TBLM 01

 Chapter 1

I have never been particularly lucky.

Ever since I was young, I had grown up carrying poverty around on my back as if it were permanently attached to me.

My only parent was sick and spent most of her days confined to bed. I had been forced to grow up early, and I spent countless days carrying my little sister on my back while chasing after my delinquent older brother, who was always running away from home.

Whenever I made up my mind to go outside, the weather was guaranteed to be cloudy, and even when I entered raffles with a fifty-fifty chance of winning, I always ended up with the losing ticket.

Especially on the day of the college entrance exam, when a thirteen-car pileup occurred right in front of and behind the taxi I was riding in, leaving me completely trapped with nowhere to go, I was so dumbfounded that all I could do was let out a hollow laugh.

Every time something like that happened, I would repeat to myself thousands of times, I have to stay positive. I have to stay positive, trying to hypnotize myself into believing it.

Even so, the truth was that my life had been far from smooth compared to everyone else’s.

So when I was hit by a car and died, at the moment of my death, I didn’t think about the pain or resent anyone.

The very first thought that crossed my mind was:

Of course.

I had jumped into the road to save a child who looked about ten years old, only to get hit by the car instead.

The instant the car struck me, there was a deafening crash unlike anything I had ever heard before. Startled by the sound, the child collapsed onto the ground and burst into tears.

“Ahhh! What do we do?! The child was hit!”

“Someone call an ambulance!”

As the child cried, people approached with worried expressions. The shocked pedestrians gathered around the child.

Through my fading vision, I saw the child’s parents rush over and embrace their frightened, crying child.

In stark contrast to the crying child, my body, which had been thrown onto the ground, was growing cold amid everyone’s indifference.

People merely gathered around me and whispered among themselves. No one readily stepped forward to save me.

As my consciousness slowly drifted away, I stared blankly at the scene as though I were merely watching someone else’s misfortune.

In this perfectly heartwarming scene, I had been completely left out.

Well… it’s not as though I had done it expecting praise or anything…

I didn’t have parents who would come running at full speed to take care of me after an accident, nor was I a young child who could earn the sympathy of those around me simply by crying. In a way, it was only natural…

…But honestly, I was a little jealous.

Yeah.

Before I knew it, I realized that I was crying.

It was pathetic and ridiculous for an adult to be jealous of a child. And yet, the thought that my entire life had passed without a single memory of being loved, right up until the moment of my death, was so empty and miserable.

I didn’t know whether my chest hurt because of the pain from being hit by the car or because all the resentment I had been holding back for so long had finally exploded.

But my chest hurt terribly.

……

……

……

After dying while doing such a good deed, I was reincarnated as a princess in my next life.

As a princess, I was rewarded for all the good deeds I had done in my previous life, and I began my second life surrounded by soft, comfortable sofas and sweet treats.

“Princess, for today’s full-course meal, the royal head chef has prepared steak flavored with a sauce made from freshly picked strawberries specially developed for Your Highness, along with rosé pasta and non-alcoholic champagne made from white grapes.”

“Mmm. More.”

I spoke with clumsy pronunciation as I chewed the meat stuffed into my mouth.

As soon as I gave my permission, a lavish meal was laid out before me.

One glance at the handsome butler’s face, followed by a sip of grape juice.

“Ahhh—”

I downed the grape juice in one go, as though I were taking a shot of liquor.

A beautiful maid who had been waiting nearby came over and gently wiped my lips.

After becoming a princess, I filled my staff with nothing but handsome men and beautiful women—from my maids and attendants to the gardeners and chefs.

I even made sure that the horse in the castle stables was handsome.

No matter how much I spent my days eating, playing, and living in luxury, no one ever complained to me.

It was, quite literally, a perfect life!

“Princess, would you like chocolate macarons or strawberry shortcake for dessert?”

“Hmmmm…”

My greatest problem in life was choosing dessert.

There was no labor required for survival here, no painfully empty stomach, and no family I had to support.

Maybe I was being a little extravagant…

But I died trying to save someone!

I deserved this much compensation, didn’t I?

Good people are rewarded eventually!

With a proud expression, I stuffed a chocolate macaron into my mouth.

And then—

“Issolette! Issolette!”

“How dare you! Who dares call the princess by her name so casually?!”

