Chapter 1. Awakening

Translator: AdCaelum

Editor: Evelet

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Since birth, the man had never experienced happiness. He had his indoor slippers hidden from him, his desk graffitied, and at worst even his body beaten. He felt like telling anyone that he was being bullied would have meant accepting that this was his reality, and he couldn’t do that. Having spent his school days like this, he naturally developed into an adult who was plagued with anxiety and pessimism and couldn’t properly adapt to society.

“…You can go home for today,” his work superior instructed him.

“I’m sorry…” The man apologized, but his superior audibly clicked his tongue and sighed. His coworkers refused to look at him as the office fell silent as if this was no concern of theirs. He quietly said, “…Then I’ll take my leave now.”

There was no response from his boss. The man wanted to leave this suffocating space as soon as possible and departed without a delay.

His shoulders drooped as he weakly walked from his office to the station. He wanted to say that he wasn’t the one who wrote up those documents in the first place, that he wasn’t the one responsible. But it had become his responsibility without his knowledge and he was reported to his superior. Even back when he was a student, he was accused of breaking a flower vase he had never touched and thoroughly scolded by the teacher. He wasn’t particularly smart or handsome. However, he also wasn’t a complete idiot nor was he terribly clumsy. Yet why was he so hated? He wondered what his purpose was in living. He reached his 30s without finding out what he wanted to do in life. He spent every day in fear of others.

He wanted someone, at least one person, to love him. He wanted to be in love.

He looked at his shadow by his feet. He let out a long sigh when he heard a scream. He looked up from the ground and saw a woman in front of him looking back at him with wide eyes. The same time her expression registered in his mind, something massive collided with his back. The orange of the evening sky reflecting in his eyes quickly darkened.

“A car crashed into the sidewalk!!!”

“Someone was run over!!!”

“Somebody, call an ambulance…!!!”

The man heard these distant screams and indifferently thought to himself, “An accident? Sounds terrible.” Then his consciousness shut down and everything went dark.

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His eyelids felt heavy. His head throbbed. He didn’t know what time it was.

He slowly opened his eyes and turned to his side to check the clock by his bed.

“Prince Asher, have you awakened?!”

When he looked to his side, he saw an elderly woman peering worriedly over him.

“…Huh?”

He froze in shock. Who was this woman? Or rather, was he at home? …Was this his home?

“Thank goodness you have awakened… My heart stopped when I heard that you fell off the horse during your horsemanship training…”

“…Horse?”

“I shall go alert Queen Angela that you are awake.”

The elderly lady promptly stood up and left the room. At the same time, the man was startled by how expansive the room he was in was. The bed had a canopy and the mattress was perfectly fluffy.

“A dream… Is this a dream…?”

The man slowly got off the bed and his feet touched the soft carpet below.

“This is awfully realistic for a dream… Hm?”

He felt that his line of sight was rather low and his limbs were shorter. His voice, too, sounded high-pitched. He timidly approached the large mirror by the bed.

The figure it reflected caused him to open his eyes wide. The one in the mirror looked back at him with wide eyes as well. This figure had shiny, golden hair sticking out from between the bandages wrapped around his head. Jewel-like, blue eyes. Light pink lips and cheeks. Pale skin. Slender limbs. Golden eyelashes so long it seemed like they would make sounds every time the person blinked. There was an angel standing inside the mirror. The image was just like the depiction of an angel the man had seen in his textbook during his school days.

“U-um…”

The man reached out as the angel in the mirror did the same. Their fingers touched.

This was a mirror. Indeed, a mirror… This meant that the angel in front of him was his very self.

He didn’t understand what was happening. His mouth opened to scream when the door to the room burst open.

“Asher!!! Oh, do you know how worried I was?! Thank goodness you’ve regained consciousness!!!” A peerless beauty with golden hair tied up held the man tightly to her chest. Moreover, this woman was crying. The man’s face was buried deeply in her voluptuous bosom, making it difficult for him to breathe. “I didn’t know what I would do when you wouldn’t wake up for a week… Oh, my dear Asher!!!”

“…Guh…!”

“Queen Angela! Prince Asher has just awakened! You mustn’t hold his head so tightly…!” The elderly lady from before advised the beautiful woman.

She finally released and apologized, “Oh dear! Mother’s sorry, Asher…”

As the woman let him go, her eyes stared directly at him. Shiny golden hair. Jewel-like blue eyes. Pale skin… All of them resembled the angel in the mirror.

She said “mother,” right? Who’s mother? The man’s? No, it wasn’t the man’s but this body’s…

“Asher, why are you so silent…? Are you still feeling ill?”

“…Ah, no… I…”

The man didn’t understand what was going on. ‘Asher’—the name of this body—had fallen off a horse, and after a week of unconsciousness, the body woke up with the man at the helm…?

“…My head hurts,” the man mumbled.

“Ellie!!! Call the doctor immediately!!!” the beautiful woman cried.

“As you wish, Queen Angela!” the elderly lady named Ellie acknowledged.

“Also inform His Majesty that Asher has awakened,” the beautiful woman added.

“…Huh? His Majesty? …By ‘His Majesty’ do you mean…? Why tell him…?” the man asked, confused.

“It’s only natural for a father to be concerned about his son, yes?” the beautiful woman answered, matter-of-factly.

The man wanted to compose himself, but that was impossible. He didn’t understand what she was saying. He had more questions than answers at this point. He wanted to believe that this was a dream, but this felt too real to be one. That was when he realized something.

This was just like those ‘reincarnation’ plots in light novels he had heard about…right? He searched through his memories, but he could only recall up to the point when he was walking to the station from the office. Something collided with him… Huh? Wait…

“Did I die?” he muttered to himself.

