Chapter 11: 11

“…I’m fine with dying like this.” 

Hwaa, I was mistaken that flowers were blooming from the back of Pedro’s head.

…If something bloomed, it must be a red flower. He was bleeding so much! 

“Lily, what about me? Do you want to know who I am? It’s Hugo. Your favorite second brother.”

Hugo sneaked up and pushed his head towards me. Both didn’t seem to care about the blood dripping from behind their heads. 

I had a hard time acting out of common sense. 

‘But they seem to forget about the fight when they focus on me.’

I reached my small hand out and touched Hugo’s cheek. 

“Hugo, brother.” 

Crushed, magically made spear crumbled like a sugar snack.

I was deeply relieved.

Then Michael, who was yawning in the corner, raised his head like a meerkat. 

At the end of the hallway, jade-colored eyes approached, there was a dazzling light in those eyes. 

“Did you wake Lily up?” 

I thought they stepped on the tail of a sleeping black leopard. 

“I couldn’t stand it, Father. Lily is back, how can I wait until morning?” 

Unlike me, who was nervous about Alan’s sudden appearance, Pedro smiled as if he was just happy. 

Alan didn’t greet his sons who just returned from the subjugation, but only stared coldly at his hand, which held me. 

“Don’t talk nonsense, put her down.”

Pedro said, ‘Yes, yes,’ and dropped me off. 

After arguing with his younger brother like that, he seemed to be obedient to what the first rank in the family was saying. 

“Sorry to wake you up, Lily.”

Alan knelt on one knee and put a big stuffed doll into my arms. 

“Dad, it’s…”

“It fell under the broken ground. I thought it was precious because you hugged it tightly and wouldn’t let go. It was easy to find it, but it took me a long time to wash it clean.” 

Bright red hair, sweet soapy scent as if freshly washed and dried. It was the cabbage head doll Thomas gave me. 

“Don’t you need it?” 

“…No way. I like it a lot. I like it. Thank you.” 

I buried my cheeks into the fluffy doll. 

I didn’t have any lingering feelings about it, but I was touched by the sincerity that came from the devastated land. 

Alan smiled softly and looked around his sons with quite different eyes. 

“You guys, get back to your places now.” 

“Huh, now? Come on, let’s sleep together, Lily. I’ll read you a fairy tale.” 

Pedro lowered his head to me, expressing his disappointment. 

There were still drops of blood dripping from the back of his head. 

“Brother, you’re bleeding.” 

I wouldn’t care about the fairy tales or whatsoever, but Pedro said, ‘Ah right. I’m sorry, I messed up your room.’. 

He was sorry for making my room dirty, didn’t he know what the problem was? 

Some buttons were torn off by his rough hand and rolled under the drawer. 

Pedro just rolled up his shirt and groped the cuff, didn’t care about the rolling buttons, and he didn’t even look like he was going to apply the medicine. 

“Is there anything you want me to read? Whatever you choose, I’ll read it more interestingly.” 

“I can read you three times more accurately than brother.”

“Bullshit… No, ahem. Don’t talk nonsense. Fairy tales are not magic books.” 

“I’ve already read <How to read a Fairytale> textbook, so don’t worry. If I entrust it to brother, you’re just going to ignore the original and make up a weird story.” 

“I’m just adding a little. Whatever it is, it’s only fun once the dragon comes out.” 

Alan’s expression only got dark as the eldest and second son quarreled. 

Rather than the fight itself, he seemed unhappy that they made a fuss in front of me. 

As soon as his eyebrows were fully gathered, I raised my arms and intervened between the brothers. 

“I’m going to sleep alone! I-I want to get used to my room!”

I was actually just afraid I’ll talk in my sleep. 

I would have said, ‘Lilly, I’m sorry’ while having nightmares. 

I didn’t even want to think about it. 

“You heard that, now both of you go back quietly. And don’t even come around until morning. I read in <How to Put My Child to Sleep>, and it says that waking up in the middle of the night interferes with growth.” 

Alan gave me a big hug and laid me on the canopy bed. The two brothers seemed disappointed, but they did not rebuke, as if admitting that it was late at night. 

Three men swarmed around my bed. 

Alan’s hand stroking my cheek was elegant, yet the calluses and joints stood out. 

Pedro’s hands that covered the blanket were thick like a full sandwich, and Hugo’s hands that covered the nightcap were smooth and delicate. 

Alan lowered his head as if to give me a good night kiss. But he stopped just before his well-shaped lips touched my forehead. 

As if it was a fantasy that crumbled when I touched it. 

“Have a good dream, Lily.”

He left the room, dragging Pedro, who still lingered. Hugo let Michael out, who was leaning at the corner, and shut the door.

Only then did the room become quiet. 

‘I must look a lot like her.’

No one doubted, they thought I was Lilietta. They didn’t even know I was fake and poured a lot of affection on me. 

“Everything you enjoy, it’s not really yours.”

The words I heard in my dream throbbed pierced through my chest.

When I turn 14, Alan and my brothers will all know. That the youngest one they love so much is fake. 

‘Because I’m an ordinary extra.’ 

