WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Malfoid

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Don't Need a Family ◈

Episode 1

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‘I can’t die. I have to live. I’m going to survive...’

But contrary to my wish, my breathing only grew fainter and weaker.

I was in the intensive care unit of a university hospital. Medical staff swarmed around me, moving urgently.

Medicine and medical equipment filled the room, but even modern medicine could not stop my death.

The cause was a long illness.

A vicious, rare disease that gradually weakened the muscles throughout my body until, in the end, my breathing muscles were paralyzed and I suffocated.

I had lived with that illness for twenty years.

The days when I could neither walk nor stand had been horrible, but they were still better than dying.

No, even with that body, I wanted to live for a very, very long time.

It might sound ridiculous to be so attached to a life like that, but when death came for me, it felt as though the sky had fallen.

One night, when breathing had become especially painful, I died without even getting to say goodbye to my family.

I wanted to live, so I tried desperately to struggle, but my already weakened muscles would not allow even that.

Unable to move even my eyes, I went stiff in silence, clutching nothing but pain.

That was surely what should have happened.

Then darkness came, as though something had snapped.

And a moment later,

everything had changed.

‘I can breathe!’

The shock of nearly dying made me suck in air so frantically that I nearly hyperventilated.

Not only could I breathe, I could move my body properly. In fact, it moved so lightly that I nearly pitched forward.

I staggered for only a moment before my muscles supported me, allowing me to regain my balance.

No, wait. Was this even possible?

‘How long has it been since I sat up in bed with my own strength?’

I was stunned.

Absentmindedly, I touched my head, only to be startled again by the unfamiliar hair falling all the way to my shoulders.

This was not my hair.

First, it had been a long time since I had cut my hair short because people said long hair was hard to wash for me. Second, I was Korean, and my hair had been black without ever being dyed...

Yet long, luscious, pure white hair swayed enticingly through my fingers.

Even when I thought of everyone in the hospital ward, such soft hair was rare.

There were no women among the patients I knew who could casually comb their own hair. No one even had the energy to care about something like that.

‘Then who is this woman?’

My head automatically turned in search of a mirror. As though it had been waiting for me, a full-length mirror standing in one corner of a bedroom at least twice the size of an eight-bed hospital ward came into view.

Carefully, I lowered one leg from the bed, then the other.

I took a deep breath to brace myself, but taking a step was incredibly easy.

Twenty steps to the mirror. I reached it in one go, without falling or resting once.

After spending more than ten years as Choi Eunseo, imagining it thousands upon thousands of times, something so simple had become possible overnight.

‘Even after ten years of rehabilitation therapy, I never succeeded even once.’

The slender woman in the mirror gazed back at me blankly.

Warm silver-white hair and blue eyes like a spring sky.

Behind the woman in a cozy white nightdress stretched an antique, extravagant room where a king from centuries ago might have lived.

Yet it was neither her appearance nor her wealth that caught my attention.

‘You stand so beautifully. Like a young lady from a noble family.’

Her proper posture, and the health that supported it, made me unbearably envious. So did the way she had awakened at this early hour feeling perfectly refreshed, without a trace of exhaustion.

But the corners of her eyes were red, as though she had cried herself to sleep the night before.

Why had she cried? What could someone with such good health, youth, shining beauty, and financial security possibly be so sad about?

On impulse, I brushed a hand over the red rims of her eyes in the mirror. At that moment, my fingertips tingled, like static electricity had jumped through them.

“Ow!”

As if that pain had been a signal, countless pieces of information flooded my mind.

The memories held by this body’s owner.

Her name was Vivette Ashwilt, the one and only lady of House Ashwilt, a ducal family renowned for magic.

From noblewomen in the capital to mages of the Mage Tower, everyone in this country admired those connected to Ashwilt without end.

Lady Vivette was famous not only for her family but also for her beauty.

Pure white hair like a crescent moon reflected on a lake. Blue eyes as though a piece of the spring sky had been cut away.

She looked precious and alluring, as though she had been born from magic itself.

Every member of House Ashwilt was so beautiful that it was hard to rank them, but Vivette drew even more attention as its only woman.

She was like the heroine of an old kingdom fairy tale, someone who had everything.

If not for the one lack that drove her into tragedy.

Despite being born into a family of mages, Vivette Ashwilt could not use magic at all.

House Ashwilt had produced genius mages for generations, and every descendant of this generation was gifted as well.

All except Vivette.

