I was 10 years old when I first realized my past life. There are some areas where it is unclear to say that I’m 10 years old, but for convenience, I might as well think so. And to explain it, I have to talk first about an event that was a big turning point in my life. That day, I got caught pickpocketing and was being beaten with fire.

Thwack! Bam!

“Did you think today was your big day? How dare you pickpocket me because there’s no one else to rob?”

That day was really an unlucky day. I thought the man with the smell of money was a merchant or tourist who went astray on the road, but I was completely wrong. It’s not like I was an officer of a new criminal organization that just received this area. It was a mistake that I didn’t know that the face was unfamiliar and was the bottom person. Moreover, it was a mistake to think that a man was so stupid and easy. The moment I reached out to the back of the man’s clothes, I was soon ****** to the floor with my hands behind my back.

“I’m felt something dirty touch me!”

“Hey, I don’t have time, just do it in moderation.”

There was a colleague at the side who tried to stop him with a lukewarm attitude, but it didn’t help much.

“No, I’m sorry… Aah!”

The man pushed me into an alley and hurled a random kick at me. There were many abandoned children here in the slums. And there were also adults who gathered the children together and gave them sleeping bags and snacks, which provided food. For a good-looking kid, they occasionally gave away cheap junk food such as candy made with sugar water. I was living there hiding my gender and pretending to be a boy because I didn’t get accepted in the crowd. It was possible because I was still young and had my hair cut thickly and had my face covered with a big stick(?), and my gender was not yet revealed.

Thwack!

“Ptoo(spitting)…! Bitch irritates me.”

The man spit sideways as he looked down at me with merciless eyes. I was famous among the children in the crowd, but I was so unlucky that day. I got caught pickpocketing and got beaten up several times when I first started. But this was the first time it was so severe.

The guy next to him clicked his tongue as if he were in a hurry, but that was the end. They left me alone in the alley.

I thought it was a good thing that it was over. If it had been worse, I might have died. I got up to go back to the group, but I could only move a few steps and passed out. And when I opened my eyes again, I was being sold to a human trafficking ring.

*********

Where I live, slavery was not illegal. Of course, it was forbidden to kidnap and sell random people on the streets, but I was from the slums without parents. So even if I was gone, there was nobody to find me. Even the group I belonged to would not have tried to find me. It was not uncommon for people to go missing one day in the slums. I was like that, and while I was lying on the alley, I was sold as a slave by passerbys.

“This time, 50 people that are healthy.”

“Oh, come on. I’ll pick one for you this time.”

Lucky or bad. I was sold right away on the day I was handed over to the top of the slaves. It was a suspicious person who bought me, wearing black clothes from head to toe. From the sound of his voice, it seemed like he was a man of considerable age. When I heard the slave trader groaning, it seemed that this wasn’t the first time he’d taken many slaves at once. This time, I was taken to a cart with other slaves, and after a full two-day journey, I arrived at the destination.

“What, are you dying? Besides, it’s only blood, right?”

I was sick in the cart and was found only then. The aftereffects of being beaten in the alley seemed to have been unknown, as he did not check on each slave’s status when he bought them.

“Ha, you son of a bitch. I’ve been so good to you last time, and you’re selling me something I can’t even eat?”

The man frowned irritably. The man who took off his hat and revealed his face looked older than I thought. He looked at me disapprovingly and soon clicked his tongue.

“Tsk. I can’t do that.”

It was too much to go back to the top of the slaves now, so I just decided not to return myself but to go inside. But it might have been better to be abandoned or killed that day. Because I arrived at the Institute of Bioscience, which is notorious even in the criminal city of Carnot.

*********

“Is it all this time?”

I was immediately put in the lab. There was a strange smell, and there were depressing cries everywhere.

“It’s similar so far. I don’t think this would work for you anyway?”

The woman there replied sourly to the man’s voice. Then her eyes turned to me hanging from the man’s side.

“But who’s that little kid? Have you been deceived again this time?”

“Who is the messenger?! I picked this young man on purpose.”

It must have hurt his pride to let them know that he was swindled by a slave dealer. The man pretended to be serious as if it was his intention to bring me in.

“Put ‘it’ in his body.”

“Really… Are you serious?”

“I’ve only been trying on an adult body, so I’ll change the method this time.”

The woman seemed reluctant at first, but at the end of the day, at the man’s command, she took me to a bed. My eyes were blurred at that time because I was boiling with a high fever. The sound of two men exchanging talks over me was fading away. So I couldn’t remember what happened to me right after that.