No matter how crazy Alan is, if I can’t turn into an animal in four years, he’ll realize something’s wrong. 

If I’m not a beast, I have to awaken as a spirit, which is even more impossible.

I hugged the soft cabbage head doll. 

I had seen parents who lost their children a few times before. 

You are reading story How to Live as the Mad Duke’s Fake Daughter at novel35.com

The prostitute who lived next door lost her son in a carriage accident and cried every night. 

She fought with her son to leave the neighborhood every day, and said ‘I don’t need a child like you’ and ‘It would feel better if you disappeared’, but she cried so much after her son died. 

If her son had returned alive, would she have looked like Alan? Like there’s salvation?

Is it something that even a cold-hearted villain will shed tears when his beloved child comes back alive? 

I, who was not in the public, slapped my cheeks with both hands. 

“Wake up! Alan is a villain who cuts my head with a machete in the original book!” 

Let’s just think about my future. 

When he finds out I am a fake, Alan will say, ‘How dare you impersonate my daughter! I’ll kill you’ and cut my head and hang it next to the drawbridge.

No, I’d rather die gracefully. I might be tortured and my limbs torn to pieces. 

I buried my mouth in the doll with that terrible imagination and endured a scream.

‘Aahhh.’

Whether I would get quaked with a skewer, hit with brimstone, or go my limbs cut off… 

No matter how much I agonized, there was only one conclusion. 

“Let’s run.” 

So that the tail falls off too. 

In the world of bad guys, I have to be a bad guy to survive. 

“But it’s dangerous to run away recklessly.” 

Even Thomas, who fled for 10 years from Alan, was eventually caught. 

I was a child who had nothing at all now. 

For the time being, I had to pretend to be Lily and plan my escape. 

‘The best way is… as expected, that one.’

I rubbed my face to get my head together, but I felt somewhat empty.

I touched my chest. It’s flat. It’s weird. Why does it feel so empty? 

I didn’t think there should be nothing. 

After a while, I had to scream my loudest inner scream since I came to the duchy. 

‘…My necklace!!’ 

***

Dawn is coming. 

I wiped my messy hair clean that I had been tearing all morning and wrote down three candidates on paper. 

「1. Emperor, 2. The Demon King, 3. The Main Character.」

When it comes to running away, people think of only financial problems, but there was something else that was most important. 

The power to protect me. It could never be bought with money. 

Because If I hire a mercenary without any connection, I’ll probably get hit in the back of my head. 

In other words, if I’m going to survive, I have to get a stronger backing than Alan before Lily’s 14th birthday. 

This was the best way to escape safely from a Mad Duke. 

“Candidate 1, Emperor… Out.” 

I drew a straight line over the writing. 

The emperor was eliminated because she was close to that one.

‘There is no way the imperial family, who is allied with the Bauners, will help me.’

I was glad she didn’t have to cut my throat instead of Alan.

“Candidate two, the demon king. I don’t know who it is.” 

I also drew a line for the second candidate. After constant efforts, I found out that there is ‘The Demon King’ in the <No Dreams or Hope> worldview.

But that was it. There was no further information on whether the demon king’s identity would be revealed.

I didn’t have time or time to cling to things that didn’t work out for me. 

“Reastically, he’s the only one that can do that.”

I circled the last candidate. 

The most important person and my only hope. 

「The Main Character」

There were many disturbing factors compared to other candidates, but now I was not in a position to choose between them. 

I changed the paper and wrote down everything I knew about the main character. 

「Name: Benimus (Nickname is Benny)

Gender: Male

Appearance: Beautiful silver hair, dark purple eyes, wild, yet somewhat lonely and fragile…

Characteristics: The count’s illegitimate child. Ever since he was young, he had been sworn at and rolled over and over again for being a half-blood.

Age: Alan killed his fake daughter and mentally exploded (though the original was changed thanks to me!) so as of now, he is 12 years old.」

“Oh, he’s about the same age as me.”  

I’m 9 years old pretending to be a 10-year-old Lily, and Benimus is 12 years old.  

That is great. Maybe it would be easier to get closer because it was between children.

But even when I rolled the pencil, there was nothing more to write, so I was disappointed.  

‘It’s not even the profile of the person I need to face, at this rate it’s no wonder then I don’t know anything about him.’  

There were countless characters in <No Dreams or Hopes>. Among them, I tended to remember only those who were directly related to me.  

“How can I seduce him? All I care about is knowing the future. And it’s incomplete as of now…”

I had to give the main character something to turn the Bauner family into an enemy.  

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to help me.

He might be the righteous main character in an adventure novel, but Benimus was as heartless a dark hero as a villain. 

“What does he want the most? I think I’ll just roll around miserably when I meet him…”

I put my hands into the nightcap and scratched my red hair. I had a lot on my mind. 

There were so many problems to worry about besides the main character. 

Like my real father whom I didn’t know when he was going to show up, or having to play a real princess, and seduce the main character. 
(PR/N: ‘seduce’ in the sense of bringing him to her side, not the usual kind of seduce lol)

The most serious of all was… 

“…Where is it? My necklace.” 

I looked at my chest, but all I could see was my distinct collarbone. 

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