About Rosetta Cliff’s Misfortune
Whoooosh.
From somewhere, the faint sound of rough wind could be heard.
She realized instinctively.
‘Ah, the dream of that day again.’
The beginning of this dream was always the same.
A dark field where a fierce snowstorm raged.
A thinly dressed child desperately walking while clinging to a woman’s hand…
It was her childhood self.
“Cough. Where are we going?”
Each time she burst into a rough cough, her emaciated body, thin from not eating properly, shook violently.
There was no answer to the child’s question.
Feeling anxious, the child asked once more.
“Huh? Where are we going?”
“Be quiet! Can’t you keep silent for a moment?”
Smack!
With a sharp sound, the woman struck the back of the child’s hand.
The delicate skin, frozen by the snowstorm, had long since turned red and chapped.
On top of that, after being hit, a bead of blood formed on the back of the hand.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sob.”
Perhaps the place that was hit hurt terribly, because the child hurriedly let go of the woman’s hand and covered the injured back of her hand with the other hand.
But the tears wouldn’t stop from the sorrow.
The hot tears froze as soon as they flowed down.
The gaunt child’s cheeks were rough and cracked in places.
“Can’t you follow faster!”
“Sob, hic. I-I’m coming.”
At the woman’s shout, the child swallowed her tears and hurried her steps.
In truth, none of the memories from that day were clear.
Only a few fragmentary scenes remained in memory.
But even within those blurred memories, the aching sensation of her skinny ankles sinking deep into the cold snow remained vivid.
“I’m cold….”
No footprints remained on the path the child had walked.
That was because freshly falling snow quickly piled up and covered the traces.
At this rate, the child thought, it would be impossible to go back the way they came.
“Mom…”
Shivering from the bone-cutting cold, the child sniffled and called out to the only person who seemed able to protect her, but no answer came back.
It was the child who tightly held the hand, afraid of losing it. The woman had only offered her hand; she never clasped the child’s frozen one in return.
Although she stumbled frequently while walking through the snowfield almost barefoot, the woman never once helped the child back to her feet.
“Can’t you walk properly? Because of you, we keep arriving later and later!”
“Hic, sob. I’m sorry.”
Sniffling, the child struggled to stand and followed the woman again.
After walking for a long time like that, the place they arrived at was the estate of Baron Cliff.
The woman pointed at the entrance of the mansion where the lights were on and said,
“Go knock on the door. Baron Cliff will take care of you from now on.”
“By myself? Why? Together… aren’t you coming?”
She wanted to pour out question after question in her anxiety, but the child’s mouth had long been frozen stiff, so the words wouldn’t come out properly.
The child repeatedly tried to grab the woman’s hand again, afraid it might slip away. But the woman coldly shook off the small hand.
“Just go inside already.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to go.”
The child cried.
“I don’t want to. Please don’t abandon me. I want to go back to where we were before.”
Even though the child pleaded while crying so hard she was gasping for breath, the woman ultimately turned away coldly first.
“If you don’t go in, you’ll freeze to death here. Do whatever you want.”
Then, unlike before, she walked away quickly.
“Don’t go alone. Take me with you!”
The child ran while crying. But because of her frozen feet, she could barely walk properly.
Soon the child fell to the ground. She hurriedly lifted her face, covered in snow, but the woman who had brought her there was already nowhere to be seen.
As if the snowstorm had swept her away.
Left alone in the pure white world, the child burst into tears.
“Sob, Mom…. Mom…! Mom!”
The child’s body, crying so hard her head hurt, finally lost its strength and collapsed onto the snow.
“N-No. Please don’t abandon me….!”
And at that moment, her eyes snapped open.
Hair redder than the sun was soaked with cold sweat and stuck to her forehead and face.
It wasn’t the white snowfield. The chill that had seemed to seep into her bones could no longer be felt.
“A dream…. Right, it was a dream.”
Only then did she let out the breath she had unknowingly been holding.
“I hadn’t dreamed it for a while.”
She sat up and leaned her back against the headboard of the bed, muttering bitterly.
The dream was a memory from a very long time ago.
The day she collapsed in the snow like that, she suffered from a high fever for quite a while.
And as a side effect of that, when she opened her eyes again, she had lost all memories from before the day of the snowstorm.
