The late afternoon sun filtered through the canopy above us, casting dappled shadows that danced across the forest floor as we continued our search.
We had spent several more hours combing through the deeper parts of the forest, our party spreading out in practiced formation. Though we managed to snare additional game—several plump rabbits emerged from their burrows at the wrong moment, and Tom's keen eye spotted a family of pheasants roosting low in a gnarled oak—the elusive deer had vanished like morning mist. Perhaps our earlier success had spooked the rest of the herd, or maybe they had simply moved to better grazing grounds beyond our reach.
I shifted the leather bucket strapped to my back, feeling the weight of five rabbits bouncing against my spine with each step.
These were my kills—my first real contribution to the village's winter stores and I was quite satisfied with it.
As our hunting party began the long trek back toward the village, I found myself walking alongside Lisa. Her catches far exceeded mine—not just in number, but in variety and size. Two fat grouse dangled from her belt alongside a string of rabbits that made my own haul look meager by comparison.
"I have to admit," I said, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between us, "hunting is quite nice." The words came out more genuinely than I had expected. There was something deeply satisfying about hunting, it was similar to me hunting women in my past life after all. Getting informations, following, trapping, and shooting.
The moment when my arrow had found its mark—that perfect instant when instinct, skill, and luck aligned—had sent a surge of primal satisfaction through my chest. It felt almost like a game, but one with real stakes and tangible rewards.
Lisa glanced at me, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "This feels calm, doesn't it?" she said, nodding in agreement. "You can focus on it without caring about the rest of the world."
Her words carried a weight that suggested deeper meaning. I knew Lisa had been hunting since she could barely hold a bow—her father had started teaching her when she was no older than five or six. But it was only after her parents' death that hunting had become her daily ritual, her escape from a house filled with their memories.
It was understandable—Martha had confided in me once that she worried about her granddaughter spending so much time alone in the woods. But I couldn't help feeling that Lisa was limiting herself, using hunting as a shield against life rather than a tool to enhance it. She had such potential—her skill with a bow was already legendary among the village youth, and she possessed an intuitive understanding of animal behavior that impressed even the most experienced hunters. Yet like me, she had steadfastly refused Isadora's invitations to test for magical aptitude, though Martha suspected she possessed considerable talent.
"Hunting is good but it shouldn't be your whole life, Lisa," I said.
She turned to look at me fully. I could see the defensive walls going up behind her eyes—she had probably heard similar words from Martha countless times. The well-meaning advice of adults who didn't understand that sometimes survival meant finding one safe place and clinging to it with both hands.
But I pressed on, offering her a grin. "Have some ambitions."
"Ambitions?" She raised her brow.
"Yeah, ambitions," I said, warming to the topic. "Look at my sister—she wants to be a powerful mage, maybe even join the royal guard someday. She dreams of standing before the King himself, of using her magic to protect the realm from threats we can barely imagine. The Village Chief comes from a fallen baron's family, and every day he works toward reclaiming that lost status, rebuilding what his ancestors lost to poor decisions and worse luck. Even Rumia has plans—she wants to become strong and independent enough to leave this village behind, to see what lies beyond the forest borders. What about you?"
Lisa's steps slowed, and she turned her head away from me, her gaze fixing on something in the distance that I couldn't see. "I don't have such ambitions. I don't have any dreams like that."
Without thinking, I reached out and grasped her hand. Her skin was warm and slightly rough from years of drawing bowstrings, and I felt her fingers tense in surprise at the contact. "Then find one," I said simply.
She looked at me with wide eyes, clearly startled by both my words and the unexpected intimacy of the gesture. For a moment, she seemed younger than her fourteen years, vulnerable in a way that her usual competent facade never revealed.
I flashed her one of my James-like smile not of my age.
"Once you find it, you'll see your life from a completely new point of view. You'll wake up each morning with excitement racing through your veins, with anticipation making your heart beat faster as you think about taking one more step toward reaching those dreams."
She said nothing, averting her gaze once more, but she didn't pull her hand away from mine. We walked the rest of the way back to the village like that, her hand nestled in my smaller palm, both of us lost in our own thoughts as the familiar outline of thatched roofs and chimney smoke appeared through the trees.
The village was already preparing for the evening meal when we arrived. Smoke rose from a dozen hearths, and the sound of children playing in the common area mixed with the lowing of cattle being brought in for the night. The hunting party dispersed with tired satisfaction, each member heading home to clean their catch and share stories of the day's adventures with eager families.
