Hot tears streamed down Radish's cheeks.
She felt the shadows of death looming over her by her bedside, waiting for their chance to swallow her whole.
She'd never really felt alive before, but now she was on the verge of dying.
She'd been thrown onto a thorny path the moment she was born, and ever since, all she'd been trying to do was survive.
She'd endured so much pain that she'd forgotten what pain felt like.
The whole time, she'd just believed that happiness would come someday.
But at the end of the road... this is how she died!
In that moment, Radish felt a fierce emotion settle in her heart, something she'd never felt before.
Why did she have to die after everything she'd gone through on this thorny path?
She couldn't accept that she'd only find peace after death.
Over and over, she'd believed happiness would come someday... so she'd just endured and endured and endured.
"...That was all just a phony dream."
"I shouldn't have lived for my parents, for my brother... for my family. I should have lived for myself...!"
She couldn't believe she'd figured out something so huge right at the end of her life!
Gradually, it got harder for her to breathe.
She couldn't tell if it was from the physical pain or if it was because of the sorrow, because the grief she felt for herself was so immense it was indistinguishable from her fatal injuries.
The light started leaving her blurry vision.
Radish couldn't move anymore.
Then a colorful light enveloped her, and the pain was gone.
Feeling like this was the end of her life, she slowly closed her eyes.
Radish died, and no one was by her side.
2. The Eldest Daughter's Second Life
Radish Tellrod was the eldest daughter of the Tellrod family.
"Known as the daughter nobody wanted."
Her parents, Jayde and Margaret, were a typical couple brought together by an arranged marriage.
Jayde had loved a woman before he got married – Flora, who worked at the village flower shop.
Margaret didn't love Jayde either.
Jayde was a lot older than her, and his leg had been paralyzed in an accident years ago. Margaret resented Jayde because he was far from being the ideal husband.
Still, despite not being an affectionate couple, they at least agreed to respect each other as partners.
— If only the firstborn had been a son.
— If only Jayde hadn't reacted that way when he heard the baby was a daughter.
"For heaven's sake, a girl? Damn it, is that all I get from the hellish marriage I've put up with till now?"
— If only Margaret, who had just given birth, hadn't overheard that.
Margaret pushed the baby away from her arms like she was some giant leech.
"Get rid of this damn girl right now!"
And so, the baby was abandoned, and the relationship between Jayde and Margaret was irrevocably broken.
The baby was raised by a maid who did small chores in the staff quarters.
Whenever she was hungry, she'd crawl under a goat that regularly grazed in the backyard and drink its milk.
Whenever she felt sleepy, she'd curl up and sleep just about anywhere.
For her, the warmth of the sun was her blanket, and the whistling wind was her lullaby.
The child grew up then like one of the tall, sword-like flowers in the backyard.
Named after that flower, the maids started calling the unknown child "Radish" only after she turned two.
Margaret couldn't keep ignoring her daughter due to social pressure now that the child was walking, so she called her to the mansion.
However, just because there was less physical distance between them didn't mean affection would just sprout naturally if there wasn't any seed to begin with.
Margaret couldn't understand the child; in her eyes, Radish was like a strange animal.
So Margaret would scream hysterically when she saw the child.
"Why are your clothes always so dirty? Why, why, why do you pee on yourself like that?! Ugh! I can't stand it!"
Because she was so scared, she couldn't even leave her room, which was tiny, like a closet. When the maid brought her meals, Radish would cling to her apron.
"I think Mom hates me."
The maid didn't know what to do. She hadn't been trained to be a nanny; she was just a maid who did housework.
She didn't know how to handle the lady's child who kept clinging to her.
The maid took Radish's hands off her apron.
"No, Miss, the lady doesn't hate you. The lady is the mother who carried you in her belly. There's no parent in the world who hates their child. If she's mad at you, maybe you did something wrong. You gotta make up for it. You gotta try."
The child believed the maid's words.
In fact, she believed her with all her heart.
And that's why it took Radish such a long time to realize that was wrong.
Because she tried and tried again.
She ate properly and cleaned herself up in the bath so her mom wouldn't get upset anymore.
She tried to be a good kid, but it didn't change anything. Margaret still thought Radish was an eyesore and let the kid eat alone.
She played by herself too, since nobody paid any mind to her.
That was fine; she could play by herself all day.
But then, one day.
David, the Tellrod family's first son, was born.
David's birth was celebrated like a real blessing from heaven; it wasn't anything like Radish's birth.
When she was told she'd had a son, Margaret's face lit up instantly.
And when Jayde heard the news about his son's birth, he bolted from his mistress's place and came home with enough flowers to fill the mother's room.
Radish was happy because everyone else was happy. Even though she went back to her tiny room alone and slept with an empty stomach, she was still happy.
David grew up carrying the family's expectations.
Jayde brought two wet nurses from the capital for the family's oldest son.
David, who gained weight after breastfeeding from the wet nurses, was a beautiful baby, and Margaret didn't know what to do because he was so wonderful.
