From Ciela to Ciel
I first became aware of my second life through searing pain.
Was it a headache from the flood of past-life memories crashing over me like a tidal wave?
Well… I had fallen out of a tree, but close enough.
After realizing this was my second life and hauling myself upright, only one thought rose to the surface.
“I think I’m completely fucked…”
“Ciela! Who on earth taught you such vulgar language!?”
When did this woman even get here?
I looked at her with eyes that couldn’t hide a flicker of annoyance, and Sister Marie’s eyes sparked with fire as she smacked my backside, once, twice, sharp and stinging.
Before I had awakened, I would have wailed, “I’m soooorry!” with tears streaming down. Not anymore.
Her hand stung a bit, sure, but compared to the worries swirling in my head it was nothing.
And with good reason.
Where the hell even is this place?
Even sifting through Ciela’s—my—memories, I couldn’t figure out where I was for the life of me.
One thing was certain: this place was nowhere near modern civilization. I had memories of going outside, and there wasn’t a single utility pole in sight.
Even in the countryside, unless you were living completely off-grid as some nature hermit, electricity reached everywhere these days.
What that meant was crystal clear. Snatching up undervalued blue-chip stocks and buying the crypto dip at the bottom? Totally out the window.
It didn’t even seem like I’d been flung into Earth’s own past.
So much for the historical-regression special privilege of rewriting history.
If only I’d gotten the standard otherworld-reincarnation perk—a status window—I might have felt differently.
I tried shouting “status window” in every language I knew. Nothing appeared.
Truly unsettling.
If I had simply remained the orphan Ciela, I would have lived out an ordinary life without ever sensing anything wrong.
But once I had awakened, ordinary was no longer possible.
They call this the curse of knowledge, don’t they?
The rustling sounds that reached me whenever I lay down to sleep were pure horror. When I sniffed the air, the cozy scent of the countryside came rolling in.
My gender had changed too. It would have been a lie to say it wasn’t awkward, but I also carried Ciela’s short stretch of memories, so adapting wasn’t all that hard.
Whether “adapting” was even the right word was debatable, but whatever. Who was going to call me out on it?
And honestly, looking ahead to the future that awaited me, it was a minor issue.
Whenever I stared into a water-filled basin, my face—Ciela’s face—rippled across the surface.
Even looking a bit scruffy, she had features that caught the eye.
Her hair was either silver or white, shot through with a blueish sheen that made it stand out, and her eyes glimmered with an uncanny hue, like uncut gemstones waiting to be polished.
All those elements together created a face that—though I might be tooting my own horn—looked like it had a bright future ahead.
If I’d been born with this face in my original world, I could probably have lived off looks alone.
Digging through my memories, I recalled the other orphan kids staring at me awkwardly or picking on me for no good reason.
I didn’t feel fear or disgust—just nothing much at all. What would a bunch of snot-nosed brats even know about looking at someone that way?
It was almost pitiful that they had no idea the mind inside was a grown man’s.
…Well, to them I had been just another kid their age. Not anymore, though. Too bad!
And frankly, I had lived long enough already that none of it stirred much in me.
Body of a child, mind of an adult. Kids being kids just made me chuckle. What else was I supposed to do?
So, as befitting a second-lifer, what I worried about was the future.
Living as a pretty orphan girl in some vaguely medieval-looking world.
How could that future not be terrifying?
Listening to the nuns talk, a child or even a whole person vanishing wasn’t exactly rare.
If I’d been born into a decent family it might have been different, but I was an orphan.
Dumped in front of the monastery without a soul knowing, and not a single person who had ever seen my parents’ faces.
Was this insane or what?
So I didn’t know my parents’ faces either. Maybe that was why, even before the memories returned, my personality had been pretty vicious… no, more like a troublemaker.
Even without the memories I had been stubbornly resilient, as if I were still myself.
But that was all in the past. Now that my eyes were open, all I did was sigh over the future.
How bad did it have to get for even Sister Marie—who used to spank me daily to straighten out my attitude—to start fretting over me?
Thinking about the future, I knew I should be preparing somehow, yet I couldn’t summon the will.
If there had at least been something like a status window, I might have felt motivated…
In a place I didn’t even recognize, there was precious little a young orphan girl could do. Eat, sleep, relieve myself, help with chores, keep the other orphans in line. That was about it.
Would things have been a little better if I’d been born a boy?
The thought crossed my mind that if things went south I could just follow Sister Marie and become a nun myself.
At least then the future I’d been fretting over would vanish. Live as a virgin forever? Actually, I’d take it!
In comics and games those worries of mine were closely tied to certain… scenarios, but real life was the real deal, right? Please spare me the lewd stuff already.
Though I’d heard that sometimes, when men were scarce, the women ended up doing that sort of thing with each other… Hmm. Being a girl might not be so bad after all?
Wait, did that mean even Sister Marie…?
Ahem.
Anyway, in my previous life I hadn’t believed in any particular religion, but in a world like this maybe having one wouldn’t hurt.
They seemed to get decent treatment, so it might not be a terrible choice. Watching them care for the orphans, they didn’t look all that rotten either.
Whether you could even call it a job was a little fuzzy, but no other options sprang to mind, so there was no alternative.
You need knowledge to invent alternatives. I’d heard there was a job called adventurer or something… but I don’t know. It didn’t exactly scream stability.
They called themselves adventurers, but weren’t they basically just hired thugs?
Adventurers seemed more likely to end up in worse scrapes than nuns, so it wasn’t a great pick.
If I had a status window or some monstrous talent it might be different, but the former didn’t exist and the latter was something I had no way of knowing.
