Chapter 1, Three Days Left to Live
“Mmm…”
A faint, pained sound escaped the girl slumped over the desk.
She slowly pushed herself upright, rubbing her temples with a deep frown. When she finally opened her eyes, she stared around the unfamiliar room in confusion.
A notebook lay open on the old wooden desk in front of her. The surface was cracked with age, but it had been carefully wiped clean. Page after page was filled with neat, elegant handwriting.
Morning sunlight streamed through the window and fell across the desk.
Judging from the dull ache in her back and shoulders, she must have fallen asleep while studying and spent the entire night hunched over the table.
“But… that can’t be right.”
Her voice came out hoarse from thirst.
She held her aching head and muttered, “I could’ve sworn I got flattened by a semi.”
She had not died while heroically saving a child in the middle of the road.
Nothing that dramatic.
She had simply been staring at her phone while walking, wandered into traffic, and gotten run over by a passing truck.
The last thing she remembered was an enormous vehicle barreling straight toward her.
So yes, walking while glued to a phone was a terrible habit.
Once she finished sorting through those memories, she turned her attention back to her surroundings.
This definitely was not a hospital. It was not her home either.
Besides, she was fairly certain the truck had gone right over her. There was no realistic chance she could have survived something like that.
Which meant…
“Did I get reincarnated?”
For someone who had spent plenty of time reading web novels, the idea was hardly unfamiliar.
A new world. A new identity. A new beginning.
And from what little she could remember, she did not seem to have left any family behind in her previous life.
She lowered her gaze to her hands.
They were smooth, delicate, and unmistakably feminine. This body clearly belonged to a young girl.
The real problem was that she could not remember her old name.
She could not even remember whether she had been a man or a woman.
A sharp pain suddenly tore through her skull.
She clutched her head with both hands and curled forward in the chair, a weak whimper escaping her lips.
The pain gradually faded after what felt like an eternity.
Then memories began pouring into her mind.
They belonged to Freya Russell, the girl whose body she now inhabited.
The date was July 20, Year 1151 of the New Calendar.
Freya was seventeen years old and one of the top students at Kordo National Academy.
She had grown up in an orphanage and had no family to rely on. She survived by working part-time jobs and living off the scholarship the academy awarded its highest-performing students.
Unfortunately, maintaining those grades came at a cost.
Every day, Freya worked until late, returned to her rented room, then studied deep into the night.
Between the physical strain, the constant mental pressure, and a diet that barely kept her fed, her health had slowly deteriorated.
The previous night, she had lost consciousness while reading.
When the body woke again, its original owner was gone.
The person sitting here now was someone else entirely.
“So she worked herself to death.”
Freya sighed.
Whatever had happened, she was already here. She could not change that. All she could do was take over the original Freya’s life and try to survive.
That might be harder than it sounded.
She had inherited the girl’s memories, but having access to information was not the same as truly understanding it.
The original Freya had consistently ranked among the top three students in her year. The new Freya doubted she could manage the same.
It was like taking an open-book exam.
She could search through the original owner’s memories whenever she wanted, but that did not mean she could effortlessly score full marks.
“Mechanical dynamics, chemical equations, national history… What even is half of this?”
Freya sighed again.
She vaguely remembered having finished school in her previous life, but most of what she had learned had faded long ago.
Besides, this world’s curriculum was nothing like the one she remembered.
Then she noticed something strange.
She had forgotten her name, her face, and even her gender, yet she still remembered an enormous amount of general knowledge from her previous world.
At first, she had assumed the truck had scrambled her brain and caused some form of amnesia.
Now, she was beginning to suspect something else was going on.
A soft chime rang inside her head.
A translucent interface appeared in front of her.
[Ding.]
[Future Simulation System successfully initialized.]
“There it is. I knew no self-respecting reincarnation would leave me without a system.”
Her attention immediately shifted to the glowing panel.
[Current Save Slots, 00, Freya Russell. 01, Empty.]
[Begin Future Simulation.]
[Time remaining until next fatal crisis, three days.]
Freya stared at the final line.
“…What?”
Her first thought after discovering the system had been whether it came with a beginner’s package.
Preferably one containing money.
According to the original Freya’s memories, she had less than three thousand ducats left.
A ducat had roughly the same purchasing power as a dollar from her old world. Between tuition, rent, and food, three thousand would not even last her a month.
Her most urgent concern should have been earning money.
Unfortunately, the system did not seem interested in helping with that.
There was no friendly guide, no starter reward, and no helpful system spirit waiting to answer questions.
The interface was almost aggressively bare.
The final notification was the only thing that stood out.
[Time remaining until next fatal crisis, three days.]
If the system was telling the truth, she probably did not need to worry about running out of money next month.
She would be dead in three days.
Most people would have panicked after learning they only had three days left to live.
Freya felt strangely calm.
Maybe dying once already had taken some of the fear out of it.
After studying the interface for a while, she began to understand its main function.
Future Simulation allowed her to enter a special simulated state.
Once the simulation started, she could continue living normally. She could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she pleased.
A single simulation could last for up to thirty days.
It would end if she reached the time limit, died during the simulation, or chose to exit manually.
