I’m a Villain, but I Want to Live a Long Life - Chapter 127

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Sebin, didn’t you finish disposing of the food waste yesterday?”

A voice echoed through the air. My blurry vision swayed slowly.

I could only open and close my eyes helplessly, unable to move a single finger. Then the scene changed.

Countless LED lights embedded in the ceiling. Something appeared under the blindingly bright light.

An unfamiliar building and sliding doors with glass fronts.

And two people with familiar faces standing in front of them.

Only then did I remember.

‘This place is…’

Inside a famous franchise restaurant.

A damn annoying place where customers were always plentiful but part-timers were always short-staffed…

My first part-time job in life.

‘Selene, you must be very careful. Those creatures seem to show hallucinations while absorbing magical power.’

Estelin’s words echoed in my mind. I moved my parched lips slightly.

‘Hallucinations…’

Really hallucinations.

“Don’t you see the bugs swarming here? How can you leave work in midsummer without properly disposing of the food waste!”

I let out a hollow laugh at the scene unfolding before my eyes. My dizzy head gradually cleared as I grasped the situation.

‘Right, certainly…’

Anita abandoned me and ran away. Even while activating her guardian-type ability and summoning magical beasts.

Before long, a Dearmant horde surrounded me, and without a sacred relic, I couldn’t do anything.

I tried to run away on my own two feet but failed. I think I collapsed onto the grass after not getting very far.

In the last moment before losing consciousness, Anita’s retreating figure pushing through the grass was vivid before my eyes.

A sigh welled up.

‘Why on earth would she do such a thing to me?’

Resentment and anger rose simultaneously. And along with that, an unexpected thought rushed in.

‘…It’s my fault for saying unnecessary things.’

Whether she insulted me or insulted the late Duchess.

I could have just smiled and let it pass.

‘But why did I react so strongly?’

No matter how much my reputation and position had changed from the original story,

No matter how I had come to live a life feeling unprecedented interest and affection.

I should have remembered that not everyone could love me, that I wasn’t the protagonist.

As I was lost in such thoughts with a frown, a voice suddenly reached me.

“I tried really hard not to have prejudices against Sebin. But I can’t do it anymore. Thanks for all your hard work.”

Even knowing the scene before my eyes was a hallucination, my expression hardened.

They tried not to have prejudices?

A hollow laugh burst out.

At nineteen, at my first part-time job, I was noticeably isolated.

No one liked me as I always went around in shabby clothes with a gloomy atmosphere.

Perhaps that’s why.

Even though I took on all the unpleasant tasks alone, I was always an easy target for criticism.

Whenever even the smallest error occurred in the store, it was always my fault.

It wasn’t uncommon for employees who wanted to torment me to disguise their mistakes as mine.

But the biggest problem was myself, unable to even say a word of protest while being treated that way.

Thinking of that time, my fists naturally clenched.

‘What kind of nonsense…’

But at that moment, the space suddenly warped.

Looking around, I could quickly figure out where I was.

A familiar-looking empty office.

This time, I saw myself at twenty-seven.

I was wrapped in a blanket because of the cold, rubbing my hands together while staring at a monitor in the darkness.

The memory from that time was still vivid.

When I first joined the company, I could count on my fingers the days I left work on time because of tasks my supervisor dumped on me.

Even though I clearly said I was working overtime, the security guard who claimed to be close to the CEO always turned off the heater on his own.

‘Following my part-time job days, now even my overtime work?’

The hallucinations shown by the Dearmant seemed to be custom-made for personal trauma.

A hollow laugh escaped at how they picked and touched only painful memories so precisely.

Then, I who had been typing suddenly raised my head and grabbed under my nose.

Bright red nosebleed was dripping through the gaps between my fingers.

I bit my lips.

In the dark office with no fire or heater.

Seeing myself working while even bleeding from my nose made my nose tingle for no reason.

‘…Wicked magical beasts. Friendly to humans my foot.’

If I met Adam again, I definitely wanted to confront him.

What was gentle about Dearmant? Was it okay to torment people using their weaknesses like this?

Then the scene changed again.

A single-room apartment with not a single ray of light.

I was wearing a stretched-out t-shirt while talking to someone on the phone.

-Sebin, I heard you moved? Where did you go? Can we come stay over?!

“Ah, that… It’ll be difficult for a while.”

Sitting alone in the narrow room, I was making my voice sound nonchalant with a troubled expression.

And ridiculously, this scene was also very familiar to me.

Back then, my landlord had unreasonably demanded to raise the monthly rent and deposit, so I moved to a goshiwon.

That room, which had been empty for a long time because tenants rarely appeared, was a place where not a single ray of light entered.

It was also so cramped that one would think humans couldn’t possibly live there.

When I squeezed my body onto the mattress placed without even a bed frame, it felt suffocating as if the ceiling was pressing down on my entire body.

