The Hero's Coffin - Chapter 1

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TL Note: This is an MTL translation. I'm open to someone else taking over the novel but I'd really prefer if you contacted me first. I promise I don't bite. I'm only doing this out of passion for the novel, nothing else. Feel free to correct me if you spot any errors or would prefer a different romanization. I hate romanization so much >.>

If you need to contact me, leave a comment here or DM me on Discord @kdjs.

Original publish date: 08/04/24

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Chapter 1.    1%

I transmigrated into another world. 

If you were suddenly hit by Truck-kun one day and found yourself in a fantasy world, what role would you choose to play?

You could be a swordsman or a magician possessing special abilities, or maybe someone of noble or royal blood who had the power to shape the world with your own hands, or even a life of wealth where you could eat and play to your heart’s content. The choices were endless. 

I, too, once dreamed of such a hopeful life, but…

“Meal time, prisoner number 444.”

I found myself in the body of a prisoner. 

A prisoner on death row scheduled to die tomorrow.

***

If you’re wondering how all this started, we need to go back a few hours. 

It was a normal day like any other. 

I woke up late, spending most of the time in bed. After eating a decent amount of freezer meals, I got ready for a late night outing. I put on a black hoodie and jeans, pulling down my dark purple baseball cap on my head as a final touch. 

“Whew…”

I could tell that winter wasn’t over yet when my breath came out of my mouth white. I started to walk, though it felt awkward moving my joints after spending all day in bed at my cramped studio apartment.

But I had to move them in order to make money. Now, I just needed to cross the street and then I would soon reach my destination…

Ding!

The cheerful notification sound stopped me in my tracks. It was during the pedestrian signal, so I could’ve crossed, but my instincts stopped me. I took out my cell phone and checked the text message that had just been sent. 

[ DU Store Manager ]

[ Ivan-ah… I’m sorry, but you don’t have to show up to work today. I’ll put in the deposit for the work you did up until yesterday. Thank you for your hard work. ]
10:50 PM

It was a sudden notice of dismissal, but there was only one thought on my mind right now. 

You should’ve contacted me earlier. I already came all the way out here. 

I’ve had this job for a month now, so I figured it was time for me to get fired. But if you were going to fire me, I wish you told me at least a few hours before my shift, or even at least half an hour before it started. What reasonable person would give only a ten minute notice? I felt even more annoyed because I was already in front of the convenience store. 

[ DU¹ Store Manager ]

[ Sorry for telling you at the last minute ㅜㅜ are you already on your way??

It’s not because you didn’t do your job!! you did great, it’s just that the early morning sales have been a little slow lately ㅜㅜ I’m going to take over the early morning shift from now on… sorry…

And I’m saying this for your sake… from now on, you should smile a little more~ be more cheerful~~ sometimes looking at you would spook me haha ^^; I saw the CCTV and people wouldn’t come in because they were also spooked when they saw you… ~lol ^^; i hope you don’t take this the wrong way… ha ]

10:52 PM

It was common to ramble on when one was embarrassed, and sometimes that would result in unnecessary things being said. I looked up and saw the store manager chatting with the evening shift part-timer at the convenience store before glancing back down at my phone screen.

Sometimes, people think that as long as they add a disclaimer like “I’m saying this for your sake”, everything they say should be taken as warm advice and encouragement. It’d been a while since someone tried to pull that on me, but I guess I wasn’t too surprised. I shoved my phone back into my pocket. 

“I wonder what the customers said about me…”

It didn’t matter what the part-time job was, I was always fired within a month at most. While the ways the manager fired me tended to vary, the reason was always the same. 

‘The customers are uncomfortable around you.’

It had been like that since I was little. With skin so pale that the veins could be seen, dark circles under my hollow eyes, and a gloomy expression… Honestly, the appearance alone would be enough to make someone keep their distance from me, but there was even a much more obvious reason. 

I could see ghosts.

I must’ve been able to see them since the moment I was born. The staff who took care of newborns at the orphanage would sometimes feel a chill down their back from the way a particular baby’s gaze was always directed at their back. The other children who grew up alongside me also became wary of me. As a result, I was kicked out of the orphanage as soon as I was old enough to be independent. 

Since I’d been seeing ghosts since forever ago, I wasn’t afraid of them unless they were an evil spirit. I usually ignored them, but there were times when I was young when I would try to help people who were haunted. I told them to be careful at night, warned them to stay away from certain buildings, or asked them if they had obtained any strange objects recently. 

Half of the people were grateful while the other half would get pissed off. I would’ve been happy with the former, but then they’d persistently ask questions trying to wring more information out of me, it turned out to be an annoying affair with either crowd. I hated getting involved in complicated matters. 

Eventually, I stopped mentioning them altogether. Now, I only occasionally saw the odd ghost from time to time. 

‘I didn’t feel good about it.’

But just the act of staring blankly into space was enough to make others feel uncomfortable. Throughout elementary and high school, students would avoid me while teachers also shunned me. They would often call me ‘you know, that kid’. I felt like a puzzle piece that had no place in the world. 

I wasn’t particularly hurt by this treatment, but it was a little unfair to be thrown out as soon as I stepped foot in the shaman’s abode, with salt even being thrown at me. I thought they’d accept me as a comrade, but they treated me like I was an evil spirit instead.

I wondered if adulthood would change things, but it hadn’t. The only thing that changed was the fact that I’m less likely to be told to “be cheerful” now that I’m older. It’d been a long time since I heard that phrase, until today when the streak had unfortunately been broken. 

