Pain came first.

  Leo's ribs throbbed with each breath. His skull pounded like something had crawled inside and was trying to dig its way out. Every muscle in his body was aching.

  He tried to open his eyes and failed.

  Is this...the hostpital?

  But the smell was wrong.

  Antiseptic should have burned his nostrils. It was the smell that had defined his world for two years. Instead, he breathed in woodsmoke and dried herbs, and a faint trace of something that smelled suspiciously like blood.

  His fingers twitched and found rough wool beneath them, nothing like hospital sheets.

  Where...

  He forced his eyes open. And the first thing Leo saw were old wooden beams crossing a low ceiling.

  This wasn't the hospital.

  Leo's breath caught. He tried to sit up and the world tilted violently sideways. A pained grunt escaped him, and he colpsed back against the thin mattress stuffed with what felt like straw.

  "Don't move."

  An unfamiliar female voice reached his ears.

  He turned his head toward her. Such a simple task was now costing him all of his remaining strength.

  She was sitting on a low stool beside the bed, close enough that he could see the weave of her dress. His gaze traveled upward automatically, still hazy with confusion as he tried to take in her features.

  Full hips pressed against the stool's edge. A waist that curved inward, soft, but far from delicate. And above that...

  His eyes stopped.

  Her breasts strained against the modest neckline of her pin dress, heavy and round, the fabric pulled taut across them in a way that left little to imagination. They rose and fell with her breathing, and even in his addled state, Leo couldn't help but stare.

  Large. It was the only thing that he could think of. Really rge.

  "Thank god...You're awake."

  His gaze snapped up to her face and found her watching him with an expression he couldn't read.

  It was obvious that she had seen him staring. His eyes had been fixed on her chest for a solid three seconds and she'd been looking right at him. But for some reason, she didn't mention it.

  Her face was beautiful in the way a girl next door was - heart-shaped, soft-looking cheeks, framed by chestnut hair pulled back in a practical braid that had started to unravel.

  A beauty mark sat near the corner of her left eye. Her brows were strong, her lips full, her skin fair with a scattering of freckles across her colrbone where the dress's neckline dipped.

  Leo had no idea who she was.

  "How do you feel? Are you hurting anywhere?" she asked. He could hear the worry and frustration in her voice.

  He opened his mouth to answer and found his throat parched.

  "Water, water," she said, already reaching for a cy cup on the small table beside her. "Here, take small sips. You've been out since yesterday."

  She leaned forward to bring the cup to his lips. The water was lukewarm and tasted faintly of minerals, but Leo was too thirsty and tired to care. He managed three swallows before she pulled the cup back.

  "Slowly. You'll make yourself sick."

  "Where... am I?"

  Finally, he managed to speak.

  Her brow furrowed deeper.

  "This is our home. Don't you remember?"

  "You hit your head," she continued, watching him with growing unease. "When those bastards beat you. You hit it on the cobblestones. Do you remember what happened?"

  She stopped, and for a second, Leo could see the fear in her eyes.

  "Do you...remember me?"

  Should I? The question almost escaped before he caught it. Because the answer was no. He had never seen this woman before in his life. But it didn't take a genius to know that was the wrong answer.

  Lucky for him, when he was trying to find a way to dodge the question, a wave of memory crashed into his head, and he remembered.

  He was indeed on a hospital bed, dying from the terminal illness that had been haunting him for years. He was ready to let go...

  Then what...? What happened?

  Leo couldn't remember anything after that in details. He felt like he had a long dream, and met someone in a garden surrounded by a blinding, holy light.

  And then he was here. And this woman...

  "I...You're Sera, my wife," Leo said. "Sorry... everything's blurry."

  Or rather, she was the wife of this body's former owner.

  She exhaled. Relief loosened something in her shoulders.

  "The healer said that might happen. She said you would recover eventually if you manage to wake up. Do you remember anything else? Who did this to you?"

  "I...Don't remember..."

  "You should sleep more," Sera finally said after a long sigh, giving him a smile and rising from the stool. "I'll make broth. You need to eat something."

  She moved toward the other end of the small room, and soon, he could hear the sounds of her stirring a pot, adding wood to embers.

  Leo y there, staring at unfamiliar beams, breathing through the pain in his ribs, and tried to convince himself this was still a dream.

  But he knew it wasn't.

  "I died. I'm sure of it. But then...I get to live again? Why did I have to trade a bedridden body for another bedridden body?"

  On the other hand, Leo had hope. He wasn't ill now, just bruised and beaten up. He would recover.

  More memory of this body's former owner was still flowing into his head, and he was trying to absorb it all.

