Chapter 02
“Cough….”
My horrible death was just around the corner. It seemed as though everything around me had grown quiet.
‘Ah, so this is what death feels like.’
Thinking that, I let the strength drain from my body.
‘I just want to stop now and die.’
Just as I was about to peacefully surrender myself to the darkness, someone roughly grabbed me by the back of my neck and forcibly pulled me up.
“Gasp!”
I exhaled a ragged breath toward the world like a newborn baby being dragged out into it for the first time.
‘What kind of dream is this…?’
My body was so heavy that I could barely move a finger, and I couldn’t even open my eyes.
“Sniff, sob….”
A crying sound came from somewhere, and the sniffling gradually became clearer.
“Ranya, stop crying. Teacher has always told you how much of an honor it is to go to the home of such an esteemed person.”
“But, sob. Ranya doesn’t want to be separated from Teacher… Sniff. Waaah!”
“Ranya, I’m sure you’ll become a wonderful lady.”
The sobbing voice of a child filled with sorrow and the gentle voice of a woman could be heard at the same time.
As soon as my eyes, which had been as difficult to open as if they had been glued shut, registered the noisy sounds, they opened wide.
“Come on, let’s go outside for now.”
“Yes, sniff.”
The voices grew more distant, and an unfamiliar yet somehow familiar ceiling came into view.
‘What? I died….’
That’s right. I had died because I couldn’t escape from that moldy, foul-smelling basement.
The moment I sensed something strange and unsettling, I sprang up from where I had been lying.
My entire body ached as though I’d been beaten senseless.
‘What? I heard you can’t feel any pain after you die….’
But the pain I felt throughout my body right now was incredibly vivid.
I died.
Yes, I definitely died, so what was this?
‘Ranya?’
If it was Ranya, she was one of the children who had lived with me at the orphanage more than a decade ago.
She was pretty and smart, so the nuns wholeheartedly favored her, and she was adopted as a foster daughter by a baron and his wife who had no children.
I heard that after the baron and his wife became pregnant with their biological daughter, their treatment of Ranya worsened.
‘Come to think of it, hasn’t everything in my field of vision been strangely low?’
Curious, I lowered my gaze slightly and saw a tiny hand resting demurely on my lap.
‘…My hand is small?’
Terrified, I turned my head, and my blurry reflection appeared in the window.
There, a very small child sat alone with a deathly pale face.
In other words, apparently, that child was me.
“Why….”
Why had I suddenly become a child again?!
I stared at the window with my mouth hanging open.
And at that very moment, I remembered everything.
All the memories of my past that had been lost during the long years of experimentation.
That’s right.
This was an orphanage run by a monastery.
And it was the place that had sold me into that hell.
‘I’ve returned…?’
I bit my lip tightly and stared quietly at my blurred reflection in the window.
“…I really did become young again.”
I looked about ten years old.
‘I used to look this normal.’
As an adult, the side effects of the experiments had caused my skin to melt away, and my body always smelled like rotting flesh.
But things were different now.
I still had my pale green hair, which fell all the way down to my waist in soft waves, along with my pure white skin and glass-like gray eyes.
My body was a little thin, making my bones stand out, but my round face was actually quite cute.
Unable to believe it, I pressed my cheeks several times with my hands before clenching my fists tightly.
‘Did I really return to the past?’
Turn back time?
Was something like that really possible? No, more importantly, had I suddenly been given such good fortune?
My legs suddenly gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor.
‘Am I finally free now?’
Did this mean I no longer had to live in that insane laboratory?
“Ha, haha….”
Perhaps this was a chance given to me by God.
I was barely holding back the laughter rising from the overwhelming joy inside me when I suddenly noticed something dark beneath the loose, oversized clothes hanging off my small body.
It looked like soot had been smeared all over my arm.
‘What is that?’
A chill instantly ran down my spine.
I swallowed hard and, tense with caution, slowly pulled up my sleeve.
When I lifted the fabric completely, I saw strange ancient letters densely covering my small arm in pitch-black ink.
My face went deathly pale as I hurriedly pulled the sleeve back down.
‘What is this…?!’
This was one of the traces left behind by the experiments.
And it was also a mark announcing that my life had a time limit.
It was also evidence of the experiments that crazy scientist had conducted in an attempt to implant the soul of his deceased wife.
“No one except me would take care of a filthy, smelly child like you.”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d be beaten to death with stones on the street.”
“I’m taking care of you because I’m the one who has to.”
He always said things like that.
Still, I believed him and endured everything.
I had never doubted that if I became useful, I would be loved.
But once I’d served my purpose, the man I’d believed was my father discarded me without hesitation.
“I thought you were a pretty decent vessel since you were the only one who survived among the ones I bought from the orphanage….”
—That’s what he said!
I tightly grabbed my left arm, where the disgusting markings were engraved, with my right hand.
‘Of all things, why did this have to remain?!’
The markings on this arm would gradually spread throughout my entire body as time passed, eventually taking my life.
“Damn it…!”
Tears blurred my vision from the sorrow.
What rotten luck I had.
Just when I’d thought I might finally get to live a somewhat normal life this time.
‘But if I’ve returned to the past… then that means that bastard is still alive, too, right?’
The man who had subjected me to those horrible experiments.
