Beast in the Woods, Deep in the Night

2.1

Chapter 2.1

“Cough, uhh…”

Christine gasped roughly and jumped to her feet like she was having a seizure. At the same time, she was surprised to find that her arms, which had been heavy and limp until just now, were moving freely.

‘What?’

Despite being very perplexed, she calmed down and looked around.

This was not the Black Fang Guild’s hideout, but a room with plenty of sunlight. A shabby inn room with an old wooden chest of drawers and a desk, chair, and bed. It was a place Christine knew.

‘This is the same inn I stayed in for a day on my twenty-second birthday.’

Christine remembered that time. She had been out for a week because Duff had assigned her a commission to approach a middle-aged businessman in his forties who was having an affair with five married women and to find out information about his slush funds.

In the end, the bodyguards hired by the man went after her, so she couldn’t return to the hideout and spent the night at a nearby inn.

‘I was depressed thinking about how I was going to spend the morning of my birthday in a completely unfamiliar place.’

But why did she wake up here? She clearly died from the pain spreading all over her body.

She knew everything she had seen, heard, and felt up until now was real. It was too vivid to call it a dream; she felt like her lungs were contracting on their own, increasingly becoming short of breath, and her vision was blurred by tears.

What she experienced was definitely death.

But why was this the first place she faced after her death? It wasn’t a place she particularly liked, nor did she have a great connection to it.

‘Maybe I’ll go to the afterlife or be reincarnated after this, but let’s enjoy my last moments in a space I know.’

In any case, the fact that she had died couldn’t be undone.

So Christine thought about going down to the tavern on the first floor of the inn and ordering something to eat. She felt such hunger that she wondered if a dead person could be like this.

However, when she stood in front of the mirror to straighten her clothes before going down to the first floor, she couldn’t help but be dazed for a moment.

“… Why does it look like I’ve gotten younger?”

She surely died at the age of twenty-nine, but she looked like she was in her early twenties in the mirror.

The clothes she was wearing were the same as the day she finished her quest and celebrated her twenty-second birthday at the shabby inn.

Only then did Christine feel that something was amiss. She quickly walked down the stairs and picked up the newspaper on the tavern table.

‘The date is my birthday from seven years ago.’

The dead couldn’t even dream, and all the sensations she was feeling now were as clear as reality. Even the feeling of hunger, which felt like her stomach was sticking to her back, was clear.

“…”

For starters, Christine ordered a stew and bread to fill her stomach. The taste of the food spreading in her mouth and the hardness of the utensils she touched were so vivid that she didn’t feel that this moment was an illusion.

‘Then… did I come back to when I was twenty-two?’

She suddenly remembered a story she had heard from her mother a long time ago. The blood of mages they inherited had the power to perform miracles.

‘I didn’t think that was a lie.’

Christine hastily finished her meal and returned to her room. Then, she stood in front of the mirror once again and examined herself.

‘I came back to when I was twenty-two years old.’

The reflection in the mirror showed her long, lustrous platinum hair and shining purple eyes. Her glossy skin and her body, which she had managed like a weapon, were full of life.

She remembered when she lost the vitality that had made her shine. It was when her mother became so ill that she had difficulty moving, when she was about twenty-six years old.

From then on, Christine had to carry out more requests and spend more money on caregiving. Rather than being harmed by overwork and collapsing, the fear that her mother might die soon made her haggard.

‘But if I came back to the past… isn’t it possible to cure my mother?’

Besides, she just happened to find out about the method.

She recalled what had happened just before she died.

The moment the gorgeous man she encountered in the Black Fang Guild touched her, her body became lighter, as if the curse that had been binding her heart had disappeared. It was different from barely alleviating the pain with Duff’s necklace.

‘Did the man receive a particularly large infusion of the grand duke’s blood in the laboratory?’

Judging by his appearance, he definitely looked like a chimera, but she had never seen his face before. The master of that guild was someone else who looked a little more cold-blooded.

In any case, the man made her feel comfortable just by touching her.

So Christine made an assumption.

‘My curse might be lifted if I come into direct contact with the chimera.’