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Chapter 1
I was eight years old.
By chance, I suddenly remembered something I had forgotten.
“I heard there’s a dog in that abandoned warehouse over there!”
“They said it’s not a dog, but a person. Apparently, they bite people and keep them locked up.”
“No, it’s a dog. I even heard it making an ‘awoo’ sound! And there wasn’t just one! I think there were two!”
“You idiot! Dogs go ‘woof woof.’ That’s a wolf’s howl.”
“A-a wolf!”
The problem was the conversation of the orphanage children, which I normally would have considered childish and ignored.
I had been reading a book beneath a large tree, but the moment I heard the children whispering, a chill ran down my back.
「The abandoned children of beasts who were locked away in the orphanage warehouse.
It turned out that those children were twins whom the Grand Duke had lost—or rather, twins he never even knew existed. The problem was that the orphanage director regularly abused them.
As a result, the twins developed terrible trauma during their childhood, and that became the foundation for them growing into the hidden villains of the novel.
Eventually, the children grew into truly insane adults and became the ones who ruined the story.
One became the mastermind, and the other became a villainess.
Ironically, the woman the mastermind loved and the woman the villainess hated with all her heart were the same person.
She was the heroine of the novel, and……」
“I hated that mastermind and villainess so much.”
Sigh.
Why had the contents of the novel I had completely forgotten suddenly come back to me?
Why did I only realize now that I had entered the world of the novel…… as orphanage child number eight?!
As if a covered book had suddenly been opened, the moment I found a clue, my memories flooded through my mind at an incredible speed.
‘Of all things, I remembered that those children were locked inside the orphanage warehouse as children and treated like dogs. This is giving me chills! I even remembered that the orphanage that was their very nightmare was Sandra Orphanage, and that the devil-like orphanage director was Cyril Sandra!’
The place where I was right now was Sandra Orphanage, and the orphanage director was Cyril Sandra.
“Absolutely not, right? This is…… I’m just overreacting, right?”
Yeah, there was no way that there could be another Sandra Orphanage with a woman named Cyril Sandra as its director somewhere else……
There was no way that such a coincidence upon coincidence could happen in this country!
I immediately closed the book I was reading and ran toward the orphanage children.
The children stepped back in surprise when I suddenly ran over.
“Aisha’s here?”
“Yeah, I’m here. But what exactly are you talking about? There’s a wolf in the orphanage?”
“Yeah!”
“Where? Where is it?”
“As expected! Aisha was curious about this too, right?”
The boy who always bothered me with meaningless things puffed out his chest proudly, completely unaware of how impatient I was.
“Forget that. Just tell me where it is quickly.”
“Okay. But since Aisha is weak, I’ll take you there!”
The moment he said something ridiculous, I kicked him in the shin.
“Ugh……”
“Idiot. I’m not weak, okay? If you say something like that one more time, you’re going to regret it. You’re weaker than me, so where do you get off saying that?!”
When I shouted angrily, the boy flinched and pouted.
“O-okay……”
“So where is it? The place where there’s supposed to be a wolf or dog!”
“Th-that place. The abandoned warehouse on the way to the forest……”
“Such a bully. Seriously.”
Some of the children shook their heads at my behavior, but I ignored them and headed toward the abandoned warehouse.
I was too overwhelmed by the anxiety violently rushing through my heart to care about them.
“This can’t be happening. This can’t be the world of the novel. Absolutely not…… I don’t want to die!”
Now that I think about it, I have a very good memory.
I remember everything from the moment I was born and my eyes first opened.
Of course, I clearly remembered the moment those so-called parents abandoned me.
But there was one place that always gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.
This very Sandra Orphanage.
I had always thought it was because I had been abandoned here as soon as I was born and had grown up here ever since.
“But to think it was because this place was inside a novel. No wonder…… no wonder it felt so strangely familiar!”
Damn it.
The curses slipped out of my mouth.
I repeatedly denied that this place could be inside a novel, but as I ran toward the abandoned building, the memories that kept surfacing merged with my existing memories one after another until they became one.
“Damn it. No matter how much I think about it, this really seems like the world of the novel. Sigh. Of all places…… why did it have to be that novel?”
The twins had a fairly important role in the novel.
