Isabel knew her place well.
She was a maid in Count Grey’s household, and among them, she ranked among the lowliest. She had been from birth.
The place where Isabel was born was the slums of the capital. Throughout her childhood, her parents taught the child how to beg.
If she failed to bring back the quota, she starved, and sometimes she was driven from the house to spend the night alone.
The hand she held out, pleading for charity, was always trampled underfoot.
That remained the same even after she became a maid of Count Grey’s household by luck.
Most of the low-ranking maids in the Count’s household had parents who were maids, or some kind of connection to the master’s house. Even the dogs kept within the Count’s estate had some thread tying them to it, one way or another.
But Isabel had nothing.
A maid working in Count Grey’s household had introduced her as a relative, allowing her to secure employment, yet no one truly believed her word.
They merely said that no matter how thoroughly she was scrubbed, her squalor would never wash away.
Still, she smiled it off.
Even at that young age, she had known she must.
Because they stood above her—people who could crush her at any time.
Rather than resist such unfair treatment, she worked herself to death.
After several years passed in that manner, no one looked down on Isabel for being from the slums.
Once, a maid who worked alongside her asked,
“Why do you go that far?”
It was when she had pulled all-nighters for a week preparing for a ball without even being told to.
Isabel answered under the gaze of a maid shuddering with exasperation.
“Just… because I’m alive.”
There was no position she wished to climb to. Neither was there something she had to protect, nor something she wanted to possess.
She simply strove to live a slightly better life because she was still breathing.
Thus, Isabel’s efforts had no goal. They were purely blind.
Because she was alive, she tried.
Without knowing what she was reaching for, she endlessly strained upward. It felt as though something would be there if she kept going.
To be sure, it was not without its rewards.
Isabel was recognized for her ability and became Countess Diana’s exclusive personal maid.
But even having risen to the highest position a maid could hold, she felt no sense of fulfillment. The meaning of life remained elusive, and the emptiness only grew.
Then came a day as she ran on, eyes fixed ahead.
Isabel gave birth to Margarita.
The child who came to her at an unexpected moment burst into tears, scrunching up eyes just like hers.
When she first saw the child’s tears, clear and brimming, Isabel could not clearly remember what she had thought. Before she knew it, she was holding the child tightly, and when she came to her senses, she was crying louder than the baby.
It was the moment color began to seep into her ashen life.
From that point on, Isabel lowered herself far more than before.
She believed that if she lived quietly without forgetting her place, she could keep her daughter safe.
But if there was one thing Isabel did not know…
…it was that an irrational death for a maid was a natural disaster that could strike at any time.
Whether a tree bowed its head or held it high, to a typhoon, it was of no concern.
She had realized it too late, and that was precisely Isabel’s sin.
* * *
“……Hah.”
Isabel Zeminin’s eyes snapped open.
The whip striking down upon her was gone.
She had clearly been whipped to death in the square, yet not a single bloodstain marked her body.
With a dumbfounded expression, Isabel looked around the room.
Faded wallpaper, an old pendulum clock, a grimy wall mirror, and picture frames containing strange paintings met her eyes.
Unbelievable as it was, she was lying in a bed in an unfamiliar room.
*Did someone save me and bring me here?*
Isabel recalled the circumstances just before her death.
Dragged to the capital’s square, she had been framed for the murder of the Countess and whipped.
The beating continued until she neared death, and Isabel met her end in excruciating agony.
Yes, she had clearly died. She remembered vividly the moment her breath had stopped.
*Then how am I alive now?*
No matter how she thought about it, there had been no way to survive.
Isabel stared blankly down at her own hands, then furrowed her brow.
Something was off.
Her hands were somehow different from usual. After staring intently at both hands for a moment, Isabel realized.
Her skin was far too pale.
It was not the sort of pallor that came from merely staying indoors for a few days.
*What is this…*
Unable to hide her flustered expression, she sprang up from where she sat.
“Ugh……!”
The moment she exerted strength in her lower body, a sharp, stabbing pain surged through her. Collapsing back onto the bed, Isabel looked down at her legs.
Her thigh was wrapped several times in medical bandages, stained red with seeping blood.
It was strange. Thinking back to the moment before her death, if anything there should have been wounds all over her body; there was no reason at all for only her thigh to be injured.
Enduring the grating pain, Isabel exerted strength in her legs to move. She headed toward the mirror on the wall.
The brief instant her face was reflected in the mirror felt stretched long.
“Ah.”
A woman with an utterly unfamiliar face stood in the mirror.
Brown hair falling to her shoulders, green eyes, white skin—a face of ordinary features.
She was a woman with a slender silhouette, yet with finely defined muscles that caught the eye.
