Sergeant Rosaria, Today Is Your Day Out!
The cloudless blue sky was so clear that just looking at it lifted the spirits.
The air, free of fine dust and exhaust fumes, tasted better drawn into the lungs than any ice-cold soda on a sweltering day of hard labor.
The sunlight was warm, and before long the chirping of distant birds drifted in.
A peaceful, tranquil day.
Taking it all in through the open window—eyes, nose, and mouth—Rosaria said:
"Ah… I'm bored out of my goddamn mind."
Filthy, soul-crushing bored.
It had already been well over two weeks since she'd possessed this body of Rosaria's. Put another way, it had already been two weeks since her discharge from the military.
Around this time of year, the original plan had been to jet off on an overseas trip, wake up somewhere unfamiliar and fresh—somewhere thoroughly un-routine—and map out the day over a cup of coffee. In a way, that plan had landed almost perfectly.
She was staying in expensive lodgings (a count's mansion) somewhere in Europe (or rather, a European-flavored otherworld), soaking up a culture utterly divorced from Korea (a forced medieval lifestyle with not a single cellphone in sight). If you squinted, she was following the itinerary to the letter.
But she was bored.
Extremely, unbearably bored.
Being a noble, naturally, came with very little to do. There were nobles out there who probably prayed for a second body just to handle the crushing weight of their responsibilities and duties—but the position of youngest daughter of a count's household was not particularly busy.
Freya was buried in complicated work that made your head hurt just looking at it, and Felix had vanished into the world of magic, holed up in his room learning spells. According to Bennet, her personal maid, you could sometimes hear weird laughter drifting out whenever you walked past—but Rosaria had waved it off. He's always been like that. Back home, after finishing his studies, he'd sit there snickering to himself over his hobbies, so it wasn't even much of an excuse.
As for Darian—
"Man… Mom never gets tired, does she."
Rosaria dropped her gaze from the sky to the grounds below. Down there, on something that looked like a parade ground—wait, was it actually a parade ground?—Darian was sprinting across the wide training field where the soldiers employed by the count's household drilled.
Waking up at the crack of dawn while breakfast was still being prepared, then running like that every single day. Looking at him, the only thought that came to mind was: Yep. That's Mom, all right.
"Hey, Bennet."
"Yes, my lady?"
Bennet, who had just finished brushing Rosaria's hair and was tidying the vanity, hurried over at once to the window where Rosaria sat, chin propped on her hand, watching the scene with a listless expression.
"About Father. Does he do that every day?"
"If you mean the master… yes. He rises even earlier than we do and goes running."
"Huh. Figures."
Earlier than the maids—who were already the second-earliest risers in the mansion, after only the kitchen cooks—and out exercising every single day.
"…Ugh, the PTSD is kicking in."
It looked so much like the morning formation runs of military grunts that Rosaria involuntarily shuddered, unwanted memories of her service flooding back.
"Pee-tee-ess…dee?"
"Don't worry about it. Just talking to myself."
"Yes, my lady."
"God, I'm so bored I could die! I discharged already—why does this still feel like end-of-service hell?!"
Muttering to herself, Rosaria slammed the window shut, flung herself onto the bed, and grumbled into the mattress.
Her current situation was no different from a short-timer sergeant's. She woke up at set hours, had nothing to do, ate three square meals of thoroughly unappetizing food (by modern standards, anyway), slept, rolled around—and just like that, more than two weeks had already slipped by.
The first few days had been chaos and terror: stranded alone as some count's daughter she didn't even know. But once she learned the whole family had come along, she'd accepted and adapted to the situation surprisingly fast.
After that, she'd tried to satisfy her curiosity by wandering the enormous mansion—but every servant she ran into nearly jumped out of their skin, and the guilt of it drove her back into her room. She knew exactly how it felt to curse under your breath when the division commander suddenly announced a base visit.
"Hey… Bennet."
"Yes, my lady?"
"I was a real piece of shit, wasn't I?"
Which meant the person she spent the most time with in the mansion was, inevitably, her personal attendant, Bennet.
"Pardon? What are you saying, my lady? Of course not!"
"Come on, who the hell beats someone just because their hair got a little tangled while brushing it?"
