This chapter is brought to you by Much Madness by aeseaes.

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It took a month before Nine settled properly into his new life.

The human settlement he was living in was a secluded pastoral farming village hidden by mountains and trees. The people were friendly, and Nine took care to learn the names of those who greeted him every morning.

His new mother was a woman who moved to the village with her husband many years ago.

Said husband was now missing and likely dead.

Nine was able to figure it out after he looked through the hut he and his mother lived in.

The man had only taken the bare minimum when he left for a trip and the joint savings between him and his wife were mostly untouched when he left, according to the ledgers Nine found while his new mother was sleeping.

The likelihood of his new father abandoning them was slim.

"Good morning, Toby. Going to the farm again?"

Nine was passing through the marketplace when one of the vendors stopped him.

He nodded and was promptly given a freshly wrapped loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.

"... Thank you."

One of the major differences Nine realized between this world and his, was the treatment of children.

The villagers were kind to kids his age, and Nine was unused to it. In his time, the war had forced drafts on children as young as five. Desperate for manpower, all children were sent to military orphanages and assigned a serial code.

The world he was reborn into was from a story he once heard called Poison-Laced Dagger.

The book was written by his roommate's younger sister in her free time.

They were cadets at the time and lived in a small dorm with a few others. Every once in a while, the roommate would gather them around in a circle after dinner so he could read the story out loud.

The story was set in the hidden city of Vesna—the secret jewel of the Tiber Empire.

"O Dreaded Vesna, with its dark corners and darker corridors, where the most innocent and pure was tainted pitch black by its countless sins..."

"That's cringy."

"Shhhh... you're ruining the mood."

In other words, Vesna was a legally sanctioned criminal underworld rife with crime and corruption. Not only did it house the largest black market in the Empire, but it was also the home base of the two most powerful mercenary families on the continent.

House Monttevi and House Calypto.

The leads of the novel were children and heirs to these two families, but they inevitably fell in love with one another when they were sent out on a mission together.

Putting romance into the backdrop of political intrigue, war, death, and strife was a recipe for disaster.

Eventually, to no one's surprise, the hero and heroine's forbidden love led to their deaths.

"Isn't this just a rip-off of Rumeo and Joliet?"

"She's sixteen!"

"Ah."

The ending was predictable, but much of the story still focused on the internal problems of the hero and heroine. With any tale of love and woe, there were bound to be friends and foes, alike.

Those who supported the love of the lovers, and those who opposed it, existed in this complicated whirlwind romance.

Nine happened to be in the body of a character who constantly antagonized the main characters.

His new mother called him Toby.

And everything started to make sense.

He was "Toby Calypto," the petty and spiteful cousin of the heroine who was foddered for drama and ridiculed.

His cousin despised him and many grew tired of him after meeting him. He was a sly and scheming bastard, weak to those more courageous and powerful than him, yet impetuous against the weak.

Due to his incompetency, he was forbidden to leave Vesna, which led him to develop an inferiority complex that he tried to mask with arrogance.

In the story, Toby was the type of person to walk around Vesna with his head held high, looking for duels to fight, and men and women to seduce.

But that wasn't all.

He was a character written to annoy the audience, so whenever he appeared, he would belittle the heroine and even threaten to expose her relationship with the hero if she didn't give up her heirship to him.

He had at one point tried to seduce the relatives of the Lord of Vesna--which went horribly wrong for all parties involved--and even attempted to arrange an engagement between him and the only heir of House Calypto, the heroine... his first cousin.

Toby was a white-eyed wolf with the heart of a scorpion, greedy for power and undeserving of it. He was that bitch, and not in a good way.

In the end, the hero's friend, (not even the hero!), killed him and no one cared.

"..."

Nine was perfectly content with his current life, thank you very much.

He might have stolen the life of a child, but there was no way to undo what had been done. This life was his.

Nine approached the gate of the farm and was welcomed by a tall man with red hair and a wide grin.

"Toby, you're here! Is the injury all healed up?"

The healer had removed his bandages yesterday.

"... Yes."

Nine was overwhelmed by the man's enthusiasm. He was still unused to anyone asking about his injuries.

Wasn't it a simple headwound? He had worse at this age when he served in the Special Forces.

The people in this world were weird. The way they cared so much about a scrappy thing like Nine was a difficult concept to grasp.

The red-haired man, Eru, was the owner of the farm and Nine's current employer. He was a kind man, and from what Nine has seen so far, a well-respected member of the community.

