The Top-Tier Butler of the Marquis Family

Chapter 002

“Oh! You are finally awake! Try to get your head together!”

That damned truck....

But why was it so noisy?

A young man’s voice rang through my skull. The headache was so severe that a groan slipped out. I was conscious, but speaking felt strangely difficult.

Even so, I forced my eyes open with a deep frown.

“Thank God! Thank you, truly!”

What?

A stranger came into view. A young man with brown hair and blue eyes. He was not anyone I remembered. And where was this place?

Could it be... the afterlife?

“I am seriously so relieved! Do you know how shocked I was when I heard you fell from the balcony while cleaning? What on earth were you doing to fall like that?”

Cleaning? What kind of creative nonsense was that?

I paused and gathered my thoughts.

I had been sitting outside the room salon after seeing my advisor into a taxi, and then I got hit by a truck and lost consciousness. I had probably died on the spot. I was definitely not someone who had fallen while cleaning.

Wait. Something felt wrong with my body.

What was with this frail, pathetic frame? These were not the lean, well-defined arms that had once been my trademark.

And what was with this foreign-looking man and this shabby little room?

In the end, only one sentence came out.

“Who are you?”

Apparently, that hit him pretty hard. His mouth stayed hanging open for a moment.

“You do not remember? This is bad. It is me, Rohan. Rohan. Your fellow butler apprentice!”

“Butler apprentice... fellow trainee?”

“Yeah. I am your best friend too. Do not tell me you do not even remember that we are from the same hometown.”

My mind was blank. I remembered nothing at all.

The man who had introduced himself as Rohan looked at me in frustration. But there was nothing I could do about that. I truly had no idea who he was.

At times like this, the best thing was to clear my head for a moment.

Ignoring the young man in front of me, I looked around.

Everything was unfamiliar.

The old walls were made entirely of wood, and a lantern, not a fluorescent light, cast a soft glow across the room. There was not a trace of modern civilization anywhere.

One thing was certain.

This was not a hospital.

What in the world had happened?

No matter how hard I thought about it, I could not make sense of the situation. I clearly remembered getting hit by the truck.

In fact, the harder I forced my memory, the more violently the headache returned. I pressed a hand to my forehead.

“Dilen. Are you all right? I think you must have hurt your head. If it hurts, get some more sleep. I need to go tell everyone this good news.”

“...Dilen?”

“That is your name. Do you not remember even that? Ah, this is seriously bad.”

It was not that I did not remember.

My name was not Dilen.

It was Kim Suhyeon.

“No. My name is—”

“That is enough! Stop talking and get some rest for now. I have to go report this to Lord Yanrof right away.”

After soothing me in that manner, the young man opened the door and went out. The incomprehensible situation only made my mind more confused.

Could that really have been the reincarnation truck?

My logical brain presented the possibility.

I pinched my cheek and had no choice but to accept reality. The sharp pain told me this was not a dream.

A little later, Rohan returned with someone else.

My gaze fixed on the man.

A middle-aged man in a fine tuxedo, wearing a monocle. White gloves covered his hands. He radiated charisma at a glance. He looked like the sort of man who must have been formidable in his younger days.

“You do not look well at all. Can you speak?”

“Yes.”

I forced myself to sit up a little. Rohan helped from the side. It seemed this middle-aged man was the one called Yanrof.

“First of all, I regret that such an accident occurred. I would like to know how it happened. There were no witnesses, after all.”

“I do not... remember very well.”

“Is that so?”

Stroking his elegant beard, Yanrof began examining me from head to toe.

“The doctor says that if you injured your head, your memory may be gone for a while, so rest for the time being. Your apprenticeship is suspended for now. Whether you continue or withdraw will be decided after we observe your condition. A man must take care of his own body, so be more careful from now on.”

With that, Yanrof left the room.

He struck me as a rather stern man. He said he regretted my injury, yet his cold tone made it sound as if even that were ultimately my own responsibility.

