TheFather I Never Knew:
The caretaker came for me just as the sun dipped low, painting the windows in shades of amber and gold.
"The Count has returned, my lady. He's waiting for you in the dining hall."
My hands went cold. I wasn't ready. I'd spent the entire day trying to prepare for this moment—still, I wasn't ready.
I'd tried to finish reading the diary. Tried to understand who the real Eledy had been, what her relationship with her father looked like before everything went wrong.
But I couldn't.
Every entry was a knife twisting deeper into my chest. The birthday gifts—"Dad gave me a wand"—written in messy, childish letters. The excitement about the magical academy. The grief over her mother's death, tear stains still visible on the pages.
I never wrote any of this.
I'd made her a villain. Flat. One-dimensional. Cruel, because the story needed an obstacle. I never asked why she became that way. Never cared enough to give her a past, a mother, dreams that were crushed one by one.
I never cared to write why—so this world filled in the things I never even imagined in my dreams.
And when I transmigrated the first time at seventeen, I inherited the consequences of that carelessness. I lived five years hating her father, resenting Duke Kael, blaming the world—never understanding that I'd created the very tragedy I was suffering through.
Now I was back. Before the worst of it. Before she committed her crimes. Before he became the cold, distant man I remembered.
But I was an imposter wearing a dead girl's face. The real Eledy had written her last diary entry last night—dizzy, defeated, possibly dying—and never woken up.
I woke up instead.
And now I had to face her father, pretending to be the daughter who'd died last night.
"My lady?" The caretaker's voice was gentle, patient.
"I'm coming."
I stood on shaking legs and followed her down the hallway, my bare feet silent on the plush carpet. The manor felt too large around me, too grand. Every piece of furniture, every painting on the walls—things I'd never bothered to imagine when I wrote this world.
Each step felt borrowed. The air was thick with polish and candle smoke, carrying the faint scent of dust that hadn't settled in years. The walls seemed to whisper with memories that weren't mine—Eledy's laughter, her footsteps, and the echo of a family I'd only half-written.
Maybe that's what frightened me most. Not that I'd taken her place, but that the world accepted me too easily, as if it couldn't tell the difference.
The dining hall doors loomed ahead, heavy oak with brass handles that gleamed in the candlelight.
The caretaker opened them.
He stood by the window, his back to me. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Still in his military uniform—dark blue with silver insignia, the formal attire of a Count who also served as a general.
My breath caught.
This was him. But... younger. His hair was still wholly dark, not yet threaded with the gray I remembered. His posture was straighter, unbowed by the weight I'd seen crush him at forty-five.
He turned at the sound of the door.
I froze.
That face—I knew it. I'd seen it hollow and cold, lined with years of exhaustion. But now the lines around his eyes were softer, the expression that met me not distant, not brittle—just warm.
"Eledy."
His voice was steady. Deep. Not cold. Not clipped.
Just her name. My name now. The name of a girl who'd died last night, while I was nowhere—and whose second chance I'd stolen without meaning to.
I stood there, unable to move, my hands clenched at my sides. What was I supposed to do? What would _she_ have done—the real Eledy, the grieving twelve-year-old who'd humiliated herself at a party and come home with a head injury that would soon kill her?
Would she have run to him for comfort? Or had she already begun to pull away—after her mother's death, after failing the aptitude test, after the laughter of other children?
The diary hadn't said. I'd been too ashamed to keep reading.
Say something. Anything.
"Father." The word came out smaller than I intended. Fragile.
His brow furrowed. "Are you alright? Mrs. Hanna said you weren't feeling well this morning."
Concern. Real, unguarded concern.
My chest tightened. This didn't fit. This wasn't the father I remembered—the one who'd looked at me at seventeen with the disappointment of a man already grieving something lost. The one whose voice had gone cold.
"You're a burden I never asked for."
The words echoed in my head, sharp and heavy. But now, standing before this younger version of him—his eyes still warm, his voice still steady—I wasn't sure anymore if he'd ever truly said them.
