Chapter 1: Hot Breath
A Trick of the Gods?
It’s just that Father can’t read it, but I can. If I said so, though, they’d just think I’d lost my mind.
But wasn’t magic supposed to be wind, water, fire, earth, ice, lightning, barriers, teleportation, healing, and storage?
Since I’m reading it from across Father, the characters are upside down, but it looks like a four-character idiom… no, four words lined up.
What is this string of characters that doesn’t even seem like magic?
However, on the day of bestowal, you only receive magic and Skills, right?
The things bestowed by the Creator God Asshila-sama are only magic or Skills, and this string of words is neither magic nor a Skill.
Father tilts his head, unable to read it, while I tilt my head, unable to understand the meaning of the string of words.
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My breath is hot, my body burns. Just lying in bed makes every joint ache, and my consciousness is hazy.
This is bad. I had signs of a cold, so I went to bed early, but now I have a headache, joint pain, fatigue, a sore throat, a runny nose, and a cough.
I want to check my temperature, but I don’t have the energy to get up and grab the thermometer.
Judging by the symptoms, maybe it’s the flu that’s going around like crazy.
It’s late Friday night. Tomorrow the company is closed, and the doctor’s office is only open for half a day. This has turned into the worst possible weekend.
Shivering, I wrapped myself in my futon and fell asleep thinking I’d go to the emergency outpatient clinic first thing tomorrow morning.
I woke up thirsty, but the plastic bottle on the side table was empty.
Forcing my aching body up, I staggered to the refrigerator and gulped down some Mugicha.
The cold Mugicha slid down my throat, cooling my burning body. Delicious.
I felt like I was coming back to life, but then I got dizzy, my strength left me, and my vision went dark.
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Huh? I don’t remember anything after my strength gave out when I drank the Mugicha, but now I’m in bed.
Since I live alone, no one would come visit me. What happened? I wondered, but my body ached.
If morning had broken, I needed to go to the hospital. I reached for my smartphone, but something felt incredibly off.
The bed is hard, and the blanket is heavy. More importantly, this isn’t my room.
It’s a tiny, crude room with wooden plank walls and a wooden bed. Across from me is another empty bed.
On the table beside me sits a ceramic pitcher and a single mug. Crude clothes are carelessly placed on a chair.
It’s an unfamiliar room, yet it feels familiar. It’s the place that always appears in my dreams.
This is the first time I’ve seen it so clearly, but it’s a tiny room with two beds, a small table, and one chair.
A few sets of clothes hang on the wall, along with a Knife hanging from a leather belt and a canvas bag. There’s nothing else.
I placed a hand on my forehead, but there’s no way I could tell my own temperature. My body felt sluggish, so I just went back to sleep.
A dream within a dream… Is this a dream or reality? I ponder within the dream.
The sound of a door being violently thrown open echoes, followed by shouting.
I wonder if I’m still dreaming, but I don’t have the energy to get up.
“You! How long do you plan on sleeping so soundly!”
Along with the angry shout, someone grabbed me by the collar and hauled me upright.
This dream is so real.
An old guy whose face I’d never hope to see in a dream is yelling.
If the dream is this realistic, maybe I should punch him once as payback for all the times before, but unfortunately, I have no strength in my body.
He’s a recurring character in my dreams, a main character alongside the old woman partner and two annoying brats.
He’s got an imposing build and pretentious mannerisms, always complaining about Marquis households or Barons and the like.
As I was thinking, my body completely devoid of strength, a voice came from behind.
“Master, Fernan caught the epidemic; today is the third day. Don’t blame me if you catch it! The high fever will continue for another four or five days, but whether he survives or not is up to the will of Asshila-sama.”
“Make him get better quickly and put him to work!”
With another angry shout, I was slammed back onto the bed.
Never mind the shouting, my head hurt from hitting the wooden bed frame.
Groaning that this pain was too real, the person who had spoken picked up the fallen blanket and covered me.
“I’ll bring you some soup later, so just lie still and rest.”
My head throbbed where I’d been slammed down, and my joints ached all over.
Headache, joint pain, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose, cough – it was exactly like my symptoms before the dream, and my head really hurt where I hit it.
The pain was so bad I gently touched it and found a bump forming.
Is this… really a dream?
It’s the usual dream, but this time it’s strangely realistic, and the sound isn’t cutting out.
I mean, usually when I wake up, I only remember a few words or the faces of the characters, but this dream isn’t ending.
The pain from the bump has been added to my body aches, and my runny nose and cough seem to have gotten even worse.
How much time had passed? I was woken by someone shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, Fernan. Here’s soup and bread. Eat even a little to get your strength back.”
The woman from before woke me up and placed a mug of soup and some Black Bread on the table.
“You stink of sweat. Use Clean on yourself.”
“Clean? Cleaning?”
“Clea…ning? Oh dear, this child has forgotten Clean. Is his mind still not clear?”
Saying that, the woman held her hand over me and muttered, “Clean.” My sweaty skin and underwear instantly felt refreshed.
Urged by the woman, I took the mug of soup and took a sip.
The lightly salted soup was delicious.
“Honestly, just because he’s the child of a maid doesn’t mean they should treat him so cruelly. It’s the epidemic; they could at least buy him a single Potion. Shynin died because they were stingy, and if this boy dies right after, their reputation will hit rock bottom…”
This woman’s name was Hanna, wasn’t it? She appears in my dreams sometimes, always speaking bluntly.
