I Want to Live an Easy Life - ✿ dusk blossoms ✿

“Ahem, you’ve known me for 10 years and still have so little trust! Well, I’m starting to feel hurt!”

“It’s because I’ve known you for 10 years that I have no trust.”

I corrected him personally.

The Professor’s wrinkled eyes drooped downwards, showing a somewhat hurt expression, but I, already worn out and tired, was no longer fooled.

“Ah!! This is an old man’s last wish! Kiel, you’re going to die if you stay here anyway! Let’s go, let’s go! Huh? Let’s go! I said let’s go! I told you to go!”

Seeing my frozen expression as I stood still with no intention of moving, the supervising professor finally lay down on the floor and flailed his arms and legs.

Watching a professor nearing 50 rolling around on the floor cleaning was disgustingly unpleasant.

“Let’s go.”

I concluded it would be better than vomiting, getting stabbed, and dying with my face in my own vomit.

The place I followed the damned professor to was the underground laboratory.

Professor Lemerun dragged me into a box large enough for two or three people to enter.

“What is this?”

From the crude machine that only gave me uneasy thoughts, I could feel an unbelievably condensed large amount of magical power.

“This is a long-distance teleportation device! It breaks a person down to the molecular level, sends them to designated coordinates, and then recondenses and reassembles them.”

Saying that, he opened the lid of a translucent brown bottle that was neatly placed inside the machine.

Pop!

As the cork popped out, the bitter and strong alcoholic scent unique to whiskey spread throughout the narrow box.

“Is that whiskey the fuel for this machine?”

Could alcohol be fuel?

“No? I just don’t have the confidence to press the button while sober.”

“……”

I was dumbfounded.

Standing to one side, gulping down the strong liquor, the professor looked at me and smiled.

It was the same smile he showed when I had been submitting my resignation letter for about a month.

That day, I was informed that he had paid off the debt of my parents, whom I had never even seen, and received a lifetime contract.

A chill ran down my spine.

“This is groundbreaking! If it succeeds, it will change this world!”

He gripped the neck of the bottle tightly and gave a speech with his face flushed red.

“Though the success rate is only 1%.”

Thud–!

Professor Lemerun pressed the button.

“Even I was afraid to do it alone, but this worked out well! Let’s hope for that 1% luck, Kiel. As of today, our lifetime contract is over!! Congratulations!!”

“You, son of a……”

Beep beep beep–, beep beep beep beep–!

Beeeeeeeeeep–!

In the box flashing with red light and unstable beeping sounds, my last words were brief.

“If we meet in the next life, I’ll definitely kill you, Lemelin!!”

“It’s Lemerun, you fool! Kuhunghunghung!”

Kwaaang–!

Just as he had boasted, we were broken down to the molecular level.

Our bodies.

Of course, it didn’t reassemble.

There was no need to blame someone for her unfortunate life. At the moment of death, she wished for nothing.

She didn’t want reincarnation, possession, or a happy life. She just hoped this was the end.

She didn’t want to live a meaningless life as a slave anymore.

However, the body that should have stopped breathing realized there was air and desperately sought oxygen.

When she opened her eyes like that, it was an unfamiliar place.

At first, she thought someone had saved her, but when she saw her hands, she closed her eyes again.

Originally, Kiel’s skin, who had been Professor Lemerun’s assistant for 10 years, was tanned from tending to the herb garden every day, but these hands were pale white.

So she thought it was a dream.

“But, why isn’t it a dream.”

She wished it was a dream.

She looked back on her life so far, but the scenery still hadn’t changed.

She knows this place. Not as ‘Kiel’, but as ‘Serena’, she had been here before.

Realizing she could no longer deny reality, she got up from the bed.

The room’s scenery, which she had been avoiding for a day and a half, became even clearer.

The silver dragon statue decorating the bedside table, the old chandelier hanging from the ceiling, the fountain with a dragon decoration visible through the window, and the mirror facing her when she got up from the bed, reflecting her familiar yet unfamiliar appearance.

‘This kind of hair isn’t common.’

She touched her hair with her fingertips. Her reflection in the mirror moved the same way.

‘So I didn’t die back then.’

Pink hair with curls mixed in.

Despite looking like a soft, cotton candy-like female protagonist…, this body was that of a villainess.

A straight nose and quite a round face shape, skin as white as powder, and hair a bit dry as if not properly cared for in a while.

Even judging objectively, it’s quite a beautiful face.

At least among the three bodies she had gone through so far, Serena’s face stood out.

Her lips were gently closed with no expression, and her slightly drooping eye corners made her look a bit languid.

It looked like chronic fatigue had built up, or like someone who had just given up on life.

On top of that, her pitch-black eyes were dark and worn from life.

In the past, there might have been some vitality from her will to survive somehow.

Only her eyes remain the same as always. The anxiety in her heart melted away like snow when she saw her eyes.

Her mind eased with the familiarity.

They say eyes reflect the soul, perhaps these reflect her soul worn down by years of slavery?

