I Start with a Bad Hand!

“I understand what you’re worried about. How could recording something be completely free of subjective views? For someone in your position, who wants to find a way to leave this place immediately, obtaining accurate information is crucial.”

“……”

“I don’t know how this book ended up in your library, but for now, it seems best to use the information in this book as a basis.”

“…Yes, you’re right. Thank you. Um… may I ask you one more thing?”

“Feel free to ask.”

“Why is this book written in Lucero?”

“That too… I’m not sure yet.”

The priest was an adult who could admit when he didn’t know something.

“I’ll look into it more as well. Is it okay if I make another copy of this book?”

“Another copy of this book? How…?”

“There are ways.”

I was impressed with his confident answer and subsequent actions. He managed everything from priestly duties to medical tasks, and now even played the role of a human-copy machine. He truly seemed to be a human loved by Hades, the god of the otherworld.

I held back my somewhat shameless question of ‘Can I come by sometimes to copy play scripts?’ and continued speaking.

“Do you have the ability to copy things?”

At my question, the priest looked at me as if wondering what I was talking about.

“No. I’ll have the apprentice priests transcribe it.”

“Oh…”

“With this amount of content, it should take about five hours.”

“No, is that really possible?”

“I used to do it too. Of course, when I was an apprentice priest, it would have taken me three hours.”

For a brief moment, as he seemed to reminisce about his past, the priest momentarily aged but then quickly regained his youth. I was left speechless by the genuine, inevitable affection even priests couldn’t escape.

While I was chatting with the priest over tea, one of the apprentice priests, who looked like he had been squeezed out like a human copier, came to us.

“I have something to report.”

“What is it?”

“Several parts of the book are blank… These are sections that shouldn’t be empty according to the content. I wanted to ask if it’s supposed to be like this.”

The priest and I exchanged a brief glance. After sending the apprentice priest away, I carefully spoke once we were alone.

“You once told me that the fragment of a soul remaining in my body was due to some lingering attachment.”

“I never said that.”

Oh, that was what the fortune teller granny said. I lightly brushed off his comment and continued speaking.

“Ah… I got confused with what someone else told me. Anyway, if that book contains Dietrich’s soul and for some reason, it has blanks, could it be that the fragments of the soul that make up those blanks are still left inside my body?”

“Hmm… that’s possible. We’ll have to look at the context to understand better, but there must be a reason why those pages are blank.”

“Yes. I’ll keep that in mind and read it focusing on that.”

The transcription was finished in less than five hours. As I picked up my coat to leave the room, the priest asked me in a subtle tone.

“By the way, do you meet other priests?”

“Uh… that person is more of a… street… kind of priest.”

“Street… as in street priest?”

“Yes, yes… something like that.”

The priest laughed awkwardly and said, “I’ve heard that cults are rampant these days, and it seems to be true.”

“That person… didn’t seem like a cultist… I think. Haha.”

It was really time to leave. I stood up clumsily. At that moment, the priest called out to me, “Sister,” stopping me in my tracks. He seemed to have something to say and after a brief pause, he began speaking in a calm voice.

“Yes?”

“If our assumption is correct, the book’s record would have stopped when the soul of the owner of the body shattered.”

Seeing that I had no response, the priest paused briefly and then continued.

“…It means that the final chapter of the book contains Dietrich’s last moments.”

So there might be clues as to why you came to this place.

On my way back, I opened the last page of the book. I repeatedly opened and closed the final page, which I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read until now.

Finally, when the clock tower of the academy came into view from a distance, I was able to properly read the last page.

(Climbing the stairs.)

Me: If the legend is true, please have pity on me and change the past. (Jumps off.)

That was the end. As I read the last sentence, I couldn’t find the words to speak.

The clock tower had truly granted that child’s wish. The result was me.

A person who could pity themselves enough to change the past. This frustratingly simple wish left me feeling conflicted in many ways. First, because the wish was so trivial. And second, because Dietrich couldn’t fulfill that trivial wish on her own.