"Lisa," Tom called out as we approached the cluster of buildings near the village center. "You might as well teach Harold how to properly skin and dress the game. Show him the right way to do it."
Lisa nodded, and I found myself following her around to the back of her modest house. Behind the main structure stood a smaller building—little more than a shed, really—that served as her processing station. The door hung slightly askew on leather hinges, and the smell of old blood and woodsmoke drifted out as she pushed it open.
Inside, the space was cramped but efficiently organized. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the low rafters, their sharp scents helping to mask less pleasant odors. A sturdy wooden table dominated the center of the room, its surface scarred and stained from countless hours of use. Sharp knives of various sizes hung from pegs along one wall, their edges gleaming despite their obvious age. Clay pots and wooden bowls were stacked neatly on rough shelves, ready to hold the precious organs and fat that would be rendered into lamp oil and soap.
"Let's start with a rabbit," Lisa said, her voice taking on the businesslike tone of an experienced teacher. She selected one of her own kills—a plump brown rabbit that had probably been enjoying the last of the autumn berries when her arrow found it—and placed it on the center of the table.
I followed her example, lifting one of my rabbits from the bucket and setting it beside hers.
"Take your knife," she instructed.
I took the knife she gifted me, watching as she positioned her own rabbit and prepared to demonstrate the first cut.
"The first cut is the most important," she began, her voice steady and sure. "If you do it wrong, you'll ruin the hide and waste good meat. Watch carefully..."
Her hands moved with precision as she positioned the rabbit on its back, one hand holding the hind legs steady. "You want to start here," she said, indicating a spot just below the ribcage. "Make a shallow cut—just through the skin, not into the organs beneath. If you puncture the stomach or intestines..." She wrinkled her nose expressively.
I nodded, understanding the implication. I'd heard enough stories from other hunters about ruined meals caused by careless knife work.
Lisa's blade sliced cleanly through the fur and skin, revealing the pale flesh beneath. Her movements were economical, precise—there was no wasted motion, no hesitation. "Now you try," she said, stepping back slightly to give me room while still staying close enough to guide my hands if needed.
I positioned my rabbit as she had shown me, acutely aware of her proximity. The scent of pine sap and woodsmoke clung to her hair, mixing with something uniquely her own—something clean and earthy.
"Steady," she murmured as I pressed the knife's edge to the rabbit's belly. "Don't press too hard. Let the blade do the work."
The knife was sharper than I had expected, and I felt it part the skin with surprising ease.
"Here," Lisa said, moving behind me. Her arms came around me on either side, her hands covering mine on the knife handle. "Like this. Feel how the blade wants to move?"
Her breath was warm against my ear, and I had to concentrate hard on not letting my mind wander toward her budding breasts pressing against my back.
"Better," she said as the blade followed a straighter path. "You're getting it."
We worked in comfortable silence for a while, Lisa occasionally adjusting my grip or correcting my technique. The initial awkwardness gave way to a kind of rhythm—her quiet instructions, my careful attempts to follow them, the gradual pile of fur and cleaned meat growing on the table between us.
"You learn quickly," she observed as I managed to separate a particularly tricky section without damaging the hide. "Most people struggle with that part for weeks."
"I have a good teacher," I replied, glancing up at her. She was concentrating on her own rabbit, having moved on to the more complex task of removing the organs while I worked on the basic skinning. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, a small line appearing between her eyebrows that made her look older, more serious.
"Lisa," I said, setting down my knife for a moment. "What I said earlier, about ambitions... I didn't mean to sound like I was judging you."
Her hands stilled on her work. "I know," she said quietly. "It's just... after my parents died, everything felt so uncertain. Hunting was the one thing that still made sense. Still felt real."
"And now?"
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the rabbit before her. "Now I'm not sure. Sometimes when I'm out in the forest, I catch myself wondering what it would be like to travel beyond the village borders. To see the great cities Martha used to tell me about when I was small." She looked up at me, vulnerability flickering in her eyes. "But that feels like someone else's dream, not mine."
"Maybe that's because you haven't given yourself permission to want it yet," I raised a brow.
She considered this, then returned to her work with renewed focus. "What about you?" she asked after a while. "What are your real ambitions? Not what you think you should want, but what you actually dream about when you're alone."
My ambitions... eh.