Someone was shamelessly calling out the name of a princess—my name!

Furious, I shot to my feet.

“Who the hell is it?!”

I lowered my head toward the direction of the voice.

It was a dumpling!

A dumpling was talking.

The moment I saw that sight, I fell backward as though I had been knocked over.

“E-Eeeeeek!”

“If you want to make a living, you’d better get up and start working!”

The dumpling said something horrifying to me.

I ran farther and farther away.

And then I fell to the floor.

Thud!

I opened my eyes after rolling halfway off a hard bed.

When I moved my body, the rotten wooden floor beneath me creaked ominously.

The familiar sight of a desperately poor house came into view.

I blinked blankly several times before opening my mouth.

“Oh, shit…”

It had been a dream.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t been reborn as a princess.

Instead, I was a nine-year-old commoner girl working odd jobs at a run-down inn.

Could that have been a prophetic dream?

I wondered as I looked at the face of the nobleman standing in front of me.

Where did my mother’s genes go?

The man standing before me looked so much like me that we could have been doppelgängers.

I had a feeling I already knew why this man had come to find me without even having to hear him explain it.

Perhaps…

It all began again with the dream that morning.

I had been having a happy dream.

While dreaming, I heard someone urgently calling my name, and I woke up.

The owner of that voice was none other than Mr. Dumpling, my employer.

That was the nickname I had given him because, strangely enough, the shape of his face resembled a dumpling.

He was an unscrupulous employer who forced me to work fifteen hours a day without pay in exchange for taking care of me, an orphan with no family.

That despicable employer even appeared in my dreams to torment me.

He really was beyond evil.

Anyway, there was a reason Mr. Dumpling had woken me up so urgently.

While I was still groggy on the floor, someone suddenly flung open the door to my room.

There were two people standing outside.

One was Mr. Dumpling, my unscrupulous employer.

The other was a young man I had never seen before, who looked like a noble.

A man who looked as though he had stepped straight out of a painting strode into my otherwise plain room.

“I-Issolette… T-This gentleman has come looking for you…”

“……”

Mr. Dumpling had lost all his usual bluster. He trembled behind the man, keeping his mouth shut.

I looked up at the man.

Two pairs of identical red eyes met in the air.

He was a young man who looked to be in his mid-twenties.

His flawlessly pale skin, without a single scar, made it obvious that he belonged to a noble and distinguished bloodline.

His beige hair appeared almost pale platinum beneath the light.

He had clear, pink-tinged skin and slightly upturned eyes like a proud cat.

Even his strikingly bright red eyes gave him an unusual, almost intimidating appearance.

“……”

“……”

The man stared down at me with an expression of fascination.

Perhaps because I was lying upside down on the floor.

Or perhaps because my face looked exactly like his.

I couldn’t tell which one he found more fascinating.

The man gazed at me for a long moment before speaking in a voice filled with certainty.

“…So it was true that I would recognize you at first sight. At this point, we don’t even need a paternity test.”

“……”

“It’s nice to meet you, Issolette. My daughter.”

This isn’t some over-the-top soap opera. Where did this come from all of a sudden?

I had been through every hardship imaginable, yet I was more bewildered than anyone by how confidently the man standing before me introduced himself as my father.

I looked at the man claiming to be my father and recalled the day I had first arrived here.

Two years ago, one day, I suddenly found myself dropped into the world of a novel I had once read.

The me in the novel was a young child on the verge of starving to death.

When I first entered this child’s body, I spent some time searching for her parents.

But I quickly gave up.

Even in this world, I was nothing more than a helpless child with no parents, no money, and no friends.

The Baros Empire, where I had landed, had an enormous gap between the rich and the poor, and commoners were constantly going hungry.

The fact that I was only seven years old, had no parents, and had gone without food for an entire week wasn’t anything particularly unusual here.

It wasn’t even enough to make someone feel sorry for me.

By the same logic, even if I starved to death tomorrow, no one would think I was particularly pitiful.

At most, they’d probably just be annoyed that there was another corpse they needed to dispose of.

Once I realized that, I don’t know how many days and nights I spent crying.

After working myself to the bone all my life only to die painfully, shouldn’t I have been allowed to live a somewhat luxurious life in my next one?

Why, instead of lifting me out of the dirt, did the world have to push me even deeper into it?