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The beginning was no different from the start of all the other possession stories.
The only difference was that it wasn’t a reincarnation truck, but rather I was hit and killed by some crazy drunk man who was driving a deep-black car.
While returning home at night on a dimly lit road, I died in a car accident.
I possessed the novel that I was reading two hours ago.
If I knew this would happen, I would have begged to possess the female lead of a sweet romantic comedy or a healing childcare story before I closed my eyes.
In fact, even if I made a wish, there was no guarantee it would come true as I wished or not.
However—
‘At least I’m not a villain or a supporting role that gets horribly killed as soon as I appear.’
I was really lucky that I reincarnated as commoner ‘N’ whose name didn’t even appear in the original story. I was just an ordinary background character that would never cross paths with the main characters in my entire lifetime.
Even so, I was somehow satisfied with Catyshia Ainsley’s newly started life. For me who lived in poverty in my previous life, I was also very grateful for this new life.
Although it was an orphan’s body, it was better to not have a parent at all than to have one who can’t even fulfill their parental duties. As long as I have someone to take care of, a house where my body can lie down, and enough food to not be hungry, I’ll survive somehow.
‘Although after today has passed, maybe all three of them will disappear.’
I twisted and squeezed the clean towel with all my might. However, the slightly salty water still dripped down from the towel.
“Ugh, my arm…”
As expected, the body of a 10-year-old girl was too young to nurse someone. It’s short, and its grip was also weak. The physical strength was also terrible.
I grabbed a square folded towel and carefully climbed up to the bed.
There was a dying old man lying on the empty bed. It was the Landlord Grandfather of the three-story house that I rented upstairs.
Since this was a world where there was no high-tech medical equipment, I couldn’t know exactly how much time was left for Grandfather, but maybe he wouldn’t be able to surpass dawn today. It was the intuition of a person who had been nursing him closely for several months.
Honestly, if you’re not 70 years old yet, then it wasn’t time to die of old age in South Korea, but…
‘What should I do if Grandfather Herzen really dies?’
Just thinking about it made me cry out of sadness. I could see the dark future that would await me.
It was five years ago, when I, who was just a little over five years old, was born as Catyshia Ainsley and regained the memory of the war as well as intellectual abilities.
At that time, I was already living in Grandfather Herzen’s house.
When I barely figured out the situation, it seemed that a woman who couldn’t afford to raise a child abandoned me, a newborn child, in front of Grandfather Herzen’s house, who was rumored to have a lot of wealth.
The stubborn and good-looking Grandfather Herzen raised me up even though he complained about everything. Due to his strict and sensitive nature, it must not have been easy to raise a complete stranger’s newborn baby, and even change its diapers.
After I grew up a bit, I was given a separate room on the second floor, and the monthly rent was replaced by coming down to the first floor every day and becoming Grandfather’s conversation partner, and cleaning the house.
Although every time he nagged me to clean cleanly until my ears were bloody, and I shrieked saying that it was child exploitation, Grandfather who raised me up to this age was my savior and parent.
‘From a few months ago until he suffered from an unknown disease, he was strong enough to even go hiking with me by his side.’
But death seemed to come so suddenly.
“Baby…?”
I was cleaning the old man’s wrinkled face, diligently wiping his neck, and kneading his cold hands and feet, when a faint voice was heard.
“Grandfather!”
I raised my head right away. Grandfather, who thought I was asleep, narrowly opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Are you alright? How are you fee—”
“Have you done all that I have told you to…?”
To think that the first thing he said after two days of barely waking up was checking on my errands.
I bit my lips and nodded.
“I sent it to the address you wrote down. I’m sure it has arrived safely, the letter.”
He said that it was a will. He said that he would send it to his children and grandchildren who were in the capital. But, it had already been a week since I sent that letter, but there was not even a single piece of paper as reply from those bastards he called family.
I didn’t know if there was some kind of reason or not, but still, how can no one, not even a person, come when it was said that your family was in a critical condition?!
“At my last moment… you don’t know how fortunate I am to have you.”
“What are you saying! To say it’s the last! Hicc.”
I tried to hold back my tears and chatted in a bright voice. I knew that my expression of barely holding back tears would look ridiculous, but I hated sending off people to the last road with tears.
“Where’s the, uhuk, swearing grandpa, heuk, who used to wield a poker face and ask me to pay the monthly rent…? Just, what’s with that weak voice… Hic.”
As I tried so hard to hold back my tears, I finally started hiccuping.
Perhaps because I looked funny while hiccuping with a red face, or because I was pathetic, a faint smile appeared on Grandfather’s mouth.
“My Little Girl, have you thought about how you’ll live without Grandfather?”
“I am not going to think about such things. Huhuu.”
Without any effort, tears began to fall. The determination to send him off with a smiling face evaporated.
I hugged Grandfather’s arm and burst into tears.
“Where are you going when you said that you’d go to the summer festival with me next month! You said we’d ride a sled next winter, I’m sure you said that last year. Heeup, Grandfather, if you go away like this, I’ll swallow this house. Keup. I said I’m going to steal all of your inheritance…”
“Just take it away, yeah.”
“Chee, you always say that…!”
It was one of Grandfather Herzen’s habits. ‘If I die, this is your house, so clean it up cleanly’.
