stiff. I couldn’t move a finger.
For a long time, I stared at the ceiling mural of baby angels hunting devils.
Soon the mural distorted, and strange memories flooded into my mind. They belonged to a person named “Ariel Vallienor.”
While forced memories were implanted, a ringing noise pierced my ears.
Convulsions started from my fingertips and toes. My waist floated and my whole body shook violently. Then, like taking out earplugs, a clear sound rushed in.
A foreign language. Foreign voices.
Everything was strange, yet familiar. The most unfamiliar thing was understanding a language I had never heard before.
“Wizard, my… my daughter has come back to life?”
“First, we must stop these convulsions.”
“Ariel, can you hear me…”
Beeeeep—
The memory of Ariel Vallienor that occupied my mind was sucked into black darkness. It was a strange sensation of the memory being completely absorbed into my body.
How much time had passed?
When I finally opened my eyes, I realized I was inside the novel I had read recently, “I Saved a Cat and It Obsessed Over Me.”
I had possessed the eldest daughter of the Vallienor family, the dark lord family in “Gogu House.”
According to the original story, the eldest daughter of Vallienor should have died yesterday.
“…Damn. Eldest daughter again.”
The day my life as a K-eldest daughter ended, and my life as a fantasy eldest daughter began.