Among those who shared the family blood, there was not a single person who was not a mage. Even the maids in the Ashwilt estate knew how to use magic.

Vivette suffered greatly among them. On nights when her heart ached especially badly, she would sob soundlessly all night long. Last night had been no different.

“I can’t endure this any longer.”

In those fragmented, disordered memories, Vivette had clearly muttered those words.

“Why did you cry like that?”

I ran a hand over the mirror, leaving behind a cloudy handprint. It roughly covered the reddened corners of her eyes.

I understood that feeling all too well.

The feeling of being unable to do what everyone else did so easily.

While other children walked and ran as though it were only natural, I had to learn how to stand up from where I lay facedown on the ground.

“Vivette, why don’t you at least try harder? They say no one can beat a person who works hard.”

What a load of crap.

Speaking as someone who had spent twenty years devoting every moment to treatment and rehabilitation, there were fields where effort simply did not work.

Proof of that was that I had eventually died, while Vivette had been unable to manipulate mana by the age of twenty, the cutoff for becoming aware of mana, and disappeared from this world.

My intuition told me that Vivette would never return.

‘Then does that mean... I can keep living in this body?’

Honestly, it was not bad at all.

No, if I could live in such a healthy body, it would be more than I could ask for.

I felt sorry for Vivette, but perhaps my long illness had made me selfish.

At least when it came to my health and my life.

Our family had struggled financially to pay my hospital bills after I began growing sickly around the age of three or four. My mother had to quit her job to care for me, and my younger sibling was often looked down on for having a sick older sister.

But even while being a burden to my family, I wanted to live.

I was sorry to them, but I wanted to live. For a very, very long time.

‘But for that wish to be granted in someone else’s body.’

I clenched my fist tightly.

To someone who had been terminally ill with a rare disease, this grip strength was unimaginable. The more I looked, the more astonishing this body seemed.

“Magic or no magic, I know I can live happily. So what if I can’t use a little magic? I have money, prestige... and most of all, I have such a healthy body.”

Fixating only on what you lacked would make you unhappy.

That had been me in the past. Though I knew I would die someday, I left my family behind whenever they came to visit me at the hospital and focused only on rehabilitation.

Only now did I think this, but I should not have done that. Even if I had died sooner, I should have spent more time with my family. Now, they would remember me as a cold daughter and a boring older sister.

A rush of sorrow welled up at the thought that I would never see them again. The corners of my eyes were surely red again.

‘But... perhaps it’s for the best. I made them suffer so much. They’ll be sad for a while if I die, but they won’t have to struggle anymore.’

Still, one thing concerned me: Vivette’s family.

Unlike my family, who loved one another dearly, Vivette’s family sometimes got along and sometimes did not. Recently, things seemed to have tilted more toward the latter.

Vivette’s family had suddenly lost a daughter and a sister. I pitied them for being destined to live their whole lives without knowing that.

The person occupying her body instead of their family member was a complete stranger. How heartbroken would they be if they learned the truth?

But that thought soon shattered completely.

* * *

“My goodness, my lady. Your eyes are red. Did you cry?”

Vivette’s maid, who came as soon as dawn broke, was astonishingly cheerful. It was enough to make me wonder whether servants took after their masters.

“...”

“I-It’s all right! You’re still beautiful. They’re not even very puffy... His Grace and the young masters probably won’t notice.”

Why would those people matter? I only learned the reason after Lola fussed over me and dressed me up from head to toe early in the morning.

“Today is the day His Grace isn’t reporting to work at the Imperial Palace, isn’t it? The whole family is gathering for a meal.”

“Mm, is that so?”

My palms grew sweaty at the thought of meeting the original owner’s closest family on my first day after reincarnating. Could I deceive them without incident?

“My lady? Why are you so indifferent toward your family today? You never forget even the smallest details...”

Lola’s questioning gaze weighed on me.

Come to think of it, Vivette had truly loved her family. Even at her age, she had tirelessly followed the men of the ducal household around.

I was not particularly affectionate by nature, but if I acted as coldly as I did toward my own family, it would be too obvious.

Determined not to act too differently, I headed for the dining room in the main building.

* * *

But,

“You managed not to die overnight, I see.”

That was the first thing the duke said when I entered the dining room.

Duke Ashwilt was not the only one who did not welcome me.

Vivette’s older brother, Gillian, wore the duke’s face exactly, his eyes gleaming fiercely.

Then there was her younger cousin Harris, whose expression held the indifference one might show a complete stranger.

...Every last one of them was a complete asshole.

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