After a huge fight with the girlfriend he’d grown up with, he died beneath a runaway hundred-ton truck.
When he opened his eyes again, he had become Ilya, a bankrupt baron’s daughter with white hair and red eyes who burst into tears at the slightest bump.
The day her creditors cornered her in a dark alley, a black-haired girl came walking through the flames.
She wiped the dust from Ilya’s face with a handkerchief, her thumb lingering on Ilya’s lips for two seconds.
“From today on, you belong to me.”
So declared the black-haired girl, Selena von Savigny, the Grand Duchess of the Empire.
She paid off all of Ilya’s debts, then handed her an adoption agreement.
From then on, Selena chose what Ilya wore and decided what she was called. Even where she wanted to run, it was up to Selena whether she would allow it.
“Call me Big Sister.”
“...Big Sister Grand Duchess.”
“Such a good girl.”
She always called her “Little Lark,” as if summoning a bird kept in a golden cage.
Ilya thought she had simply been taken in by some important person on a whim.
She didn’t know that in the study, just beyond the wall that night, Selena covered her face, stifling a laugh that slipped through her fingers.
“Welcome home, my dearest childhood friend, my beloved.”
