Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Serf's Son (1)
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Prologue
The man was sobbing alone in a tiny five-pyeong room.
"In the end, it came to this... Why did you even give birth to me...! Why!"
It was an empty resentment.
He resented the parents who had given birth to him only to abandon him, but he didn't even know their faces or names.
With nowhere to go, the resentment only gnawed further at the man's body.
Stage 4 stomach cancer.
He had visited three major hospitals, but there was no turnaround.
He had thrashed about desperately, trying somehow to survive.
Yet the world only sent cold sneers his way.
The doctor had tried to offer hope, saying steady treatment could save him, but the man had no money for that.
The price of hope was absurdly expensive for him.
His life had always been that way.
A precarious tightrope walk.
If he hadn't made the effort, he might not have felt so wronged—he had always put in twice the work of others.
Unable to afford cram schools, he had studied alone obsessively and gotten into a prestigious university that everyone envied.
But the man's luck ended right there.
He had thought attending a top school would let him earn plenty for living expenses through tutoring, but reality was different.
Even prestigious university students needed connections for tutoring gigs.
And the man had no parents to provide the networks others had.
Balancing part-time jobs for living expenses with academics was tougher than imagined.
Maintaining scholarship-level grades at a top university was no easy task.
When he had to weigh next month's rent against next semester's tuition.
The man had no choice but to drop out.
The professor suggested a leave of absence, but he saw no future that way.
And in a cruel twist of fate.
The year after he dropped out, the national scholarship system was implemented for the first time.
It was truly laughable.
After quitting university, his first job turned out to be a recruitment scam.
They called it full-time, but it was contract work.
The salary was only 70% of what was promised.
Without a parental safety net, he couldn't afford to hold out for better.
Even if it was a rotten lifeline, he had to grab it to survive.
And from there, his life plunged endlessly into the abyss.
Shuttling between part-time gigs and contracts.
Suffering endlessly without saving money, only piling up illnesses in his body.
"If only... I hadn't been born at all, at least I wouldn't have suffered..."
No.
His life had never escaped the pit since birth.
All his past efforts had been meaningless flailing.
"It was all... futile from the start..."
The man sobbed as he collapsed face-down on the floor.
He curled up his aching body and trembled ceaselessly.
As if longing to return to the fetal stage.
Lian was a child who somehow seemed extraordinary.
Golden hair like threads woven from sunlight, a beautiful face that even elves would envy endlessly.
His looks lacked nothing to be called perfect.
Moreover, even his every small gesture was markedly different from other children his age.
He was intelligent enough to teach himself to read without instruction.
Adults even swallowed their pride to seek his advice at times, thanks to his profound insight and wisdom.
He was the very model of a young noble.
"Hey, Lian. What are you... ugh! The smell!"
"Compost stirring. If you hate the smell, don't bother me—go away."
But he was a serf.
Doomed to spend his life spreading stinking manure.
"Sigh. Why bother digging through that smelly stuff?"
A girl with a fairly pretty face—though not quite matching Lian's—wrinkled her features and pinched her nose.
"Says the girl who reeks of urine from tanning."
"Sh-shut up! I don't smell like urine!"
The girl's name was Nora.
The tanner's daughter, she was like a childhood friend and next-door neighbor to Lian.
"Here! Dad said to give you this!"
"Hm? Oh, payback for last time? Thanks... Hey, don't drop it on the ground."
"No way! What if pig shit gets on me!"
Nora tossed the small leather pouch onto the dirt and backed away a few steps.
Lian let out a small sigh and picked up the leather pouch.
It was already soiled with compost and soil.
"As expected from a spoiled brat like you."
"Hey! That was an insult just now!"
"Praise, praise. Means you're roughly cute."
"Liar! You're two years younger! Think I'm an idiot?"
"Eh, not?"
"Eeeeek!"
Lian occasionally used words no one else could understand.
Words from an entirely different world.
A minor habit carried over from his previous life.
"Hmph! Keep being mean to me, and you'll regret it later?"
"Why would I?"
"Didn't you hear? The Young Master is coming to our village."
"Young Master—the Lord's son? No wonder the Village Head's been fussing over pointless village sprucing lately."
Lian roughly stuck his shovel into the ground and let out a long sigh.
Harvest season was approaching, and he was already swamped—what was this about?
The future lord's first visit to the village; the Village Head had good reason to worry.
"So what?"
"What do you mean, so what? The Young Master might see me, fall for me, and take me as his bride?"
"Sorry. Not sure where to even start objecting."
"Tch! Don't mock me!"
Nora's lips pursed in a pout after being brushed off by her two-years-younger childhood friend.
"But well. If you want to marry me, I might wait until next year?"
Lian still looked boyish, but come next spring, he'd be of age for his coming-of-age ceremony.
He might have grown taller if things were better.
But judging by his usual meals and sleep, there was no hope.
"Think so? Your dad's always saying he'll marry you off well to change your fate."
Height aside, adulthood wouldn't change his lot much.
He'd probably be stirring manure this time next year too.
Far from the son-in-law Nora's father dreamed of.
"Besides, you're not my type."
"What! There's no prettier girl in our village than me!"
"Me. I'm uglier than you."
"Eeeeek!"
The girl fumed but couldn't bring herself to deny it.
She had always liked his face the most anyway.
Who else would fall for a manure-stinking serf?
"So what kind of woman is your type, anyway?"
"Rich widow."
Nora was momentarily at a loss for words.
Not the first time hearing it, but it never got any less weird.
"What is that! You always make such lame jokes!"
"Not a joke. Don't dismiss my tastes."