From the moment I first arrived in this world, there was a question I had always wanted to ask Dietrich.

“Why me?”

No, there must have been a reason why I came here. But why me, of all people? I have nothing to boast about, except for accidentally obtaining a Class 1 license. Why was I brought here?

Whenever things started to go awry, I thought that a brilliant strategist with an IQ of around 215, or someone with extraordinary strength who wouldn’t need to use their brain, should have been the one to possess Dietrich. At the very least, someone with good luck should have come. Deep down, I always felt that I was never the best option for Dietrich.

Somehow, I ended up here, and though I’ve been living my life as best as I could, whenever an unsolvable question arose, I wanted to shout it out to the world.

Why me!!!!

But now, having learned the truth, I wanted to say something else to Dietrich. Why didn’t you ask for an amazing genius to come and help you? Or ask to become the strongest person in the world? If you had done that, someone like me, who is astonishingly ordinary and only pitied you, wouldn’t have come to you.

I didn’t even make a grand change to the past. Honestly, anyone who goes back in time could change something. Dietrich could have done it herself.

But Dietrich couldn’t. She didn’t pity herself. Because of that, she didn’t meet the conditions she set. That’s why I felt sorry for her, and that’s why I felt more inclined towards her.

I leaned my head against the window. The rattling vibrations pounded my temples relentlessly.

There were four blank pages in the book. If our guess was correct, Dietrich’s soul fragments, which the book couldn’t contain, were still left in this body.

I opened one of the blank pages. Considering the content before and after the blank pages, what had happened in between was clear.

The deaths of the Baron and Baroness Degoph.

This was the first thing I needed to solve.

Why did the Degoph couple die?

Their deaths remained a lingering question in my heart, as troubling as Dietrich’s death. However, I hadn’t prioritized their deaths because they occurred much later in the novel’s storyline.

As I recalled, the bad news of their deaths came around the time the first season of the original work was about to end.

After that, Dietrich completely lost control.

“Was their cause of death an illness?”

I turned the pages, trying to recall the now-faded original content. The events before and after the blank pages included Dietrich arriving in Heylem and then returning to the academy. The blank part probably contained the scenes of the couple’s funeral. Honestly, it felt overwhelming.

‘Now I have to do the diagnosing too.’

However, even Heo Jun wouldn’t be able to determine why the Degoph couple died just by reading a few lines. I felt like I was handling too many things beyond my capabilities. My life, Dietrich’s life, and even the lives of the Baron and Baroness Degoph. It felt like I was juggling with lives.

‘But what can I do? I have to do it. If I don’t, everyone will die…’

I began to translate the text, word by word, while tearing at my hair.

Sarah Hanson: My lady, what should we do? Who would have thought that the two of them would pass away so suddenly like this…

August Hill: It’s my fault. I should have taken better care of them. It’s all my fault.

‘It’s not a contagious disease. If it were, the butler, the cook, and the gardener who lived in the same house would have died too.’

If only one of them had collapsed, it would have increased the chances of speculating about their personal medical history. However, the Baron and Baroness Degoph both passed away around the same time. Then a thought struck me.

‘Is it not a disease?’

August Hill: They have been ailing frequently since last winter. They didn’t recover, so we were about to call a doctor from the big city… but then yesterday, suddenly, both of them started coughing up blood…

It didn’t make sense that only the Baron and Baroness, living in that estate, in that castle, would die at around the same time if it wasn’t a contagious disease. But attributing their deaths to anything other than illness felt fundamentally wrong. They were good people.

Of course, dying from a disease is terrible enough. But disease has an impression of being unavoidable, like a natural disaster, just bad luck. However, if their deaths were caused by some other deliberate malevolence… that would be horrifying. It would no longer be a matter of luck.

‘Oh, someone please bring the forensic team here.’

I ruffled my hair furiously. But what if the two didn’t die from a disease, if there really was another reason?

‘No, in this novel, there are plenty of people who could be stabbed to death. Why kill these two?’

These good people… I forced myself to stop thinking too far ahead and continued transcribing the translated content.