“What absurd thing are you saying, Asher?! See? Take a look at yourself! You must have hit your head terribly hard… My poor child.” The beautiful woman wrapped both hands around the man’s cheeks and gently stroked them. Glistening tears were about to fall from her moist eyes when the beautiful woman’s eyes suddenly turned sharp. “But not to worry. I had the fools who were with you during your horsemanship training currently undergoing torture. I also had the horse that threw you off beheaded immediately after.”

The words that came out of this beautiful woman’s vibrant red lips chilled the man to the bone.

“T-torture?!”

“Correct. Such is justified for injuring your precious body. They shall continue to suffer through hell, unable to die until you wa—”

The woman’s sentence was drowned out by the loud sound of the door slamming open again. The man looked at the door in surprise to see a young, black-haired man wearing a completely black military uniform walking toward him. This young man completely clad in black was tall, so tall that the man needed to look up quite high to see the young man’s face. The young man’s eyes were pitch black, and above all, they were cold.

“Prince Asher, it is wonderful that you have awakened,” he stated.

“How insolent for entering the prince’s room without permission!!! You may be our kingdom’s hero, but this will not be tolerated, Black Knight Theodore!!!” the beautiful woman reprimanded him.

“I am aware of my impoliteness, Your Majesty Queen Angela. However, I have come here to request the release of my subordinates.”

The man thought the young man’s cold, black eyes would turn to the beautiful lady as he addressed her, but they remained fixed, glaring at the man as he continued to speak.

“Prince Asher, while you continued to sleep this whole time, my subordinates have been enduring punishment. Now that you have awakened, I implore that you liberate them from their suffering as soon as possible.”

“Asher! You need not listen to his nonsense!!! Even allowing the tiniest scratch to harm a prince is a grave crime!!! Rather, now that the prince has awakened, I will have them beheaded!”

The man’s mind couldn’t keep up with this hectic exchange happening in front of him. The man had died and reincarnated into the body of a kingdom’s prince after he woke up. This prince had been injured after falling off a horse. This led to some people being tortured. And now a beautiful woman was yelling at a young man addressed as the Black Knight. But the man had no time to make sense of all these events and issues. His thoughts were a mess. Didn’t God usually feel sorry for the protagonist for dying, give them a cheat ability, and explain everything before reincarnating the soul?

The man faced the beautiful woman, who was still yelling, and the young man, whose expression remained serious, and he mustered the courage and timidly said, “Um… Your Majesty…The Queen? …Please liberate them from their torture. B-Black Knight… Sir Theodore? Please go provide them with aid quickly.”

He addressed the two before him before going quiet again. The beautiful woman and the young knight looked at him in surprise, their expressions frozen on their faces. It was as if the man had said something strange.

“Asher… What did you just call me? There’s no need to address your mother as Her Majesty the Queen. …Theodore! You heard him, right?! Because of the terrible shock to his head, Asher is incapable of making sound judgements! Your stupid subordinates have yet to fully atone for their crime!!!”

“…Prince Asher, thank you very much for graciously pardoning my subordinates. I shall take my leave.”

“Wait!!! Who allowed you to do what?!!!”

The young man left the room without listening to a single word the beautiful woman shouted.

“Asher!!! Why would you do something like that?!!!”

“…I’m fine now. My head doesn’t hurt anymore…”

“That’s not the issue!!! To pardon those who have brought harm to the royal family is—!!! That will only increase the number of fools who think they can injure you without any repercussions!!!”

“No one would think that…”

“Moreover, you would normally—!!!” The beautiful woman’s brow crinkled as she looked at the man, but her expression soon returned to its gentle state. “No, what’s important is that you’re well now, Asher. Greet His Majesty in person at the royal dining table tonight.”

The beautiful woman gently stroked the man’s cheek and quietly left. Now alone in the room, the man finally exhaled.

Being told that he wasn’t like the ‘usual Asher’ meant that it was likely that that ‘Asher’ died after falling off the horse and the man’s soul had reincarnated into this body. He was suddenly thrown into this world without any explanation as to why. He didn’t have the customary meeting with God before reincarnating, but this was the only thing he could think about concerning his current situation. When compared to his circumstances in his previous life, he was now an incomparably beautiful prince. Considering that, his current situation seemed rather favorable. He was a dazzling prince whose beauty was like that of an angel. Her Majesty the Queen—Asher’s mother—also appeared to be concerned and care about her son. He wasn’t someone loved by others in his past life, but as Asher in this world, he would be loved as the prince, right? This was probably a gift from God for the lack of love he experienced in his previous life… although there were neither words nor an explanation given about this. The man turned around and looked back at the mirror. He locked eyes with the sparkling ones of the bright, young angel in the mirror.

“Asher…? Asher… Asher Dias…”

Asher’s full name suddenly popped into his head. He wondered if more of Asher’s memories remained in his mind, but when he attempted to recall them, nothing else came to mind.

“No good. Too much has happened so it made me exhausted…”

The man staggered over to his bed and collapsed on top of it. It probably wasn’t a good idea to use his head so quickly after being unconscious for a week.

Thus, Asher lay on his bed and promptly fell asleep.

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Translator’s Corner:
Hello! I found this series from Blossom Translation after they started on Mercenary Goddess (which I highly recommend for everyone else to read since it’s a good BL isekai story). They dropped this series so I wanted to pick it up since the first chapter seemed interesting enough. Then I actually bought both LN volumes and read through the WN. Now I love the story and hope to get more chapters out to you guys soon. Enjoy~
As for this chapter, the narration is actually in first-person, but as the rest of the series is in third-person, I thought it would be better to keep everything consistent. From this point onwards, our MC will be referred to as Asher.

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