<CHAPTER 01>

That day, I was unusually tired.

I had botched yet another job interview, and as if reflecting my miserable mood, the sky was filled with dark clouds.

The traffic light turned green. I forced my heavy legs to move.

And then, from somewhere in the distance, I heard a child crying.

I turned my head and saw a little boy in a yellow kindergarten uniform lying on the ground, sobbing.

HOOOOONK—

A deafening horn blared, loud enough to drown out the child’s cries.

A huge dump truck was barreling toward us from across the street without slowing down.

It was honking like mad, as though its brakes had given out.

Huh?

That’s dangerous.

The moment I thought it, my body moved before my mind could catch up.

When I came to my senses, I was lying on the ground.

The thick clouds that had loomed overhead all day had finally begun to release raindrops one by one.

Feeling the drops splatter against my face, I slowly pushed myself upright.

But my body felt strangely weightless.

Could it be… I’m dead?

I didn’t want to die like this…

I got to my feet and turned my head.

There, I saw my own body lying on the ground, covered in blood.

Beside it, the little boy in the kindergarten uniform was bawling his eyes out, while people began gathering around them.

The siren of an ambulance soon joined the chaos.

I don’t even have a family. Who’s going to take care of my funeral…?

I was staring awkwardly at my own corpse when, all of a sudden, a bizarre status window appeared before my eyes.

<You have died.>

Choice 1. Proceed to judgment in Heaven or Hell.

Choice 2. Be reincarnated into another world.

*Because you saved one life, an additional choice and a buff item will be granted.

*Warning: The other world will be randomly selected.

*Undisclosed item (1)

“…”

What was this?

Had even the grim reapers lost their jobs now?

Apparently, the afterlife had been mechanized to keep up with the IT age.

I quietly read through the explanation when, all of a sudden, a countdown appeared.

10, 9, 8, 7…

<If no selection is made, Choice 1 will be automatically selected.>

Judgment in Heaven or Hell…

To be honest, I wasn’t confident about that.

I hadn’t lived a particularly bad life, but I couldn’t exactly say I’d been a good person, either.

Of course, I’d just done something good, but…

Still, the warning made me hesitate to choose Choice 2 without a second thought.

If my next life was randomly assigned, couldn’t I end up as some bizarre criminal or even a monster?

*System processing…

5, 4, 3, 2…

But despite all that, I chose Choice 2.

Hoping that, just maybe, I’d be happy in my next life.

* * *

It had been a week since I came to this other world after receiving whatever the so-called buff was.

This isn’t happy at all.

She was not happy in the slightest.

Elodie Meclaire.

The daughter of Count Meclaire, she was destined to die a dozen or so years from now.

Right. I’ve never had much luck with gacha, anyway…

Even when I was reincarnated into a random world…

Of all things, Elodie Meclaire was the villainess in a novel.

Of course, she hadn’t realized that she was inside a novel the moment she was reincarnated.

At first, she simply thought this was an ordinary magic-fantasy world.

It was thanks to her husband, Cavil Cernoir, that she realized this was the world of a novel.

Cavil was the male lead of a romance novel.

He was the kind of protagonist who had every possible buff dumped onto him—handsome, well-built, kind-hearted, and extraordinarily talented.

Why did it have to be like this…?

Unfortunately, Elodie was not the female lead.

The heroine was a princess of the Kingdom of Dayef, a kingdom that would be destroyed several years later, around the time war broke out.

The reason Elodie had grown attached to Cavil’s character in the novel was nothing complicated.

She simply felt that his miserable fate was strangely similar to her own.

Cavil was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Cernoir, abandoned at an orphanage as a newborn.

To make matters worse, he suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of the adults there.

Then, after both the duke and duchess died, it was discovered that he was the heir, and he was brought back to the ducal estate.

But his true misfortune began there.

Immediately after arriving at the ducal estate, he was married to a woman six years his senior—and then subjected to abuse by his own wife.

That abusive wife was Elodie Meclaire.

As the mistress of the ducal household, Elodie lorded over the estate, replacing all the servants. The new servants followed her lead and treated Cavil with contempt.

This novel doesn’t even have any catharsis…

It was the kind of story that made your chest feel painfully tight just reading it.

And several years later, Cavil would receive an imperial decree and be sent to the battlefield at a young age to lead a knightly order.

There, Cavil would grow from a boy into a young man.

Before the war ended, he would meet the love of his destiny.

That person was the heroine.

If I had to be reincarnated randomly anyway, I wish I’d at least been the heroine…

But it couldn’t be helped.

In any case, after earning great military distinction in the war, Cavil would return to the ducal estate together with the heroine.

And Elodie, Cavil’s wife, would suddenly change her attitude after seeing the husband she had once ignored return as a celebrated war hero.

She would shamelessly spout nonsense about how she’d been waiting for him, how she’d missed him, and so on.

Cavil demanded a divorce, but there was no way she would accept it quietly.

Not only did Elodie reject his request, she also persecuted and tormented the princess who had come to stay at the ducal estate.

Eventually, she would commit an act of evil from which there was truly no turning back…

Was it the poison that made your entire body stiffen like stone…?

She used poison.

Amazingly, Elodie, a genius in the field of magical potions, developed a horrifying poison specifically to kill the princess.

Fortunately, Cavil discovered her plan, and she was expelled from the ducal estate.

Such lukewarm catharsis…

Still, at least the villainess received the conventional fate of a villain.