And I never escaped from that goshiwon until the day I died.

I bit my lips while glaring at my figure that was beginning to blur.

‘…What is this.’

My mood sank endlessly downward. Then a strange doubt suddenly arose.

‘Had I been doing something wrong all along?’

Perhaps getting this life after dying in the company collapse wasn’t something to be purely happy about.

I was struggling to live somehow…

‘But what meaning could that possibly have?’

Wasn’t that right.

I had already lived like that and died once, and life had ended.

I actually knew.

The fact that effort alone could never bring happiness.

The past unfolding before my eyes was proof of that.

‘…Yes, that’s right. I was always like that.’

Even when I tried more desperately than anyone else, what always followed at the end was a despairing finale.

Good fortune, at least for me, had never been easily given even once.

And I had essentially proven that through an absurd death.

A faint bitter smile kept bursting out.

‘Come to think of it…’

Because I had lived such a life in my previous existence, I had been desperate to take care of the people around me since possessing this body.

Anna, Walter, Ansun, and countless other people who had been kind to me.

If there was anything I could do for them, I wanted to do everything.

Because I knew how lonely and difficult it was to endure life alone without any interest or help from anyone.

But the family I had for the first time since becoming Selene.

The people I could call friends.

‘How is that yours?’

‘You stole it.’

‘You should have given it back.’

The words Anita had said to me wouldn’t fade and kept circling in my head.

My hands trembled faintly.

‘She said I stole it.’

Right. Come to think of it, those words seemed correct too.

This life, everything I was enjoying,

‘It was originally Selene’s.’

Not mine, not Sebin Lee’s.

That was the reality I had tried so hard not to think about, the truth I knew but had buried.

When I realized that reality, my eyes became uncontrollably heavy.

My chest burned like fire, and my nose stung.

A small voice flowed out between my lips.

“Someone like me…”

What exactly had I been trying so hard to change?

‘You’re the one who’s crazy!’

‘How dare you try to deceive everyone!’

‘I’m curious what their expressions would be like if they knew you deceived them all.’

The wish to live happily for a long, long time was just a vain dream.

There was no way something like that could come true.

My vision became distant.

‘Someday when it’s revealed that I’m not the real Selene.’

When the fact that someone completely unrelated to the noble house had been pretending to be a lady and stirring up the manor was revealed.

I could picture Father’s back as he would coldly turn away.

What kind of reaction would Walter, Anna, and Ansun show?

‘Would they be shocked? Would they find me disgusting?’

Estelin and Rosette…

‘Just like Anita said, they might think I deceived them.’

Rubel would be the same.

If he thought that I, who was nothing but a fake, had used him…

Hot tears fell from my eyes drop by drop.

As I trembled with my face pale as a sheet, a faint red light suddenly flickered before my eyes.

When I raised my head, I saw the familiar elevator.

I could see someone’s silhouette relying on the emergency light.

‘…That’s me too.’

I was waiting for the elevator while looking at my phone.

The screen displayed was a familiar web novel page.

‘No way.’

The moment an ominous premonition filled my mind.

Strange noises came from all directions along with tremendous vibrations.

The me standing in front of the elevator looked around in confusion.

At that moment, the elevator LED lights burst with a pop, and the ceiling collapsed.

The emergency exit door crumpled like tissue paper. Concrete chunks began falling from the sky one by one.

Sebin Lee’s body, which had been fine just moments before, staggered.

I watched that scene with dazed eyes.

Thinking that this was how I looked on the day the company collapsed.

My body was instantly swept away among the debris of the collapsing building. Every scene was excessively vivid.

“Why…”

Why do I have to see something like this?

Is this telling me that this is my real life, so I shouldn’t even dream of another path?

This scene is exactly like…

The fact that I’m fake, the fact that I could never become the real Selene even if I died and came back to life,

‘It’s like telling me to realize it.’

The company continued to collapse.

Stone chunks poured endlessly from the sky, and my body was no longer visible, having gone somewhere.

I muttered in a voice so small it seemed ready to break.

“…This is too much.”

I couldn’t control my emotions. I was actually so afraid and scared.

While hating myself for being frightened by something so obvious, I simultaneously felt miserable.

The tears wouldn’t stop.

As I breathed heavily, I soon muttered to myself with a mocking tone.

“…Should I run away?”

Even if I woke up from this filthy hallucination, the future would be one of two things.

Either die to monsters in the forest, or have my life ruined by Anita’s exposure.

And whichever it was, I didn’t have the confidence to endure such a miserable future.

“It would be better to… just die.”

It was when I muttered emotionlessly while looking into space.

“After I went through the trouble of breaking the curse, now you want to die on your own.”

An unfamiliar voice rang out from above my head.

“How interesting.”

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