  His name was still Leo. He had a wife named Sera. Their wedding was just a week ago. Arranged. They hadn't consummated their retionship, because the old Leo wanted them to fall in love with each other first.

  Bro died before even getting to sleep with such a beautiful wife, such a shame...

  The second day arrived with the same gray light seeping through the shutters, but the fog in Leo’s head had begun to thin.

  He spent the hours dozing, floating in and out of consciousness, each dip into the dark surfacing another piece of the man who used to inhabit this skin.

  Old Leo was… simple. He woke with the sun, thought about the weather and the crops, went to bed when the work was done.

  He wanted to love Sera, but he didn’t know how. His entire approach had been a clumsy, earnest mirroring of what he’d learned from his father - quiet, stoic and hardworking.

  He was a kind, but terribly boring man, Leo thought. His detachment must have felt like cruelty to the new wife Sera.

  Speaking of Sera...

  She was beautiful, kind, and strong. 'The flower of the vilge', as they said, if it wasn't for her family's unfortunate circumstance.

  Her father, Gregor, had been a respected guard once, with honor and a modest wealth. Three years ago, that had all been stripped away.

  The Baron’s son, drunk on entitlement and cheap wine, had cornered a undress in an alley. Because it was too dark, Gregor didn't recognize him and intervened, with more force than necessary..

  The Baron demanded retribution. Gregor was cast out, disgraced. No pension, no prospects, nothing to leave his children but a tarnished name.

  What man of good standing would marry the daughter of a disgraced guard and a undress? Especially a daughter with a willful tongue and hands that held a spear more gracefully than they held a needle.

  And so she had married a poor farmer with no name to speak of. A man whose only asset was a small plot of nd and a gentle disposition.

  That wasn't to say Sera wasn't hopeful. She had hoped that she could change the old Leo, making him more strong-willed. She knew that if he kept to farming, they would be poor forever.

  He died before she could convince him, and what she had managed to achieve before it happened amounted to nothing.

  By the third day, the dull throb in Leo's ribs had receded to a faint, persistent ache. The memories of the old Leo had stopped coming somewhere during the night.

  Now, Leo was starting to get bored. He’d stared at the ceiling beams until he felt he could draw their grain from memory. He’d counted the knots in the wood floor. He’d listened to the distant sounds of the vilge, trying to stitch together a picture of a life he remembered, but hadn't actually experienced.

  It was in the afternoon that something 'interesting' happened.

  Sera entered, her face slightly flushed from exertion as she lugged a heavy wooden bucket. Water sloshed over the rim, falling onto the packed-earth floor. She set it down with a thud next to the bed, before reaching for the hem of his shirt.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Washing you," she smiled and answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And changing your bandages. You've been sweating."

  Whatever Leo was about to say died in his throat as she peeled the top off his shoulders. The movement sent a sharp pang through his ribs, and he grunted, falling back against the pillow.

  "Sorry. Did I hurt you?"

  "It's fine."

  His torso was bare now. And for the first time, he saw his body. It was lean, slightly muscur from years of farm work. A far cry from his body back on Earth, which was drained of life by the illness.

  Sera wrung out a cloth and wiped at the grime on his arms. She tried to be efficient, but her eyes lingered.

  Leo felt her gaze skate over his chest, to the curve of his colrbones, then down to the surprising definition in his abdomen. She was pretending not to look, but he could just feel it.

  An unfamiliar heat creep up his neck. He'd never been looked at like this before, especially by an attractive woman.

  "Your ribs are looking a lot better," she prodded gently at the bandages wrapped around his torso. Her voice filled with relief.

  "Yes, thank you, Sera. Sorry for making you take care of me."

  She just gave him a gentle smile and turned back to her work.

  Soon, Sera finished washing his upper body. Leo thought the ordeal was over, but he was wrong.

  Her hands moved lower, to the string of his trousers.

  "No!" he said, the word sharper than he intended. He tried to push her hands away, but a fresh wave of pain nced through him. "Don't. I can do it."

  "You can barely sit up, Leo," she paused, her fingers still hooked in the drawstring. Her hazel eyes met his. "You're going to get a rash lying in your own sweat. It needs to be done."

  Her hands tugged the loose-fitting pants down his hips, over the bandage on his thigh, and down to his ankles.

  And there he was. Utterly exposed.

  The cool air on his bare skin was a shock. He squeezed his eyes shut, a mortified heat flooding his entire body.

  Leo wanted nothing more than to sink into the mattress and disappear.

  "It's alright," Sera said, her voice softer now. "We're married. This isn't… anything to be ashamed of."

