Chapter 1
How long had I been asleep?
I slowly opened my eyes at the hot sensation coming from my head.
Along with the reddish blur in my vision, the heat soon turned to pain.
As a piercing headache began stabbing at my skull, my already blurry vision grew even hazier.
"Ugh...?"
Through my blurred vision, I saw the taxi driver collapsed, with smoke rising from the front of the car.
Only then did I understand what had happened.
Had I really just been in a traffic accident?
Pain throbbed in my head, and only a faint groan escaped my lips.
"There's been an accident!"
"Whoa, that's crazy. I should film this and post it."
"Someone call an ambulance, quick!"
"Uh, isn't that thing going to explode?"
"Everyone, get back!"
For a brief moment, the voices coming from all around me reassured me.
As my heavy eyelids slowly drooped, my vision gradually turned to darkness.
Along with a crimson noise.
Was this how I was going to die?
At least I had to kill the bastard who'd said, "Whoa, that's crazy. I should film this and post it!" before I died....
******
I had a dream.
A dream where I wandered endlessly through a maze whose floor was stained red.
After wandering through the dream for what felt like forever, I finally found an exit.
And when I stepped outside...
"Aaaah!!!"
The floor suddenly gave way, and I fell before losing consciousness.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw a ceiling painted white.
What? Was I in a hospital?
Racking my memory, I recalled the moment I'd gotten into an accident on my way home.
The ceiling was white, so this looked like a hospital.
It was strange that I couldn't smell the antiseptic unique to hospitals, but the important thing was that I was alive.
Maybe because of the accident, my whole body felt uncomfortable.
My body felt so uncomfortable that it almost didn't feel like my own.
"Cough, cough...!"
My throat was almost completely hoarse, and my voice wouldn't come out properly.
If this was a hospital, a nurse would come explain things to me.
I lay still, staring at the ceiling.
But the longer I lay there, the stranger things seemed.
Neither a doctor nor a nurse came, and I couldn't hear a single sound around me.
Only my breathing filled the space; I couldn't hear anyone else at all.
What the hell was going on?
Could this not be a hospital?
Then where was I?
"You're finally awake!"
"The child woke up after almost two days. Should we let them rest a little longer?"
"That would be best. Then rest here for a while. I'll come back later."
The door suddenly opened, and people wearing strange clothes came over and spoke to me.
Faced with this incomprehensible situation unfolding before me, I was so flustered that I could only stare at them wide-eyed.
Who could easily speak in a situation like this?
Not that I could speak anyway.
The people who'd just left through the door were definitely wearing maid outfits.
If this was a hospital, people like that had no business being here, so I immediately got up and looked around carefully.
White walls, various wooden pieces of furniture, and identical outfits hanging on the wall.
Anyone could see this wasn't a hospital, and it wasn't my home either.
Then where the hell was I?
I ran through every possibility I could think of and arrived at one answer.
'Could I have transmigrated or been reincarnated, like in a novel?'
It might sound like the ravings of a madman, but given the situation, what else could I think?
No matter how I looked at it, this didn't seem to be Korea.
The people who'd just come in looked foreign, too.
"Cough, cough!"
After I kept coughing, words suddenly started coming out.
"Ahh."
Now that I could speak, it felt as if the frustration in my chest had lifted.
At least, until I realized my voice sounded strange.
"This isn't my voice?!"
In a way, that was only natural.
If I'd already died in an accident and been reincarnated in another world, there was no way my voice would be the same.
But that wasn't important right now.
The sound that had just come out of my throat definitely wasn't a man's voice.
"No way...?"
With a sliver of hope, I reached down toward my lower body.
And the worst-case scenario became reality.
"Aaaah!!!!"
I couldn't help screaming at the shocking situation.
Any man would scream if this happened to him.
The only companion I'd had through my thirty years of life had disappeared.
And without me even knowing it.
"This...can't be true, right?"
I tried and tried to deny the unbelievable reality, but the more I looked and checked, the more I had to accept that I'd become a woman.
As if being a thirty-year-old virgin who'd never even dated wasn't bad enough, I'd suddenly become a woman...
A bitter feeling and profound despair churned through my mind.
I tried to think of a way to turn back into a man, but since I didn't even know where I was, I couldn't think of anything.
"And of all things, I'm in a child's body."
The reason my body felt so uncomfortable wasn't because I'd been injured, but because it had suddenly become so small.
