The Exhausting Reality of Novel Transmigration

o those of the lowest social class, sickness was nothing but a shackle.

If any ordinary person would get sick, the possibility of death would loom.
But if a poverty-stricken person got sick, then every single day was an ongoing battle between life and death.

Since their parents left the world early, Ria was solely Harron’s charge, and they were just managing to get by to purchase the needed medicine.

Then Harron joined the current guild they were part of.

It’s the only place that supplied the medicine that actually improved Ria’s condition.
And at the same time, Harron earned money at that guild.

It certainly sounded like the guild was their benefactor, but that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Harron had borrowed money from them before.
When they first found out about the place, they were just trying to buy medicine, but they didn’t have any money.

With an agreeable expression, those people lent Harron money—yet passed down a ridiculous interest.

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Thanks to this, Harron worked hard, yet earned very little.

Half of their paycheck went to their younger sister’s medicine, one quarter went towards paying off the debt, then the last quarter went towards the incurred interest.

In the end, the only money that had been able to pass through their hands was chump change that was barely enough to keep the two siblings from starving.

It was a life of just living day by day.

However, even with a bottom-of-the-barrel life like this, they could still reach the worst depths.

“Seems like the price of the medicine will go up sometime soon.”

This unilateral notice was given to Harron only a few months ago.

The already expensive medicine was going to be even more expensive.

It wasn’t due to a lack of effort.
Harron became a more valuable worker over time, and the commission fees they earned for their requests rose, too.
But at the same time, the price of the medicine was raised as well, leaving Harron no room to breathe.

“You can’t do that!”

Even as Harron tried to stand in defiance, it was of no use.

The only thing that came back after that was a harsh retaliation.

Gradually, the quality of the requests that came to Harron also deteriorated.

In the beginning, the kind of jobs they got were along the lines of secretly delivering parcels or escorting someone until a certain destination.

Most of the time, they were covert missions…

But as the days went by, they were given more commissioned requests like stealing, robbing, fighting, getting into a brawl among others.

Every time Harron accepted terrible requests like that, a sense of guilt always lingered in them.

This guilt weighing down on Harron made them want to defy and rebel against it all, but as long as they had to pay for Ria’s medicine and as long as there was a debt to be settled, then Harron’s body was not their own.

A choice.
That was a privilege for those who were not poor.

That’s right.
Privilege.

If only one day passed when Harron’s younger sibling was not given her medicine, then she would go back and forth between life and death.
When Harron was the older sibling of a child like that, they couldn’t dare enjoy that privilege.

That’s why, as Harron tediously repeated the same tasks every day, even the guilt they once thought was unbearably heavy became nothing but a dull feeling.

In the middle of it all, that’s when this request came in.

“This woman here, ambush her.”

The client was a tall man.

He held out a piece of paper with details of the woman’s features and many other things about her.

Silver hair.
Has a man accompanying her.

She’s going to be wearing a veil on her face, and she would be at a certain location at a certain time.

‘Now that I think about it, it really was suspicious…’

As Harron recalled this memory, their heavy eyelids blinked.

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No, actually, they found it to be sketchy even back then.

However, they just tried to suppress this nagging feeling because they had been offered a ridiculous amount of money for this request alone.

Besides, they figured that their life wouldn’t be in danger for this mission.

One man and one woman.

Due to the experience they’d accumulated over time, Harron arrogantly thought that two targets wouldn’t be a problem at all.

It was of no exaggeration to say that Harron’s overconfidence was entirely laughable.

“Twenty-four, twenty-three…”

It was a tempting, saccharine voice, and yet it was a voice that was so frightening that Harron had been utterly overcome with the urge to cover their ears.

As the numbers went down, their chest got heavier and heavier, making it difficult for them to breathe.

Even though it was just a voice that they had already left behind, it arrested them in such fear as though they were being licked by the tongue of an enormous beast.

The whole time they were running away from her, Harron could almost hear the ‘ttak, ttak, ttak,’ of a beast’s fangs biting down, chasing after them.

Just thinking about that now made their heart pound so much.

Shutting their eyes very tightly, Harron breathed in, breathed out, and repeated the process.
Then, they slowly rose from the ground.

Harron must return to the guild and confess that the mission was a failure.

‘I’m going to get hit a few times… I hope it won’t be painful enough that it’ll interfere with work tomorrow.’

Trudge, trudge. Taking a few powerless steps forward, Harron suddenly stopped in place.
They felt the weight in their pocket.

They recalled only now that the woman had shoved something into their pocket earlier.

Harron forgot about it because they’d been preoccupied with running away.

Soon, they reached into their pocket and pulled out what’s inside.

But their hand paused all of a sudden the moment they touched it.
Even their labored breaths stopped altogether.

This person who momentarily forgot to breathe slowly re-opened their eyes.

In that hushed stillness, there was but one movement.

“…Ha.”

In the end, because they needed to breathe, Harron opened their mouth and practically vomited an exhale.

They had stopped in place just until now, but they soon turned around.

They started heading towards not the guild, but towards the alleys once more.

As they turned around, Harron began to march forward without thinking.

Ta-dak, ta-dak, tak, tak, tak.

Those first few slow steps gradually accelerated, and eventually, they soon broke into a run.

Their body was as heavy as lead, but this time, they did not stop moving.

Rather, it was so hard not to cry out at the top of their lungs.