Rehab Is One-Handed Handstand Push-Ups!? That's Death!
I stood before the mirror once more. The pain in my body had finally faded to something manageable.
My gaze drifted to the blonde hair, coiled into a drill-like curl. The height was a little over 170 centimeters by my rough estimate — quite convenient for a woman.
Seen from the side, the shoulders were straight and the waist slender — a well-balanced figure that brought a knight to mind.
"Ah……"
Staring into the mirror while stripping all expression from my face, I flinched and let out a small sound. The blank look was colder than I'd expected. No — "frightening" might be the more accurate word.
In Katerina's memories, other people — the maids especially — always flinched the moment their eyes met hers. But the woman herself had never understood why.
Racking my memory, she apparently hadn't paid much attention to her own appearance at all. At most, she'd thought something along the lines of Am I the likeable type?
'For a man, a face like this would be perfectly ordinary…… so that's how she felt, I suppose?'
But through the eyes of a modern person like me, it was nothing of the sort. Blonde drill curls, height above the average woman's, and a face that was quite cold and intimidating under a blank expression.
This was the textbook physiognomy of a villainess.
'It really does look like a face straight out of a novel…… Still, surely she never actually did anything cruel?'
I didn't put much stock in face-reading, but I was a little worried about whether the noble daughter I'd possessed hadn't gone around tormenting everyone around her.
I combed through Katerina's memories as carefully as I could. Thankfully, I found no recollection of deliberately harming or bullying anyone.
That said, memory is a hopelessly subjective thing — people inevitably polish it in their own favor — so I couldn't swear to it with certainty.
Then how had the people around her reacted? Digging a little deeper into her memories turned up a surprising fact.
First, among her social equals — that is, among the nobility — there was no one who could honestly be called a friend.
If I searched across all social standings, the closest thing would be Eliza, her personal maid. Indeed, the person Katerina spoke with most often had been Eliza herself.
The reactions of the other servants were a bit more complicated. They seemed to fear Katerina while simultaneously holding her in awe — the way one might regard a dangerous but magnificent(?) beast.
'Not as bad as I expected, actually?'
All things considered, Katerina apparently hadn't lived up to the price of her villainous face. Probably.
She had simply lived exactly as she pleased, without ever once caring what anyone else thought.
'Right. First things first — adapt to the current situation.'
I took a deep breath and steadied my mind. Assuming my brain wasn't floating in a jar somewhere, then even if I didn't like it, this place was now my reality.
'Take stock of my surroundings and adapt slowly. And above all…… make no enemies I can't afford.'
With that firm resolution, I looked once more into the mirror at the pair of ruby-red eyes staring back.
According to Eliza, the day I woke up was roughly three months after I had fallen unconscious.
The healers had said rehabilitation would take at least several years, yet in mere days I was not only walking but sprinting.
"This is a miracle. I have practiced the healer's craft for over thirty years, and I have never once seen anything like this — from surviving a fatal wound to recovering this quickly. Never."
My attending healer shook her head again and again. I couldn't understand it either.
Fine, this was another world unlike modern Earth — but this was a bit much, even so.
'Judging by the healer's reaction, though, this body's recovery ability must be something special……'
So I decided to test this body's athletic capability. Late at night, when no one was around, quietly in my room.
"Yap!"
My feet kicked off the floor and my body launched into the air. One rotation, two, three — spinning round and round. A backflip.
Before I could even be amazed, my hands moved on their own. As a follow-up to the landing, I balanced into a one-handed handstand and tucked the other arm behind my back.
Then I did push-ups on my thumbs. Ten of them, no less. And far from being difficult, it left me feeling positively refreshed — like I'd just finished a light stretch.
Cold sweat broke out all at once. My body — Katerina's body — could not be called ordinary even as a joke.
"It must be thanks to Mother, who birthed me so robustly, it iswa!"
The words slipped out of their own accord, my mouth twisting mid-sentence. I was still officially "sleeping," and if I talked that loudly, it would inevitably give away the fact that I wasn't asleep at all.
"Are you still awake, Lady Katerina?"
Sure enough, she'd heard my little soliloquy. Eliza slipped silently into the room, as elegant as she remained in my memories.