The only Grand Duke in the empire had a Grand Duchess, but she was unable to have children. The exact reason was unknown, but rumors spread that the problem lay with the Grand Duke.
There were even rumors that he spent every night with a different woman, and during that time, an unknown woman became pregnant with the Grand Duke’s child.
I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t read the novel, but this part was clearly written in the story.
「The Grand Duchess secretly removed the unknown woman.
Ten months later, when the Grand Duchess saw the twins born from the unknown woman, she fell into despair.
Because they looked exactly like the Grand Duke.
‘Disgusting. These things…… these things should all die! My son must inherit the Grand Duke’s family!’
The Grand Duchess, who openly displayed her hostility toward the children, gradually became more and more insane.」
The Grand Duchess had also succeeded in becoming pregnant around the same time, and because she had finally conceived a child after five years, she became even more sensitive.
She showed no hesitation in abusing the twins who had been born only a few months before her own child.
Then, fearing that the Grand Duke might discover the truth, she sent the newborn twins to this Sandra Orphanage, far away from the capital, along with a large donation.
With a warning—or rather, a threat—that the children must never be allowed outside.
The truth was that she had intended to kill them.
However, the children who had inherited the Grand Duke’s blood strongly…… the bloodline of those called beasts, survived no matter what was done to them.
Even after being starved for days, even after being poisoned, the children survived.
In the end, the Grand Duchess sent them somewhere extremely far away, hoping the Grand Duke would never find them.
But in the year the twins turned seven, the Grand Duke eventually found them.
‘And then he burned this place down. He was a crazy bastard with no blood or tears. He didn’t even look at the other children and killed them all.’
Now that I knew, I couldn’t let that happen.
I clenched my small hands tightly and ran until I was out of breath.
And finally, I arrived in front of the warehouse.
There was no one guarding it, but the building was tightly bound with thick iron chains.
Five unusually large and sturdy locks were attached to it.
“Anyone could tell this is suspicious.”
I pressed my small, plump hands—like maple leaves—against my temples.
“Is it really true……? Are they really here?”
While coming here, I had held onto a little hope.
That I was simply overthinking things.
That this place was not inside the novel.
But everything matched the story I knew too perfectly for me to keep denying it.
“Damn it…… I can’t not check now.”
After looking around carefully, I walked around the warehouse once.
Perhaps sensing the arrival of a stranger, the sound of a wolf’s howl came from inside.
“Awooooo!”
As if telling me not to come inside.
Human nature is strange.
When someone tells you not to enter, you only become more curious.
“I have to see it with my own eyes.”
What if I was wrong?
What if this world just happened to have an orphanage and director with the same names as the novel, and they just happened to be raising dogs in this warehouse?
‘Maybe these so-called forgotten memories were just fragments of something I had seen in a childhood book.’
Even though I knew that wasn’t possible, I pushed my head through the small hole in the wall, large enough for only a child to crawl through.
Holding onto my final hope.
“I guess I should be grateful to the director at times like this.”
The hole was so small that only a child could barely fit through.
If the orphanage director had provided “normal meals,” I probably would have been too big to squeeze through.
Fortunately, the director only gave me barely enough food to survive, and thanks to that, entering the warehouse wasn’t difficult.
“Phew.”
After struggling my way inside, I slowly stood up.
At that moment, a sigh escaped my lips.
“Ha…… in a place like this……”
The ceiling was high, but the only place where light could enter was a small window.
Because of that, the inside was even worse than it looked from outside.
Objects were scattered everywhere, and the air was filled with dust.
Then—
Perhaps startled by the stranger entering their territory, someone in the corner growled and slowly approached me.
A sensation unique to a wild beast I had never experienced before brushed past me.
Dangerous.
This isn’t human.
The warning bells in my mind rang, but I didn’t step back.
I stared at the creature crawling toward me on all fours.
The window was small, but since it was bright daylight, I could clearly see inside the warehouse.
“Growl…….”
I could clearly see the appearance of the child making beast-like noises.
Showing just how long they had been neglected, their hair reached down to their waist, and their fingernails were so long that I immediately wanted to cut them.
Even their clothes were not human clothing.
They looked like they had roughly cut holes into nearby sacks and worn them.
They were nothing but a beast itself.
