You Say This Child Isn't Yours!? - Chapter 1

“Will it ever stop….”

Looking at the thin snowflakes fluttering outside the window, all she could do was sigh deeply.

‘White chunks of poop are falling from the sky.’

It wasn’t funny. What was a joke in her past life had become a reality. Because of that snow, she had been stuck at an inn in a village at the foot of the mountain for three weeks, unable to cross the mountain range. Meanwhile, her worries grew as big as her belly.

“I want to settle down before giving birth, but I’m not sure if I can.”

She was endlessly stroking her belly, now past the six-month mark, when she picked up the unfinished baby clothes again.

“Baby’s mom.”

The innkeeper knocked on the door, calling her with a title that was three months ahead.

Since she was paying her lodging fees on time, it wasn’t likely that the innkeeper was here to collect. Did she come to buy medicine again?

Erica rose from the window. It was only natural for her steps to be slow, given her heavy body. As she waddled to the door, supporting her back with both hands, the innkeeper couldn’t wait and knocked again, urging her.

“Yes, yes. I’m coming.”

What could be so urgent? When she opened the door, the innkeeper started speaking incoherently.

“Baby’s mom, didn’t you lament yesterday about just wasting money?”

“Yes? Yes, that’s right.”

Though she hadn’t used such a cheap expression.

“There’s a chance to earn money.”

“Really?”

The innkeeper, pointing towards the worn stairs, spoke excitedly as if it were her own business.

“A young couple came into the lower room last night, and the wife seems to be in labor.”

Out of boredom, she had chatted with the innkeeper about being a midwife, and it seemed the innkeeper remembered that.

“The pregnant woman looks fair and noble, like she has quite a bit of money. When I said we had a midwife at the inn, they asked to call you. Go quickly.”

“Thank you.”

Erica went downstairs to check the condition of the pregnant woman and knocked on the door of the room the innkeeper mentioned.

“What is it?”

A man’s voice asked from beyond the door, sounding wary of an uninvited guest. Had they forgotten they called someone?

“You called for a midwife….”

She thought it was odd, but the real surprise happened when the door swung open.

“…Roderick?”

Black hair, deep blue eyes. His features were a bit thinner than she remembered, but she knew them well.

“…Erica?”

Above all, her name slipped out of his mouth reflexively.

The man who opened the door was Erica’s childhood friend and fiancé, Roderick.

“You… you’re alive?”

The joy of her first love, whom she thought dead, being alive was brief.

“Aah!”

A scream came from behind Roderick. The person groaning and curled up on the bed inside was a woman. A heavily pregnant woman.

At that moment, the situation in Erica’s mind was neatly summarized in just a few sentences.

The father of her child, whom she thought dead, had returned alive.

With another woman, more pregnant than she was.

Indeed. She had been, in crude terms, ‘dumped and abandoned.’ In that moment, the genre of her current life turned into a melodrama.

***

Erica’s past life was, in a word, a melodrama.

She was born the eldest in a chaebol family that every Korean would recognize by name. Not only was she born with a silver spoon, but she also had beauty and brains, with no weaknesses—except that her lack of weaknesses was her weakness.

Until the day she thought she was the eldest.

“Say hello. This is your brother.”

Her father, notorious as a playboy, brought in an illegitimate child he had hidden away as soon as her mother died of cancer. A ‘brother’ born just ‘two months’ earlier than Erica.

From that day on, being female became her weakness.

“Having only a daughter as a child doesn’t uphold my dignity.”

Father, what kind of world do you think it is these days? But alas, a chaebol family is a different world.

They wouldn’t send Erica to study abroad because she was a girl, yet they’d spend money on her ‘brother’ to donate and get him into a prestigious overseas university. It was absurd.

By then, she more than understood. The position of the group head wasn’t hers.

Even knowing this, Erica couldn’t give up.

From the moment I was born, that position was mine.

So she stubbornly joined the group to prove her abilities and tried to build her own allies within the group. Fortunately, her efforts didn’t betray her. The division she led performed exceptionally well, and she managed to gather some supporters.

But in the end, what came back was….

“The successor should be a son, after all.”

Her efforts didn’t betray her, but she was betrayed by her senile father.