"How can my baby be so cute? David, you're the only light in my life!"
Radish could only look at David with envy in her eyes.
The year after David was born, Margaret gave birth to their third child, Yurhee.
She'd wanted the third child to be another son, but she wasn't too flustered since she didn't want to see two boys competing for the inheritance anyway.
"I bet you'll be pretty!"
"Milady, young miss Yurhee looks just like you. Look how lovely her golden hair and green eyes are!"
Margaret smiled with satisfaction at her third child who resembled her so much.
"That's right. You really are my daughter...!"
Radish and David had red hair and black eyes like their father, but Yurhee was different.
Margaret felt a special kind of affection for Yurhee. For the first time, she felt overjoyed about her daughter and kissed Yurhee's golden hair.
When David was four, the indifferent Jayde opened his mouth.
"We're a family of knights, so David, learn swordsmanship and become a great knight. You'd better be diligent because the south is full of demonic beasts."
After the meal when Jayde left, Margaret scoffed behind his back.
"He's crippled, but he's still a great knight?"
Margaret patted David's plump cheek, laughing at her husband's words.
"My baby! You must never become like your father. You have to be an amazing knight. David, you will march like a king in shiny silver armor, riding a white horse. After that, everyone will look and know that you're my son and I'm your mother!"
After that, Margaret grabbed Radish's arm, dug her fingernails into it, and then said,
"Be quiet and go back to your room!"
The sword instructor who came to teach David was a man named Armano.
Since David had never been taught how to use a sword, he was supposed to spend a week just holding a wooden sword, but all he did was run away from his instructor.
"Jeez, what a clueless kid. Do you even wanna learn how to use this thing?"
At that, David properly grabbed his sword with his hand for the first time.
Then he yelled and hit Armano's leg.
"You cripple! You dumb cripple!"
Armano couldn't help but hold his forehead in his hand.
Then Radish, who had a branch and was playing by herself in a corner of the backyard, came over.
And with that, Armano instantly saw her potential.
When he spoke to her, Radish turned away with flushed cheeks, then backed off, hiding the branch behind her back.
"Hey, hey, don't run off. Why don't we learn together?"
Armano was just trying to motivate David by using his sister as competition.
But it was the first compliment Radish had ever heard in her life.
This was their first meeting.
Just like Jayde mentioned, the Tellrods were a family of knights.
Their ancestor, Alexis Tellrod, was a knight for Dantes Alfred, Cardia's first emperor, and they said he was called "The Sword of Fire."
As the first Emperor's knight, he kicked off a new era by reclaiming lands overrun by demonic beasts.
But ever since his time, the Tellrods had been in serious decline, failing to produce decent knights generation after generation.
Turns out, Alexis Tellrod's talent was misplaced.
It showed up in Radish, the outcast of the Tellrod family.
Armano realized he'd found a single pearl in a whole ocean of mud. Now he understood that this mud wasn't just any mud.
But the governess, who'd secretly visited Armano, had warned him before he even met the kid.
"Don't praise Miss Radish. If you do, you might get kicked out without even getting a letter of recommendation."
Armano didn't want to bury Radish's talent away. He poured all his passion into Radish and her potential, pretending to teach both David and Radish together.
And lazy David liked it that way.
It was kinda entertaining watching his sister sweat under the hot sun. David happily laughed at Radish, content to take a nap under the cool shade.
And in her own way, Radish was happy too because she got to learn swordsmanship and get compliments from a reputable teacher.
Armano, who was teaching her, was happy as well.
But this little bubble of happiness in the mud was bound to pop.
It didn't last long.
The year David turned fourteen, everything was laid bare.
"Sir, I'm sending David to the Imperial Academy."
"I hear it's the elite training ground for knights. I'm thinking about getting David in for early admission. What do you think?"
As he looked into Jayde and Margaret's eager eyes, Armano knew the time was right. He opened his mouth, extremely hesitant.
"That's probably going to be tough."
Jayde's face stiffened up. Same with Margaret, but she hid it and smiled, then asked again.
"As expected, fourteen is too early, isn't it? Will it be okay if it's next year, or the year after that?"
"No, that won't be possible no matter his age. I apologize for telling you this so late. David has no talent for swordsmanship."
Armano tried to explain to Margaret that David had no talent, no perseverance, and no drive to become a knight in the first place.
Instead, Radish had all of it.
But Margaret didn't want to hear any of it.
"You sneaky little tramp...!"
The target instantly became Radish.
"You seduced your teacher like a fox, you did! This is how you ruined your brother's and your family's future!"
Margaret shrieked and slapped Radish hard across the cheek.
Radish didn't complain so much as she just kept her head down. She was already used to accepting and enduring all the violence and verbal abuse aimed at her.
Armano grabbed Margaret's arm.
"Milady, please stop!"
Margaret slapped his cheek too.
"You're fired! You even ruined my jewel!"
Armano was immediately kicked out, but the current situation wasn't resolved yet.