Maybe I'd only heard what I'd wanted to hear back then. Maybe I'd needed him to be cruel so my anger could have somewhere to go.
Because this man, standing here younger and still trying, wasn't that man yet.
And I had no idea when or why he'd become him.
"I'm fine now." I forced the words out, my throat tight. "Just... a headache. It passed."
A lie.
The real Eledy had struck her head hard enough to feel dizzy, nauseous. Hard enough that she never woke again.
But I couldn't tell him that.
Couldn't explain that his daughter was gone—and in her place stood someone who'd once written her suffering for convenience and called it fiction.
He nodded slowly and gestured toward the table. "Come. Sit. You should eat."
I moved toward the chair he'd indicated—the one beside his at the head of the table, not across from him. Close.
Too close.
I'd expected distance. Expected him to put the table between us, to keep me at arm's length the way I remembered. But this—sitting side by side—felt wrong.
Was this how it used to be? Did the real Eledy sit here before? Or was this new—his attempt to reach out, to fill the silence his wife had left behind?
I didn't know. I didn't know _anything_ about what their relationship had been like when she was twelve.
Servants brought in dishes—rich stew, fresh bread, roasted vegetables, honey butter. The kind of meal I'd dreamed about during those days on the streets, when warmth and safety felt like stories meant for someone else.
My stomach twisted with guilt. This should be hers.
The servants left. He waited until I'd taken a few bites before speaking.
"I heard you asked to join me for dinner." His tone was gentle, almost careful. "You haven't done that in a while."
My hands stilled. She'd stopped asking. The original girl had pulled away from him.
"I..." I searched for words that wouldn't sound wrong. "I wanted to see you."
For a moment, he just looked at me. Then something shifted in his expression—surprise, then something like relief.
The silence stretched between us, awkward and heavy with a distance neither of us knew how to bridge.
"How was The Crown Prince Lucian's birthday banquet yesterday?" he asked. "The ball..."
My gaze snapped to him, a little shocked.
He knows. He knows she went.
He must have seen my reaction. "Mrs. Hanna mentioned you were looking at your diary this morning. That you'd been crying."
Of course she mentioned it. Of course he asked.
He watched me carefully, his expression gentle but searching. Reading something in my reaction I couldn't hide.
"Did Duke Castor..." He paused, choosing his words. "Did something happen again? Is it related to that?"
Again. The word hung heavy between us.
My thoughts spiraled—
The ball. The fall she wrote about... but what actually happened? I don't even know. Just that the nobles were cruel, that she tripped.
How can I tell him something I don't even understand myself?
He'll find out eventually—everything except that I'm not Eledy.
Then I remembered her. The real Eledy, from the diary entries I'd read this morning. The way she wrote around her pain, never saying everything outright.
Hiding it... hiding is the best choice for now.
"I miss her," I whispered, reaching for the only safe truth I could offer.
His expression softened immediately, the questions dying on his lips. Old grief flickered in his eyes—still fresh enough after three years to hurt.
"I do too," he said quietly. "Every day."
He didn't push further. Didn't ask about the banquet again, didn't mention Duke Castor, and didn't press about why I'd really been crying.
Just accepted my deflection with the gentleness of a father who knew his daughter was hurting—but no longer knew how to reach her.
The silence settled back between us as we continued eating. But it felt heavier now. He'd given me every opening—the banquet, the diary, Duke Castor—and I'd shut them all down with two words about Mother.
I glanced at him as I ate. The stew was warm and rich, but I could barely taste it.
He ate slowly, his posture straight but with tension in his shoulders that didn't match the gentleness in his voice. His jaw was set just slightly too tight. When he thought I wasn't watching, his gaze drifted toward the window, distant.
A knight thrust into nobility. Eleanor had been his guide, and she'd passed away three years ago.
I thought about what I'd read in her diary this morning. The entry from months ago where she'd asked him to teach her about politics and noble houses. He'd seemed surprised but pleased, she wrote.
