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Chapter 2
Watching the children bicker with a sullen expression, Yulian glanced down at her wristwatch, let out a deep sigh, and clapped her hands twice.
“All right, that’s enough.”
At her intervention, the children fell silent. True to their age, they were lively and noisy, but they all listened well when it came to “Teacher Yuri.”
The students who attended the advanced class were, for the most part, heirs to families who ran shops in the village. Anyone involved in commerce needed mathematical knowledge, and Yulian was the only person in town capable of teaching it systematically.
Beyond mathematics, she also possessed knowledge and sensibilities on an entirely different level from the people of this backwater village. By common consensus, she was the most elite individual in town. The adolescents, who loved anything that seemed sophisticated, might grumble outwardly, but inwardly they respected her.
“I trust you all, so I’ll assume you worked hard on your homework. Now go home, everyone.”
That said, Yulian had little interest in exercising authority. She took her teaching duties seriously during class, but she wasn’t especially passionate about educating children. Her sole goal was to work as little as possible, clock out as early as possible, and enjoy a leisurely afternoon. Checking homework after dismissal was, naturally, out of the question.
“Come on, you’re just too lazy to check it, right?”
“Teacher Yuri is a slacker!”
Students who had been with her for years teased her, well aware of her tendencies. But Yulian felt no shame in her laziness.
After all, wasn’t it already admirable enough to be born human and manage to earn a living? A hardworking employee wanting to rest—what did these rice-cake-sized brats know about life?
“If you know that much, hurry home. Shoo, shoo!”
Yulian tapped the teacher’s desk with her pointer, shooing the children out. Luke clicked his tongue in annoyance at not getting his diligently completed homework checked, while the others hurried out of the classroom in case she changed her mind.
Only after every student had left did Yulian erase the blackboard and line up the scattered desks. Then she opened her lunch basket. Inside was a sandwich she’d bought that morning from the local bakery.
The bread, slightly soggy from the sauce, wilted vegetables, and salty ham spread across her mouth. Once she finished eating, the entire afternoon would belong to her alone.
The sun was high, and the sky was perfectly clear. Gazing out the window, Yulian let out a satisfied sigh.
Another deeply fulfilling day.
* * *
Three years earlier, the first thing Yulian did after being dumped alone in the northern border forest of Latem was strip off her stifling clothes.
A corset cinched so tight she could barely breathe, a skirt puffed up with petticoats, and merciless high heels that showed no concern for ankle health.
Those things had played no small role in her decision to escape Latem.
“F— patriarchs! F—ing Latem!”
Latem was an extremely outdated, patriarchal country that had no respect whatsoever for women’s freedom.
A woman belonged to her father at birth, to her husband after marriage, and was expected above all else to remain beautiful and obedient.
Yulian had grown up hearing that nauseating nonsense until her ears practically developed calluses.
Of course, she had never agreed with any of it.
“Still… should I be grateful they didn’t outright kill me and instead dumped me in some backwater like this? Did they think I couldn’t survive without my father’s power? Was leaving me here meant to be a more ‘refined’ alternative to poison—so I’d just die miserably instead?”
She tossed aside the heavy, cumbersome garments and walked barefoot in nothing but her underclothes. Naturally, she removed and kept the jewels, lace, and ribbons sewn onto the clothes. Because she’d been labeled a criminal, her dress was fairly modest, but buttons used in noble clothing were gemstones, and ribbons and lace could all be sold for money.
“Most Latem ladies would consider selling used items shameful—but I, ‘Yulian with no family,’ don’t care about dignity.”
Stuffing the items into her underskirt, Yulian walked with every ounce of strength she had. At night, she slept in gaps between rocks or inside caves. During the day, she walked again, searching for signs of habitation.
Had she been an ordinary noble lady of Latem, she would never have endured it. No—before even reaching that point, she would have taken her own life in prison to preserve her honor.
But Yulian endured.
In fact, wandering the borderlands with nothing but her own body was better than the nearly twenty years she’d spent living in Latem.
No longer a grand duchess, she didn’t have to wake at five in the morning to prepare her appearance, nor did she have to squeeze herself into prison-like dresses and pretend to be refined.
After walking, and walking, and walking some more, she finally reached a village where people lived—a remote mountain village in Tarel, a neighboring country to Latem.
“Please help me! I was robbed in the forest!”
She pretended to be the daughter of a small merchant caravan that had been attacked by bandits. The kind-hearted villagers readily extended sympathy to “Yuri,” a girl who had suddenly lost her parents. Their hands lingered on her jewels more than once—but instead of hiding them, Yulian boldly auctioned them off to buy help.
“I’ll give this emerald button as a small token of gratitude to whoever becomes my parents. I’m looking for a long-established commoner family with at least a hundred years of history!”
“Come to our house! We’ve raised pigs since my grandfather’s grandfather!”
“Pigs, my foot! Farmers are the true commoners! Our family has farmed for five generations!”
“Child, we don’t even have knightly relatives—one hundred percent pure-blood commoners!”
Latem’s official punishment ended with her banishment, but simply staying alive wasn’t the end of it. No one cared what happened to her afterward. Struck from the Baph ducal registry, Yulian was neither a noble nor even a citizen of any country—officially, she didn’t exist.
Without household registration, finding work or crossing borders was severely restricted. In a sense, being dumped in a border forest and slipping into another country by sheer luck was an unbelievable stroke of fortune.
That was how she added her name to the registry of a purely commoner lineage with not a single drop of noble blood. Her former enemies would never have imagined that Yulian would enter a commoner family.
The village chief, who became her new stepmother, happily provided her with potato soup and a warm place to sleep. Though she had begun a new life, Yulian soon had to pack her bags again.
“Sniff, sniff! I’ll never forget your kindness!”
Just as there’s no kindness without a reason, there’s no free potato soup. To survive, she needed work—but in a village of barely fifty people, there was no job that matched her skills. Moreover, the village wasn’t far from Latem’s border. The thought of accidentally running into a familiar face was terrifying.
“Ptooey!”
Spitting in Latem’s direction, Yulian moved from village to village for a while. She deliberately muddled her route, preparing for the unlikely possibility that someone from Latem might change their mind and chase her down. Sometimes she wondered if she was being paranoid—but the moment she even saw the letter “L” of “Latem,” chills ran down her spine again.
Unable to find peace anywhere, she wandered for half a year. She switched ships in port cities and crossed borders three separate times. After circling endlessly, the place she finally settled in was the country of Melburn.
It wasn’t because she’d been particularly moved by anything there. She was simply running out of travel funds when she saw a flyer urgently recruiting teachers. Fortunately, the educational level of a rural village wasn’t very high, so the knowledge she’d learned long ago was more than enough.
And just like that, three years passed.
The pay was low, but the work was absurdly easy.
“Five hours a day, five days a week—and it’s not even manual labor. Where else could you find a dream job like this?”