After being driven out of the ducal estate, Elodie was punished by karma and contracted an incurable disease with exactly the same symptoms as the poison she herself had created.

And she eventually died a lonely death in the slums.

Yes.

That was me.

Elodie smiled bitterly as she looked at her sleeping husband.

Right now, Cavil was only seven years old.

But because he had been abused at the orphanage and barely fed, he looked like he was five or six at most.

His painfully thin belly broke her heart.

Children were supposed to have plump little bellies and chubby cheeks…

Elodie made up her mind.

She had been given this precious second chance at life. There was no way she was going to die of some incurable disease.

There was no restriction saying she couldn’t alter the course of fate in this world, either…

And she certainly had no intention of abusing Cavil as Elodie had in the original story.

How could anyone abuse someone this adorable?

In this life, she intended to live quietly and for as long as possible.

To do that, she first had to raise Cavil properly.

She also needed to develop a cure for the incurable disease she would eventually contract.

And finally, she would calmly get divorced!

Her goals were crystal clear.

“Cavil, wake up. It’s time to eat.”

“Mmm…”

Elodie shook Cavil, who was burrowing deeper into the blankets.

At this point, Cavil was seven years old, while Elodie herself was only thirteen.

“Eat your breakfast, and I’ll read you a fairy tale.”

“A fairy tale?”

At the words fairy tale, Cavil finally opened his round eyes wide.

Because he had been neglected for so long, Cavil was considerably behind in his development.

As a result, he still couldn’t read or write. In the original story, he wouldn’t learn to read until he went to the battlefield.

But Elodie intended to teach him before then.

My baby can’t go around feeling inferior to anyone!

She wanted to make him into someone no one could ever look down on.

* * *

Cavil’s family had once been a powerful ducal house.

The first Duke Cernoir had been a war hero who personally conquered vast territories.

However, because Cavil’s father had neglected the management of the family’s domain for a long time, the household was now suffering from financial difficulties.

Elodie’s family wasn’t particularly wealthy, either.

In fact, the character of Count Meclaire, who had married his daughter off to the young heir of an impoverished ducal house, was pretty obvious.

From the faint memories of the young Elodie she had inherited through reincarnation, Count Meclaire had been an extremely greedy father.

Desperate to sell off his children whenever the opportunity arose, he had handed Elodie over to the steward of the ducal house without a moment’s hesitation when the man offered a substantial sum of money.

Norman, the loyal steward of House Cernoir, had prepared a considerable dowry for Cavil’s sake.

Cavil had come to the ducal estate from the orphanage, but he couldn’t adapt at all and was still terrified of adults.

Norman believed that having a wife who was slightly older and more mature might help him recover.

Someone who could stay by his side, protect him, and cherish him.

But the steward’s decision ultimately became the beginning of all the trouble.

It was enough to make all the money he had scraped together seem like such a waste.

Of course, even the steward could never have imagined that a wife six years older than Cavil would abuse him.

At first, none of the servants in the estate knew that Elodie was tormenting Cavil.

Her abuse was subtle and calculated.

In the original story, after getting married, Elodie gradually grew more ambitious as she matured. She drove the steward away and seized control of the ducal household.

She replaced all of the loyal servants of House Cernoir as well.

Considering the countless different misdeeds she committed, there was no doubt that she was quite an intelligent woman.

In fact, she was a genius when it came to magical potions.

“Oh, right. I need to research magical potions, too…”

Elodie murmured as she watched Cavil rub his sleepy eyes.

“What’s a magic potion?”

“You don’t need to know yet. Come on, let’s wash your face first.”

“I don’t wanna wash…”

“Didn’t I tell you that if you stay filthy, you’ll turn into an ugly little boy?”

“…”

Cavil stuck out his lower lip before obediently nodding.

Only a week ago, he had been wary of her like a frightened animal, but fortunately, he had opened his heart surprisingly quickly.

After all, when they slept and woke up in the same bed every day, it was only natural for them to grow attached.

It broke Elodie’s heart to think of how much Cavil must have longed for human affection and warmth.

A maid brought in some warm water, and Elodie rolled up her sleeves.

“My lady, I’ll do it.”

At the maid’s words, Cavil hid behind Elodie’s back, watching her warily.

“It’s all right. I’ll do it myself, so you can go.”

“…Yes, my lady.”

The maid, Marie, felt her heart melt with emotion as she looked at Elodie.

Marie was still young, but like the steward, her family had been loyal servants of House Cernoir for generations.

At last, I’ll be able to serve a proper mistress.

Marie was filled with hope.

How could she be so mature at her age?

Marie began to think that perhaps the steward had been right all along.

In truth, she had initially been against the marriage.

How could a child who had only recently come from an orphanage possibly be expected to get married…?

But contrary to her fears, after gaining a wife, the young lord had quickly begun adapting to life at the ducal estate.

It was truly a relief.

* * *

Once the maid left, Cavil finally let down his guard and lifted his head.

Perhaps because he had suffered cruel beatings at the orphanage, he still seemed afraid of adults.

“Come on. Let’s wash your face.”

Elodie wrapped a towel around Cavil’s neck and gently washed him with warm water.

“Now, blow.”

“I don’t wanna…”

“Blow!”

“…Phoo.”

Making the little male lead blow air like that…

Somehow, it felt as though she’d suddenly gained a youngest brother.

Elodie wiped Cavil’s now-clean, fair little face with a proud smile.

That’s it. I’ll raise him well and hand him over to the heroine!