A Korean Office Worker Who Became a Nuisance Villainess in a Zombie Story - Chapter 40

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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I never had a father.
I was the eldest daughter of the Grand Duke’s House, beautiful, wealthy, with a mother, a younger brother, and maids—
But no father.
Well, I did have one, technically.
But he disappeared at some point.
He left the house and never came back.
“Your father is dead, dear.”
Whenever Mother spoke those words, she always looked so sorrowful.
“Yes, he died and left me behind… with that vixen!”
Mother would pull young me into her arms and weep bitterly, as though her heart had been shattered.
“Because I gained weight after bearing you, because I couldn’t maintain myself… he said he no longer felt any excitement when looking at me…”
Mother cried every time she looked at me.
At some point, I stopped bringing up Father myself.
But even without my mentioning him, Mother would often bring up Father first.
Crying, raging, feeling wronged.
Growing up watching Mother like this, I developed a certain sense of obligation.
Obligation? A sense of debt?
Guilt.
Father abandoned Mother and was unfaithful because of me.
So I had to make sure I never disappointed Mother.
And Mother’s words to me were always the same.
“It’s all because I love you. Don’t live like I did!”
“What do you mean, live like you?”
“Not being loved!”
Being unhappy!
“How could I bear to hear people whisper that my one and only daughter isn’t pretty?”
It was because she loved me.
Because she couldn’t stand to see my daughter disrespected anywhere. Because she wanted you to be happy.
“That’s a mother’s duty to her daughter…”
She said that to be happy, I had to be loved.
She said that to be loved, I had to be lovable.
If there was unsightly fat on my sides or forearms, if my palms were rough with calluses, if my calves showed muscle definition—
Then I wasn’t lovable, she said.
So I believed her.
If I was beautiful, if I was slender and delicate and resplendent as a flower, then everyone would love me.
But no one loved me.
“I want to be loved.”
I want to be loved.
I want to be loved.
I want to be happy.
My hypnotic ability manifested in that way.
‘It was willpower.’
And yet.
‘Why?’
Love was never meant for me.
What should I do.
If I couldn’t be loved—
I could never find happiness.
‘Grand Duke, is that you?’
‘Ah, no….’
‘It was your doing.’
I yearned so desperately to be loved, to find happiness.
Even awakening magic in my desperation.
Yet the result that returned to me was.
Death at the hands of the one I loved.
‘Nobility carries obligations. By the Crown Prince’s authority, you who have forsaken that duty shall be….’
Executed.
I harbored no resentment.
Even by my own judgment, I was a wretched person.
Death was only fitting.
I simply wanted to know.
Why did everyone hate me?
I had done my very best.
Was it because I lacked charm—that no matter how hard I tried, happiness would forever elude me?
Then my happiness rested solely upon another’s choice.
‘Praha, I….’
I wanted to save you.
I sensed the shadow lurking behind your serene sunset-colored eyes.
I wanted to dispel that shadow of yours.
To the dying words I spoke, the man I loved tilted his head in confusion.
As though genuinely bewildered.
‘How can you speak of saving others when you cannot even save yourself, Grand Duke?’
True to his nature of always speaking what was right, those words too held truth.
I laughed.
That’s right.
I had done my very best.
Yet that best fell woefully short.
Was I then destined to be hated no matter what I did.
‘No.’
No.
If only I had been born differently.
If only I had grown up in a different environment.
If only I had learned a different way to find happiness, rather than merely being loved….
I could have changed too.
I could have been different.
If only I had been given another chance.
[Would you truly?
Even if you had grown up differently, you would have become exactly the same person.]
That was when I heard the voice.
I thought to myself.
Since I was already dead, this had to be the voice of God of Light.
Indeed.
God of Light spoke.
[Humans do not change easily.
You disagree?
Care to make a wager with me?]
I shall grant your wish.
I will let you live the different life you spoke of.
After you have lived that other life, you will return to this one.
If you return and something has changed within you, then I lose. At that moment, I shall grant you one wish.
– And if nothing changes?
[Then you lose.]
– Then what must I stake?
[Well. Your soul?]
And it will prove once more that I was right.
That human will amounts to very little.
– What is the measure of having changed?
Even if I change, you could insist otherwise.
What if you deny it and refuse to honor the promise?
God of Light laughed at my bitter question.
[Do not worry about that.
If you know you have won, and I know you have won,
then we cannot help but acknowledge it.
The promise will keep itself.]
God of Light’s words carried weight—once declared, they must be upheld, and even God of Light would suffer consequences otherwise.
Even God of Light cannot defy the rules.
God of Light spoke.
[The greater one’s power, the greater the responsibility that follows.]
So, will you try?
God of Light asked.
I nodded.
‘I’ was Yusara.
Yusara, dead by Praha’s hand.
Yusara, reincarnated on Earth, living the mundane life of an ordinary office worker.
And Yusara, returned once more.
The villainess Yusara was me.
‘…And the God I made a wager with is the God of Light.’
The God of Light and Stars.
The God who governs dimensions and passages.
That’s why he could send me to another world, and why he brought me back now.
“This is insane….”
Cold sweat streamed down my face.
I made a contract like this without even knowing?
My soul?
My souuuuuuul?!
Have I lost my mind?!
‘A god who takes your soul when you lose a wager? That’s a demon!’
If you’re going to make a bet like this, you should at least return my memories properly first!
I was about to lose my soul while wandering around clueless!
‘Ah. He did return them.’
That novel I saw on Line 9.
No matter how powerful a god of this world is, his influence couldn’t fully reach the world I came from. It wasn’t his domain, after all.
So he returned them in novel form….
‘I barely skimmed through it.’