"Hmph! If you like that type, how about Isabel, the wicked woman of the Lapis Lazuli Merchant House?"
"Exactly. Perfect match. Finally getting it?"
"Whaaat? Snap out of it! She's from the kingdom we're at war with!"
He said it jokingly, but to Lian, marrying a rich widow was the most realistic shortcut to rising in status.
Serfs had no right to choose where they lived or worked.
He could read and handle numbers well enough, but the local nobles showed zero interest in his talents.
"Then if I marry some pot-bellied rich guy and he dies, you'll marry me after?"
"Not a bad deal. I could even help secretly kill the husband if needed."
"Whaaat? That's not funny at all!"
'Not a joke.'
Lian put on a listless expression and stabbed at the compost pile with his shovel again.
He had one lesson from his previous life: living honestly and diligently only brought illness.
The world wasn't righteous retribution or inevitable justice—it was a delusion.
Believing that and slaving away had only let him watch scammers thrive.
'This life, I won't live like that.'
To avoid it, first.
He had to escape this cursed serf status.
"But still."
"Yeah?"
"If you hate this village too, I'll take you with me when I run away."
It wasn't about wanting to elope in love.
Perhaps due to memories of his past life, he saw Nora less as a romantic interest and more like a niece or much younger sister.
If anything, it was a bond of shared misery.
Unaware of Lian's true feelings, Nora blushed shyly and beamed.
"Yeah. Promise?"
"Yeah. Of course."
But the chance for Lian to keep that promise never came.
The next dawn.
Nora was found as a cold corpse at the village central well.
Lian was despised by his parents.
The reason was simple.
He didn't resemble them at all.
It was too extraordinary to chalk up to his mother's affair—even that seemed doubtful.
A child swapped by fairy mischief.
That was the conclusion reached by his parents and the village adults.
Because of it, Lian had been treated by his parents as less than a child, even worse than a farmhand.
'Would my parents grieve like that if I died?'
Lian gazed at the grief-stricken tanner couple, lost in strange thoughts.
Nora's father stared blankly at the sky with unfocused eyes.
Nora's mother, exhausted from crying, muttered her daughter's name like a madwoman.
That was how normal parents would react.
But Lian had never known proper parents, not even in his previous life.
To him, parents weeping for their child felt utterly alien.
'You idiot! Are you jealous of the dead girl right now!'
Lian smacked his own head repeatedly.
Unable to shed tears for his childhood friend, wallowing in pointless envy instead.
It nearly brought tears to his eyes at his own pettiness.
"Hey! This isn't some festival—everyone go back to work!"
A crotchety old man pushed through the crowd gathered at the well.
It was the Village Head.
With the nobles present, the incident had made his wrinkles twice as deep and crinkled.
"I knew this would cause an accident someday!"
The Village Head arrived at the scene and immediately thwacked the well—the culprit—with his cane.
He paid no heed to Nora's soaked corpse slumped on the muddy ground.
Or to the tanner couple who had lost their child overnight.
"You there! Before another funeral, raise this wall another foot."
The Village Head barked an order at the mason mixed in with the onlookers.
"Pardon? It'll be too high and inconvenient then."
"Fool! Human life matters more than a little inconvenience!"
"W-well, true..."
"Then get it fixed quick!"
It sounded reasonable on the surface.
In the end, the mason slunk off sheepishly to fetch his tools.
It seemed the matter would be swiftly resolved thanks to the Village Head's wisdom.
'Just conclude it as an accident like this?'
But to Lian, there were too many suspicious points.
First, the well's height the Village Head had pointed out.
About a meter, just above Nora's waist.
Not the sort of height prone to accidents.
A full bucket's weight might cause someone to lose balance, sure.
But the hanging bucket was bone-dry, not a drop of water on it.
'And above all, those bruises...'
Lian stared intently at Nora's cold corpse.
Small bruises marred her neck and wrists—marks that hadn't been there yesterday.
Unlikely the doting tanner parents had done it.
Perhaps Nora had been murdered by someone.
"Wait a moment, Village Head."
He had to tell the Village Head.
Nora's death couldn't be brushed off like this.
The moment that thought crossed his mind.
"...!"
Lian suddenly clutched one ear and furrowed his brow.
"What's wrong, Lian?"
"No... I just can't believe Nora's really dead."
"That's life for you. We can't presume to decide when to repay our debt to the earth."
The Village Head gently stroked Lian's hair.
Lian's expression looked grave, but he chalked it up to grief over losing a close friend.
"You go home now too. Lingering over a drowned girl might bring back a water ghost."
"Yes."
In the end, Lian couldn't voice his suspicions to the Village Head.
An incomprehensible whisper had rung in his ear.
Such auditory hallucinations had plagued him since childhood.
Sometimes like human voices, sometimes like song—strange mutterings he could never make out.
But one thing was certain.
Something always happened right after he heard it.
'That one felt ominous.'
Instinct told him voicing his words to the Village Head would lead to something bad.
The last time he'd heard such a dreadful sound was when neighborhood kids invited him to pick fruit in the mountains.
He'd felt uneasy and stayed home; one of the kids who went up met a wild boar and never returned.
'Which means, perhaps...'
Lian glanced toward the Village Head's house.
Far atop the hill, a group of men looked down this way.
Three knights in armor.
And one noble youth in conspicuously lavish furs.
If there was injustice in Nora's death, uncovering it was rightly their duty.
'But if they did it, I'll be the one in danger.'
Lian's clenched fists trembled.
They were foes a powerless serf boy couldn't handle alone.
He needed to stay calm and cautious, not swept by emotion.