So religion it was. Maybe being abandoned here had been some kind of divine revelation.
O God! Your son has returned!
You’re not supposed to convert with that kind of casual attitude? Just believe and it’ll be fine. Believe!
And so the days continued of me pestering Sister Marie about becoming a nun.
Then something strange happened, as if a god really did exist.
“You mustn’t cause any trouble once you get there, all right?”
You’re selling me out! Cold-blooded, no pity, just handing me over!
I wanted to shout it, but Sister Marie’s eyes were brimming with tears, heavy with worry.
Maybe she had granted my wish after all the singing about wanting to be a nun?
It made sense.
Because a high-ranking member of the Order had come to collect me.
A situation that made me think, Wait, this actually worked?
I carefully climbed into the carriage and kept stealing glances at the man seated across from me.
A man who looked closer to middle age than youth.
But that didn’t mean some pot-bellied uncle with an alien gut from too much drinking.
The man before me looked less like a priest and more like someone who fought for a living—someone who used his body.
His build was solid, and even a glance at his hands showed thick calluses and scars.
Basically a human weapon. If he was from the Order, maybe a holy knight or something of the sort.
…But he was taking me away to make me a nun, right?
It felt a little different from the rumors I’d overheard… but Sister Marie had seen me off, so it was probably fine.
The reason I was fretting alone was simple.
Speaking to him felt a bit too delicate, and he wasn’t saying anything either.
Especially the way he looked troubled, as if he himself didn’t quite understand why he was doing this.
Seeing that made me wonder if maybe I had some secret parentage.
Perhaps the parents who abandoned me were actually high-ranking members of the Order hiding an illegitimate child or something.
Who knew? The uncle sitting in front of me might even be my grandfather.
Everyone had kids young around here, so it wasn’t completely impossible.
But the more I looked, the less I saw any resemblance. No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t seem like we shared a single drop of blood.
Time kept flowing endlessly while I thought.
The village that had reeked of countryside dwindled to a speck, and the rattling carriage began to roll along neatly maintained roads.
A faint sense of drawing closer to something called civilization.
Was a utility pole going to pop up any second?
Without meaning to, I let my mouth hang open like a country bumpkin.
I felt the uncle across from me snort a quiet laugh. Only then did he seem to get his thoughts in order and speak to me.
“Ciela… was it?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Right. Ciela. I am Marcus. An Inquisitor of the Order, and… the man who will be your guardian from now on.”
“…What?”
The atmosphere suddenly turned ominous. An Inquisitor—just meeting his eyes made me feel like a mace was about to come swinging.
“Have you done something wrong?”
“No…?”
“I see. Then that’s fine. You’re quick on the uptake; I like that. Shall we talk about your life from here on?”
Had that been a joke just now? Not the kind of joke you pull on a kid.
The humorless uncle who had introduced himself as Marcus poured out all sorts of explanations.
Basically, he was becoming something like my guardian and would support my life for a while—no, for quite a long while.
I felt bewildered. Was this how they recruited nuns?
He had said Inquisitor, so maybe it was… that side of things.
It looked dangerous… but why was he taking me away like this in the first place?
My head was spinning with this suspicious stroke of luck when, as if telling me not to overthink, he dropped something strange.
“This may sound odd to you, but from now on you will have to live as a boy.”
“…?”
What the hell was he saying all of a sudden?
My expression must have been easy to read, because he let out a sigh.
“I don’t think I can explain the details just yet. But it’s not as though you’ll have to live that way for the rest of your life. Probably.”
At that point the uncle’s face took on the look of someone explaining exactly what an Inquisitor was.
In other words.
If I refused, he looked ready to beat me into compliance.
Like that someone who used to yell that if you treated a boy the same as a girl, he would become a girl!
So I had no choice but to agree. It wasn’t because I was scared—not at all—and it wasn’t a bad deal for me either.
Honestly, with a body that wouldn’t even reach that uncle’s waist, what rebellion could I mount? One slap and I’d probably skip straight to a third life. If that even existed.
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t uneasy.
But this was probably average for this world. An adult was speaking—where was I going to argue? I felt a weird sense of déjà vu. Was I imagining it?
Anyway, thinking of how often Sister Marie had spanked me, it was clear this was a world where things like children’s rights were a luxury.
Having it explained this calmly was probably the unusual part. Hesitate a second and the belt came flying.
I had wondered what it would have been like to be reborn a boy, but I never expected it to happen like this.
…Was it even happening?
I wasn’t sure.
Setting aside the part I didn’t understand, it didn’t seem all that bad.
It looked like it would guarantee a far better life than sleeping among fleas and bugs while hacking and coughing.
He had said it wasn’t for the rest of my life, so there had to be a reason.
I didn’t have a choice anyway.
I could only hope that when the work was done, he would open a path for me to make a living.
“Understood.”
“…Hm.”
The uncle raised an eyebrow, then nodded as if satisfied.
Children who listened well were loved wherever they went.
The me before the memories returned hadn’t exactly been an obedient kid, but the current me was the reborn New Ciela, wasn’t I?
And so my new life began.
It didn’t take long at all to start regretting it.
“Ciel. You still have five more laps.”
“Ghk—hkk!”
“If you’re hurt, say so. I’ll go easy on you.”
Hey, you said live as a boy—you never said you’d work me like this.
With even my name casually shortened, I was being tossed around every which way in the uncle’s hands.
This was full-on Spartan training without the cliff-dropping. Do you even know how old I am!? Neither do I!
But unfortunately, my hardships didn’t end there.
They were only just beginning.