I Was Just Having Fun With The Time Limit - Chapter 1

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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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The night I confirmed my acceptance to Korea University, a prestigious institution recognized both domestically and internationally.
That day felt profoundly strange.
‘Where am I?’
The scenery was utterly different from the hospital ward where I had spent my entire life.
I saw a golden chandelier, and the walls were made of ivory-colored marble.
The faint floral fragrance drifting through the air was nothing like the hospital smell I had always known.
‘Where are the doctors? Where are the nurses?’
Excuse me?
I tried to speak, but….
“Waaaaaah!”
A cry burst forth.
‘What, what is this? Some kind of prank?’
I blinked my eyes repeatedly.
My body felt impossibly weak.
Ugh, ugh.
I strained to lift my hand. My arms were remarkably short.
“Waaaaaah!”
My throat continued crying against my will, and I barely managed to turn my gaze sideways to look at my stubby little arms.
They looked like plump sausages.
A voice reached my ears.
“It’s, it’s a daughter!”
I felt a shock.
That language was not Korean.
Yet the moment I heard it, I understood it instinctively.
As if it were my native tongue.
“The, the Imperial Princess has been born!”
Wow, I must have been reincarnated into this world.
‘Or perhaps, possessed?’
I listened intently to the midwife’s words.
Then I heard sobbing.
“A daughter from the Villorian Royal Family….”
I wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed my mother who had given birth to me was crying.
She did not appear happy about giving birth to me.
Yet I was quite pleased.
‘Wait! Villorian! I, I know this.’
Villorian was the name of the royal family that appeared in the novel “After the Doomed Villainess Dies.”
They revered physical strength and possessed a peculiar tradition where only power proved one’s worth.
They were a cold-blooded clan that viewed their children not as offspring but merely as successor candidates, and they were also a family from which only male children had been born for five hundred years.
‘So Princess Isabel of the Villorian Royal Family is born here. That must be me.’
The swordsmanship of the Villorian Royal Family had been designed and developed to suit the magical circuits of men.
In other words, it meant that women could not master Villorian swordsmanship.
In Villorian, where strength was everything, being born female was a curse for any girl.
‘A midwife in shock, a mother weeping. The Villorian Royal Family. A princess born for the first time in five hundred years. My name is Isabel?’
The place where I awakened was undoubtedly inside the novel 【When the Doomed Villainess Dies】.
I had read it through more than seventeen times.
I knew most of the characters and had memorized all the settings and plot points.
I had spent my entire life bedridden, and my only hobbies were solving math problems and reading novels.
‘Good heavens, what in the world. This must be a possession.’
To be honest, believing it was a dream would have been far more convincing than possession, but I preferred the idea of possession, so I decided to think of it that way.
“Waaaah!”
Even as I cried, I felt joy.
It was no lie—I was quite pleased with this possession.
‘This place is so much better than South Korea.’
In South Korea, I was an orphan.
My biological father abandoned me before I was even born, and my mother ran away and left me not long after.
I don’t know either of their faces.
When I turned four, I was diagnosed with childhood cancer and began treatment.
I was often introduced in the media as an unfortunate child.
Thanks to the support of countless nameless people, I managed to survive in the hospital without being turned away.
As a stroke of luck amid misfortune, I had quite a talent for studying.
[A miracle achieved in a hospital room!]
[The miracle child is accepted to Korea University.]
My university acceptance was even broadcast on the news.
Countless people congratulated me and praised me.
I was grateful, but truthfully, I wasn’t that happy.
‘What does it matter when I’m going to die soon anyway.’
I had a certain premonition of death.
Even so, it was unbearably painful and difficult.
I had wished countless times to die quickly and find peace.
‘Wow, neighbors, this body doesn’t hurt at all!’
Even as I cried out loudly, there was no pain.
Normally, I should have felt a sharp, crushing pain in my chest.
That alone made me so happy.
‘If I’ve possessed Isabel, I’ll die at twenty-one?’
Isabel was born with a terminal curse.
She was born bearing the ‘Mark of Narbidal,’ a setting from the novel.
The Mark of Narbidal was an hourglass-shaped pattern carved into the wrist.
Fine sand continued to fall throughout one’s life, and when all the sand ran out, death would come.
It was a curse one was born with from the beginning.
But what did it matter. Right now, nothing hurts at all.
At least until I turned twenty-one, I could live in perfect health and happiness.
For someone like me who had been living day to day, gaining twenty-one years of life was quite the windfall.
‘What a jackpot!’
Though my time was limited, I had possessed myself in the body of Isabel—a strikingly beautiful and healthy girl.
‘Wow, so I can eat cookies whenever I want now?’
I had spent my entire life eating nothing but hospital food.
I had never even tasted cola, that most common of beverages.
I had managed to sneak half a sip into my mouth once, and the nurse scolded me terribly for it.
‘Does cola exist in this world?’
Unintentionally, I had become quite serious about food.
‘Surely there’s no tteokbokki here?’