I couldn't remember the last time anyone had bothered to ask what I truly wanted—not in this life, nor in the one before.
In my previous existence, the women whose lives I'd systematically destroyed would spit those very words at me like venom. "You're drowning in your ambitions, James," they'd cry, tears streaming down faces I'd once found beautiful enough to manipulate. "They've made you into something monstrous." Their accusations had rolled off me then, water off a duck's back. I'd been too consumed with getting what I needed to care about the wreckage I left behind.
But this world was different. This life was different. Or was it?
Perhaps my core desires hadn't changed at all—they'd simply found new soil in which to take root.
I set down the skinning knife, my hands still sticky with rabbit blood, and looked across the small wooden table at Lisa.
"I want to be recognized," I said finally, surprised by the raw honesty in my own voice. The words came slowly at first, then with gathering momentum like stones rolling down a hillside. "Not just by some backwater village or even a single kingdom, but by the entire world. I want every person on this continent—no, every person who draws breath—to know my name and understand exactly who Jam—Harold Eindoral truly is."
The room seemed to grow smaller as I spoke.
"I want to achieve something no one has ever achieved before," I continued, my voice growing harder. "Something so magnificent, so impossible, that it rewrites the very definition of what a person can accomplish. And I want to do it completely alone—without the help of anyone who thought they could ignore me, dismiss me, or..."
My hands clenched involuntarily into fists on the table surface, and I felt the dried rabbit blood crack between my knuckles. The memory of my biological parents' faces flashed before my eyes—their cold indifference, their casual cruelty, the way they'd looked right through me as if I were less substantial than air.
"I want those who turned their backs on me to spend the rest of their miserable lives drowning in regret," I finished, angry at myself to be this bothered by my previous parents even after all these years.
It was then that I felt the gentle pressure of Lisa's hand covering my bloodied fist. Her touch was warm, soft—so different from the calculating caresses I'd known before. When I looked up, she was smiling at me with something I'd rarely encountered in my two lifetimes: genuine compassion.
"I don't know about the rest of the world," she said quietly, her thumb tracing small circles over my knuckles, "but I recognize you, Harold. I've watched you work these past years, seen the way your mind operates. You're brilliant—truly brilliant—and I believe with everything in me that you have the talent to reach whatever heights you set your sights on."
I stared at her, caught completely off guard by the sincerity in her voice, the true faith shining in her eyes.
Wow.
When was the last time someone had looked at me like that? When was the last time someone had believed in me without wanting something in return?
And that's when it struck me—the realization that had been hovering at the edges of my consciousness for days now, finally crystallizing into perfect clarity.
Lisa was different. Isabella was different. Rosaluna, Rumia—they were all different from the women I'd known before.
The women from my past life had been cut from the same cloth—wealthy, pampered creatures who'd been raised to see the world as their personal playground. They'd had everything handed to them on silver platters, which made them suspicious of everyone's motives because they assumed everyone else was as calculating as they were.
But Lisa? Lisa had nothing. She was a commoner, poor as dirt, with callused hands and patched clothes. She had no fortune to protect, no social status to maintain, no hidden agenda to pursue. Her kindness came from a place of genuine warmth because she had no reason to pretend. Her belief in me was real because she had nothing to gain by lying.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt my face shift into what I knew was a genuine smile. Not the practiced, calculated expression I'd perfected over years of deception, but something real and unguarded. It felt strange on my lips, rusty from disuse, but surprisingly natural.
"Lisa," I said staring straight at her. "I'm going to marry you someday. In a few years, when we're both ready, I'm going to make you my wife."
The effect was immediate and dramatic. Lisa's smile wavered and then collapsed entirely, her hand jerking back from mine as if she'd been burned.
"Harold, I... what... you can't just..." She stuttered, embarrassed by emptier confession but maybe because this one felt truly real, she felt strange.
I turned my attention back to the remaining rabbits, a small smirk playing at the corners of my mouth as I picked up the skinning knife again. The work felt different now—less like drudgery and more like preparation for something greater.
Beside me, Lisa attempted to return to her own tasks, but I could see her hands trembling slightly as she worked. She kept shooting glances in my direction when she thought I wasn't looking, her brow furrowed in concentration as she tried to process what I'd said. Every few minutes, she'd start to speak, then seem to think better of it and return to her work with renewed focus.
I smiled to myself.
Yeah, I am definitely going to make her my wife and show her what true pleasure is on my bed and out of it as well.