Amnesia Is an Advance Payment
"Meow~"
Inside a shabby building, a cat purred lazily in the warm sunlight spilling through the window.
"Come here, kitty."
At the girl's call, the cat hopped lightly down from the sill and padded over to her. She gathered it gently into her arms.
"Hungry?"
"Mrr~"
The cat answered with a weak little cry, as if it understood.
"It's all right. Just wait a little longer and Unnie will bring dinner."
She stroked the cat as she spoke, her voice soft with comfort.
"I miss Unnie so much..."
The ash-haired girl—Lily—waited for her sister again today.
Growl...
"Ha. I'm screwed."
Ignoring the protest of my stomach clock demanding food, I lay on the ground staring up at the sky. Night had fallen without my noticing; a softly glowing moon looked down at me.
"Is there some kind of activation condition?"
I had tried punching a wall to force the ability out, but the only thing that changed was the bloody bruise blooming across my knuckles. Apparently it wasn't the kind of power I could just use whenever I wanted.
I was planning to train the ability and take mercenary work...
Mercenary work in this world covered a lot of ground—night watch, security, escort jobs, monster subjugation. The commissions came in every flavor, and the harder the job, the fatter the reward that ended up in your pocket. Dangerous work, sure—but that changed if you were a skilled mercenary. Skill bought trust, and trust meant hazard pay and a wider range of contracts you could take. With a unique ability, gold-coin commissions wouldn't have been out of reach.
For me right now, though, that was pure fantasy.
In other novels the status window always helps out...
Yeah, no. Sadly, the author hadn't felt like handing me that convenient little feature. I'd shouted "Status window!" at empty air and gotten nothing but shame for my trouble.
Who needs a status window anyway.
I could figure this out on my own. I cast my mind back to the moment I'd blown that bastard's head off.
What was different?
The man had grabbed my wrist. Disgust and rage had surged up my throat, and I'd driven my fist into the bridge of his nose with every intention of killing him.
Does the ability only activate against someone I genuinely want dead?
It made sense. The second I'd committed to killing him, my body had felt like it was burning up. But that was only a guess—it could just as easily have been my imagination. To test it, I'd need a target.
"And how exactly am I supposed to find someone I want to murder..."
Growl...
I hadn't been in this body long, but unlike me, it seemed to have gone a very long time without food. I couldn't ignore the signals from my stomach any longer. My eyes drifted to the "food" sitting on the ground.
I looked at it earlier and I still can't bring myself to eat that.
When I'd first possessed this body and searched the area, I'd found that bizarre lump that vaguely resembled food. At a glance it looked like straight garbage. Had the original owner of this body been eating things like that on the regular?
But I'm so hungry...
Once it hit the stomach it was all the same nutrients, right? If I pinched my nose and forced it down, maybe it would be fine. I was still stuck between fighting my hunger and fighting my gag reflex when a voice cut through the alley.
"Still alive, huh?"
A boy's voice, in an alley that should have been empty except for me. I turned my head. A boy about my age stood there.
"It's been a while. Aren't you even going to say hello?"
He smiled lightly as he walked toward me.
"Don't come any closer."
I put a warning into the words.
"Why so scary?"
He ignored me and kept coming. I clenched my right fist, ready to throw it the second he got too close, watching him with every intention of hitting him for real if he took another step. He closed the distance until he was right in range of my punch—and the moment I decided to swing—
"I even brought you something 'cause I thought of you. You're hurting my feelings here."
I looked at the hand he held out. In it was a loaf of bread as long as my forearm.
Growl...
Uh...
Calling him Oppa felt weird. Would Hyungnim work?
What kind of Korean is into bread, anyway.
Back in Korea I hadn't been much of a bread person. If I was going to eat, I preferred a solid bowl of rice that actually filled me up. I didn't hate bread—I'd nibble some when the craving hit—but I'd never thought it could be a staple.
I was wrong.
I felt like I could live the rest of my life on nothing but bread and die happy.
This is so fucking good... snf.
As I demolished the bread the boy had brought, I repented for every narrow-minded thought I'd ever had about it.
"...You must've been starving pretty bad."
He looked at me with open pity.
I ate too fast, didn't I.