Once it ended, she could save the version of herself from that run into one of the system’s save slots.
Later, she could summon that saved version into reality as a separate body.
At first glance, the ability sounded powerful.
At the same time, Freya could not immediately think of a practical use for it.
Was she supposed to spend a month exercising, save the result, then summon a slightly fitter copy of herself?
Wait.
There was another possibility.
She could use the simulations to investigate the future.
If she discovered what would kill her in three days, she could find a way to avoid it.
Freya focused on the words [Begin Future Simulation].
A second prompt appeared.
[Please select a save file.]
Two slots appeared before her like character options in an RPG.
Slot 00 and Slot 01.
There was not much of a choice. Slot 01 was empty.
When Freya focused on Slot 00, a small three-dimensional figure appeared.
The model had shoulder-length light brown hair. It wore a black sweatshirt and a pair of gray trousers. Both garments had been patched several times, and the fabric around the edges had faded from years of washing.
“Is that me?”
This was the first time Freya had gotten a proper look at her new body.
Her clothes were painfully ordinary, but they could not hide the girl’s natural beauty.
Her amber eyes were clear and tranquil. She had a small, delicate nose and soft pink lips.
Her features were gentle enough to make her look harmless, like the sort of person who would never fight back if someone bullied her.
The kind of girl who looked as though she might cry for hours if someone hit her.
A few strands of hair were sticking up from sleep, but they did not make her look messy.
If anything, they gave her a soft, drowsy charm.
Her figure, on the other hand, was less impressive.
The loose sweatshirt made her chest look almost completely flat.
Freya glanced down and pressed both hands against herself.
There was definitely something there.
Maybe the sweatshirt was simply too baggy.
“No. Absolutely not. This is not what I should be worrying about right now.”
She shook her head hard.
Freya selected the only available save file, Slot 00.
The next moment, she felt as though an invisible hand had shoved her head beneath the surface of a lake.
When she regained her senses, only one line remained in front of her.
[Simulation in progress.]
Freya sucked in a deep breath and looked around.
“That’s it? It already started?”
Her vision, hearing, and sense of smell all felt exactly the same.
The room had not changed either.
If not for that strange drowning sensation, she might have doubted whether anything had happened at all.
At a thought, another prompt appeared.
[Exit simulation?]
She selected no.
Everything around her was now part of a simulation.
Nothing she did here would affect reality.
She also knew that some kind of fatal crisis would occur in three days.
Given those facts, what should she do first?
The answer was obvious.
She needed to arm herself.
She needed a weapon.
Based on the original Freya’s memories, this world was somewhere around the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
Only a few days ago, one of her classmates had mentioned that the first steam-powered passenger train had begun service in a nearby region.
The development of weapons, however, seemed to be far more advanced.
Pistols, rifles, machine guns, and even artillery already existed. Their designs were roughly comparable to firearms from the First World War in her previous world.
If Freya could get her hands on a weapon, her chances of surviving whatever happened in three days would rise dramatically.
The problem was obvious.
Where was a seventeen-year-old student supposed to buy a gun?
Freya searched through the original owner’s memories.
A place immediately came to mind.
She currently lived in the Kingdom of Tarapaca, one of the more powerful nations in this world.
That did not make it particularly stable.
Industrial expansion had brought wealth to some, but it had also filled the cities with gangs, unemployed laborers, homeless families, and people who had lost everything.
The original Freya had lived a difficult life, but plenty of people had it even worse.
Public safety was poor as a result.
The streets were tolerable during the day. At night, they became dangerous, especially for a small girl who looked as defenseless as Freya did.
Under circumstances like these, enforcing a complete ban on firearms was nearly impossible.
The original Freya happened to know about a black market hidden in a neglected part of the city.
According to rumor, almost anything could be bought there.
She might be able to find a gun.
As for why an honor student knew where to find an illegal market, she had heard about it from a classmate during an idle conversation.
It had been discussed more like an urban legend than useful information.
Girls talked about strange things sometimes.
That was normal enough.
Once Freya had settled on a destination, the next issue was money.
She had only three thousand ducats.
That would not be enough to purchase a decent weapon.
What was the fastest way to get a large amount of money?
Some people might have suggested robbing a bank.
Freya was a small, underfed teenage girl. She would not make it through the front door.
There was a far easier option.
She could borrow money from a loan shark.
She had no intention of paying it back.
Once the simulation ended, the debt would vanish along with everything else that happened inside it.
It was practically free money.
Once the idea occurred to her, she did not waste time.
Freya drank a glass of water to soothe her dry throat, changed her shoes, and left the apartment.
She did not even need to search.
A few minutes after stepping outside, she spotted two bleach-blond punks wandering down the street with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders.
The original Freya could not afford to live in a respectable neighborhood.
Poorer districts attracted all kinds of petty criminals, including men like these.
The two belonged to a small local gang.
They did not collect protection money.
Their main business was illegal lending.
They had approached the original Freya several times and offered her loans, but she had always refused.
Anyone with common sense knew that borrowing from men like them was the first step down a road that rarely ended well.
The original Freya had been one of the academy’s brightest students.
Of course she had known better.
The new Freya lowered her head and quietly walked toward the two men.