Chapter 1
“Haru, I like you.”
As the red sunset slowly sank.
On a hill in the middle of the village, where a single massive tree had grown.
A boy with short, dull-blond hair spoke, his face flushed bright red.
I had expected this day to come.
Because the one standing before me was the protagonist, and I was the protagonist's childhood friend.
“…I'm sorry, Rex.”
But I couldn't accept his confession.
Because I was a man in my previous life?
Of course, that could be one reason. But it wasn't the decisive one.
“Um, I think you may have gotten the wrong idea.”
If that really had been the only reason,
“I have never once seen you as a man, you know?”
I wouldn't have needed to go as far as saying this.
“…What?”
Rex stared at me with a flustered expression. His face held the faint hope that he'd simply misheard me.
I bit the inside of my lip. I had to be cruel. A simple rejection wouldn't do.
I—the Haru who was Rex's childhood friend—had to be the most loathsome woman alive.
“Didn't you hear me? I said I don't see you as a man.”
“…What does that mean?”
“I'll be honest. You springing this on me out of nowhere is really overwhelming.”
I dredged up every stock phrase I'd overheard in my previous life, sharpened my words into daggers, and hurled them from my mouth.
“You and I aren't anything particularly special to each other, are we?”
The dagger-sharp words flew at Rex and pierced him. He went deathly pale and stared blankly at me, then bit his lip hard as if steeling his resolve.
“…Y-yeah.”
Rex stared at me with hollow eyes and nodded.
“I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable.”
With that, Rex disappeared from my sight.
I watched his retreating back for a long while before letting out a small sigh and slowly leaning my back against the great tree.
The Hill Where Confessions Come True.
That was the name given to this hill, one of the village's few landmarks.
When the crimson evening glow settled over it, any confession of love made atop this hill was said to be certain to succeed—a legend, though not quite a legend.
And I had just broken that legend.
“…Yes, this is how it had to be.”
I muttered it under my breath, trying to convince myself.
There was no way around it. I had no choice but to cruelly reject the protagonist's confession.
The reason was….
“……Ugh.”
At that moment, a hot, unpleasant fluid surged up from my stomach. I clapped a hand over my mouth, dropped to my knees, and collapsed face-first where I stood.
“Khhk, urk…!”
I remained hunched over for a long while, hacking wetly through the pain that felt as though my throat were being torn apart.
“Haa, haa… ngh.”
I slowly took my hand away from my mouth and groaned, narrowing my eyes.
My palm was completely drenched in bright-red blood.
=
The memory of that day seventeen years ago still comes vividly to mind whenever I close my eyes.
There were two reasons I rejected Rex's confession.
The first was to avoid deviating from the original plot.
The only things I knew, having only skimmed the early part of the novel, were that the protagonist made a name for himself on the battlefield after being coldly rejected by his childhood friend, and that he became an instructor at the Royal Mana Academy after returning to his hometown.
The reunion with the childhood friend who had coldly dumped the protagonist was tucked away in a paywalled chapter, so I ended up in this body before I could read it.
If I didn't reject Rex's confession—if he didn't suffer the emotional wound, and therefore didn't enlist of his own accord—
then the hero of the Western Front, who single-handedly held back the ceaseless onslaught of demonic forces for three whole days, would never have been born.
There was even less guarantee that anyone else would take Rex's place.
In the worst case, the Western Front might be annihilated outright, and even the royal capital of this magical kingdom could be engulfed in the flames of war.
So I couldn't help it.
Knowing that the world would be destroyed unless I dumped Rex, choosing any other option wasn't easy.
And the second reason was an intensely personal matter.
It was a reason closer to selfishness than to any noble cause.
Haru was both terminally ill and an orphan. What's more, this was a fact that hadn't even been revealed in the early part of the original novel I'd read.
Since the very first thing I did after transmigrating into this body was vomit up a basinful of bright-red blood, anyone who wasn't a fool could immediately tell that I didn't have much time left.
I knew without even having to say it that appealing to the orphanage director would be pointless. The orphanage was struggling financially, to the point that it served thin, watery gruel without a morsel in it for breakfast and dinner, out of the three meals a day.
I'd woken up to find myself abruptly saddled with a terminal illness and a life at rock bottom. On top of that, treatment was effectively impossible, and all I could do was wait day by day for my death.
It only took a week for a person's personality to fall apart.
With my heart festering and ready to burst, my expression grew more and more sour, and people gradually stopped coming near me, calling me a pretty-faced child with an unpleasant air.
“What are you doing?”
And the one who spoke to me was none other than that guy from the same orphanage—Rex.
“…Mind your own business.”
Back then, I was cold and vicious. Not only did my physical condition leave me no room to care about anyone but myself, I was also racking my brain over problems like having possessed the body of someone doomed to die and my shaken sense of self.
“Are you worried about something?”
“Worried?”
I openly glared up at Rex to show my revulsion as he stubbornly clung to me.
“If you know what I'm worried about, are you going to solve it for me?”
“Hmm….”
In response to my question, Rex shamelessly gave me this answer.
“Who knows? I wouldn't know.”
“…What?”
“Is it really a problem you can solve by worrying about it all day?”
“What a stupid question. If it were that simple a problem, I wouldn't be sitting here like this.”
I scoffed and muttered, but Rex suddenly seized my hand, hauled me to my feet, and said,
“Then don't think about it.”
“What?”
“Why rack your brain over something that won't yield an answer even if you think about it?”
At the time, I was dumbfounded. Did this idiot not have a single wrinkle in his brain? What kind of carefree nonsense was he spouting?
But looking back, there couldn't have been a more mature response.
“Just forget about it and come play with me!”
At those words, I followed him as if bewitched.
And I played with him and his friends.
Why did I do that? Even now, I don't really know.
Still, it was fun.
Enough to let me turn my eyes away from the pain eating away at my whole body and the fear of death drawing closer with every passing moment.
Naturally, as he'd said, it was impossible to forget my troubles completely.
After running around the forest and playing hard, I spent every night groaning through pain that felt as though it were tearing my veins apart.
Even so, I found myself thinking it was all right. Just meeting Rex had made this second life worthwhile.
So I wished that he wouldn't be hurt because of me.
“Didn't you hear me? I said I don't see you as a man.”
That's why I dumped him.
I had plenty of time to put my feelings in order. Plenty of time to steel myself to pour out cruel words.
Because I already knew that he would confess to me on my fourteenth birthday.
“I'll be honest. You springing this on me out of nowhere is really overwhelming.”
I thought that would do.
“You and I aren't anything particularly special to each other, are we?”
This would be enough.
Even if I died, he wouldn't have to miss me. He wouldn't have to suffer while thinking of me.
Rather than a painful, bitter memory of losing his first love to illness, he would be left only with the bittersweet, wistful memory of a failed first love.
And the next day, Rex left the village immediately, leaving only a single letter behind at the orphanage.
It said he was enlisting at the recruit training center on the border front.
Everything was exactly as it had been in the original.
And within a few months, I was bedridden.
By then, everyone was bound to know.
Naturally, rumors spread that I had some serious illness. And I did.
Still, it was hard to stomach the absurd rumor that I'd fallen ill with lovesickness because Rex had enlisted.
The orphanage where Haru lived was poor. It had no money to call a doctor, and the best it could offer me was a private room where I could at least close my eyes in peace when I died.
I knew it instinctively: this really was the end.
And I was certain that I would never see Rex again.
One day, as I lay in bed like a corpse, letting the days slip by.
In the middle of the night, when the clock's two hands pointed exactly at the number twelve.
‘That person’ appeared before me, as if by fate.