I Broke Up With The Country

It seems I fell asleep after crying so much. When I opened my eyes, I saw an elegant ceiling.

I was still in the mansion where I had arrived yesterday. The softness of the bed and the warmth of the air were the same as they were yesterday.

Suddenly, reality hit me.

It wasn’t a dream; everything had really happened. I was poisoned, betrayed, and killed…

Wait a minute. Did I really die?

I got out of bed and looked around. I couldn’t tell where I was, let alone if I was dead or alive.

Summoning my courage, I stepped out of the room. The hallway wasn’t particularly dark. Though it wasn’t as warm as the room, it wasn’t cold either.

At that moment, I saw the faint figure of a man at the end of the hallway.

I instinctively turned around, but the man suddenly disappeared around the corner.

“Wait!”

I ran down the hallway. I wanted to meet anyone and ask where I was.

“Wait!”

As I turned the corner, I came face to face with a stranger.

The man looked down at me with startled eyes.

I scrutinized the man.

His face was ordinary. He looked familiar, but then again, maybe not. He had such a plain appearance that I wouldn’t remember him even if we met again later.

The man also scrutinized me. After staring at me for a long time, he finally spoke.

“…You’ve awakened.”

“Yes.”

His voice was deeper than I expected. It was definitely not the ‘voice’ I heard when I first entered the mansion.

I calmly asked him a question.

“Do you live here?”

The man looked at me with a peculiar expression and then nodded.

“Yes, I am the owner of this house.”

“What is your name?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have a name?”

When I frowned at the unbelievable answer, the man continued with a calm expression, as if he had expected this reaction.

“Yes. It’s hard to believe, but I really don’t have a name. So, call me whatever you like—’you,’ ‘he,’ ‘that guy,’ ‘you there.’ Anything will do.”

I had never heard anything like this before. How could someone not have a name? But the man didn’t offer any further explanation.

“How did you get here?”

I was in a daze for a moment, then briefly recounted what had happened.

“…I lost consciousness while lying in bed and woke up to find myself in a forest. As I kept walking, monsters appeared, and while running away, I ended up in front of this house.”

As I spoke, painful memories resurfaced, so I stopped explaining.

“Thank you for opening the door. If it weren’t for this place, I would probably be dead.”

“It was nothing.”

The man calmly shook his head. Just as I was about to say that wasn’t true, his next words struck me like an arrow.

“Even if I hadn’t opened the door for you, you wouldn’t have died. It’s impossible for someone who has already died to die again.”

The questions I had prepared vanished from my mind in an instant. Shock engulfed me.

“I’m… dead?”

“Yes. This place is a trap for lost souls, a land of the abyss situated between the living world and the afterlife. It’s where souls who have rejected their fate end up.”

The land of the abyss? A trap for souls? What does all of this mean?

It was all incomprehensible. But there was one fact that I understood clearly without needing to ask any more questions.

Ah, I really did die.

So painfully, so miserably, betrayed by those I trusted.

A hollow laugh escaped me. The emptiness and sorrow felt like they were going to shatter me. I couldn’t even cry anymore.

“Then, is this the middle of hell?”

I looked at the man weakly and asked. I no longer cared about speaking formally.

The man calmly shook his head.

“No. Ordinary people don’t come to a place like this when they die. They either fall straight into hell or are reborn as someone else.”

After finishing his explanation, he cautiously asked me a question.

“Could you tell me how you died?”

How did I die?

Suddenly, the emotions I had been suppressing surged up. A mix of injustice and sorrow bubbled in my throat.

I tried my best to relay only the facts as plainly as possible.

“…I was a Queen.”

The moment I spoke, my throat tightened.

“Because I became a queen, I had to live alone my entire life without a family. I had one close friend, but that friend poisoned the food I ate. The others I trusted were all in on it too.”

That was it. That wasn’t the entirety of the sorrow and betrayal I had endured, but it was all I could manage to say.

“I see.”

The man didn’t ask any more questions. Strangely, he nodded like a scholar who had reached an understanding.

“It’s a story befitting the abyss. Now I understand why you ended up here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Hmm… Where should I begin…?”

After a brief pause, he looked directly at me and asked,

“Do you know about fate?”

“Fate?”

Fate—what an unfamiliar word. The man observed my expression for a moment before calmly explaining.

“Every human has a fate assigned to them by the gods. Each soul has a different fate, and this fate continues even if you lose your memory and are reborn.”

“The soul of a noble and the soul of a commoner are different. Is that what you mean?”

“No. Fate has nothing to do with social status. Even if two people have the same fate, no one knows whether they’ll be born a noble or a poor commoner.”

“Then…”

“The fate I’m referring to is about what you are destined to do in life. Whether you are fated to deal with money, pursue scholarship, or serve the gods, that sort of thing.”

The idea that gods assigned tasks to people wasn’t unheard of—it appeared often enough in religious texts. Though, to be honest, I never really believed it.

“So, what was my fate?”

I asked, feeling utterly drained. At this point, I felt like I could accept whatever he was about to say.

But what he said next was something I couldn’t accept.

“Your fate was to become a queen, to be the ruler of the world.”

What?

So, the lonely life I led, the wretched throne I endured, the reality I accepted as nothing more than a trial given by the gods—was it actually my fate?

“But you cursed that fate, didn’t you? Those who reject the fate bestowed by the gods—this is the place where such souls end up.”

The man pointed out a faintly visible iron gate outside the window.

“Many others before you have passed through that gate. But you’re the only one who managed to actually open it.”

“My fate was to become a queen, as decreed by the gods?”

The man calmly continued his explanation.

“To be precise, your fate was to become a leader. If you were born into royalty, you would become a queen. If you were born a noble, you would become the head of a family. If you were born a commoner, you’d likely become a village chief.”

But none of his words registered with me.

The thought that my suffering, the miserable end to my life, was nothing more than a piece on the gods’ chessboard filled my mind.

“So, what happens to me now?”

I asked weakly. The man looked at me with a calm expression and asked in return,

“Are you seeking advice?”

“What do you mean…?”

“You can choose what you want now. You can be reborn like others, or you can remain here forever, like me.”

The sudden choice made my hollow laughter stop. I could choose what I wanted? Really?

“I…”

Before I could even think, the words spilled out.

“I want to go back to where I was.”

“That’s not possible.”

The man shook his head firmly.

“You may not have realized it, but decades have already passed since that day. Returning to the same time is impossible.”

In just a brief moment of unconsciousness, so much time had passed. It seemed that time indeed worked differently here than in the living world.

If decades had truly passed, it was obvious that everyone I knew was likely already gone.

If I can’t go back, then where do I go now?

As I stood there in a daze, the man calmly offered advice.

“Why don’t you consider being reborn?”