"I'm a lowly commoner, and you're a noble, my lady. I consider it a fitting punishment."
"…Bennet, you're too nice for your own good."
"Pardon?"
The first time Rosaria had laid eyes on Bennet—wholesome, adorable, wearing a maid uniform that would melt any man's heart—she'd been so flustered she could barely string a sentence together. But after learning what this body had done in the past, and watching Bennet tremble at the slightest thing, the feeling that rose wasn't excitement so much as guilt.
Even as a bottom-rung private, she'd hated seniors who slapped people around over nothing. And no matter how hard she tried, she simply could not get used to a class system that split people into nobles and commoners. Still, having survived every toxic hierarchy and absurdity the Korean Army had to offer, she found herself able to accept Bennet's service without much fuss.
"Anyway, I'm bored out of my skull. There's nothing to do."
Rosaria buried her face in the pillow again and mumbled. Back in her short-timer days, she could at least kill time hanging around the juniors on work detail and talking trash. Do that in this mansion and people would genuinely drop flat and start shaking—so she felt too bad even to strike up a conversation.
Bennet, at least, had gotten used to her face after enough time together, and her manner had softened a little compared to the other servants. That was a relief. And Bennet reminded her of a kind junior she'd been close to during her service, which made dealing with her a bit easier. There were always those types who stayed positive no matter what. She still couldn't forget the smile on that junior's face as he laughed while putting his uniform back on after an emergency call yanked him out of a nap he'd been about to take after pulling an all-night duty shift.
But Bennet wasn't glued to her side all day either—she had all sorts of odd jobs on top of attending her mistress—so for most of the day, Rosaria had nothing to do but lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, killing time. If anything, the hours seemed to crawl even slower than they had as a short-timer sergeant.
And so, once again, she was wearing a death-mask of boredom, about to be swallowed whole by the monotony, when—
"Then why not go out for a bit, my lady?"
"…Oh."
Bennet's suggestion brought the light back into her dead eyes.
"My Rosaria. What is it, dear?"
"I mean… wow. Aren't you exhausted?"
From behind a mountain of documents, Freya looked up from furiously scratching away with a feathered pen and regarded Rosaria.
After possessing the world of Starlight of Dawn, the entire family's genders had flipped, and the son she'd habitually called by that title had become a daughter. Freya had eventually settled on simply calling her Rosaria in public or whenever others were present.
The smile was still warm and gentle—but the dark circles hanging beneath those kind eyes were impossible to hide.
The moment Bennet had made the suggestion, Rosaria had bounced off the bed like a spring and headed straight for the study. Formally speaking, Darian was the head of the household, the family lord, and the ultimate decision-maker—but the one actually running the Evergarden family right now was Freya.
Bluntly put, Darian had zero talent for paperwork. Felix was brilliant but completely absorbed in magical training. And Rosaria's brain started steaming the second she tried to read a document. So the mountain of accumulated karma that had piled up even before the family possessed these bodies had fallen squarely on Freya's shoulders.
"It isn't so much that the work itself is hard… more that we're short-handed, I suppose. Documents I could knock out in a minute with a word processor have to be written out by hand, one by one. It's rather a lot."
She'd been at the lord's duties for some time now, and she'd resolved plenty—but the paperwork never ended. Setting aside the debts, the usable funds were a pitiful scrap. And with that scrap, she had to prioritize the most urgent matters, allocate budgets, stamp documents, and send them off—already a headache—while the territory itself was like a critical patient one breath from flatlining. A single bandage wasn't going to fix anything.
Watching the light slowly drain from Freya's face worried Rosaria, but—
Well, not much I can do. Dad's already struggling. What am I supposed to jump in and accomplish?
Years of reading the room in the military had taught her that stepping up would only make things worse. So she stuck to cheering Freya on—and in doing so, took one solid step down the path of the unfilial (flower) daughter.
"So, what brings you here?"
"Well, you know. Sitting around in here all day is boring as hell, and I'm about to die of boredom… so I was hoping I could go out for a bit."
"Go out… Now that you mention it, it's been over two weeks since we arrived, and you haven't left this mansion even once, have you?"
"Right? I finally discharged and I'm stuck in here—it's killing me!!"
