The Wolf Lord's Lady

Chapter 2: Beginning for some reason, you and me.

Like so, the previous ruling house, the foulest villains, ended.

However, that sin was not forgiven.

The ultimate punishment and the ultimate liberation known as death was not given to me. I was reborn with memories of getting beheaded.

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I don’t remember since when I had those memories. From when I could think, I knew that I was beheaded.

I don’t know if it’s punishment, but I had no parents. There were many orphans around me, but I pondered inside the orphanage. In this place full of orphans, am I orphan like them?From the point that I have memories of my previous life, I’m different. If this was my punishment, my parents might not exist at all. It’s not that I don’t want to think that I was abandoned.

If I did have parents, I can understand that I would be abandoned. However, did they really exist? Am I really born of woman?

Would my sins be forgiven with just one death?

Might I have been born from the rage and hatred of the people? I had such thoughts.

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I was a child that did not smile. I was a child that did not cry.

It must have been disgusting. If I really did have parents, it’s no wonder that they would abandon me in a roofless place as rain fell.

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Would it have been punishment for me to be born again in the fief that my family and I caused much grief to. I was abandoned here, so I might not have been born here, but in the end so I was raised in this land. I grew up getting soaked with curses towards the previous ruling house, to which the hatred did not fade out yet, along with praises to the current lord.

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As a result, I think it can’t be helped that I became famous as a woman who had no speck of cuteness or sociability.

However, please don’t blame me for not being able to anticipate that I would come to work at the lord’s place from the connection of the orphanage director’s little sister’s daughter’s three-blocks-away neighbour’s teacher’s older brother’s grandson’s neighbour’s store regular’s wife’s parent’s regular store’s fellow regular’s tea-drinking companion’s little brother’s colleague’s crush’s flower shop’s passerby lady’s husband’s mother.

I was just a normal stranger, and on top of that I wasn’t even related to any of them to begin with, yet how did it reach that? Everyone, you started minding other people’s business. I see that there’s leisure in your life and in your hearts. Long live the current lord.

However, it’s a little too much, so I would be happy if you held back a little.

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In the mirror, there was a woman withered away like a dead tree, with clouded and creepy eyes, truly a horrific sight.

For a blossoming fifteen-year-old maiden to be like this, how laughable.

I had a funny experience, but my mouth in the mirror did not twitch a bit.

Rebuilt after having burned down, the new lord’s house is nothing like the previous.

If the previous one looked like a palace, this one looked like a box. It was one that could make one think that forts are more pleasing to look at.

The garden where I planted flowers together with mother was turned into a training ground for soldiers, and the fountain I watched while riding on father’s shoulders was turned into a horse trough. The chair where I sat on grandfather’s lap as he read picture books to me, the shade where I learned to sew laces with grandmother, they were no longer there. There was just a stump.

However, when I first visited, I could not feel even the most minute stab of pain. Everything was over already.

We were resented. We were punished in the name of loathing and justice. That was right. Justice was with you. We were just evil itself.

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Many times, I told myself that I won’t stand out.

I won’t enjoy anything. I won’t wish for anything. I won’t make any friends. I am only here because the orphanage director told me with teary eyes to wait at least until I am sixteen. I’ll become a nun the next year and spend the rest of my life as one.

That is the duty of the last of the ruling house that drained the land and drove people to death.

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But how did it turn out like this.

I looked at the man hiding in the shade with me and sighed slightly.

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Black hair and golden eyes. When I heard that he was turning thirty next year, I could only think, ‘See?’ Even his age is different. What do you mean sixteen, a year younger. Even though he pretended to be disappointed at his short height, if he was fourteen then it was a normal height.

I was being toyed around not by a boy a year younger than me but by a boy three years younger than me.

I am the epitome of stupidity.

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Around the bush we were hiding at, a butler and a maid encountered each other.

“Might you have any idea where master may be?”

“Master? No, he wasn’t here. Hey, have you seen Shirley?”

“Shirley?”

If it’s the lord, he’s right here, I answered in my mind. However, if I say it out loud, I would get caught too so I observed silently.

The shrewd butler raised an eyebrow.

“Who’s that?”