The long loaf that had been in my hands was gone without a trace. Slightly embarrassed, I hastily brushed the crumbs from my fingers and held my hand out toward him.
"Thanks. That took care of the hunger."
"The Hera I know doesn't know how to say thank you..."
He stared at me, thrown. So he had known the original owner of this body. Lucky me. I had no idea who this body belonged to or where I even was. I'd planned to walk the streets and pry information out of people—
Looks like I don't need to anymore.
—because someone who clearly knew me had walked right up on his own. I wasn't the person this boy remembered. Acting differently from the original could make him suspicious. But no worries. For someone who'd conquered nearly every flavor of fantasy novel out there, this was nothing. When you can't pull off the awkward-innocent act, going full shameless is what works. I decided to deploy one of the signature finishing moves of possession stories.
My silence must have worried him, because he asked again.
"You're... okay, right?"
I looked him straight in the eye and answered.
"By the way. Who are you?"
Amnesia.
In possession stories, memory loss was a beautifully convenient device that let protagonists get away with awkward behavior around people who knew them. Most of the ones I'd read had the soul drop into a body that had just been knocked unconscious in some accident, so if the character claimed amnesia, everyone chalked it up to the trauma and moved on. What are you going to do—argue with someone who says they don't remember? Honestly, it was so good at dodging suspicion it bordered on a cheat key.
And the neighborhood I was stuck in was a slum where a dead body wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Amnesia wouldn't sound that strange here either.
"What? You don't remember anything?"
The boy stared at me, startled.
"Yeah. Nothing at all."
Heh. Your move, kid.
"For real?! You seriously don't remember a single thing??"
"Y-yeah..."
"You fucking kidding me!"
He was a lot more shaken than I'd expected. Had they been closer than I thought? I felt a tiny twinge of guilt, but there was nothing I could—
"Hey!! The money you borrowed from me!!! Don't you dare tell me you forgot and you're not paying it back!"
"Hweh?!"
He seized my shoulders and shook me like a man having a seizure.
"You said you'd pay me back! If you try to play dumb, you'd better be ready."
"Wh... ah...?"
Even at this late hour, a certain tavern was loud and packed. Drax was a ruined city, but it hadn't stopped functioning entirely. There weren't many, but inns where a person could sleep still stood, and food stalls that sold meals—edible, if not delicious—still operated. Of all the buildings that remained, most were taverns. And into this one, the place that saw the most foot traffic of any of them, walked a woman.
Women were a rare sight in Drax. Most had already lost their minds; the ones who hadn't were usually dragged off and put through hell. In a city like that, a woman drew every eye in the room.
"Whoa... she's actually pretty cute..."
"Been a while since I had a woman. Must be my lucky day."
"Walking in here alone—is she right in the head?"
Ignoring the men's greasy stares, the woman walked straight to the back of the tavern.
"Hey. Innkeeper."
"What do you want... some woman—... Hhk!!!"
The moment the innkeeper saw her face, he slammed his head down.
"I-I'm so sorry... Lady Dania!!"
The tavern erupted in whispers.
"Dania? I feel like I've heard that name..."
"You dumb bastard! That's Lord Bram's right hand!"
"Eyes down!! Unless you want to die."
"Haa..."
Looking thoroughly done with the noise, Dania ignored the stir and got straight to business with the innkeeper.
"I need information on a corpse found near here."
The innkeeper kept his respectful posture as he answered.
"Corpses... quite a few have passed through. Which one might you mean, my lady?"
"The one without a head."
The innkeeper cast back through his memory.
"Hmm... ah. It was an absurd story, but there was talk about that."
Dania tipped her chin, telling him to continue.
"Someone claimed they saw a man get his head blown clean off by a single punch from some woman—"
Catching Dania's expression, the innkeeper hastily tacked on,
"Ridiculous nonsense, of course! Haha... people must be going mad and seeing things."
"And what did they say about the woman?"
"Pardon?.. Well... a witch of a girl, they said. A young face that could entrance a man, with long black hair..."
Her business finished, Dania left the tavern and thought back to Rick's corpse from earlier that day.
I wasn't imagining it.
The fist-shaped crater left in the corpse's head had been far too small to belong to a man's hand.