Child of a maid? Was the sickly woman I always heard about his mother?
Wait a minute… I think that woman died recently. Her name was Shynin… I remember dreaming about burying a coffin.
I have a vague memory that the empty bed across from me belonged to that woman…
I feel like it was me in the dream, clinging to that woman and crying.
I think the woman Hanna, an old man, and two unfamiliar men were there.
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Every time I wake up, I check, but three days have passed without me waking from the dream.
Morning and evening, I soak the hard Black Bread brought to me in the thick, mushy soup, munching on it listlessly before lying back down to think.
The bump on my head has gotten a little smaller, but the aches, the joint pain, the coughing, and sneezing all seem undeniably real.
However, I’m supposed to be 28 years old, but this body belongs to a young boy, and I also have the memories of the boy I saw in my dreams.
I wondered if two minds existed in one body, but his consciousness wasn’t present.
My last memory before waking up here was shivering in bed with the flu.
I wondered if I had been living two lives, but that wasn’t right either.
I had watched him in my dreams for a long time, but the fact that I am now here as him might mean that his consciousness and mine were synchronized.
According to my memories, I started dreaming about him around the time he learned Household Magic.
Now I understood. The dreams I had been seeing were reality, seen through his eyes.
This conclusion presented me with a terrifying fact.
I, Kawase Yugo, was dead.
Tormented by a high fever, unable to bear the thirst, I got Mugicha from the fridge and drank it. After that, I only remember feeling dizzy, my strength leaving me, and my vision going dark.
If I lost consciousness in the kitchen on a February night, my future as someone living alone was sealed.
If our consciousnesses had merely swapped, there might be a chance to return, but…
Fernan, in this body, is in bed, and meals are brought to him.
In contrast, there’s me, living alone, rarely visited by anyone.
Three days have passed since I woke up here. That means someone must have come looking for me after I missed work without notice at the start of the week, found me collapsed in the kitchen, and caused a huge fuss.
Kawase Yugo, died at age 28. A short life working at a dead-end factory job, huh.
After graduating high school, I lived in a dorm for my factory job and grew distant from my family. We were indifferent to each other, so I have no lingering attachments, but still… what should I do?
This world clearly doesn’t have a shred of science, but it does have Household Magic, just like in light novels.
Feeling gross from the sweat, I remembered Hanna’s words and tried saying “Clean” just as I recalled.
Seeing the bread crumbs and stuff on the table disappear and become clean, I realized my mistake.
Turning my palm towards myself, I muttered “Clean,” and my body and underwear felt refreshed.
When I was dreaming, I’d never even seen anything like Household Magic, but in Fernan’s memories, not only does Household Magic exist, but so do the magic and Skills familiar from light novels.
In fact, I, Fernan, have acquired Household Magic, as well as Presence Detection and the Stealth Skill, albeit clumsily.
The reason is simple: they have no intention of feeding the child of a maid, a concubine’s son, for free. I was told to earn my keep, which meant I had to go out Herb Gathering.
If I didn’t want to die, I needed to quickly sense the presence of wild beasts and use Stealth to erase my own presence.
From the servants’ chatter and the like, I gathered that my mother worked for the Honnings Barony, but the master laid hands on her, and she became pregnant with me.
However, Baron Honnings had a legal wife who, at the time, was still childless.
After I was born, his wife became pregnant, and she wouldn’t allow the first child of Baron Honnings to be the son of a maid.
What’s more, the Honnings clan, led by Norca Honnings, Marquis, turned out to be strict purists about bloodlines and kinship.
My mother was half-Elf and half-Catfolk. The child born, me, was half Black Dragon, a quarter Elf, and a quarter Catfolk—an eyesore.
They wouldn’t go so far as to say, “Get rid of the nuisance!” but it’s clear they have no intention of recognizing me as kin and plan to use me up.
Fernan himself was only 14 and hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I can read that much from his memories.
If I’m not careful, I’ll be kept and disposed of by the Honnings Barony in this place.
I’m too young to run away and survive on my own, so I’ll obey quietly until the day of leaving the nest next June.
The problem is the Bestowal Ceremony in June. As an avid reader of light novels, there’s something I can’t overlook.
If I’m granted Spatial Storage or Healing Magic, my fate of being kept and disposed of will be sealed. If things go badly, I might even be sold off to another house, only to be kept and disposed of there or treated like a slave.
No matter how I think about it, this part is entirely up to the gods; I don’t think they’ll grant my wishes even if I make requests.
But depending on the magic I receive, I might need to escape immediately, so I have to prepare countermeasures.
There’s only one thing I can do. According to light novels, if I can use Household Magic, then I should have a mana pool.
I need to train my Magical Power so I can handle it freely… Can I really do it, though?
Isn’t this the standard light novel course? Either dying by getting hit by the classic truck or dying from illness, and then your consciousness ends up in another world? It’s pretty much confirmed that I can’t expect a happy isekai life.
By the sixth day after waking up, I could somehow manage to get out of bed. On the seventh day, I was kicked outside and told, “Go gather herbs.”
This is what happens the moment I’ve recovered from my illness and can finally eat normally?