Why had I been reborn in a body like this?
No, had I really died in the first place?
I wondered if I'd only lost consciousness and all of this was just a dream... and that thought immediately led to action.
If it was a dream, I'd wake up.
I slammed my head into the wall!
-Bam!
"Ngh..."
It hurt.
It just hurt like hell.
I hadn't woken up from a dream; all I'd gotten was a bump on my head.
I gave up on the hope that this was a dream and simply lay back down.
There was nothing I could do here anyway, so I decided to wait until the people who'd just come by returned.
As my back started to ache from lying down, the door opened and someone came in.
"Is this the child?"
"Yes. We found the child in the bushes near the wall."
"Hmm... There was a child at the duke's estate. Does that make any sense?"
"Someone might have thrown the child over the wall."
"Well, we can ask the child and find out."
The people who'd just come in were accompanied by a woman in rather extravagant clothes.
Silver hair, golden eyes, and that lavish dress.
It was clear now that this was another world.
"What is your name?"
I couldn't give any answer to the question that had suddenly been thrown at me.
I couldn't tell them my real name, so what was I supposed to do?
"I don't remember."
My answer was simple, but effective.
No one suspected a thing.
If I said I didn't know, they probably wouldn't force an answer out of me.
"You don't remember... That's a bit of a problem."
"Shall we take the child in? We're short on people these days, so we do need to train someone."
"Take the child in for now, wash them, and give them some basic training. It wouldn't be a bad idea to make them a maid."
"Understood."
Wait a minute.
What had that person just said?
A maid?
They'd definitely said to make me a maid.
If they meant the kind of maid I was thinking of, I wanted absolutely no part of it.
But when I thought about it, I had no connections here at all.
In other words, I was essentially just a child dropped into society without a penny to my name.
For someone like me, who'd spent my life working at a black company just to survive, this situation actually seemed like an opportunity.
They were offering to hire me without even an interview. Was there any reason to turn that down?
"Let's get you washed up first."
"It'll be hard for you to wash by yourself, so we'll wash you ourselves."
"Um!"
"Hmm? Is something the matter?"
"Um...could I wash myself?"
"It's all right, little one. We'll get you nice and clean."
And just like that, I was about to lose yet another thing important to me as a man.
I told them several times I could wash myself, but the two of them just smiled and ignored me.
In the end, they scrubbed me from head to toe, leaving me utterly drained, body and soul.
"Hmm. Now you're all clean."
"She's quite cute. Perfect for a maid."
My face was reflected in the mirror attached to the wall.
Black hair and red eyes.
It was the face of a little girl, completely different from the one I'd had before.
Faced once more with a reality I wanted to avoid, I let out a small sigh.
-Grrr.
Along with the rumbling from my stomach.
Damn it.
"Are you hungry?"
"....Yes."
"Once we're done washing you, we'll get you a little something to eat."
"Yes."
Maybe because I'd become a child, I felt like I was being taken care of.
I didn't exactly dislike it, but I didn't exactly like it either. It was a complicated, hard-to-describe feeling.
When I came out of the bathroom, a simple meal had been prepared.
Something like corn soup and a piece of bread.
It was a modest meal, but the smell was incredible.
I slowly scooped up some soup and put it in my mouth.
I still wasn't used to this body, and my hand was trembling, but thankfully I managed to eat without spilling a drop.
The soup tasted amazing.
Since I was used to eating nothing but instant food, this was practically a buffet.
It was the best thing I'd eaten in ages.
"Thank you for the meal."
"You have such good manners. You're a good girl."
"Then get some sleep. You'll have some basic training tomorrow."
"Yes."
"I'll turn off the light on my way out."
-Click.
"Phew!"
As soon as I heard the door close, I let out the breath I'd been holding.
Acting like a little kid was no easy feat.
My usual way of speaking kept slipping out, and it gave me a lot of trouble.
At the end, I barely said anything beyond answering their questions.
"I'm exhausted, even though I barely did anything."
Flopping onto the bed, I thought things over again.
The fundamental question of where I was.
"Hmm..."
No matter how much I thought about it, I had no idea.
I had a hunch, but that didn't mean I could be certain.
"By the way, don't you get something in a situation like this? Something like a 'status window.'"
-Flash!
"W-What is that!"
My vision suddenly flickered, and a familiar blue window appeared out of nowhere.
It was exactly like the status windows I'd seen before.
"What in the world is going on."