"That's the spirit!"

Eru gave him a pat on the back and brought him over to the barn.

"We've been hearing some sounds in the walls. It's been spooking the animals and stressing them out. Do you think you can get rid of it?"

"Yes."

Another thing Nine learned about his current life. He was a mouser, which was this world's equivalent of pest control. Children his age were allowed to work on the farms as mice catchers.

It took Nine a couple of weeks before he got the hang of it. His adjustment period also included getting used to being in a child's body. He was incredibly nimble despite the lack of proper training, but his hands still lacked the proper dexterity of an adult. It didn't make catching mice any easier, but he was somehow able to catch quite a few.

Perhaps it was the power of the plot?

Toby was referred to as the Prince of Cats in the story, a monicker that he despised. Was it because he used to be a mouser?

"I'll leave you to it, kid."

"Yes."

Nine was left in the barn by himself while Eru went out to feed the animals.

---

He was standing in a crouch on top of a beam when he heard a rustle.

Patience was key to being a mouser. Most children didn't have much patience, so few were very successful.

Nine was an adult, so being patient wasn't exactly something he could be proud of. In the Special Forces, missions were like waiting games that could prolong for days and weeks and months.

So comparing his patience to children was not exactly fair.

He had been waiting for a few hours for the mice to come out after scattering some grain.

The first thing was to entice the targets.

There was another rustle and Nine stilled.

He watched as two mice appeared from a small hole in the wall. They made their way out into the open and sniffed the air.

Nine waited.

The mice made their way over to pile of grain.

He released the rope in his hand and the trap fell.

The makeshift cage was a wooden box that was used to store eggs. It fell over the mice, trapping them inside.

Nine dropped down from the beam and took out a bag.

With quick and sharp movements, he opened the trap and grabbed both mice before shoving them into the bag.

Mission complete.

---

Three months into his new life and Nine was... happy.

Or at least, he beleived he was.

As a soldier, there was little time to think about happiness and the likes. It was always the next mission, the next task, or the next assignment.

When he thought about it long enough, perhaps it was for the best that they did little thinking. It wouldn't have helped in the war efforts, and it would have made them openly resentful about their lives.

Yet, Nine remembered clearly the small moments of happiness, before the war was all that they could think about.

There was never an absence of war, but he knew the signs of violence encroaching closer with each day that passed.

His roommate was the first to go, followed by others. Friends left him one by one until Nine was all alone and then taken into the Special Forces.

Poison-Laced Daggers was a happy a moment, despite being a tragedy. It was a story shared among friends, so was it so strange when Nine found himself in this world?

He remembered the story so clearly.

It was a happy moment.

"Mama."

He greeted the woman who was cooking in front of a fire.

She smiled at him, warm brown eyes looking at him with an emotion Nine couldn't describe.

When he saw her, his heart felt tight, as if someone had squeezed it.

"Toby," she greeted him, "did you have a good day at work."

Nine nodded.

"That's good."

---

Her son wasn't the same after the head wound.

There was something different about him, and it worried Fiamma.

"Mama," her son said, meeting her gaze with a curious tilt of his head. His wide emerald eyes were like her husband's. Deep abyss pools filled with hesitance and uncertainty.

How was it that he was so like her husband now that he was gone.

Thibault was a soldier. He used to work in a special division contracted to the Imperial Family. What horrors he had seen, Fiamma never asked.

She fell in love with the kind man beneath the danger and wariness that surrounded him. The one who wooed her with wilted flowers he found in the woods during missions and trinkets from markets all over the continent.

Fiamma was more than willing to elope with him when he whittled her a hair stick in place of a ring.

If he had left them, there had to be a reason. And if he was dead... at least she had her son.

She brought her son into her arms.

"Mama?"

"Yes, Mama's here. I love you, Toby."

"..."

Her son didn't reply.

It was alright.

This, too, they would overcome.

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[....... In the fifty-eighth year of the Interstellar Calendar of ZEFRE-2B9, Day 123, Soldier 9A1420H5 -ZT4's consciousness has been located. His punishment has been retracted. Extraction of his consciousness from <> will be pending .......]

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The author has something to say:

If any of you have read The Reincarnated Villainous Young Master's Guide to Happiness, you know I don't do a lot of time skips (Volume I was literally three-and-a-half months), but to you get the plot moving for this particular story, time skips will be a must (kind of ironic since Rumeo and Juliet takes place over five days).