Margaret needed to get her son into the Academy somehow. She always did everything to give her precious jewel a bright future.
Radish, whose face was swelling after being slapped, raised her head.
"You ruined everything, so fix it. You go take the exam instead of David."
"You're roughly the same height, so nobody will know if you're wearing armor and a helmet. Your faces are pretty alike too."
Margaret brought over scissors used for cutting cloth.
Margaret hit Radish on the head again, making her bend her head down, then Margaret grabbed the kid's hair and swooped in with her scissors.
Radish couldn't say anything and just trembled as she watched her tangled hair fall in front of her eyes.
She could see her younger siblings' faces through the gap in the open door.
David's face was red from trying to hold back laughter, and Yurhee's big eyes were wide with horror.
Then, after Margaret had cut Radish's hair, she said,
"I'll forgive you if you do a good job for David. You're the eldest daughter of the Tellrod family, aren't you? Isn't it natural for you to do your best to support your brother since he's a pillar of our family?"
The word sounded like a revelation to Radish. She'd never been called "daughter" before.
Radish did everything Margaret ordered her to do.
She took the Academy entrance exam, wearing her brother's armor and with her chest, which had just started to grow, bound up tight.
Then she saw her brother leave the house after she passed the exam.
It was the first compliment she'd ever heard from her mother. Radish smiled.
Her hair was badly cut, and her face and body were covered in bruises, but she was happy.
Radish wrote a letter to Armano saying she was grateful to him and that she was sorry he'd been fired because of her.
One day, she found out he'd replied.
Margaret came to her room with a single letter in her hand.
No matter how hard she tried to practice swordsmanship and strengthen her resolve, Radish was still scared of her mother. When she saw her mother's angry face, her heart pounded.
Radish instinctively put her arms up around her head because she thought she was about to get hit.
But Margaret didn't do that this time.
She silently threw Armano's letter into the fireplace right in front of Radish, a nasty smile on her face.
That hurt way more than a slap.
A long time passed, and David graduated from the Academy. He became a junior knight after that.
But a trainee was still just a trainee.
His worthiness had to be acknowledged for him to be officially appointed as a knight.
In other words, he had to go monster hunting.
David, who was eighteen, cried.
"Subdue a demon? Why do I gotta join something like that? I'm gonna get hurt! I'm gonna die!"
"Oh, my son! You'll only have to go a few times."
"Bryan didn't do any subduing! His dad made him an apprentice for a knight he knows. Dad, don't you have any connections to make that happen for me?!"
Listening to David, Jayde walked out of the drawing-room.
Then Margaret said coolly, looking at his back,
"You said our family was an empire-founding family, but look at us now?"
David talked like the sky was about to fall.
"How many times am I supposed to go? Mom, please don't pretend you don't know! Do you have any idea what happens during subduing? I'll have to fight in the woods! Do you think I'm not gonna die? Besides, they give off demonic energy!"
"Do you have any clue how awful demonic energy is? It's like poison! They say if you go hunting for a month and come back home, people need to rest for half a year or they'll die. Or they gotta go to the temple and pay a ton of money and get blessed by the priests. Do you have that kind of money in this house?"
"But... if you kill a monster, you get a magic stone, right?"
"How can I kill one? I'm gonna get hurt! I'm gonna die!"
So the story came back to the beginning.
After listening to the conversation in silence, Radish turned around and went to her room.
At that time, Radish was twenty. If she were a regular noblewoman, she would have been married already.
But she couldn't. In this era, a woman's parents or guardians had to prepare a dowry for the groom.
Neither Margaret nor Jayde cared about her.
Plus, like David said, they didn't have any cash.
The taxes they collected were really low, and it was tough managing their territory.
The Tellrod family was also carrying huge debts from sending David to the Academy, for both tuition and living expenses.
On top of that, Radish, who wasn't active in high society, didn't have any connections at all.
There were guys dating Yurhee, who was three years younger than her, but Radish hadn't even had a conversation with a man.
She didn't belong anywhere.
Margaret mistreated her, and Jayde just ignored it.
Her younger siblings saw her as a nuisance.
The only place she could relax and be herself was the empty spot where Armano had taught her swordsmanship a long time ago.
She just practiced the same routine over and over.
It was the same situation that day.
While she was using her sword, she stopped mid-practice when she saw her mother approaching.
She wondered if she was about to get slapped again, but Margaret didn't do that.
"A lord from the Wenns family wants you to be his wife. If you're a healthy woman, shouldn't you have a son? They don't need a dowry, and he'll give you money. If you have a son, he'll give you property. Ah, I feel like I'm finally getting rewarded for having you. You know, it's right for the eldest daughter to be the breadwinner. He's seventy years old, but he's still alive, so just live with him like newlyweds."
Margaret smirked when she saw the blood drain from Radish's face.
"You don't want to? Then go hunt demons instead of your brother. You'll get to use that sword you like so much. It's just too embarrassing to have an unmarried daughter hanging around the house. But if you go on that expedition, I'll let you stay here."
Comments
Post a Comment