It was a South Korean dish, so it probably didn’t exist.
I knew the recipe, but really—what was I doing thinking about tteokbokki at a time like this?
…or so I thought, but my mind refused to stop wandering.
‘Oh, could I maybe try alcohol before I die?’
How delicious must it be for people to become addicted to it?
They say it tastes bitter, but that’s probably just a lie to keep children from drinking it.
I definitely wanted to try it at least once before I died.
You know, something a bit grown-up and sophisticated. A glass of wine while gazing at a beautiful night view—just perfect!
It was a fantasy, but if I had a wish, that would be it.
Sooooooob!
Though I tried to cry out that way, all that came from my mouth was a wailing “Waaaaah!”
Another voice reached my ears.
“A useless thing has been born.”
It was exactly like the novel.
「”A useless thing has been born.”」
「He gazed at the newborn girl with emotionless eyes. In his gaze, there was no trace of paternal affection.」
I rolled my eyes and looked up at the face that had suddenly appeared.
Then I cried out instinctively.
“Waaaaah (so handsome)!”
And I truly was astonished.
I had never seen a creature so beautiful before.
The description in the novel fit perfectly.
「Everyone unhesitatingly called him beautiful. Though he was called an emotionless doll, countless young ladies suffered from lovesickness because of him.」
His black hair was cut short, and his eyebrows and eyes were exceptionally sharp.
His gaze was fierce and wild.
Yet despite all that, this man so beautiful I couldn’t tear my eyes away—he was undoubtedly my father, Ron.
‘Hehe.’
The moment I saw his beautiful face, I despaired at the poverty of my own imagination.
‘He’s far more handsome than I ever imagined.’
He was so strikingly handsome that I, a newborn, stopped crying altogether.
‘Wow, such a fierce gaze, yet still so handsome.’
In this world’s narrative, this was an entirely expected reaction toward me.
Ron loved his wife dearly, but he had never once loved his child as a child.
I wasn’t particularly frightened.
In the novel, Isabel, cursed with a limited lifespan, grows into a truly monstrous villainess.
‘She commits every conceivable atrocity imaginable, only to die of natural causes at twenty-one.’
As an aside, this Iron-Blooded Imperial House also falls on the day I die.
The male protagonist, whom I brought to the palace as a child and tormented mercilessly, awakens and returns to destroy Villorian.
That’s why the book was titled “After the Doomed Villainess Dies.”
‘In any case, no matter what I do, the Imperial House won’t lay a finger on me!’
So there’s no need to worry.
My father turned away from me.
He didn’t spare me even a single affectionate glance.
It was somewhat sad, but as a reader who had read the novel multiple times, it was entirely understandable.
‘So my terminal diagnosis should come around now.’
Then the Midwife, who had discovered something on my wrist, spoke.
“Your Majesty! There is the Mark of Narbidal.”
All children born with this stigma die at twenty-one.
‘So now Father will say he’s not interested and close the door as he leaves, right?’
A cold response came.
“I’m not interested.”
Slam.
The sound of the door closing echoed.
My mood wasn’t particularly bad.
‘Twenty-one years.’
Twenty-one years of life given to me for free.
My mother’s sobbing continued.
“My baby….”
Mother would apologize to me.
For giving birth to me.
“I’m sorry for bringing you into this world.”
“Waaaaaah!”
No, I’m really completely fine.
I wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come out.
I resolved to tell her once I learned to speak.
‘Though I won’t be able to master swordsmanship.’
I’m still quite intelligent, after all.
But I do know the future quite accurately. I even know the candidates for the world’s strongest.
‘This world even has something like cryptocurrency.’
This world has coins—or at least something similar to them, though they go by different names.
In about ten years, their value will skyrocket by hundreds of thousands of times over.
Not only do I know well about Narmore, the founder of that coin, but I also know the names of promising mages, magitech engineers, and entrepreneurs of the future.
When I thought about it carefully, there seemed to be quite a few ways to avoid the destruction flags.
‘Wow, I think I’ll have more than ten ways to live meaningfully for these twenty-one years.’
Ugh, ugh.
I tried wriggling my body.
‘This really is a fantasy world.’
A newborn had just performed the miracle of raising their body at will!
Though to be honest, since I’ve possessed this body and understand everything being said, it’s not really that surprising.
If I had to give a reason, it’s because I was born with the body of the Villorian Royal Family.
In any case, I moved about eagerly.
The Midwife recognized my earnest efforts.
“It seems the little one wishes to go to the Empress.”
The Midwife picked me up.
The sensation of my body floating felt quite pleasant.
‘Everything feels so delightful in a baby’s body.’
I was laid down beside my mother, Serna.
Ugh, ugh.
I wriggled like a caterpillar and burrowed into my mother’s embrace.
It was the first time I felt my mother’s warmth.
Serna’s body trembled.
Tears of joy streamed down her face.
‘Warm and sleepy.’
A newborn’s body requires much sleep, and before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.
Clutching my mother’s index finger tightly.
And a year passed.

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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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