***
Fifteen years ago, the young girl who suddenly appeared together with the snowstorm caused a great uproar in House Cliff.
“How on earth are you managing your lower half?!”
“Hey! How dare you raise your voice at your husband, who is like the heavens!”
“Heavens, my foot. If you are the heavens, then my heavens collapsed a long time ago! Oh, how unfair. I cannot live like this!”
It was because a note had been found in the young girl’s clothing pocket that said, ‘She is the daughter of Baron Cliff.’
“How could you do this? How could you bring this kind of humiliation to me again! Did you not hear me when I said that if one more of your damn bastards showed up, I would cut off that worthless thing between your legs!”
“I really don’t remember anything. I didn’t even know that girl existed!”
“You said the same thing last year, the year before that, and the day before yesterday too. When you get drunk like a pig every single day, of course you would not remember anything!”
Every day, shouting filled the Baron’s mansion, along with the sound of the Baroness screaming hysterically and crying loudly.
The only thing the child had in common with Baron Cliff was her green eye color.
But the Baroness didn’t doubt that the child was her husband’s illegitimate daughter.
She simply thought the Baron was shamelessly denying it to escape the situation.
“Fine. When that child regains her senses, I will press her until she tells me everything.”
“Do whatever you want! Ugh, that temper of yours. I’m sick of it, truly sick of it.”
From long ago, Baron Cliff had never been good at controlling himself below the waist.
So there had been countless times when women who had relations with him came to the mansion claiming a child was his.
“When that child wakes up, inform me immediately.”
“Yes, Madam.”
But the one who had caused the commotion was lying in bed with a fever.
Far from regaining her senses, she couldn’t even properly open her eyes.
Only after a full fifteen days had passed did the child finally open her eyes with difficulty.
“Uh, wha….”
“Oh my, she opened her eyes! Hurry and bring the Madam!”
A maid who had come to check on the child’s condition immediately threw aside the child who had just opened her eyes and ran out of the room.
Her voice was so loud that even through the closed door they could hear her shouting, “Madam! Madam! Please come out! The child has woken up!”
Before long, bang—the door burst open roughly.
The child was lying down, coughing repeatedly.
The person who entered the room was the Baroness, who had a fierce expression and sharply upturned eyes.
“So you’ve finally woken up. You, try getting up.”
The Baroness grabbed the small shoulders roughly and forcibly pulled the child into a sitting position.
“Ugh, wait. It hurts.”
She didn’t care at all about the child’s groans of pain. Instead, she fired off questions one after another with fierce intensity.
“Hey, brat. What’s your name? How old are you? Where did you come from? Is Baron Cliff really your father? Answer me!”
The Baroness grabbed the child’s shoulders even more harshly than before.
Her nails mercilessly dug into the tender flesh.
“I-It hurts. I said it hurts.”
At the child’s words, the Baroness pressed her even more fiercely.
“Answer the question when you’re asked!”
Her voice rose even higher.
An ordinary child would have been frightened by the Baroness’s behavior and burst into tears first, but this child did not.
“You! Do you think my words are a joke? Why aren’t you answering me? Where did you come from? Just what kind of woman is your mother!”
The Baroness continued shouting furiously.
“Can’t you answer me already?!”
Anyone could see she was venting the anger she felt toward her husband on the young child.
“Aaah! Answer me! Now! Answer me! Who are you?!”
The child pressed a hand to her forehead and frowned.
In the way she looked at the Baroness, there wasn’t fear but irritation.
“Um, excuse me. Ma’am? Could you calm down for a moment?”
The child spoke in a tone that wasn’t childlike at all.
If she would just quiet down a little, the child might at least try to search her memories.
But with that shrill voice pouring out one after another as if it would tear her eardrums, she couldn’t think even if she wanted to.
“Where exactly is this place?”
Instead of answering the questions, the child asked her own.
The Baroness’s eyes sharpened.
“You wretched brat, what kind of trick are you trying to pull now! You’re pretending you don’t remember anything, aren’t you?!”
“I am not lying. I…”
The child raised her voice as if wronged. But she couldn’t finish her next words.
“I…”
“Yes, you! Just who are you supposed to be?!”