  But her words did nothing to soothe the mortification. He could feel her gaze, even through his closed eyelids.

  Leo risked a peek.

  Unlike the calmness in her voice, Sera's cheeks were flushed. A pretty pink bloomed across her skin, cshing with the freckles on her colrbones. Her hands worked quickly on his legs, but her eyes…

  They darted upwards, a quick gnce at the softness nestled between his thighs, before snapping back to her work.

  "Deep gash here, on your thigh. The healer had to stitch it twice." Sera's voice cut through his embarrassment, trying so hard to be calm.

  She gently dabbed at the area with a clean cloth. But her eyes weren't focused solely on the wound. They would dart to it, and then in the next breath, flick upward toward the equipment between his legs.

  "The floor will need mopping when I'm done," she continued. "And there's no wood for the fire tomorrow. I'll need to borrow some from Mr. Eric before it gets dark."

  Another gnce. This one lingered for a split second longer, her gaze dropping down, before she caught herself and jerked it back to his leg as if scalded. The pink on her cheeks deepened to a dusky rose.

  If you want to look, just looookkkk!!! Leo screamed in his head. Being all innocent and shy about it only makes it worse!!!

  Mercifully, Sera was done. She pulled a clean, thin bnket over him, up to his chest, then fled. Leo y there, trying his best to calm down his heart beats.

  "She saw me..." He wanted to cry. "And the worst part is that I'm way too exhausted and in pain to get an erection."

  At this moment, the wound on his body was nothing compared to the wound on his pride as a man.

  Day four.

  Leo could now breathe without a sharp, stabbing protest, and he was starting to feel an itch deep in his bones. The itch of boredom.

  He started to explore with his eyes again. The cottage was small, a single room that served as kitchen, bedroom, and living space. A simple table with two rough-hewn chairs. A stone hearth, currently cold.

  His gaze swept the walls, searching for any detail he had yet to memorize. Then he saw it.

  Tucked away on a post near the front door, half-hidden by a folded sack of seed potatoes, was a shape he recognized instantly. A crossbow.

  It was an old weapon passed down to Leo from his father - Ronan. It wasn't anything special. Every family in the vilge had at least one weapon in their house to defend themselves.

  Still, old Leo loved that crossbow. He had been using it to hunt for years. Sometimes he got lucky and scored a big prey, but mostly he just got small game, like wild chickens and rabbits.

  A two-year fixation with YouTube suddenly fred to life. Bound to the hospital bed, Leo had nothing to do but binge watch Youtube and read all kind of novels, and his test passion was all about medieval weaponry.

  He had watched and read enough to memorize the way many weapons were made, though he had never touched a real one.

  He really, really wanted to do so.

  When Sera returned, her arms heavy with firewood and her brow damp with sweat, he saw his chance.

  "Sera," he called.

  "You're awake. Do you want to anything to eat? Or water?"

  She turned, her hazel eyes finding his, and a smile showed on her lips.

  "Just bored out of my skull," he said. "That thing on the wall. The crossbow. Could you… could you bring it here?"

  Sera paused, a log of wood held halfway to the hearth. Her eyebrows drew together.

  "The crossbow? Why? You aren't thinking of using it, right?"

  "Just... something to look at. I haven't held it in a long while," he lied smoothly, amazed at how easily the excuse came. "Staring at the ceiling is making my eyes go cross."

  With a shrug, Sera set down the wood, and brought the weapon over to the bed.

  Leo reached out, his fingers brushing against the scarred wood.

  Then, it happened.

  A surge of energy rushed up his arm from the weapon, flooding his senses.

  A game-like, holographic screen popped up in front of his face. On it, simple, glowing words were being typed out.

  [Skill Acquired: Upgrade

  Energy: 500

  Item Identified: Old Crossbow

  Detailed Specifications: [Rudimentary Stock, Yew Prod, Sinew String - 45% integrity]

  Blueprint avaible. Do you wish to begin upgrade?]

  Leo's breath caught in his throat.

  He had been in this world for less than a week. He had a new body, a new life. But this... this was something else. This was the kind of impossible thing that belonged to the stories and games he’d consumed from his sickbed.

  He, Leo, had now proudly joined the rank of 'Isekai Protagonists with Cheat Skills'.

  "Leo? What is it?" Sera asked, leaning forward slightly.

  Forcing himself to look away from the screen, Leo's mind raced.

  Sera can't see this.

  "I... it feels different. It feels heavier than I remember."

  "Is it?"

  "Yes. Well, this might take some time to get used to..." He said, a slow grin spreading across his face. For the first time since waking up here, a spark of pure excitement ignited in his chest.