'Uh, um…… what do I say?'
Naturally, no guardian would stand idly by while a patient in rehabilitation did vigorous exercise in the dead of night under the moon.
Even now, Eliza was asking with a calm, faint smile — but Katerina remembered. That expression of Eliza's carried not a shred of goodwill.
Think simply, and it's just the station gap between a maid and a noble daughter: Eliza could be crushed like a bug no matter what she said. But in practice, it wasn't nearly that easy.
Katerina understood Eliza to be the maid whom Mother and Father trusted more than they trusted her.
Meaning: press the issue, force the argument, and if she went tattling, the consequences afterward would be terrifying.
'This is the time to use my head. With people like this, a logical explanation works best……'
My mind raced. Eliza waited with patient, faultless courtesy, as if to say my answer would decide everything — so I prepared my words.
'The nighttime exercise was a continuation of my rehabilitation therapy, part of a self-diagnostic to confirm the normal recovery of my physical functions. Furthermore, I chose the quiet hours of night precisely to avoid causing unnecessary alarm or concern among the staff……'
For something improvised on the spot, it was a flawless excuse. But what actually came out of my mouth was……
"I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to exercise while checking on my condition, it iswa! I didn't want to worry the servants, either!"
'Huh?!'
The content was roughly the same, but what emerged was something enormously simplified. As though my words were being filtered by this body. The complex explanation had been transmuted into a plain, bluntly honest sentence.
Eliza, for her part, widened her eyes briefly at my answer. Then she settled into a gentle smile.
"You even considered the other maids, my lady. That is a first."
'Oh, right. Katerina never cared what anyone else thought about anything.'
"But my lady."
Eliza stepped closer and smoothed down my rumpled clothes.
"Recovery must come above all else right now. With sufficient rest — deep sleep especially — will your body truly heal."
Her words were sound and persuasive, weighted like the wisdom of long years. That was the feeling they carried.
"Furthermore, Lady Natasha of Count Volkov's house is scheduled to visit you tomorrow. To appear before her fatigued would be a discourtesy."
Me — that is, Katerina — meekly obeyed her words and made for the bed. There wasn't a single flaw in anything Eliza had said, leaving no room for rebuttal. She spread the blanket with practiced ease and tucked it around me.
"Sleep well, my lady."
Even the candle I'd lit in secret was snuffed out, and darkness settled over the room. Once I confirmed the sound of Eliza's footsteps receding down the hall, I was finally able to mutter a single line.
"Eliza is really hard to deal with, it iswa……"
When morning came, Eliza appeared holding my daily schedule. Her expression looked slightly more serious than yesterday's.
At first, I couldn't make sense of it. Why would a patient still recovering — actually, one who seemed fully healed — need a schedule this packed?
The answer only came to me after I dug through Katerina's memories.
When someone is a powerful lord, their children become independent political actors in their own right. The notion of coasting on their father's prestige while eating bread made from doing nothing is pure fantasy.
In some ways, it's comparable to the heiress of a modern Earth conglomerate — except a noble daughter's influence is far more direct and far more official.
"Today, Lady Natasha of House Volkov will call on you to pay her respects after your illness."
At Eliza's words, Katerina's memories of the Count Volkov family stirred to life.
'They have a lot of iron……? Their family is rich and strong?'
Assembling her recollections and reasoning as hard as I could, this was what I pieced together about House Volkov: the power brokers of the western Grand Duchy.
The mines and ironworks they owned formed the very backbone of the Grand Duchy's economy, and their importance was only growing with time.
'So this isn't just a courtesy visit, then? What exactly is the intent here?
If it's political…… are they trying to curry favor with the Grand Ducal house?'
I wrung my brain, but deeper inference proved impossible.
Katerina's knowledge of politics and economics — outside of what concerned herself directly — was far too shallow. What she knew of the Grand Ducal family's history or the political role of a noble daughter, she knew only because it applied to her own situation.
All that surfaced in the end was an image of Natasha from years ago. A girl with light chestnut hair who was often shy. The memory was vivid still: catching her eye over a book, only for her face to flush red and her gaze to dart away behind the pages.