“I was going to buy juice at the convenience store…”

I didn’t want to go into a store where I’d just been fired to buy something. Even though I grew up receiving all kinds of stares, I’m not that thick-skinned. I didn’t want to cause any inconvenience to the part-timers and the store manager who were likely talking about me. 

Instead, I decided to go to a convenience store on the way home. It was strangely colder than usual, so I picked up my pace a little. It was a dark night, with a sky full of clouds to the point where no moonlight peeked through.

Meow—

Just before I turned the corner, a faint sound caught my attention. I instinctively turned my head to the source of the noise, a slight smile spread across my lips. It was a black cat. 

Some have said black cats were a bad omen, but I thought that was just ridiculous nonsense. All cats in the world were cute, and there was no crime for being cute, so why would you accuse them of being a bad omen? How dare humans speak such ill of cats. Ah, maybe there was a factional civil war among the cats. Maybe the cheese², mackerel, calico, and all the other factions were intentionally trying to alienate black cats. 

It was cute to imagine, but now was not the time to continue having fun fantasizing. 

“It’s dangerous there. Come here.”

The black cat was sitting in the middle of the road. I felt endlessly anxious about that, so I gestured, yelled, and even threatened it to move, but the cat didn’t budge at all and just continued to stare at me. I felt like it was trying to call out to me. 

It seems I wasn’t given a choice. I ran forward with a hand reached out towards the cat…

Screeeeeech—

The last thing I heard was a loud pounding in my ears, intense headlights spilt all over the road, and as I turned my head, I recognized the bumper of a truck right in front of me.

That was the end.

There was no pain.

***

So then, I opened my eyes in this place. 

At first, of course, I thought I was dead. I assumed the reason why my consciousness didn’t immediately stop was because I was being given one last time to look back on my life before I died. All I was curious about was whether the cat was safe or not. 

Strangely enough, I think the cat might’ve whispered something to me before I died…

‘Now… —ium… become…”

I laughed. Death is so futile that it led me to having these ridiculous delusions. I didn’t have any great expectations or passions in my life, and I didn’t live life to the fullest, but I wanted a modest death. Just as I was thinking how dying to save a cat was excessive, I froze. 

…Did I just laugh? How? I was surely dead, or was this all an illusion created in my mind?

Clang!

At that moment, as if to tell me that it wasn’t an illusion, a sound from outside hit my ears. It was the sound of a heavy door being pushed open. With a gasp, I opened my eyes. 

Color started seeping into the monochrome landscape. It was a brightly lit place… brightly lit?

Sunlight. 

It had previously been an ominous and dark night, but now my body was being bathed in the warm midday sun. Even in the sun, these jet-black robes on me were unfamiliar. 

With wide-open eyes, I kept looking around while feeling my body with my hands. My hands moved normally, and there was no pain anywhere in my body. 

Could this be… Truck-kun?

Since I was always alone and got bored often, I read a few webnovels. Usually, in the case of novels tagged with ‘transmigration’, the protagonist was often someone who struggled in their previous life, but would live a wonderful life after possessing a new body in another dimension. 

As the transmigration trope started gaining widespread popularity, most webnovels started using ‘Truck-kun’ as a way to transition to a new body. While walking to college campus? Thud! Going to a job interview? Blam! Even on the way to take the college entrance exam³? Splat!

Death may be meaningless, but the new life that came after was always sublime. 

I felt a sense of anticipation rising inside of me. Now that I’ve been hit by Truck-kun, what arrangements awaited me? The most common setups were being the eldest, second, or youngest son of a royal family, or maybe it was a family famous for their swordsmanship skills, or even a renowned magician family. Perhaps a duchy that kept the imperial family in check, or a dark guild that has the entire empire in its palm?

Anything would be fine. Now, it was time for a new and hopeful life…!

“Meal time, prisoner number 444.”

Huh?

Before I could even comprehend the words that were spoken by the deep voice—Clatter! Something fell to the floor, a sharp sound like the sound of a plate hitting the stone ground. 

Only then did my field of vision expand. The square room, which contained nothing except a tattered blanket, looked like a prison cell. The sunlight I perceived earlier was pouring in through a small window above, a window so small that he could barely put his hand through it and it was lined with thick metal bars. 

Clang! A violent sound came from the side. Because I’d been busy staring blankly at the window, someone who might’ve thought I was ignoring them kicked the prison bars to get my attention. 

Startled by the noise, I reflexively flinched and turned around. Dull blonde hair and dark blue eyes of a man clad in iron armor, presumably a prison guard, came into view. There was a sneer on his face. It was a foreign appearance that definitely indicated this was a different world. 

“You won’t even think about eating food since you’re going to die tomorrow? Then, I’ll kindly throw it all away for you!”

The man flipped the tray over with his foot. Pieces of the black bread rolled across the cold stone floor, though it looked hard enough to be made of stone itself. Soup, or what was probably supposed to be soup, was a dark, murky color. It seems like the plate had only contained inedible garbage in the first place.

I also noticed the handcuffs around my wrists. Taking into account the situation, the room, and what the man had said, I finally came to a conclusion…

Am I on death row?

But I just died, didn’t I?

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1. DU is a parody of CU convenience stores. 

2. A specific term used for orange-colored tabbies

3. Reference to CSAT, the most important exam in South Korea that determines your university

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