"Hmm… Is that so? Well, paperwork alone doesn't give you a full picture of the ground situation. I've been wanting to see the current state of the territory with my own eyes at least once."
"Wait—D—I mean, Mother, you're coming too? You look pretty swamped…"
Freya considered Rosaria's words, then broke into a bright smile, as if she'd hit on a wonderful idea. Rosaria, staring at the mountain of unfinished documents and remembering how hard Freya had been working right up until she'd walked in, couldn't help but ask.
"Ah, that won't be a problem. Curmon! Curmon?!"
"Ugh… eh? Y-Yes?! Yes, yes!! You called, my lady!!!"
"Huh? What's this guy doing here? Wasn't he locked in a cell?"
Freya nodded as if to say it was fine, then clapped her hands and called for someone. In the far corner, a heap of documents twitched—and Curmon burst out from the middle of it, scrambling over to stand before them.
Curmon the treasurer.
Freya had clearly said she'd locked him up for his shady dealings. So why was he popping out of the study?
"That's true, but Curmon's actual workmanship isn't bad, and we're so desperately short-handed that I've granted him a provisional special pardon to assist me here."
"Ah."
"In a crisis, one uses everything available, doesn't one? Heehee."
"I see…"
Leaving a man of Curmon's skill to rot quietly in a cell would have been a waste, so Freya had pulled him back out and reinstated him. From treasurer to something more like a paperwork aide—that was Curmon's new role.
Looking at him again after Freya's explanation, Rosaria could see how drastically he'd changed since their first meeting. The man who'd once been so fat his nape folded over itself had slimmed down until his cheeks were hollow. Fatigue and dark circles covered his face to a degree that put even Freya's to shame, and he couldn't stand still—his legs kept trembling and buckling. The arrogant, self-assured gaze from before was gone without a trace, replaced by something thoroughly servile and desperate.
"Surely, Curmon… you haven't fallen asleep before finishing the work I assigned you?"
"N-No, ma'am! Absolutely not! I was merely thinking for a moment—I was not asleep!"
"Heehee. Is that so. If you ever find yourself too exhausted, do let me know. I'll see to it you get a nice, deep sleep. Yes. A very deep one."
"*Hic*… *hic*…"
Curmon, who had apparently dozed off with drool trailing from the corner of his mouth, took one look at Freya's benevolent smile and immediately started hiccupping. That even a convicted criminal could look this pitiful—was that just Rosaria's imagination?
"At any rate, Curmon? I intend to leave the mansion for a short while to inspect the territory—and enjoy some pleasant time with the family."
"Th-That is to say… you'll be away from the mansion for a bit…?"
"That's right. And so, while I'm gone, I'd like you to handle the documents stacked on my desk."
"Th-Then what about the work I'm currently doing…?"
"? You'll finish all of that as well, of course."
"…Pardon?"
In that instant, Rosaria learned what a human face looked like when it tasted despair too vast to process.
"Ah, of course—handling it alone might be difficult, so I'll instruct Gordon to assist you. That should be sufficient, yes?"
"Ah, n-no… that's… this is… really…"
"Oh, you aren't about to tell me it's too hard, or that you truly can't do it, or that you'd rather be sent back to prison, are you? I'm counting on you, you know. Curmon?"
"Th…"
"Curmon?"
"……I'll have everything neatly finished by the time you return, my lady."
"Wonderful. Then I'll leave it in your hands. Gordon? You heard me, yes?"
"Yes, my lady. It seems I ought to prepare a cup of black tea excellent for recovering from fatigue."
"Th… just bring the whole teapot, please. Yes. Haha. Ha."
"Well then, Rosaria? Everything here is settled, so why don't we go out together as a family? I think it would be quite delightful."
"…Sure, why not."
Having finished delivering her blood-chilling instructions—and assigning Head Butler Gordon as overseer—Freya clasped her hands together and looked at Rosaria with bright anticipation. Rosaria could only nod and leave the study with her.
Just before they stepped out, someone was screaming to please just kill him, and right beside that, someone else was muttering about needing to pile on even more work—but Rosaria decided to ignore it cleanly.
Anyway—they were going out!!!