But they tied my wrists and ankles to the bed and stabbed me in the neck with a sharp needle. I could feel something penetrating into my neck that I couldn’t identify. After that, I passed out, feeling a terrible pain like my whole body was being smashed. And I dreamed for days of a group of black spiders eating me. Then the pain slowly receded and the reason which had been forgotten, finally came back.

I remembered my previous life’s memories.

(note: she kinda looks like sica wolf if you’ve ever read that webtoon)

Just as water poured out of a broken jar, memories of the past that had been buried suddenly popped up. I am not an orphan of simple blood circulation as it is now, but I remember the sweet days with my family. The daily leisurely life of lying in bed while hugging a dog in my arms and reading a book that I borrowed from my younger brother. After the college exam, I had a chat with my friends until late at night. And then late one night, on my way home, I was pushed by a drunk person and fell to the street. It was a bright and glittering light that swallowed me right up after that. This time, I wandered through countless days in my memory, whether it was a dream or a fantasy.

“It was successful……!”

Then one day, the voice of a man full of joy woke me up.

T/N: hhh if someone more capable were to pick this up then please do ;-; i feel like im destroying the story with my horrible translations.. i might be able to release daily chapters till then.. but it’s not guaranteed

“It was successful……! We finally succeeded in absorbing it!”

It was the last voice I heard before I passed out after being injected by something strange. I still lifted my heavy eyelids and blinked a few times with a blurred focus. The whole view was faded away. At first, I thought I was trapped in a white room. But soon I realized that wasn’t it. I stared at the lines drawn in the air before my eyes. It was a very different thread.

Dozens, hundreds……No, more than that.

Countless, tightly-knitted silks were wrapped around me like a cocoon.

“It’s amazing. I didn’t think you’d hold out…”

“I guess I should have experimented with a young object.”

“You’re the Doctor!”

“That’s right, how did you come up with this idea, you’re amazing!”

The voices flowing in my ears and my sense of smell were clearer than before. Somehow I felt better than before.

Buuk!

I raised my hand and tore up the wall in front of me. But this place was not the last bed I slept in. The moment I tore the stringed cocoon and pulled myself out, my feet fell flat. I was pulled down by gravity.

Poof!

But something from above supported me so I could safely land on the floor. At that moment, the people who were making a fuss around her held their breath in unison.

“Oh, you’re up!”

Only the man who brought me here greeted me with a big smile on his lips.

“How are you feeling? Where are you sick?”

I looked around without an answer.

I could see the white thread that was wrapped around me everywhere, like a spider’s web. It was a thread that continued from the ceiling that supported my body a little while ago. As I lowered my head again, a long black tread swept the floor. Surprisingly it was my hair. Originally my hair was a pale gold color, as if it had been drained of water. But when I woke up, it turned black as if I had dyed my hair. So I thought it was not my hair at first. Moreover, it was hard to tell when this long hair, which had been so short as to show my ears before I went to sleep, had become so long. There was a piece of cloth on the body that could be called a bag, not clothes. I felt like I was a little tall in between, and I felt like I had grown up a bit. When I looked up, I saw that my hand, which used to be filled with all kinds of scars, was as if it had been carved out of white jade. Not just the hands, but all the skin exposed from the fabric was the same. Come to think of it, my eyesight as well as my hearing and sense of smell seemed to have improved greatly, I was surprised. It was certainly strange, but I was not particularly impressed by the changes that occurred to me at that time. It felt so unnatural and abnormal. So I finished my brief observation and raised my head. I could see a couple of eyes staring at me around. I opened my mouth and said,

“I’m hungry”

I felt that my stomach was sticking to my back.

“Yes, yes! It’s been a long time since I’ve had the proper nutrition, so I’m hungry!”

Then the man responded in a big hurry and ordered the others in a haste.

“What are you doing there? Come on, get something you can eat!”

The man who brought me here was a doctor at the Bio-Experimental Institute here. He gave me the name ‘Arachne’ and, unlike in the beginning, stopped caring for me. Of course I was just an experimenter’s pet. Apparently I was the first successful result of this experiment. What they put into my body was an unidentified piece of debris found in the ruins, and I was told that there was a strange force in it. So, they were studying whether it could be absorbed by humans. I was the first to succeed there. It turned out that there was a three-year gap from the day I first came to the institution and passed out to the day I woke up again. While I was unconscious, the research seemed to have continued steadily. I came to realize that I sometimes felt a twitching pain all over me in my dream. They say that unlike other experiments who have died when they put the fragments in their bodies, I stayed alive longer than they thought, and they began to bring young children in and experiment with them instead.

Even when I woke up, the researchers excitedly focused more on their experiments with other children. But as a final result, I was the only one who opened their eyes after absorbing the force of the debris. The people of the institute couldn’t couldn’t figure out what went wrong. So they took me again and began to do various experiments.