I didn’t have time to read something like that on my commute.
The fact that only I can see the soul stones of the zombies is probably for the same reason.
Because I’m someone who died once.
“Sigh….”
My head spun.
It wasn’t so much shock as it was.
‘Utterly absurd.’
Just because I remembered my past life didn’t mean my sense of self suddenly shifted with a .
I was simply myself with more memories.
If I had to describe my feelings.
‘It would be that I desperately want to cancel this wager I’ve apparently been in the middle of, and.’
That my past life was utterly pathetic?
And the source of that pathetic mess is right here inside this place.
“….”
I looked at the iron door before me.
With cold fingertips, I inserted the key and turned it with a click.
I opened the door to the Prayer Room.
The Grand Duke was inside.
A gaunt back. Melancholy etched perpetually into her features. A voice trembling with instability.
Mother.
Yet I no longer feared her.
No anxiety about disappointing her.
Not anymore.
“Are you still doing this?”
I stepped closer to the Grand Duke, who seemed not to hear my voice.
I glanced at the wooden barrels stacked upon the Prayer Room’s altar.
What they contained was the blood of young animals.
Fresh blood from recently hunted beasts.
It was what the Grand Duke obsessed over.
Because she believed it was the means to preserve her youth.
‘Nothing has changed at all.’
Perhaps that was inevitable, since only time had turned back.
“Mother.”
I called out once more.
Only then did the Grand Duke startle, and I regarded her intently.
Despite being a Grand Duke.
Despite wielding power.
She always hid away, avoiding sunlight.
Starving, starving, starving again, then slipping away to drink blood in secret.
Offering money to the children who came to the Mansion, burying herself among them to steal their youth.
The servants introduced their mistress, the Grand Duke, to common children in need of coin, and received referral fees in return.
The common children earned their living by murmuring worthless incantations with no effect whatsoever in the Grand Duke’s presence.
‘The entire household merely enables the Grand Duke’s compulsion while seeking profit.’
“Daughter…?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
I answered while surveying the Prayer Room.
Across the rough wooden floor and walls, I saw scratches—long and short lines of five marks carved in various places.
Sometimes four lines. Sometimes a continuous streak with one abruptly severed.
‘I was wrong. Please, let me out….’
They were made by my childhood self, scratched with fingernails.
A reek of blood so overwhelming it made my head swim.
“Daughter, why are you here….”
I closed and opened my eyes against the memories from my past life proliferating in my mind like foam.
‘It was because you loved me….’
“You said it was because you loved me.”
The words I had always wanted to say if I could meet my mother again, reversing time itself.
“Then these actions now—Mother is doing them because she loves herself, isn’t she?”
The words that abused Yusara had to speak.
“But Mother.”
The dead Yusara didn’t know, but the Yusara who returned from death does.
“Loving someone doesn’t justify hurting them.”
Perhaps I traveled back through time precisely to say this.
To that phrase: ‘I did it because I love you.’
My life crumbled as I struggled to live up to your expectations of love.
So this time, I won’t let that happen.
I blinked.
Daylight was breaking.
“I can’t stop Mother. You’re an adult, so you have the right to decide your own actions.”
“Yusara…?”
“But what Mother needs to remember is that I’m an adult too.”
I approached the window of the Prayer Room.
Grasping the thick wooden shutters with both hands, I threw them wide open.
“Ugh!”
The Grand Duke recoiled, shielding her face with her arm.
The sun rose brilliantly.
“Yusara, what are you doing! Close it, now!”
Leaving the Grand Duke behind, frantically evading the sunlight and heedless of what I’d been saying moments before.
I faced the first light of morning directly.
With my whole face.
“Close it, close it!”
The Grand Duke in darkness, I in light.
Within that sharply drawn boundary, I made my declaration.
“Mother, I’m going on an adventure.”
“Close it, close it… Please…”
“I’ll do my best to save the nation and rescue my friends.”
Even if I fail, I’ll do what I want to do.
In the process, I’ll be hurt and wounded.
My skin will tan, calluses will form on my hands, and perhaps I’ll bear scars.
But I won’t care.
“What does any of that matter?”
I’m going to save the world.
“…Still, I hope that someday we can walk together beneath the light.”
“Please…”
“Young lady…?”
The Head Maid, rushing at the commotion, stared at me blankly.
Passing before the Head Maid with her bright blonde hair in disarray, I pressed a bundle of keys into her hand.
“Please take care of my mother.”
“….”
“I don’t trust your sincerity, but I trust the evidence I hold in my hands.”
I walked forward into the light of the rising sun.
I didn’t look back.
And I made a decision.
‘Let me try to save the world.’
If God wants me to change, then let me prove that I am already a different person.
A person can change through sheer force of will alone.
‘Even if I’m nothing but a useless burden.’
When I arrived at the Imperial Palace, Praha asked me.
“Young lady, did something happen?”
“…Nothing. Really. It was nothing at all.”
I had just barely begun my third life?
I gazed intently at the man I loved, the man I had loved.
The man who had killed me.
Staring at him, I simply smiled.
“Yes. It really was nothing at all.”
* * *
And exactly ten days later.
“What do you mean it’s nothing!”
“It’s collapsing right now!”
“Aaaahhh!”
“Run!”
“Yusara!”
“No!”
[(Temporary Safe Zone) Imperial Palace]
– Yusara, Praha, Cyprus, Yujein (Alive)
[Hypnosis] ability has been awakened.
Time limit: 50 seconds
– Can only be used on beings with reason. (Cannot be used on zombies)
– Can only be used on beings whose faces are visible. (Cannot be used if blocked by a wall)
– The target will remember that you used this ability on them.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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