Room and Board Provided

I have memories of a past life.

To be precise, they arrived yesterday.

The moment I opened my eyes that morning, another man's entire life had been poured into my head — the memories of someone born in a country called South Korea, who went to school, served in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠military, and spent most of his days worrying about employment with a smartphone glued to his hand.

At first, I thought I'd gone mad.

Which was fair enough, because until yesterday I had been Grain, a man who'd spent his whole life in a tiny village on the edge of the Empire. And yet overnight, I somehow knew what a car was, had a rough idea of how airplanes stayed in the sky, and understood exactly how inconvenient a world without the internet would be.

That said, I hadn't turned into a different person.

The memory of riding home on my father's back as a small child was still mine, and so was the vivid recollection of praising my mother's stew the first time I tasted it — and then being served nothing but that stew for weeks. At the same time, my life on Earth didn't feel like someone else's story I'd peeked at, either.

Both of them had been me.

In short, I had somehow ended up living two lives.

And the very first thing I did upon acquiring that second life was not to probe the secrets of this new world, nor to spark a revolution with knowledge from my past one.

I sat at the table and counted coins.

"...Well. That's that."

I pushed the coins around one by one with my finger, then counted them again, but naturally, no miracle increased the total.

This was everything I owned.

Money had kept me up at night in my past life too, and here I was in this one, worrying about it from day one. If I was going to live twice, wouldn't it have been nice to be born rich at least once? Apparently the world had no intention of extending me that particular courtesy.

Not that there was no reason things had turned out this way.

My father had passed away from illness a few years back, and my mother had succumbed to something similar not long after. I had no siblings either, so after my parents were gone, the only family left was me.

As for property, the entire sum of it was the old house I lived in and a small field.

Even so, I hadn't starved. I farmed, went around to houses in the village that needed an extra pair of hands and earned my keep, and used the money to buy things that were hard to come by on my own — salt, cloth, that sort of thing. I stockpiled firewood before winter, and when the roof leaked, I climbed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up and patched it myself. When I was hungry, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cooked; when my clothes tore, I sewed them back up, ugly stitches and all.

So I'd learned how to survive alone fairly early on.

The problem was that I was doing exactly that — only surviving.

I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the worn ceiling.

"Is it really okay to keep living like this?"

If the memories of my past life hadn't returned, I doubt I would have even asked myself that question.

Born in the village, live in the village. Till the field my parents left me, save up money, marry someone suitable someday and have children. Grow old, hand the house and land down to those children, and see my life through to the end.

It wasn't a bad life, that one.

In fact, until yesterday, I'd considered it my guaranteed future.

But once I gained the memory of having lived differently, my thinking changed. I had only just come of age, and there was no family left to tie me to this place. I didn't have much money — but looked at the other way, I had very little to lose.

Was there really any reason to spend my whole life in this tiny village?

Then, out of nowhere, a face came to mind.

"..."

There was one.

The reason I hadn't wanted to leave this village.

A girl I'd grown up with since we were children.

She was pretty enough to be counted among the loveliest girls in the village, and friendly on top of that, so she was popular with the boys our age. I was one of them, and I'd liked her for quite a long time.

If she said carrying firewood was too heavy, I carried it for her. If she asked for help in the fields, I finished my own work first and then went to hers. Sometimes I brought her food when we had extra. And every time she smiled and thanked me, the whole day would feel inexplicably brighter.

I had believed she acted that way only with me.

At least, until my past-life memories came back.

Looking back at it now, one thing after another stuck out. When there was heavy labor to be done, she called for me; when she needed something bought, she went to another boy; when she was hungry for something specific, she asked yet another. She smiled sweetly at everyone, but the moment anyone seriously confessed their feelings, she would give no clear answer and simply smooth the moment over.

In the memories of my past life, there was an extremely fitting term for this kind of behavior.

Fish tank management — breadcrumbing.

I stared down at the table in silence for a while, then dragged a hand down my face.

"I was being used."

A mere day after recovering my past-life memories, and my first love had been demolished along with them.

That said, I didn't hate her to death over it. Thinking it through, the things I'd done for her, I'd done because I wanted to. She'd never held a knife to my throat and demanded I split firewood, and she'd never threatened to kill me if I stopped bringing her food.

I simply knew now.

That the relationship I'd hoped for and the relationship she'd envisioned were two different things.

And that was enough.

I looked at the coins on the table again.

No family, no money, and now even the reason I'd thought I had to stay in this place was gone.

Which meant my options were, unexpectedly, quite simple.

"Let's go to the City."

Make money.

Grand ambitions could wait until after that.

I had no thoughts of overturning the world with past-life knowledge or striking it rich as some legendary merchant. What came first was securing a steady job, finding a place to sleep, and building a life where I didn't have to worry about three meals a day.

Once I'd settled on that, my mind felt strangely, almost unnervingly, at ease.

Over the next few days, I put my affairs in order — the house, the field — and sold off anything I didn't immediately need to the villagers. My old neighbors were startled by the sudden decision, but they wished me well, saying that with no parents to care for, it wouldn't be a bad thing for a young man to try his luck in a bigger city.

On the morning I left, I drew water from the well and washed my face.

A familiar face looked back up at me from the water.

My black hair had grown out every which way, and my skin was a little rough from years of working under the sun. My clothes, worn pale with age, bore the marks of my own clumsy mending here and there.

That didn't mean my face itself was bad.

Ever since I was little, my mother had said I took after my father and was handsome, and the village elders would occasionally say the same. Even judged by my past life's standards, I thought my features were, considered purely on their own, fairly good.

It was just that I'd never had the reason, or the luxury, to take care of my appearance.