‘Fine. Since things have turned out this way, I’ll destroy that bastard’s laboratory and his entire life.’
Did he think he was going to be the only one to die?
Even if I died in this life, I would at least take that bastard down with me.
“First, I’ll win their favor here and get a letter of recommendation.”
This orphanage was one of the most famous orphanages in the empire.
Since it was run by a monastery, it had apparently received several official imperial evaluations and certifications.
But it wasn’t as respectable as it appeared.
Children who received good grades in their classes could be adopted by nobles or wealthy merchants, receive the patronage of nobles while continuing to live at the monastery, or attend an academy.
But the children who didn’t perform well simply disappeared one day.
With nothing left behind except a single statement that they had been adopted.
‘They probably disappeared for reasons similar to mine.’
Just like me, who had fallen into the hands of that crazy scientist, and my friends whose faces I could no longer even remember.
So my goal this time was simple.
‘I’ll get good grades, either get adopted into a decent merchant family or receive the patronage of a noble.’
After that, I would establish a foundation for myself and take revenge on that bastard.
Slap!
I struck both my cheeks as hard as I could with my hands.
My eyes reflected in the window gleamed brightly.
‘The stupid and obedient me is gone now.’
Then I let out a short sigh.
Let’s just think about my own safety.
‘As long as I avoid being handed back to that bastard, I’ll be fine. Surely nothing else could happen, right?’
But I should never have overlooked one thing.
After returning to the past, I was much more of a genius than I had expected, and “surely not” was always the kind of assumption that came back to bite you.
Rustle, rustle! Tap, tap, tap, tap! Bang, bang, bang, bang!
Chop, chop! Rat-a-tat! Clack, clack, clack, clack!
The sound of a knife striking the cutting board was strangely cheerful.
The children in the kitchen stared blankly at the source of the sound without being able to take their eyes off it.
Tap.
Eventually, the noise stopped, and a small face suddenly popped out from between the ingredient storage containers piled up like a mountain.
“Chef Teacher, I’ve prepared the onions and carrots, portioned them, labeled everything with the date, and organized them all. I’ve finished the dishes as well! Please check them.”
“Uh… there’s nothing wrong. It’s very clean….”
Indeed, the dishwashing basin and dishes were spotless, and the onions and carrots had been prepared perfectly.
“Yes, thank you for checking. May I go organize the ingredients and food supplies now?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Yes!”
Despite having a smaller body than the other children her age, the child who had finished the kitchen work with practiced skill quickly ran off and returned less than thirty minutes later.
“I’ve organized the food storage room as well. Please check it.”
‘Already?!’
Chef Rohan’s mouth fell open.
“…Y-Yes. There’s no problem. You seem to have put in a lot of effort.”
“Yes, I wanted to be a good student who could repay Teacher’s kindness.”
Anisha said this with a bright, sunny smile.
It was such a radiant smile that even the stern-looking chef’s lips naturally softened.
He forced the corners of his mouth to stay firm and nodded.
“Ahem. Since you’ve finished all your assigned tasks, Anisha, you may go back now….”
The chef spoke while still looking around the kitchen as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The children who had been assigned to the kitchen alongside her looked at Anisha enviously, unable to finish their own portions of the work.
‘This child must be learning kitchen work for the first time… How could someone like her have been rated so poorly?’
The chef was also one of the people responsible for assigning the children’s overall scores.
Until the previous evaluation, Anisha had been near the bottom of the rankings.
In everything—history, arithmetic, cooking, etiquette, embroidery, and so on.
‘Can someone really change this much in just three months?’
All classes were supposed to rotate among the children once a week, but for the first time, the chef wanted to rebel against that rule.
‘I should ask if I can keep this child assigned to the kitchen for another month.’
However, he didn’t know.
Over the past three months, Anisha had already accumulated enough achievements to make many of the teachers set their sights on her.
‘Ah, I’m tired.’
Anisha left the kitchen while lightly pounding her shoulders with her fists.
“My scores seem to be going up smoothly.”
It had only been three months, yet the teachers had already begun taking an interest in her.
All the effort and experience she’d gained from constantly catering to the whims of the fussy, crazy scientist every day and trying to earn his praise were finally proving useful here.
On top of that, Anisha had already received almost all of the education offered at this orphanage in her previous life.
Naturally, these kinds of chores given to children were hardly difficult for her.
Shangrila Orphanage.
A small society had formed here.
An invisible hierarchy existed.
This was because children who received noble patronage and those who didn’t all lived together here, except for the children who had been adopted by nobles.
Children sponsored by nobles.
Children ranked near the top in overall evaluations.
And ordinary children.
They were generally divided into three classes, but even among the children sponsored by nobles, their status differed depending on which noble sponsored them.
Thud.
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
“Ah, you got me dirty. You worthless piece of trash….”
And three months ago—no, before my regression—I had belonged squarely to the category of ‘ordinary children.’
A boy of about fifteen or sixteen frowned and spat out an insult even though our bodies had only lightly bumped into each other.
“Sorry? Is saying sorry enough? You’d say that even after killing someone? Do you really think someone as worthless as you can speak to me?”
Of course, that was only how things had been before my regression.
I had no intention of bowing my head to anyone now.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Anisha replied with an innocent, sunny smile, her expression so guileless that it was enough to make the other person’s insides turn upside down.