Three more years after that.

It was a time when I had to be trapped and experimented with various things. In the meantime, the researchers are good at it, so I had four children, including myself, who were successful in the experiment. The power of the debris I absorbed couldn’t kill or attack, and I could not escape from the lab by myself.

In the meantime, the Doctor’s greed grew, and I had to absorb the debris several more times during the experiment. The same was true for the other children. But it was rewarding, and the strength I had in my body became stronger and stronger, and I could use my powers finely. Of course there were kids who couldn’t stand it. Unlike in the beginning, the power of the debris could be used to destroy something, the lab was talking about keeping me on the lookout and trying to isolate me somewhere. I foresaw that the day of escape was approaching.

Kwang……!

Then one day, ‘the man’ came in.

*********

Kwang……!

A huge roar ripped through my eardrums. At the same time, the outer walls of the building collapsed.

“What all of a sudden!”

“What’s going on?”

Everyone in the lab was confused by the sudden situation.

Thud. (heavy footsteps)

Soon there was a man in black who stepped out of the dust.

No……

His face, with a little strange childishness, still seemed to be in its late teens, and he could hardly be called a boy.

“Ah, I have a bad smell on my clothes.”

A faint, bored voice clung to my ear.

“It’s like a maggot lair too, and it smells disgusting.”

The man was amazingly beautiful. Apparently what stretched out in his background was the dust created by the collapse of the building’s walls, which strangely gave rise to an optical illusion that seemed to have a halo on his back. Even in a dust pit, the unmarked golden hair sparkled to the point of ecstasy, reflecting light on a broken piece of glass, and the eyes beneath it shone cold and clear, like a clear ice lake. The gentle and calm face was so harmonious and well-balanced that I could believe it was a piece of art. He was a flawless and sacred beauty that made me feel as if I were in a cathedral of pure white, not a bloody lab. His face and body were covered with red blood.

“You, you!”

As the doctor recognized him, he opened his eyes. Then a smile came to the man’s face with a feeling of regret. Then the voice that flowed from his lips was as sweet as honey, but the contents were bloody.

“I’ve told you before not to look so X-like. I came here because I want to crush your face.“

Everyone around him is now agitated by the conversation, and he is the only one who is relaxed. The doctor gibbered with a look of shock.

“Is this generation just starting to change? No, but why did you come here… how did you…Don’t tell me you’re…”

The man twisted his muzzle and twisted his lips as if it were the same in the doctor’s response(?)

“I guess you’re buried in a pail of maggots, and don’t know what’s going on out there?”

There was a definite laugh that came out of his mouth.

“Nevertheless I didn’t think I’d get beat up by those little bastards.”

Even the haughty arrogance that stood on his beautiful face suited him well.

“More than…”

At the next moment, a glass like pupil left the Doctor and looked around him once.

“What the hell is this? Are the maggots even going to get their eggs?”

He brushed the objects in the room with a sharp glance and asked if they were cold at the entrance.

“I’ve hit something so many times, it makes me sick.”

I didn’t notice until now, but the man seemed to be in a very bad temper.

At last he gave notice.

“I will close this institute from today.”

“No way, anyone…!”

“Of course I will.”

A sharp smile bloomed on his face like a cross-section of a broken glass. The man’s eyes gleamed with a blue light.

“You can’t let me see this ugly thing on my land.”

Shortly thereafter, a violent red storm struck the laboratory. The man killed all those who worked at the institute. It was so one-sided that she couldn’t believe he had done it alone. In the meantime, the trapped subjects ran away. I was one of the subjects that left the lab. The man paid no mind to us. On that day, it was widely announced that the owner of the dark city of Carnot was changed. The new king’s name was Lakis Avalon. It was he who first made me realize that this was a world in the novel.

***

I escaped there without looking back and hid in the dark while the blonde man was slaughtering people in the lab. I didn’t think I could beat him by eating so many of the debris, I could only say he was a monster. The man’s name was known because late that evening, news of the change of the King of Carnot swept through the city.

The lab I was in.

The unknown strength of the historical site.

The name of the land on which the line is now two feet.

And the name of the man who became the new head of this place and his appearance I saw.

At that moment, the scattered pieces were matched in one place. It was a bit unexpected, but it was a novel that finally came to mind in the finished puzzle.

My small hobby in my previous life was reading books. Among them, I remember that one last novel I read right before I died had such a plot. Although it has been a long time since my previous life, my memory has become much better than before due to the various experiments I received from the institute.

