WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Malfoid

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◈ I Don't Need a Family ◈

Episode 8

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* * *

Gasp.

I drew in a deep breath.

Perhaps because of the pressure of standing before an enraged mage, it had felt as though my lungs were being crushed for some time now.

‘It feels like I’m back then. Back when breathing became difficult and I spent countless sleepless nights.’

I was used to this sort of thing.

I was even more used to hiding it so my family would not worry.

Ignoring it, I met the Duke’s eyes.

“Father. If I’m not a mage, do I have no value at all?”

That was the most important question.

If the Duke saw Vivette not as a daughter he loved, but merely as a defective who could not use magic, then truly...

“What else is there?”

“Father!”

“Quiet! How dare someone with no ability raise her voice?”

‘Can’t you see anything at all? Not in Vivette, that clever, lovable girl?’

It was absurd.

‘Her kindness in accepting her family’s flaws, her remarkable harpsichord playing that the Duke bragged about so much in society, the intelligence and diligence that earned her excellent grades despite having no magical ability. None of that mattered from the beginning.’

Vivette had tried far too hard.

At things no one appreciated and that did not even bring her any joy.

Whether she made that effort or not, the outcome would have been the same. Nothing but contempt and disregard.

That was all the treatment she had ever been given.

Now I knew for certain. Whether Vivette gave up on life or desperately struggled on, the Duke would think just as little of her. And the rest of the family would be the same.

‘In fact, even though I came here and did nothing, I haven’t been treated any worse than Vivette was.’

That made me laugh.

“She’s laughing in a situation like this...?”

Gillian muttered in surprise from the corner, but neither the Duke nor I paid him any attention.

We were probably thinking the same thing.

Of abandoning the other.

As expected, the Duke finally spoke.

“I... can no longer tolerate you. Do not appear before me again.”

“!”

“I will tell the head butler as well. Vivette Ashwilt is not to set foot in the main house until she leaves this house.”

The Duke drove in the final nail.

“From now on, I will not hear any news about you.”

It was an official declaration that he would treat me as though I did not exist.

* * *

After returning to my room, only one thought filled my mind.

‘I should pack, shouldn’t I?’

This seemed like the right time.

My brothers were distant, and it was clear that the Duke of Ashwilt did not see me as his real daughter.

He did not even try to hide that he had gotten rid of me because he did not want to see me. He did not bother to dress it up as punishment for angering him or confining me for my attitude.

More than anything, I no longer had it in me to remain here.

You have no ability. You cannot do anything. You are a useless girl who cannot even pull her own weight.

Everyone in this house said it with their words, expressions, and eyes.

I found it unbearably horrible, yet familiar.

‘They’re all things I said to myself in my past life.’

I had not known, when I hated myself, what a terrible thing it was. How it gnawed away at a person’s soul and drove them to drink dangerous potions without hesitation.

Saying such things to yourself could not possibly be free of guilt.

Perhaps that was why I could no longer endure others treating me that way. If I kept hearing those words, I felt I would curse myself, this body, all over again.

Staying here would be cruel to me too.

“In my past life, my family loved me and I hated myself. Now it’s the opposite.”

I laughed even though it was not funny.

“No, we won’t even be family anymore. I’m leaving.”

I did not have a plan for how I would live yet.

But if I had a little money, I would be fine.

By the following morning, I was still combing through Vivette’s cash box.

“There must be a few more coins somewhere if I look hard enough...”

After neatly sorting the banknotes and several gold coins, I picked up the box and turned around.

Someone was standing there blankly.

A handsome man with hair as white as frost, dressed impeccably despite the early hour. Gillian Ashwilt.

His gaze swept over my face.

“I thought you’d be crying. Were you cleaning?”

“Cleaning? What are you talking about?”

I was about to sneer at him when I realized I was hugging a chest from the corner.

I set it on the table with a thud.

“What are you planning to do now?” Gillian demanded sharply.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think you can do outside the Academy? And without Father’s support, you’re just a powerless human. What are you going to do with that small body of yours?”

That again.

I was sick of it. By now, I had heard those words for almost forty years. For twenty years as Choi Eunseo, a terminally ill patient, and for the seventeen years left in Vivette’s memories after she lost her mana.

So I would stop listening to them. I would go somewhere no one would say such things to me.

“I don’t have a specific plan.”

“What? I thought as much, but have you lost your mind?”

“You don’t need to get so angry. It’ll be none of your concern soon enough, Brother.”

“How could it be none of my concern?”