“……”

Who knows.

She no longer wished for much now.

Fair labor for fair compensation.

A world steeped in capitalism.

That’s all she wanted.

She wanted to set up a proxy, start a business, and live by just lifting a finger.

To do that, she needs to clean up all the messes and start from scratch.

She quickly organized her thoughts.

After dying and coming back to life about three times, there was no need to adapt anymore.

No, in fact, she was confident that she wouldn’t lose to anyone when it came to adaptability.

If you count all the lives she remembers, she has a whopping 18 years of slave experience.

’18 years as a slave?’

It’s a dizzying number.

With that much, you could survive even if you’re thrown into the middle of a desert.

‘…The fact that I’ve been driven here means divorce proceedings are underway. I’m probably refusing to sign the divorce papers.’

If so, she is now 26 years old.

11 years have passed since she thought she died in a carriage accident at 15.

‘The original story I tried to avoid must have all progressed.’

Still, if it’s the point where she’s refusing to sign the papers at 26, fortunately, there’s time to fix things.

Serena’s life starts going downhill in earnest from 27.

Now was the time when the duke kicked her out, telling her not to enter the main mansion until she signs the divorce papers.

This annex was originally unused, so that’s the only reason to be here.

‘Let’s go sign and secure food, clothing, and shelter first.’

If they divorce by mutual agreement, she’ll receive alimony.

In the original story, she refused to sign and ended up not receiving any alimony or compensation.

Because to forcibly proceed with the divorce, her husband exposes all the crimes ‘Serena’ has committed so far.

If that happens, she’ll be kicked out penniless.

She doesn’t want that.

Love? Power?

None of that is necessary for living.

Enter a romance fantasy novel and find happiness by avoiding the original story? Find happiness with someone other than the male lead?

That’s all luxurious talk for the lucky ones.

If there are lucky ones, there are unlucky ones too. That’s me. I’ve had bad luck since long ago.

Dragged along by that bad luck, one proposition settled in her mind.

You need money to avoid being used.

The life of an assistant is miserable. There’s no fair compensation for labor.

Knowing this, Professor Lemerun paid off the debt Kiel’s family owed.

It was money that would take decades to repay with the meager salary of a miserable assistant.

She almost requested the assassination of the parents she had never even seen.

She couldn’t because she had no money.

Now she didn’t dream of sudden riches.

She just wanted money proportional to her labor. If she worked 24 hours, she wanted to be paid for 24 hours of work.

Yes, money is the best. You need to have money.

Serena’s eyes glinted.

Once she thought that far, her mind moved quickly.

For ‘Serena’, one day was enough for hesitation and denial of reality.

If there’s anything she learned firsthand from the past 18 years of slavery, it’s that the longer you deny reality, the hungrier you get.

Professor Lemerun was excellent.

He was good at herbology, alchemy, and magic too.

Serena had no talent for magic.

Perhaps it was Kiel’s borrowed body that was like that.

Serena knew this, and Professor Lemerun knew it too.

So sometimes the professor would use warp to throw her into a forest full of monsters with an errand list and tell her to pick some weeds.

Every time that happened, she wanted to stuff the monster’s poison sac along with the weeds.

Shaking off the nostalgic memories, Serena slowly opened the pages of old memories.

‘By now, have I cut ties with my parents?’

The emergency fund I set aside before going to the monastery should still be there.

She, Serena, recalled the private bank account she had created around the age of 7 when she realized reality.

It was where she had stashed away all her pocket money from childhood in preparation for the worst-case scenario.

Serena’s assessment of the situation was quick.

She was quick to piece together the circumstances, judge the timing, and determine what needed to be done.

She had to perfectly understand the professors’ incoherent words.

It was an excellent virtue of a slave, no, an assistant.

But there was something she was even more joyful of than that.

‘I’ve finally escaped.’

In fact, Serena was happy just for that.

She is no longer Professor Lemerun’s assistant or Kim Chul-soo’s assistant!

She’s a regular person!

She doesn’t need to wake up at dawn to prepare meals, prepare materials, ghost-write papers, plan sightseeing courses tailored to the supervising professor’s tastes including restaurant and hotel reservations for business trips, pick up the professor’s son at the airport. Of course, she doesn’t have to see the childish behavior of a 50-year-old professor rolling on the floor in a white gown throwing a tantrum, or prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner, tend to the herb garden in between, check the weather forecast and cover the plants with plastic when rain or typhoons are coming, anxiously worrying about pulling an all-nighter the next day due to the professor’s bad mood if even a little damage occurs.

There were still too many things coming to mind, but even a month wouldn’t be enough to think about them all.

There’s no one around me.

The world decided to call that freedom.

It’s freedom!

Freedom!

Serena laughed like a madwoman for a while.

After laughing her head off for quite some time, she eventually left the annex.

Her destination was the main mansion, where her husband, the owner of the duke’s residence whom she hadn’t seen for nearly 11 years, would be.