Chapter 01
Deep darkness settled outside the opaque window.
The moon hung overhead, and from somewhere far away came the occasional cry of a night cuckoo.
Relying on the flickering light of a lamp, I wrung out a wet cloth with all my strength.
Drip—
The sound of water falling into the basin rang out unusually loud. I placed the damp cloth on the head of my young nephew, Luca.
His fever was so intense that I could practically see the water evaporating from the cloth.
Luca fidgeted, unable to settle down.
Perhaps because he’d never once received proper care when sick, this situation seemed unbearably awkward for him.
After forcing Luca to lie down and soothing him for hours on end, he was finally breathing softly, only small, shallow breaths escaping him. His throat was so swollen and clogged that he couldn’t even raise his voice properly. The way he looked at me with half-open eyes, struggling just to focus, was painfully pitiful.
If it were up to my heart, I would scoop him up and run to a hospital, even one open twenty-four hours. But this place didn’t have a twenty-four-hour hospital—hell, it didn’t even have a hospital at all.
All I could do was keep changing the wet cloth and gently calming him. I tried my best not to show how anxious I was as I comforted Luca.
“Luca. Just hang in there a little longer. I’ll get you some medicine as soon as the sun comes up.”
“Cough… I’m fine. Medicine, really… We don’t even have money.”
“I’ve got something saved up. Kids aren’t supposed to worry about money.”
Seeing him so tiny, groaning in pain and yet worrying about household finances made my chest ache.
And the truth was, his concern wasn’t unfounded—we really didn’t have any money, which only made it worse.
I wouldn’t be able to pay the full price for medicine. At best, I’d have to head into the forest at dawn, gather whatever medicinal herbs I could find, and beg the apothecary to somehow settle the cost.
While I was busily calculating all this in my head, Luca must have misunderstood my serious expression, because his face darkened.
“It’s okay if you go to the May Festival. You were really looking forward to it.”
Even as he said that, his eyes rolled around as he carefully studied my face.
You’d be devastated if I actually went, so why are you testing me like that?
I snorted and added as if it were ridiculous.
“What May Festival? Don’t talk nonsense—just focus on getting better.”
Luca, still unconvinced, insisted several times that he was really okay.
How much time passed like that? At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because his breathing evened out. From his lips, as he dozed fitfully, came a small, whimpering murmur.
“…Mom.”
Yeah. Of course you’d miss your mom.
With a heavy heart, I gently patted Luca’s small hand that had slipped out from under the blanket. His fingers twitched, then suddenly grabbed onto mine. Desperately, as if he’d never let go, he held on tight.
I laughed awkwardly.
I needed to change the wet cloth… but I didn’t want to pull my hand away.
Fine. I’ll let him do what he wants for just a little while.
So I stayed by Luca’s side, nursing him through the night, drifting in and out of sleep. The naps I took were hardly worthy of being called sleep at all, and in the early hours before dawn, even before the morning sunlight appeared, I quietly slipped away.
My eyes were hollow, my head foggy from lack of sleep, but I forced myself to shake it off and stay alert.
Man, I’m really craving coffee.
This body shouldn’t have anything to do with caffeine addiction, and yet every morning, coffee shimmered temptingly before my eyes.
Smacking my lips, I stepped out of the house. If I wanted to make a quick trip to the forest before the herbalist opened, I had to hurry.
Fortunately, I retained some of this body’s memories, enough to distinguish medicinal herbs.
If I hadn’t, there would truly have been nothing I could do in this world.
Who would’ve thought I’d become the cliché protagonist who gets into a traffic accident while drunk, blacks out, and wakes up in another world…
When I came to my senses, I was inside the body of a woman named Judith Maybaum.
What really felt unfair was that the car that hit me had been a damn Mazda slowing down as it turned into an alley!
Waking up in a completely unfamiliar body without even properly remembering dying—of course I’d been utterly confused. At first, I thought it was a dream.
A pale blonde with washed-out color, a slender frame, and equally pale, light violet eyes—a cool, beautiful woman. What a dream!
Sure, she seemed to have a bit of a sharp personality, but I’d been so happy, thinking I’d at least become a beauty in my dreams…
Who would’ve thought I’d have to live like this for the rest of my life?
Back then, I cried as I yanked at the faded golden hair that spilled down past my shoulders.
If I had to possess someone, couldn’t it at least have been a noble lady? A house without even servants, seriously?
And on top of that, there was another mouth to feed…
The original owner of this body, Judith, lived alone in a rural village with her nephew, Luca. All other family members had died in accidents or from epidemics.
Luca and I hadn’t been a particularly close aunt-and-nephew pair.
To be more precise, Judith had one-sidedly disliked Luca, mistreated him, and abused him.
Why on earth would someone hate their young nephew that much?
As I traced back through the memories of this body, a sudden realization struck me.
The world I had dropped into was the world of a novel. And not just any novel—a revenge story.
Have you ever heard of revenge filled with dreams and hope? At least, I haven’t.
Some stories, where the protagonist endures horrific events, succeeds in their revenge, and then goes on to live a glamorous life, are still relatively kind.
But there are also far more dreadful outcomes—where the protagonist succeeds in revenge only to have their own life ruined, or becomes the target of another person’s revenge because of the seeds they themselves planted.
The novel I’d possessed happened to be the former. At least it had dreams and hope, making it a comparatively positive ending.
But when I thought about Judith Maybaum’s position in that story, there was nothing positive about it at all.
Because I—
I was one of the reasons the protagonist sought revenge against the villain.
In short, yes.
I die.