“The girl that was assigned recently. The thin girl with brown hair.”

“Ah, that creepy…… pu!”

The rag that was in the maid’s hand was thrown at the butler’s face.

“What are you doing!?”

“She’s just pale because she doesn’t sleep well, and she’s just thin because she doesn’t eat much, not eating snacks too!”

“I acknowledge that I spoke improperly, so don’t throw rags at me!”

“It’s used!”

“That’s even worse!”

“I cleaned dust while chasing after Shirley so it should be full of dust!”

“Wash it! But why were you chasing after her anyway!? Is the new girl slacking around!?”

“Rude! Shirley is so perfect that you won’t believe that’s she’s being a maid for the first time! With that flawlessness, she finishes work quickly and doesn’t participate in recess tea, so I was searching for her! She didn’t eat enough breakfast either!”

The two went away while barking at each other. Even as they fought, they kept searching. They’re a superb pair of a butler and a maid. However, if possible, I’d like them use that excellence somewhere else…… someone else.

The girl I’m living with, Jasmine, worries for me about many things as she’s around my age, but since I’ll disappear in a year so I’d like her to leave me alone.

While thinking about such things, I confirmed that the voice of the two disappeared and took five…… six, seven steps away and bowed my head.

Of course, the person I am bowing to is the first that was sitting along with me.

“Please excuse me.”

Black hair, golden eyes, and sharp face like a wolf’s. The height that he lamented about so much grew a lot, and the body that was ridiculed as a girl’s grew bulky as if to say such past did not exist, and the flawless white child’s skin earned the shade of a grown man. The current lord of Laius fiefdom, Kaid Falua.

Improved the living conditions of the people who was devastated by the previous lord’s misrule and eradicating corruption, the adept young lord turned the land into one with the best economy and security in the country in the time span of just fifteen years.

He’s the man who recently became my master. I have no complaints about being a maid, but serving him…… It’s hard to swallow.

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Kaid sat down and stared at me, who took two more steps away and was now standing at nine steps away. It’s an unthinkable etiquette for a lord, but the man that did not seem like a lord is a wise man that appears maybe once a century, and father who taught me etiquette was the worst and the most evil lord, so etiquette might not matter.

“I thought that I didn’t recognise you, so you’re ‘Shirley Hince’?”

“……Yes. I moved in the other day and stared working in this mansion.”

He remembered my full name.

I was thinking of slipping away like this, but think that he does not only differentiate the new maids and the veteran maids, but also knows the name of the newcomer, what a respectable lord. You are the consummate role model of a lord.

Though that doesn’t help me a bit.

“Thank you, master. I am sincerely happy that I can work at such a magnificent mansion though I was just an orphan.”

“That’s good…… However, did my policy fail?”

“Excuse me?”

I was thinking of leaving after thanking him, but he said something strange so I ended up blurting out.

Kaid stared at me, scanning up and down with a piercing gaze.

“You, you said that you were at an orphanage until recently, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You look so frail. Was it an environment where there was not enough food?”

Hands and feet like sticks, wiry hair, cracked lips. A creepy girl who only her dry eyes stand out.

After remembering how I looked in the mirror today, I hastily corrected him.

“No, that’s not true. Indeed, I was at a small orphanage in a remote region, but not only did I not stave, there was enough firewood and blankets for everyone in the winter. I lead a comfortable life.”

Not only was the official kind, but the villagers, and of course the orphanage director made sure of such things. Everyone could go to school without starving or trembling in the cold. There was enough so that even orphans could live comfortably.

Stories of distributed goods or funds ending up in some official’s pockets are relics of when father was the lord.

I can’t allow people who were kind to me to be mistaken just because I am thin.

“Then, why are you so thin. I must hear.”

It’s just one maid, it’d be better if he ignored it. I clicked my tongue in my head.

Before, I was a child that didn’t know anything, so I didn’t know what clicking the tongue meant, but in this life I learned that it’s done in disparagement.

I sighed and grabbed my index finger and my middle finger. It felt as though Kaid’s eyes widened somewhat.

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“That is because I have memories of a previous life.”

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This time for sure, unlike those golden eyes that opened wide, my eyes must be dark and clouded.