Thus, the position of the next group head went to the thief known as her brother. Just because he was born two months earlier with a penis. The idiot, who had a head instead of a brain, barely graduated from a prestigious university by throwing money at it, and only managed to survive because the chief of staff cleaned up his messes.

How could someone with a birdbrain have any work skills! He strutted around arrogantly, pretending to be competent, when it was the chief of staff who handled everything for him. Putting a parrot that only repeated what the chief of staff said on the throne—does that make any sense?

‘Wait.’

Erica, who had lost her usual elegance and was exploding with layered anger, paused.

Isn’t this insulting to parrots? How dare I compare smart parrots to that human. I apologize to parrots and their caretakers everywhere.

Then let’s call him a puppet. One who only does what the chief of staff tells him….

‘Wait.’

She was about to lose her temper and start cursing again but stopped.

‘A puppet of the chief of staff?’

Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit her.

‘Why is it the chief of staff controlling him, not Father?’

The chief of staff mentioned here was her father’s, not her brother’s. She had thought he sided with her brother because of her father’s orders. But her intuition said otherwise.

She had an investigation done. It turned out that the person who found and brought in the illegitimate child, her father’s old lover’s secret child, was none other than the chief of staff.

‘I have a bad feeling about this.’

When she demanded to know if a paternity test had been done, it was the chief of staff who quietly handed her father the result showing a 99.98% probability of paternity.

To confirm that her bad feeling was not just a feeling, she compared the DNA of her ‘brother’ and the chief of staff….

Paternity Probability: 99.98%

It was a cuckoo’s egg.

The person who conducted all the paternity tests whenever someone claimed to be her father’s hidden child was none other than the chief of staff. It would have been easy to swap her father’s hair for his own during the process, given her father’s complete trust in him.

Her father would never have suspected that his loyal confidant, who had helped fend off scammers aiming for the group, was in cahoots with them.

‘Since you’ve lost your intuition, it’s time to pass the group to me, Father.’

If she showed this to her father, the group would be hers.

But they, too, had been investigating her. On her way to tell her father that her brother wasn’t his child, she was kidnapped.

She was forcibly injected with an unknown substance, lost consciousness, and when she regained it, everything was dark. She twisted her limbs but couldn’t move or find a place to move to. She was bound hand and foot, trapped in a cramped car trunk.

As she struggled to loosen the bindings and looked around in the darkness, a green light caught her eye, and she smiled with satisfaction.

It was the trunk release button.

‘Idiots.’

Modern cars all had buttons inside the trunk for escape in case of kidnapping.

Just like Erica now.

She gently opened the trunk of the car speeding somewhere. If another car was following, she planned to wave her bound hands outside to signal that someone was trapped. Then they would call the police.

Unfortunately, the car was driving on a deserted, dark country road. It was ominous.

She hoped to escape when the car stopped at a signal, but realizing there were no signals, she felt despair. Just then, the car suddenly stopped.

Click.

The sound of the front door opening was heard. Footsteps approached the back of the car.

“Why’d you wake up and make a fuss already? And how did you open the trunk?”

‘How did they know I just lifted it a bit, ah!’

She realized. The car dashboard must have shown a warning light indicating the trunk was open.

‘Ah, whatever.’

She rolled her body out of the trunk blindly. Without time to feel the pain of hitting the dirt ground, she tried to get up and run but was grabbed by the hair by the fake brother who followed her.

“Ah! Let go!”

“Stay still, will you? Slippery little thing.”

“Be gentle, young master.”

As she was dragged back to the trunk, a familiar voice was heard. She turned to see the chief of staff stepping out of the passenger seat.

“You should be gentle, seeing as she’s the group’s princess. Though a tragic princess.”

The man, who approached her face, tapped her dusty cheek and laughed slyly. Erica suppressed the urge to headbutt him with all her might.

“Young master? Don’t make me laugh. You can’t call your son your son, and you can’t call your father your father. It’s really pathetic for both of you.”

The chief of staff chuckled. He seemed like someone who pretended to be relaxed while actually feeling anxious and frustrated.

“You look decent enough to be useful, so if you shut your mouth and behave, I was thinking of finding you a good marriage. But since you can’t keep your mouth shut, you’re useless. Still, you might be of some use, so I’ll spare you.”

The chief of staff took out a leather pouch from his pocket and opened it. Inside was a syringe identical to the one used to inject her when she was kidnapped.

“Give her another shot.”