It did not leave me feeling very good.

Still, what mattered now was understanding the situation and accepting it.

From what I had heard, I—more precisely, the body I had awakened in—was going through a butler apprenticeship in this mansion. Exactly what it sounded like: a training period to become a butler.

Of course, before that, I needed to understand why I had awakened inside someone else’s body in the first place.

Maybe it was a dream. Or perhaps something had happened that science simply could not explain.

But it was too vivid to be a dream, and if science could not explain it, there was no way I could. Was I not, after all, nothing more than a slave to science?

For now, I should watch the situation a little longer.

But then...

If I ended up leaving this place, where would I go?

The moment that thought crossed my mind, my body jolted as if a switch had been flipped. At the same time, a stabbing pain surged through me.

“Ghk!”

A violent headache began.

In an instant, fragments of visions flashed before my eyes.

They were memories engraved into this body.

A young man had come while I was cleaning a window. I did not know why, but when he shoved me hard, my body staggered—and then it toppled over the railing.

What the hell?

This was not an accident.

That was the moment an “accident” became an “incident.”

It was the very scene of falling from the third-floor balcony while cleaning.

I could do nothing but sit there blankly for a long while, trying to make sense of that astonishing memory.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Rohan asked worriedly. I shook my head back and forth, trying to scatter my thoughts.

“Get some rest for now. I will come back later. And do not take Lord Yanrof’s words too much to heart. You will definitely be able to stay here. Do not give up on your dream!”

His dream was to become a butler? That was humble.

Still, I got a good feeling from him. He clearly trusted me and cared about me. For now, I nodded to reassure him.

After Rohan left, several other people came to visit.

I did not know their names. But judging by the way they spoke and behaved, it was obvious they held a higher status than I did.

I learned a great many things from them.

And in the end, I had no choice but to admit it.

I had not died.

I had reincarnated in someone else’s body.

I still could not believe it. Reincarnation?

In truth, possession might have been the more accurate word.

Even so, it still felt fair to call it reincarnation, because I could not sense any trace of Dilen’s soul. In a situation like this, it would not have been strange to call it a new birth.

There was no choice but to accept it. There was no way to return to my former self, and I had no idea why this had happened.

In that case, the easiest thing was to acknowledge it coolly.

Let us just think of it as some hyper-real virtual reality game.

Once I convinced myself I had been given a new chance, my mind felt easier. It was certainly better than simply dying.

But one thing still bothered me.

The image of that young man wearing a wicked smile as he shoved me—or rather, the original owner of this body—off the balcony.

Why had he pushed me and told me to die?

Because of that, even while lying there resting, I could not close my eyes for a single moment.

***

I was resting and sorting through my thoughts when Rohan came to see me again. Judging by the sweat all over his forehead, he had been working hard.

“How is our noble patient feeling?”

“I am fine.”

Even after falling from the third floor, not a single bone seemed broken. When I first woke up, I had felt sore, but now everything seemed normal.

No, to be precise, there was one strange thing.

My heart.

It did not hurt, but something about it felt odd.

Every time it beat, some unknown force churned inside me. My body tingled. Not because of some skin condition. Whenever my heart pumped, I felt an urge to release the energy surging out of it.

Had I gained some kind of power when I entered this new body?

As someone who loved games and novels, I could not help thinking that way.

“Do you remember anything else?”

“Not yet.”

“Do not rush it. Once you recover more, your memories will come back little by little. We should just be grateful you survived.”

I nodded.

My own memories were completely intact, but for the time being I decided to act like an amnesiac. Having memory problems could be useful in many ways.

If my memories never fully came back, then even if I acted like a completely different person, not many people would find it strange.

“By the way, how did you and I become close?”

“That is a little hurtful. We are from the same village, remember? And Arwen too. The three of us were childhood friends.”

The words childhood friends sounded incredibly welcome. At the very least, it meant I had allies.

