A级夜生活

Only then did I remember the stinging sensation on my cheek. While flailing around earlier, Katie had scratched my face with her long fingernails.

“. . . Ha.”

This time, I couldn’t resist the urge to let out an empty laugh.

You’re crying that much just because of a small scratch?

You have much worse wounds, but you continue to cry for me?

I know you’re kind, but it’s almost like your heart was made from jelly.

Witnessing this child’s overblown reaction, anyone could mistake her sincerity as something bordering on sarcasm, but that would be ridiculous.

“You’re crying too much.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll ask Marie to get some medicine for me.”

“But . . .”

I raised a hand to stroke Alicia’s cheek. As soon as I did, more tears flowed down.

“So don’t cry.”

What a crybaby this child was. I’d already seen what kind of future awaited her, so she really ought to save her tears for later.

Alicia looked at me without saying anything, even as I withdrew my hand. But, the moment I was about to turn away from her, she hastily grabbed the end of my sleeve.

“Sister!” Alicia exclaimed in an uncharacteristically loud voice. Even as I directed a pointed stare towards the sleeve that she clenched, she continued, “Dinner . . . Let’s have dinner together.”

A meal.

It was a simple request, but it was effective enough to stop me in my tracks.

Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of the meal itself. I knew very well how tedious it would just be.

But there was something I wanted to confirm.

“Sure.”

At the short answer, I turned away and strode forward. However, the hand holding onto my sleeve didn’t let go.

I slowed my pace at this, but before I knew it, the footsteps behind me stopped. This was because there was another person quickly approaching us.

Today might not be a good day to eat dinner together.

“Alicia.”

It was a friendly tone, but as soon as the voice’s owner saw me, his expression hardened.

A tall man who had silvery hair and golden eyes just like mine, the distinctive traits of this family’s descendants.

Damian Valentine, heir apparent of the Valentine Dukedom.

He was Alicia’s real brother, and my half-brother.

At first glance, anyone would be struck by the resemblance between Rosetta and Damian.

It could be their similarly cold exterior, or because they were both tall, or perhaps it was due to their similar coloring, but anyone with functioning eyes would mistake Rosetta—and not Alicia—as Damian’s real younger sister.

This resemblance was of no use, though. There was a limit to superficial appearances. Rather, it was because we looked so much like each other that it made the situation even worse.

No matter how much we looked the part, we could never be a real family.

Out the window, the sun began to set. As the bright orange orb sank down the horizon, light from the red and blue sky intertwined with our shadows.

Standing as if he was rooted to the ground, Damian’s eyes glinted in the sunset.

Shallow animosity rather than hostility—

Unsaid awkwardness and discomfort—

Or perhaps, guilt and resentment—

No.

Those weren’t enough.

How Damian regarded Rosetta was a more complicated feeling that could not be encapsulated in such terms.

Dear Damian, I am your family, we are brother and sister. However, with me, I carry my mother’s will . . .

I am my mother’s daughter, a descendant of such a heinous woman.

* * *

Rosetta was an illegitimate child who should not have been born.

Her biological mother was a maid who the Duchess treated like a dear friend. She took advantage of the ducal couple’s trust in her, and so it was possible to stealthily slip something into their drinks.

Sleeping pills for the Duchess and hallucinogens for the Duke.

The Duke would have normally noticed this, however, he was given the drugs during a banquet. And since he was already quite drunk at the time, he couldn’t distinguish right from left.

As he drank the hallucinogens, he took the maid to bed while thinking she was his wife.

The maid, after spending the night with the Duke, quickly fled the estate thereafter. Without telling anyone about what happened, she tightly held within her heart the truth of that night.

‘The chance of this happening in reality is slim, but . . .’

Oh well.

By nature, these kinds of flukes and coincidences were the foundation of such novels.

After a few years, not long after the fourth birthday of Alicia, the Duke’s precious youngest daughter, the maid returned to the mansion with the golden-eyed and silver-haired Rosetta.

And then she brazenly demanded to be acknowledged as the second wife.

While recalling the kindness she received when she was a mere maid of the Duchess, she thought that the Duke would extend the same benevolence once again.

But, there was a severe flaw in her reasoning.

The Duke was not a merciful man.

His compassion was limited only to his beloved wife and children, as well as to those they cared about. In his mind, there was no such thing as mercy for traitorous wretches.

Upon learning the truth of that night, the Duke broke out in an outrage.

