Chapter 0
Every child who is born is innocent.
At least, that's how it should be.
You look like you'll commit a serious crime when you grow up, so three years in prison; you're an even worse scumbag, so seven years.
If it were you, could you accept a sentence despite having committed no crime?
“Princess Estashia Latias de Kaizen.”
But it feels as though the world is especially harsh toward me.
I was already bitter enough about being reincarnated as a woman, but to be sentenced to life imprisonment from birth? All I can do is laugh. And now it's the death penalty. What a joke.
“Do you know your crime?”
Honestly, I still don't know.
The only crime I committed was working hard in my previous life.
Despite being paralyzed on one side, I got into college without a scrap of help from those people who called themselves my parents.
I worked part-time jobs to pay my tuition and living expenses. I tutored.
When that still wasn't enough, I even found construction work that didn't require me to use my legs.
Because I lived such a busy life, I never had what you could call a proper hobby.
Naturally, I had no time to play games, nor did I have the leisure to watch movies or dramas.
Actually, I did have enough time to read novels here and there, but I couldn't help regretting it now.
If I had, I might at least have known what kind of world I had been reincarnated into—a novel setting with no established foundation whatsoever.
“I still don't know what you're thinking.”
It's unfair.
Even ten lawyers wouldn't be enough to plead my case.
I died at a construction site for some inexplicable reason, and perhaps that's why I was reincarnated in some inexplicable fantasy world.
Being a woman was a slight drawback, but I was born with perfectly healthy limbs, and when they even told me I was the empire's princess, I thought my life was finally turning around.
But then...
They say I'm destined to become the Demon King who will destroy the world.
A ridiculous prophecy spread, and everyone was hell-bent on killing me.
“Are you really not going to answer me to the very end?”
The man pointing a sword at me now also happened to be the next emperor—and my half-brother, no less.
The Hero was already dead and gone, so he had to take his place.
In any case, I'd had more than enough of this life.
Now I wanted to give up both the life of running away and the life of fighting back.
I was the one who nearly destroyed the world, but in the end, I was also the one who saved it, so I figured I'd paid the full price for my sins.
“Just kill me like this.”
“... You really are going to be like this to the very end.”
He thrust his merciless blade toward me.
Now I could truly feel that I had reached the end of this life.
I close my eyes and wonder whether there will be another life waiting for me.
If I am born again, I hope it will be in the modern era, not this medieval age.
An age where I can bathe in clean water and find fast food everywhere.
If possible, I hope I can use magic too. I did quite like magic, at least in this life...
I just hope it isn't a dystopian world overrun by monsters. If it is, I'll bite my tongue and kill myself on the spot. I'm serious.
And...
And...
I should make sure to treat all children kindly, without discrimination...
“...”