Asking a man who spent his days elbow-deep in dirt and splitting firewood to worry about his hairstyle or his skin was a joke in itself.

I studied the face in the water for a moment, then raked my hair back with my fingers in a rough approximation of tidiness.

"First thing I do in the City — get a haircut."

After I'd earned some money, of course.

Food came before fashion.

And so, brimming with confidence, I set out from my hometown. The results:

"And what experience do you have?"

"Farming, and pretty much any odd job you can name."

"This is a smithy."

"Then none."

"Next."

That was failure number one.

"Any experience working for a trading company?"

"No."

"Letters of recommendation?"

"No."

"A guarantor, then?"

"...Don't have one of those either."

The merchant studied me for a moment, then shook his head with an apologetic look.

That was failure number two.

"Do you know how to use a sword?"

"If it's an axe for splitting firewood, I'm fairly confident."

"A sword."

"Can't use one."

"Mana?"

I started to answer, then hesitated.

"I... wouldn't know."

The man's expression turned odd.

"You're telling me you've never even measured your mana capacity?"

"Back in my village, there wasn't much call for that sort of thing."

"Aptitude test?"

"Never taken one."

The clerk at the Mercenary Office looked me over for a long moment, then waved a hand.

"Next."

That was failure number three.

I sat perched on a wooden crate by the roadside, watching the crowds go by.

The City was enormous.

More people passed through a single street in an hour than I'd have encountered in a full day's walk back home, and carts piled high with goods rumbled past at all hours. Merchants called out to customers from the buildings lining both sides of the road, and armored figures and staff-wielding mages were a common enough sight.

There were jobs. Plenty of them.

Truly, plenty.

The problem was that among all those jobs, not a single place wanted me.

"Something's not right here."

Back when my past-life memories first returned, I'd felt like I could do anything.

I had the knowledge of a modern man, didn't I?

But once I'd actually made it to the City, I came face to face with a very important truth.

Knowing how to use a smartphone does not mean you can build one. Having ridden in cars doesn't qualify you to build an engine, and reading assorted trivia on the internet doesn't turn you into an engineer overnight.

Above all, my past-life self had been neither a genius scientist, nor a doctor, nor an engineer.

He was just an ordinary man who had lived an ordinary life.

"Past-life perks are a bit thin on the ground, huh."

I muttered under my breath and dug into my pocket.

A few coins tumbled into my palm.

The jingling they made sounded particularly pitiful today.

Getting to the City had cost me money, and ever since I'd arrived, lodging and meals had been steadily draining the rest. I wouldn't die from skipping a few days' worth of food, but the longer my job hunt dragged on, the fewer options I'd have. That much was certain.

I might have had a little breathing room if I'd brought the full sum from selling my house and field back home, but I'd left part of it with a neighbor who tended my parents' graves. I had no intention of spending that money on living expenses.

So I had to find work.

And quickly.

I slipped the coins back into my pocket and got to my feet.

I'd try one more place today, and if that fell through too, I'd start hauling cargo tomorrow, even if it killed my pride. Sleeping on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the street so soon after setting out to make it big in the City was a bad look no matter how I spun it.

I'd never even slept rough in my past life.

Just because I was living twice didn't mean I needed to experience everything twice.

As I walked along with that thought, a notice board at the side of the road caught my eye.

It was the job listings board — the same one I'd checked who knows how many times over the past few days.

Hoping maybe something new had gone up, I combed through the papers one by one.

Guards wanted.

Cart porters wanted.

Mine laborers wanted.

Trading company apprentices wanted.

Most of them I'd already seen, or the conditions didn't fit. Then my gaze snagged on one yellowed sheet of paper, pinned off in a corner of the board.

I stopped in my tracks.

Nothing special about the requirements. I'd been doing housework since I was a child, and I'd lived alone since my parents passed. I could clean, and I could cook well enough, so of all the jobs I'd hunted down so far, this was easily the one I felt most confident about.

And then, the moment my eyes reached the last line, they stopped.

Room and board provided.

"..."

Sure I'd misread it, I read it again.

Room and board provided.

No mistake about it.

A place to sleep.

Meals, too.

And a wage on top of all that.

Everything I needed right now was packed into those four words.

"If something like this existed, I should've found it days ago."

I checked the location written on the paper.

The outskirts of the City.

It was quite a distance from the main streets, but that hardly mattered. Frankly, for a man in my current circumstances, complaining about a commute would have been pure luxury.

Still, as I reached up to tear the notice down, my hand froze.

Something was off.

The paper was old.

The corners had yellowed, and there were marks where other notices had been pasted over it and peeled away, again and again. This was not an advertisement that had gone up a few days ago.

The conditions weren't bad.

And yet they were still looking for a keeper.

I stared at the paper for a while.

If I'd come across a job posting like this in my past life, the first thing I'd have done was search the company name. I'd have dug through employee reviews, checked the turnover rate, maybe even investigated whether the boss was a lunatic.

But there was no search bar here.

No smartphone, no internet.

All I had were coins dwindling in my pocket, one day at a time.

And right in front of me was a job with room and board provided.

I read the last line once more.

Room and board provided.

"...Well, going to look costs nothing."

I'd see the place for myself first, and if something seemed off, I could always walk out.

Having settled the matter, I memorized the location on the paper and headed for the edge of the City.

What I didn't know then was:

Why a posting with decent conditions had gone unfilled for so long. Why the people of the City let their expressions stiffen, just slightly, whenever that inn was mentioned.

And what I was about to encounter there.

At the time, only one fact mattered to me.

Room and board provided.

To a penniless drifter, those four words were more persuasive than any ghost story — the answer to a reality far scarier than one.