How dare this lowly maid take advantage of his and the Duchess’s generosity—to have had the gall to slip those drugs into their drinks so easily!

He immediately reached for the sword of a knight who was standing next to him. Due to how fast the Duke moved, the knight only froze in place.

In an instant, the sharp blade sliced through the air, red liquid gushed like a fountain where the blade passed, and a blindfolded head subsequently fell to the ground with a thud.

The Duke remained expressionless even as those wide, lifeless green eyes stared back at him.

He then went to the next room to find Rosetta, who was unknowingly eating cookies by herself.

Fortunately, Rosetta’s head was not lopped off.

It was the Duchess who insisted that the child was innocent. Furthermore, she allowed Rosetta to possess the Valentine name, and so the Duke was forced to include her in the family registry.

Soon after this unbridled storm passed by, the Duchess’s health deteriorated. She was already weak from giving birth to Alicia four years ago, but her condition became even worse after a friend’s betrayal and an illegitimate child’s abrupt appearance.

After some time, on one spring day after Alicia and Rosetta turned six—

“Darling . . . o-our children . . . leave them in Katie’s hands . . .”

“Lilian! No, stay with me, Lilian!”

“Darling . . . our children . . . Rosetta, Alicia, Damian . . . take good care . . . of our children . . .”

Even through her halted words, she couldn’t finish what she wanted to say. A dark shadow loomed under her long lashes, and after her eyes closed, they never opened again.

“Lillian!”

“Mom, Mom!”

“Mother!”

Grief-stricken cries echoed throughout the mansion.

The Duke and the two children bawled their eyes out as the woman’s body grew colder. Standing not too far from them, only Rosetta was silent throughout the night.

After the Duchess’s demise, the relationship between those who remained rapidly became ambiguous.

The Duchess had insisted that the child was innocent, and so the Duke tried to treat her like family. However, understanding with your mind and accepting with your heart were two distinctly separate things.

Alicia was still young, so she couldn’t discern the household’s predicament, but both the Duke and the Young Lord were constantly reminded of the Duchess and the maid whenever they saw Rosetta.

It became an established fact that the Duchess, who was a loving wife and mother of two, was killed by Rosetta’s biological mother.

And in order to drown out the incapacitating sorrow that followed their loss, the Duke and the Young Lord also condemned Rosetta as someone equally responsible for the Duchess’s death.

The Duke knew that he would only come to resent Rosetta if he saw her face, so he eventually broke his promise with the late Duchess. He used work as an excuse to rationalize his absence from home.

As a peripheral result, Alicia took the brunt of everyone’s resentment.

Both the Duke and the Young Lord were out most of the time, so she spent almost everyday alone.

She was also the sole receptor of Rosetta’s jealousy, which stemmed from the fact that the Duke only acknowledged Alicia as his daughter.

Additionally, since no one else but the nanny took charge of the children in their mother’s place, nobody stopped Katie from actively abusing Alicia.

The violence that Alicia experienced throughout her childhood piled up and served as a kind of brainwashing. Adding to the fact that she didn’t see her family often, the punishments she received had a greater effect on her psyche.

‘The Duke and the Young Master must never hear about what happens during our classes. I would only be scolded for your wrongdoings—not mine. My hands are already full with you two, so don’t give me more headaches, hm?’

These were Katie’s words from when Alicia and Rosetta were six years old, and until now, this was an indisputable law that Alicia could not go against.

At just this one request, Alicia’s mouth was firmly sewn shut.

In the end, Alicia, this novel’s protagonist, was the biggest victim of them all.

Damian didn’t know what happened within the mansion since he wasn’t home often, but there was enough reason for him to treat me the way he did.

I was my mother’s daughter. My mother killed his. At the same time, I was continuing my dead mother’s legacy simply by existing.

We had a relationship that could superficially be considered as family, but we would never actually be one.

As tangible as a butterfly’s attraction to flowers, Damian’s unwillingness to accept Rosetta was only natural.

* * *

“Brother!”

Cutting through the tension between me and that man was Alicia’s energetic voice.

Without missing a beat, as soon as Damian’s eyes shifted away from mine, he suddenly embodied the disposition of a real older brother.

“Alicia,” he crooned, his voice as sweet as the honey-glazed look he directed towards Alicia.

He opened his arms and, with her golden hair trailing gracefully behind her as she turned her back on me, Alicia did not hesitate to run straight into his embrace.