I kindly explained it to Gillian, who was still only getting stupidly angry.

“I’m leaving this house.”

“What?”

“Then we can each live happily. You must be pleased that one troublesome disgrace to the family you were ashamed of will be gone.”

“W-What are you talking about? No, Vivette.”

Gillian pressed a hand to his forehead and fell silent for a long time, as though choosing his words. When I began sorting through the coins again, he followed me right up to where I stood.

“Father... only said that because he got worked up. You know his true feelings aren’t like that.”

His own son understood him less than I did, even though I had only just entered this body.

The Duke of Ashwilt would be happier than anyone if I left the family.

“Do you think Father is the only problem? You’ve said every cruel thing you could to me too, Brother.”

“I swear I never did.”

“What did you say when I first entered the Academy? You told me not to act like I knew you there because it was embarrassing.”

“That was...”

“And Harris said the same thing to me. Will you still insist that neither you nor Harris has done anything wrong to me?”

“Harris, that rude bastard...”

Gillian ground his teeth and muttered something before looking down at me.

“Vivette, regardless, that is impossible.”

There seemed to be a trace of sadness in his dry eyes. Just as I wondered if I had imagined it, he continued.

“You too, but I am bound to the family by magic. You know that.”

What was that supposed to mean?

The muscles in my deeply furrowed face gradually relaxed as a new memory surfaced. It was information about the family that had been buried because I had not cared about it.

‘Surely...’

When a child was born into a mage house, they commonly held something called a baptism ceremony.

They infused the baby with the house’s representative mana, binding them to the family for life.

It was a tradition born from mages’ deeply individualistic nature.

Without such a tradition, mage houses themselves could never have existed.

House Ashwilt had also grown this large by keeping even its distant branches obedient to the family.

‘I thought the baptism ceremony, like the blessing ceremony they performed for the imperial princess, had little real effect! What kind of cruel ritual is this?’

Gillian casually said to my horror, “The reason we could not cast you out was that contract too. The family has a duty to care for family members bound by the oath. Do you understand why Father could not disown you and only went this far?”

It was, in other words, a bilateral contract.

“...”

My thoughts were in turmoil.

I thought I had finally found a way to save myself, but magic had trapped me like this.

Vivette had never been able to use magic even once. It was so unfair.

‘I should have remembered something this important sooner.’

As I berated myself and pulled up the edge of that memory, the emotions attached to it came pouring out.

Soon, an unbearable pain washed over me.

Vivette knew this fact. She had lived believing that her family could not abandon her and only kept her around because they had no choice.

I had thought the same thing briefly as a child. It had been truly miserable.

“Vivette. Were you planning to leave us?”

When I looked up, Gillian’s blank, expressionless face was still there.

Had he been hurt, only now?

“If you truly can’t bear it, endure it only until Father finds you a match. It won’t take long. You’re already twenty.”

“You want me to live like this until I get married? In this house?”

“Do you hate seeing us that much? But you won’t have to see us anyway. You won’t be allowed into the main house or attend family events.”

“Then what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

Now that I had left the Academy, there truly was nothing for me to do here.

“...What have you ever done while living here?”

That was where my conversation with Gillian ended.

I could no longer endure his complete disregard for Vivette, so I forced him out.

“Leave. Now.”

“What?”

“Do you think I’m the only one forbidden from entering the main house? You and the rest of the family are forbidden from entering the annex too. Don’t come here again, and don’t casually spout that kind of nonsense.”

“Are you finished?”

“If I wasn’t, would you keep listening? How funny. Until now, you never listened to a word I said.”

Gillian’s face, always pale, turned red as hellfire.

“If you provoke me again, I’ll truly leave this house.”

“What? Then you’ll die.”

Gillian’s words were not a threat, but an objective fact.

If the regular supply of mana from the family’s main house was cut off, a person’s mana circuits would eventually become blocked.

When their mana was depleted and their mana heart was empty, it would not end with them being unable to use magic forever.

The magical body and physical body were closely connected, so the actual heart would be harmed as well.

The longer it went on, the worse their condition became. After more than ten years, they died.

So what? If I kept clashing with these people, I felt as though my blood pressure would rise high enough to kill me in ten days, not ten years.

“You said you wouldn’t concern yourself with my affairs anymore.”

When I answered as calmly as I could, Gillian could only move his lips without making a sound.

Then the door shut with a deafening bang.

As we both sensed that this had been our final conversation, he muttered something outside the door.

“...It was because of the wind.”

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