Even a Scoundrel Gets Tired

0 – Prologue

It was a day like any other, then.

Just catching up with a friend who’d finished his military service after ages, downing drinks, and crashing at my place.

Of course, wriggling free from overtime at our company, practically a black market sweatshop, wasn’t easy.

Anyway, after all that drinking, I flopped down in my room and…

…a ceiling I didn’t recognize.

Well, calling it a ceiling was generous.

No light fixture, just what looked like stone bricks, covered in

patches of moss.

“What… where am I…?”

????

That’s not my voice.

Gone was the rich baritone, replaced by a delicate, almost sorrowful soprano.

“Ah, damn… no way…”

There’s no way some cliché isekai reincarnation

thing is happening to *me.*

Thinking that, I looked down.

Gone were my thick, calloused hands, replaced by slender, white

hands of an almost unreal fragility.

Alright, I had to admit it.

This wasn’t my body, that much was clear.

The other children sleeping nearby began to stir, slowly awakening.

They all looked confused, some even started crying.

None of them seemed to understand what was happening.

Just then, an iron door creaked open, and a man of considerable size entered.

To summarize: we had been chosen as assassins for some nation

and would be forced to walk the path of the assassin.

Naturally, we had no choice in the matter.

We all became assassins.

Maybe it’s because I was a 21st-century modern man, but

I found the whole thing revolting.

Taking the lives of other sentient beings was one thing, but

I was also disgusted at having to resort to torture if needed, or

committing suicide if my identity was ever at risk.

When the faces I knew started to disappear, one by one, and

I heard news of their deaths, I barely managed to swallow the bile rising in my throat.

Of course, some tried to escape, but…

All were seized, ripped apart as an example.

The urge to flee was a furnace in my chest, but

I had no choice but to continue this work.

Because I wanted to live.

No matter how ill-suited I was to this task,

it was the only path to survival.

And so, the child of seven met his end as a twenty-three-year-old assassin.

The cause? Unremarkable.

Betrayal.

Of course, a proper death was out of the question.

They painstakingly, slowly, ground away at my body, seeking information, and

I, naturally…

Didn’t break.

Betrayal brought me to this state; why would I

commit more betrayal? I was going to die anyway, so, spit.

The last thing I saw was, well,

my own entrails, dragged from my gut?

‘I can at least boast about how shitty my life was.’

That vapid thought flickered as my eyes closed, and

I was reborn.

In a completely different era and different world.

“Fucking hell…”

The curse burst out of my mouth without restraint.

Reincarnation held no particular novelty after experiencing it once, but

the clothes this body, or rather, its original owner, wore were

unmistakably filthy rags.

“This time I end up as a slave, seriously…?”

At this point, I start to resent the gods.

Was drinking with that guy just discharged from the military that wrong?

Was eating both chicken drumsticks, since it was *my* chicken,

the sin that doomed me?

I barely choked back a self-deprecating laugh, and listened to the approaching footsteps.

A fierce-looking man burst in,

pointed at me, and barked,

“Oi, this time it’s cleaning the stables.

Get out there and clean it up, chop chop.”

He looked younger than me, yet

spoke down, and for a moment I bristled, but

realizing this wasn’t my body, I obediently headed towards the stables.

The information I gleaned while working was, unexpectedly, quite useful.

One: I had been sold as a slave to a notorious noble.

Two: In this place, slaves were treated worse than livestock.

With just these two pieces of information, my predicament was easily deduced.

In truth, I worked treated less than a dog.

A wage was an impossible dream, and I was beaten daily by the noble.

It was routine for the stronger slaves to steal my food.

If I happened to fall ill, there were no medicines, not even folk remedies.

Such things were luxuries for a slave.

Those hellish hours eventually became my daily life, and I adapted.

Or rather, I had grown numb.

Having lived that way, it was no surprise my body was in poor condition.

I died sooner than I had in my previous life, I reckon.

My body was covered in scars, unsightly even to my own eyes.

And there were plenty of slaves who worked harder than me.

I was abandoned on the street on a winter’s day and froze to death.

I couldn’t help but feel relieved that this damned life was ending.

To think, a modern person from the 21st century, where human rights are guaranteed, was treated worse than a dog.

Without exaggeration, if not for my previous life as an assassin,

I wouldn’t have lasted this long without breaking.

Ignoring the snow piling on my body, I closed my eyes.

But that damned god wouldn’t let me die so easily.

He reincarnated me again, but even then,

that life was pretty damn awful.

Like the time I was captured by a criminal organization, tortured, and forced to give them my technology,

eventually executed alongside the organization as a scientist.

The circumstances of each rebirth were always lacking or unfortunate.

No matter how hard I tried, I endlessly died and was reborn, always unhappily and in pain.

And so, I arrived at my seventh? rebirth.

?? Something’s not right here.

“Waaah~!!!!”

“Congratulations! It’s a handsome young master!”

In all my seven reincarnations, I had never once

started life as a newborn infant.

Nor had I ever had a family.

So, I never had hope, and never resisted my predetermined fate.

But why? What’s different this time?