But that was not the important thing.
Apart from the green eyes, the woman in the mirror did not resemble Isabel in a single feature.
“……Have I gone mad?”
Isabel raised her hand.
The woman inside the mirror raised her hand in the exact same way.
Thus, there were only two conclusions Isabel could draw.
Either she had gone mad and was seeing illusions, or she had entered another body.
Just then, the door burst open and someone entered.
In an instant, Isabel’s hand shot out. What she caught was someone’s throat.
“You’ve awak— hurk……”
The man who had his throat seized by Isabel the moment he entered the room flailed desperately.
His breath was cut off, rendering him unable to even beg properly. Tears streamed down the man’s face.
Plop—when the liquid touched the back of her hand, Isabel was startled.
“Why did I……”
Isabel immediately released the strength in the hand gripping his neck and took a step back. Though she had been the one to reach out and twist with force, she had not the slightest intention of doing so.
Her body had moved instinctively.
Like a combatant trained over a long period.
Isabel stared at her hands with unfamiliar eyes, then awkwardly approached the man.
When she helped the man up, he coughed and wheezed, forcing himself upright. Even though he couldn’t support himself properly, he swung his arm to push her away as she drew near.
“Are you alright?”
“Guh… huh… ugh……”
He was pressed flat against the wall, his face pale, gasping noisily. Seeing a face full of fear, Isabel became equally bewildered.
A thin silence stretched between them.
Isabel found it difficult to gauge what she should say.
That she was sorry for accidentally choking him, or that it had happened because this body wasn’t hers.
Either sounded like a nonsensical excuse, the kind that would earn her a slap in the face.
While Isabel was pondering, the man opened his mouth first. He closed his eyes and shouted.
“I-I’m just a physician! I found you collapsed in a back alley and brought you here two days ago to treat you, that’s all!”
*A physician? A back alley?*
Isabel slowly nodded.
The reflex to accurately shoot out and grab an opponent’s throat the moment an unexpected situation occurred, and his explanation that she had collapsed in a back alley.
The pieces fit. The owner of this body seemed to be someone who engaged in rather dangerous work.
Isabel bowed her head, grateful to the physician who had explained the situation first.
“……I apologize. I failed to lower my guard.”
“Y-You won’t do it again, right?”
“Of course.”
The physician, who had regarded Isabel’s face and hands with suspicious eyes several times, cautiously approached. Then, as if deciding that while frightening things were frightening, work was still work, he spoke bravely.
“Then, just a moment…… let me take your pulse……”
She readily held out her hand, and the physician grasped her wrist from a distance.
Contrary to his servile posture, the physician’s face turned serious as he began to read her pulse. But as he examined her condition, his face scrunched up repeatedly.
“Hmm…… The pulse is…… Mmm……”
Withdrawing his hand, he asked hesitantly.
“Um, by any chance, do you know anything about your symptoms?”
“No, nothing.”
“Ah…… I see.”
The physician ran a dry hand over his face.
“First of all, you saw the gunshot wound on your thigh, correct?”
“I saw.”
“It only grazed you, so the wound itself shouldn’t worsen.”
“I see. Thank you.”
When she answered blandly, the physician’s face furrowed even deeper. His expression was one of torment, as if thinking, *That’s not it*, so Isabel tilted her head.
Had she been supposed to show great relief or rush to thank him?
“What is the matter?”
“Well, it’s just……”
“Yes.”
The physician hesitated for a long while before continuing.
“So…… you are in a poisoned state. Seeing as the poison seeped in through the gunshot wound, it seems the bullet was specially treated with poison.”
“……Is that so?”
“Yes! Poison, I said, poison!”
Isabel nodded. Somehow, everything that had happened since she opened her eyes was bizarre.
She had clearly died, yet she kept waking up; she looked in the mirror and her body had changed; and now this body was even poisoned.
She had lived an eventful life, but never had she gone through so much in a single day.
While speaking with the physician, Isabel had placed weight on the possibility that this was reality; now, she placed the counterweight back on the opposite side.
*Perhaps I went mad from being whipped.*
Even so, for now, Isabel decided to faithfully play the role given to her.
With the physician before her, offering appropriate words was the best she could do.
“What kind of poison is it?”
When Isabel asked, the physician replied, flustered.
“I’m sorry. It is a very rare poison, and this is the first time I’ve seen it. But if there is one thing I can tell you……”
“Yes, speak.”
The physician looked at Isabel, then averted his eyes, seemingly unable to speak. Even then, he only spoke after a long delay.
What followed was indeed worth such hesitation.
“You have about one year left. The days you have left to live, that is.”