“Who is Arwen?”

“She is a girl who works here as a maid. She will probably come by around evening. Today is a busy day.”

I nodded. Then I brought up the question I had been determined to ask once Rohan came back.

“Is there somewhere around here where I can work my body a little? Somewhere I could train?”

“There is a training ground. But why?”

“I am getting restless lying down doing nothing.”

Rohan looked at me as though that was the last thing a patient should say. Fair enough. If a friend of mine had fallen from the third floor and then started asking for a training ground, I would have tried to stop him too.

“I just want some fresh air. Lying around all the time is stifling.”

“You can stand up?”

“Of course.”

Perhaps because I rose more easily than he expected, Rohan looked somewhat startled.

“I do not know if this is really a good idea. If I take you out and get scolded for it, I am the one who will suffer.”

“I know my own body better than anyone.”

“All right! Let us at least go out for some air, then. I have about an hour.”

So, led by Rohan, I headed to the training grounds behind the mansion.

Fortunately, no one was there.

It was not very large, but it had enough equipment for around ten people to do some light training.

“Can butlers use this place too?”

The last thing I wanted was to wander into a training hall used by knights and get into trouble.

“Do not worry. This one is just for butler apprentices. Physical strength matters for butlers too, so they need to come train whenever they can. There is even a physical fitness portion in the promotion exam.”

“I see.”

“I used to drag you here every morning when you slept in....”

While Rohan was briefly lost in nostalgia, I looked around the place again.

There were a few exercise tools, wooden swords, and sandbags.

From what I had heard, physical strength was not the only thing that mattered for butlers. Martial skill was important too, because they served at the sides of important people, and no one knew what might happen.

For now, I stood in front of a sandbag.

Tough leather, packed full of sand.

I touched it once with my hand, then closed my eyes and focused on the mysterious power stirring in my chest.

Hummm!

Just as I had expected, that mysterious force could be controlled at will.

I concentrated it at the tips of my right hand and threw a punch with all my strength.

THUD!

Something astonishing happened.

The tough, sturdy sandbag could not withstand my force. It burst open and spilled sand everywhere. Naturally, Rohan was stunned.

“W-what was that? What on earth did you just do?”

“Who knows? Maybe the sandbag was old and already torn.”

“Huh....”

Pretending ignorance, I shrugged. From the outside it had looked like nothing more than an ordinary punch, so Rohan stopped doubting.

In any case, I thoroughly tested the power I possessed in the training ground.

The more I used it, the more the amount seemed to decrease, but after resting for a little while, I could feel it gradually replenishing itself. I would have to keep observing and experimenting to find out exactly how much of it I could use.

Next, the wooden sword.

Whoosh!

Whirl!

The wooden blade moved beautifully as well. I could produce exactly the trajectory I wanted. It felt as though I had become some splendid swordsman.

Could I use magic too, perhaps?

But I could not find a method for it. All I could do was load power into my fists or channel it into the wooden sword. It seemed the power required a physical medium to work.

There had to be a way.

Like every mystery, perhaps I simply had not discovered the method yet.

“Hey, Dilen. I need to head back now. It is time for my shift.”

“All right.”

Reluctantly, I put the wooden sword back where it belonged and left with Rohan. I would have to come here from time to time and keep testing this power.

A few butler apprentices who had finished their duties were walking over to train. As we exchanged simple greetings with them, Rohan said to me,

“You seem different somehow.”

“How so?”

“You used to hate swordsmanship so much that you would not even go near a wooden sword, so seeing you swing one around is bound to feel strange. Your personality seems to have changed a lot too.”

“So? Do you not like it?”

“It is not that! Honestly, this version of you is much better to watch. You were far too timid before.”

Timid?

For a moment, I became curious about the reputation of the man called Dilen. When people had come earlier to check on me, I had sensed that they were not exactly friendly toward me.

What kind of person had he been?

Fortunately, the chance to answer that question came sooner than I expected.