Looking at him now—the tension in his shoulders, the exhaustion he was trying to hide, the way his gaze kept drifting toward the window like his mind was elsewhere—
He doesn't know how either. He's drowning in it. A knight forced into a world of politics he was never trained for. And his daughter asked him to teach her something he barely understands himself.
I set down my spoon.
"Father." The word slipped out before I could stop it. "How are things going?"
He looked up, startled. His spoon suspended halfway to his mouth, as if the question itself didn't make sense coming from me.
Then something shifted in his eyes—confusion, recognition, something I couldn't name. He set his spoon down slowly.
His eyes stayed on me. Really looking at me now. Studying my face like he was trying to solve a puzzle he couldn't quite see.
My heart hammered. He knows something's wrong. He can tell.
The silence stretched between us, taut and uncertain. His gaze didn't waver—taking in the way I sat, the way I'd asked that question, the cadence of my voice.
I forced myself not to look away, even as panic clawed up my throat.
Then his expression softened. Not suspicion. Something else. Something sadder.
He reached out and ruffled my hair gently—tender, almost hesitant, like he wasn't sure if the gesture would be welcome anymore.
"Don't worry about such things, Eledy." His voice was quiet. "You focus on being happy."
On being happy.
My throat burned. When was the last time someone told me that?
His hand fell back to the table. "If you ever need anything, you can tell me." He held my gaze. "You know that, don't you?"
There was something desperate in his tone. Like he needed me to believe it. Like he was trying to bridge a gap that had already formed between us.
"I know," I whispered.
But I didn't know. Didn't know if the real Eledy had believed it before she died.
He held my gaze for a long moment, then nodded and returned to his meal.
The tension never quite left his shoulders. The distant look never fully left his eyes. Whatever he was fighting—the nobles circling, the politics drowning him—he carried it alone.
We finished the meal in near silence, just the quiet sounds of silverware and breathing.
When the servants came to clear the dishes, he stood. "I have work in my study." He paused. "But... thank you for joining me tonight. It's been too long since we've done this."
Too long. They'd both been avoiding each other. Growing distant.
He moved toward the door, then stopped. His hand rested on the doorframe.
For a moment he just stood there, not turning back, his shoulders heavy with something he couldn't say.
Then, so quietly I almost didn't hear it—like he was speaking to himself, not to me—
"My little girl grown so much... in my absence."
The door closed with a soft click.
I sat there alone in the candlelight, my hands shaking.
That final word broke me entirely. Like a final blow.
First my realization about the girl I created for my convenience. Now him. The one I didn't even care to look at.
He isn't the one in my memories from those five years. At least not yet.
What made him change? Is it the nobles who want him to fall? Is it his daughter who grew distant and acted like a villainess and gained hatred from people around her?
Or... is it me?
The question burned in my chest, hollow and aching.
Light spilled from beneath his study door at the far end of the hallway—a thin strip of gold against dark carpet.
He was in there now, carrying burdens he wouldn't share with a child. Fighting battles I couldn't see. Probably being manipulated by nobles who saw him as an easy target.
I'll find out. I'll figure out what's happening.
But beneath that determination was darker guilt:
I'm sorry, Eledy. I'm sorry I never wrote your story. I'm sorry you died alone last night, dizzy and defeated, writing words that might have been goodbye.
I'm sorry I'm the one who woke up instead of you.
This wasn't my second chance. It was hers. The one she'd never get.
I turned and walked back toward my room, where the red diary waited on my desk.
Maybe tomorrow I'd be brave enough to finish reading it. To understand what happened in the years between that last entry and the crimes she'd commit at seventeen.
But tonight I just carried the weight of meeting a father I'd spent five years hating without ever really knowing. A father who was already struggling, already drowning, while trying to be warm for a daughter who was slipping away from him.
A daughter who'd died last night and been replaced by someone who could only pretend.
And that realization was somehow more painful than hating him had ever been.