In This Life, I Just Want to Rest
“Kuh-ahk!”
A heavy boot slammed into my ribs. The air violently evacuated my lungs.
My back scraped against rough stone paving, and a pair of scuffed gray indoor slippers surged back into view.
“Filthy little rat. Where’d you hide your ration token?”
The language was completely foreign to me. I understood the meaning perfectly, yet for the life of me, I couldn’t fathom how I knew the words.
I instinctively threw up both arms to shield my face. My forearms were slender, frail, and disturbingly short. Along the pale inner skin of my wrists, faint needle track marks and an inked identification number stood out in stark relief.
A hand fisted into my hair and wrenched backward. Through a tangled curtain of platinum-blonde hair, I caught sight of my assailants. All three wore the same drab, ash-gray institutional uniforms as mine. Though barely old enough to sprout proper peach fuzz on their chins, they were built like full-grown brutes.
In that exact instant, a shockwave that felt like it would scorch my brain to cinders ripped through my skull, unleashing a torrential flood of memories.
Kim Yujin. A twenty-nine-year-old Korean freeloader.
A desperate part-timer juggling eleven different banking and loan apps just to roll over compounding card debts. After burning through sleepless graveyard shifts at convenience stores and grueling night hours bussing tables at pubs, my body finally gave out. I collapsed, only to wake up in an emergency room with a terminal diagnosis: glioblastoma. Brain cancer.
The doctor had urged me to begin treatment immediately.
Instead, terrified of burdening my family with insurmountable debt and hospital bills, I turned down treatment and fled. And on my way back to my studio apartment—determined to wipe the hard drive containing my meticulously organized secret folders arranged by genre and actress—a seizure seized me on a pedestrian crosswalk. The last thing I saw was the grill of a dump truck barreling straight toward me.
And alongside that life lay another.
Fourteen-year-old Test Subject Sonya. Sold off by her own parents at the age of four for a few miserable silver coins. A candidate for a living weapon, forced for ten agonizing years to swallow unknown augmentative concoctions and hoist solid iron orbs until her joints screamed.
This wasn't a possession. Taking a blow to the back of the head had simply jolted every last scrap of my past-life memories wide awake.
Hold on a damn second.
With my hair still gripped tight in the boy's fist, I rolled my eyes upward.
So let me get this straight. I got hounded by loan sharks, developed a brain tumor, and capped it off by getting flattened by a dump truck. And the fresh new life I get rewarded with is being a lab rat in some imperial testing facility?
One by one, the faces of the bastards beating me came into focus. They were roommates from my assigned quarters.
Ah, fuck me. Beaten half to death over food money again.
Little middle-school-aged runts who haven't even dried behind the ears... trying to rob my meal ticket?
How many grueling years of real-world grind did I have under my belt, only to end up getting shaken down by punks like this? Fine. I'd accept the reincarnation bit. But if I died in a traffic accident, then by all the sacred rules of modern isekai, shouldn't I be entitled to at least one broken cheat skill?
I didn't recall meeting God, but in situations like this, you usually had to say the magic words aloud to pop the interface open.
Swallowing the coppery blood pooling in my mouth, I bellowed with absolute conviction:
“Status Window!”
The brute holding me by the hair drove his fist squarely into my cheek.
Crack!
My vision flashed blinding white before snapping back into focus. There was no semi-transparent blue holographic display. There was no overpowered cheat skill menu. There was only the boy’s contorted, furious scowl.
“What kind of bullshit are you barking, you crazy bitch?”
Flapping my mouth had only gotten my cheek split open worse.
Hurts like a motherfucker.
“Hey, you giant ape. How about acting your damn size? Ever heard of a conscience?”
Another fist came whistling toward my jaw. This time, however, I caught the telegraph clear as day—his shoulder hitching upward, his elbow flaring outward, painting the strike's trajectory across the air. It was the clumsy, telegraphed punch of a novice relying solely on raw mass.
You're crossing the line, pal.
Ducking slightly, I let the fist graze past my ear, slipped beneath his guard, and drove straight into his chest. With the hard heel of my palm, I channeled my entire body weight into an explosive upward strike right beneath his chin.
Craaack!
“Kyuuuk!”
The sickening clatter of violently colliding teeth echoed as the brute's head snapped back. It was an astonishingly concussive impact for the body of a fourteen-year-old girl. If nothing else, this vessel's base hardware was leagues beyond the beaten-down wreck of my previous life.
“You psycho bitch!”
Marek lunged from my blind spot, wrapping both arms tight around my waist. Sixteen years old. The type of sniveling lackey who always smirked behind Grad's back and ran crying to the drill instructors the moment things went south.
Without a shred of hesitation, I brought my heel up and stomped down on the bridge of his foot with every ounce of force I could muster.
Crunch.
“Aaaargh!”
Marek’s grip broke. Snatching him by the collar, I drove him face-first into the stone floor. My body moved before conscious thought could even intervene; this flesh had spent a decade fighting tooth and nail over scraps of food.
Driving my knee into Marek’s throat to pin him down, I reached into the waistband of my trousers and checked the brass ration token tucked safely away. My dinner—the very thing these bastards had tried to strip from me.
Grad remained frozen where he stood, clutching his shattered jaw. The third boy who had jumped in with them had already scurried behind a row of bunks. The rest of the children watching the brawl kept dead silent.
Yeah. Life’s a dogfight, you little shits.
In the end, no status screen ever showed up. Whether I had any other hidden perks was a mystery, but the only weapon I had at my disposal right now was this augmented body.
If I was forced to live all over again, I sure as hell wasn't doing it the same way twice.
First step: break out of this godforsaken facility. Second step: find a warm bed, stretch out my legs, and finally get some damn rest in this life.
And whoever dared to get in the way of my peace—be it an imperial instructor or God Almighty—I fully intended to smash their skulls in first.