Of course, it was just a threat that Grandfather who had slight mysophobia, used to make me clean his house. However….
“It looks…. like you haven’t thought of how to live at all. Tsk…. Don’t worry, Caty. Because I’ve written all of the numbers down.”
“Huaaa, I said that it’s not important, that kind of thing!”
I didn’t need inheritance or such things. To me, all I needed was Grandfather.
I had been preparing every day for the past few months, but the reality was much heavier and more frightening than I imagined.
I’m totally not ready to accept the fact that there would be no Grandfather in the world now.
“Well, it’s only my share, so it’s not much… But, if it’s not you, who else would be qualified for it?”
Was it delirium? Grandfather muttered a few words that I couldn’t understand with a hoarse voice that was slowly dying out. Then, he closed his eyes as if my wailing was bothering him.
“Don’t cry too much, Baby. Won’t we see each other again soon….”
No. Because I’m going to die an entirely natural death, so it’ll take at least 90 years to meet Grandfather again.
‘That’s why stay a little longer with me.’
Because I was coughing while crying, I couldn’t say all those words properly.
The allowed time was not long. Only a few hours later, with his eyes closed comfortably, Grandfather Herzen, “Huu—” breathed out his last breath. With that one breath, I felt his soul leaving his body.
“HUAAAAA.”
The cry escaped my throat and kept coming up.
“Please go to a nice place, Grandfather…”
Please let this place be a world wherein an afterlife exists.
His personality was a little stubborn, but he was a person who was generous enough to take care of a child who didn’t have any blood connections with him for 10 years.
So please go to heaven at any cost.
‘I’ll see you again after 90 years.’
I held the hand of the old man, which was slowly getting colder, and prayed earnestly.
***
With the help of my neighbors, the funeral was held on a scale that was not disappointing.
Uh… I’m saying that I was going to hold it like that.
Before Grandfather’s coffin could even cross the threshold of the house, a group of knights and a young man who had hair sharply parted by 2:8 came by. He had very bright red hair.
“Are you Miss Catyshia Ainsley?”
I had cried so much that I nodded with a swollen face.
“Yess. That’s me. But, who are you…?”
“Nice to meet you. I am Jemian Parker, the tax accountant of the Blasco Duke Family.”
Who?
I blinked my swollen eyes that could barely open.
‘Blasco?’
Blasco was the only duke family in the Astroca Empire where I lived. It was also the family whom Niela, the heroine of the novel [Now We’re, Like Magic] which I reincarnated to, was adopted as a child.
Blasco’s role in the novel was a villain. They were the villains, the ones’ hiding secrets, and the final boss who fought against the female lead and the male lead pair.
Why did that terrifying Duke Family, who was said to be immoral, swarming with killers and have long since abandoned humanity, suddenly come out?
My question was solved in less than a minute.
“‘Decorate my coffin splendidly and place it in the cemetery of Blasco’s Family in Artem.’”
“Pardon?”
“…Following the will of His Excellency the late Duke who said so, we came to pick up the coffin.”
What am I hearing right now?
This time, I dug into my ears with my fingers. I guess there’s a lot of earwax.
To think he said His Excellency the late Duke. Who? Grandfather Herzen?
“There is a spiritual flame telling us to run with the coffin right away, so we will take him right away.”
When the man who said he was Blasco’s tax accountant nodded his head, the knights moved in perfect order and covered the coffin with a black flag embroidered with a sword and butterfly pattern.
No, that pattern… It looks familiar. It was the pattern of the Blasco Duke Family that all the Empire citizens could recognize.
‘It’s real?’
He said Grandfather was the late Duke? Of that family which was possessed by an evil spirit?
‘Grandfather, you never said anything like that in your lifetime!’
But the shock was nothing. There was no time for me to deal with my fluster, because a greater fact was waiting for me.
“The late Duke of Blasco has passed over all his inheritance to Miss Catyshia.”
“YES?!”
Even though she shouted in shock, her opponent didn’t even blink.
The red-haired young man flipped the documents in his hand and showed them to me. List after list came one after another. It was never ending.
“Except for the inheritance tax, you can take the cash, the Astroca Central Bank’s private vault, the net profit that comes from the Artem, Liden, and Gelpor territories, the ownership of the information guild that the late Duke ran during his lifetime, the art and ancient relic collection that he had, and everything else under His Excellency the late Herzen Blasco’s name.”
It… it was an inheritance list.
I was so surprised that I stuttered.
“Uhm… so how much is it roughly…?”
“Ah, I should have explained it in an easy-to-understand way. Simply put, it is about two-thirds of all property belonging to the Blasco Family. In fact, it’s basically everything except for the profits from the family business.”
“Yess?!”
“If you rank the property level by the name of an individual, not as a family, Miss Catyshia will be the next richest after the Astroca Royal Family!”
I was so startled that I became speechless.
Only then did the words that Grandfather murmured before he passed away came to my mind. Yeah, he definitely said he had written some kind of numbers.
No, I mean, Grandfather. Although I didn’t know you would smoothly leave an inheritance…. You said that it wasn’t much…!
“Excuse me, how about the other heir, other than me…?”
“There is none.”
“….”
“Since the gist of the will has decided that Miss Catyshia is the only heiress.”
It was such a firm answer that I was at loss for words.
I am 10 years old, and I think I’ve become a millionaire.