So for the old work, memories came out quite clearly. The title of the novel, which was clearly indistinguishable from a romance novel or thriller novel genre, was “Chain of Flowers.” The novel, abbreviated by the readers, called the so-called Flower Chain, a Romance Thriller (compound word of Romance and Thriller), was dotted with blood-splattering love and war.

Like the title, the main character was a flower-like woman raised beautifully in a greenhouse. The female protagonist’s name was “Annmarie Blanche,” which I remember as being the daughter of a man who was originally a commoner but bought something and became an aristocrat.

But after Annmarie’s father got wrecked in the sea and died, her house was completely destroyed. The heroine, who was left alone with her younger sister, was in despair at first, but she stood firm and started standing alone.

She became bright and gentle at all times, and the people around her got charmed without hesitation, the charm of the heroine didn’t discriminate between sexes. Later, she chose one of the coolest male protagonists who fell in love with her and swore an oath of eternal love. In other words, the novel is about a heroine who was lonely and didn’ cry, but survived adversity, and finally became rich and honorable……

No, I don’t know about the honorable part. Anyway, it was a happy ending. But was the genre of this novel a romance thriller for nothing? No.

There was a wasp among the bees who came to suck honey, attracted by the scent of flowers. It was the villainous sub-character, Lakis Avalon, who had devastated the main character’s life.

Yeah, the same guy who showed up at the lab and destroyed it. He was a possessive human being who bound the heroine. Of course, there were a few men besides Lakis who fell in love with the heroine, Annmarie with the same characteristics.

However, none of them were as obsessed and fanatic as Lakis. The first encounter between the heroine and the sub-villain was dramatic & cliché.

In the beginning of the novel, Lakis was a man who ruled as the king of the dark world, but was betrayed by a trusted person and was driven out with fatal injuries. Then, he entered an alley and lost his consciousness and fell down. It was in front of the house where the heroine, Annmarie lives.

At that time, Annmarie fled from debtors after her family collapsed, and was living with her younger sister by buying a shabby house with the money she got from selling her parent’s belongings.

Basically, a good heroine picks up an unidentified man who has fallen in front of her house in such a difficult situation and nurses them back to health. While they’re together, Lakis gets interested in Annmarie. Of course, according to the law of romance novels, it was soon that the interest turned into love.

Lakis then becomes unnoticed by Annmarie and gives her corrupt affection. He left no one alive who seemed to do any harm to Annmarie. But Lakis’ standards were as strict as when he was the king of the dark world. As a result, the people that died in his hand included a few people whom Annmarie liked, which devastated her life.

Even one of the servant men, who was quite popular with the readers, died to Lakis. I don’t know how shocked I was when I was reading that scene. Because that dead servant guy was my favorite……

It’s been a while since I thought about it. I felt like my mouth was forming into a smile. I thought I’d lost most of my feelings during the lab experiment, but I can’t believe I’d feel this joyful when I think of the dead guy. In conclusion, Lakis in the novel was a scary guy. I wonder if even the angelic heroine regretted saving him. And judging from the circumstances, the person I saw in the lab this time seemed to be the the novel’s obsessive villain.

Of course, it doesn’t make any sense. The world I am in is the world of a novel. But it was hard to believe that I had memories of my past life or that there was such a thing as magical powers from fragments of ruins. Of course, I had to bear in mind the possibility that the world might have nothing to do with the novel I read.

Anyway, the man who was supposed to be Lakis Avalon in the novel was ten times more scarier in real life than I thought he was reading the book. He was still much younger than he was in the novel, but he’s already been that harsh. Now that Lakis has just become the king of the dark world, if this was according to the novel, it would still be years before the beginning of the story. No matter how good my memory was, there were some things I couldn’t think of, including the delicate setting of the characters. It seemed to be because it wasn’t something that I payed much attention to back then.

If you look at the lab now, you can see that Lakis doesn’t like the place……Would he have been the first to come and shut down as soon as he was king? So I was a little worried that maybe the fireball would bounce off the lab and come after me to kill me.

I took a quiet breath for a while and looked at the movements. Perhaps the same would be true of the other surviving experiments.

According to the news, Lakis killed all the other challengers after the death of his father, the former king of the black world, and achieved a generational change earlier than everyone expected.

Then he has been organizing his forces in and out of Carnot for a while. Perhaps Lakis really didn’t want to kill the escapees.

So I got my freedom back six years after entering the lab. Now I have no one to block the way where I go. Also, unlike before, I have the power to protect my body, and no one can threaten me anymore as I was a child. I left Carnot on that road and took up a site elsewhere. Time has passed, and now I have come to live a normal life that anyone can see.

Then one day,

“Hello, I will be living next door since today and came to say hi. My name is Annmarie.”

“……”

The heroine moved into my house next door.