Emma...Emma? Oh, right! That’s my name. Emma Stewart. How could I have forgotten my own name? It must’ve been that stupid washbasin knocking me out of my senses.
Wait. Washbasin? What washbasin?
Oh right, the washbasin from the megadeath thing.
Wait. Megadeath? What is a megadeath? I can’t remember...
What’s happening? What’s going on? Where did all these memories come from?
My head felt like it was being flooded with new information. Things I never knew before, but I knew now. What was happening?
There were people I’d never seen before, but I knew them.
There were these incomprehensible vehicles, but I somehow knew what they were.
There were places I was sure I’d never seen before, but I knew all about them. How?
There was someone there who was me, but also not me. No...they were both me.
I...couldn’t handle it.
“I’m sorry, Martha... I think...I need a nap...”
“What? Wait! M-My lady!”
And I was out. I lost consciousness like my body needed to do a hard reboot to sort out everything that was going on in my head. I always said that if something was wrong, you should just sleep it off. You should feel nice and refreshed once you wake up again. “Should” being the key word.
After that, I was laid up for a whopping three days, slipping in and out of consciousness. Once I awoke and had sorted out what had happened to me, I realized that I was both Minato Tanaka and the countess Emma Stewart. My maid, Martha, filled me in on what had happened three days prior.
“You cannot go doing something like this again! Sneaking strange mushrooms you found in the yard into your family’s dinner is just too much! Luckily, nobody was hurt, but can you imagine what people would say if a count’s entire family were to perish from food poisoning?!”
“I-I’m sorry...?” I stammered.
Apparently, the cause of my ailment had been the mushrooms I’d happened upon in the courtyard, and Martha was giving me an earful about it. I couldn’t help but wonder how the heck she found out I was the one who slipped them in. The dishes had all been nicely charcoal-grilled and everything... I could have sworn I hadn’t left any evidence, but she said it was just “in my nature.”
Martha probably didn’t know this, but those mushrooms were matsutake mushrooms. Seriously! Matsutake! And not those teeny tiny slices they have in soups or rice dishes either. They were the real deal.
I guessed the intensity of their deliciousness must have awoken memories of my past life. But I couldn’t tell Martha that. At least, not yet. Not that anyone would believe me.
Wait. Did Martha say the whole family got food poisoning?
“Martha...was I the only one who collapsed after dinner that day?” I asked, thinking my family might be dealing with the effects of the matsutake themselves.
“No. After they ate those mushrooms, the master, mistress, George, and William all started speaking in strange tongues and collapsed.”
Maybe the matsutake had affected my family here too. Or maybe they were in shock because people weren’t accustomed to eating matsutake in this world or something. Matsutake really is that good, after all. Just thinking about it made me drool. That full-bodied scent when biting into it...that perfect crispy mouthfeel...that fully Japanese flavor and scent was enough to bring back memories of a past life... Matsutake truly was sinfully delicious.
Funnily enough, though, the first thing I remembered when I ate it was what had happened right before I died. Or rather, Minato Tanaka’s final moments in the other world.
Right after we’d cracked open our beer cans, the earth began to shake like it was about to split. We couldn’t even stand, let alone run. I couldn’t tell if it was the wall or the ceiling coming down around me, but I heard a terrible sound as my home crumbled. After that, there had only been unimaginable pain.
“My lady?”
Martha must have noticed my furrowed brow, because she looked deeply worried. It made sense from her perspective. I had just started to recover from a long illness. But I just couldn’t stop thinking back to those awful final moments in the other world. It was such a horrible way to go.
“Man...I wish I’d at least gotten to drink the beer!” I muttered, not even realizing I’d started speaking in Japanese.
Martha was shocked. “That’s exactly what everyone else said! What kind of strange incantation is that?!”
“It’s not an incantation, Martha. It’s just Japanese,” I replied. “Wait...did you say everyone else said it too?!”
It would’ve made sense; all of us Tanakas loved our alcohol.
Martha looked positively baffled. “And what in the world is ‘Japanese,’ my lady?”
“It’s just a foreign language. Probably from somewhere in the far east or something.” It was a rather vague answer, but we had no diplomatic relations with any of the lands in the east of this world, so most of it was uncharted territory. In fact, even the best maps this country had to offer didn’t include the full scope of this world. “More importantly, is the rest of the family okay?”
“The rest of them recovered after about an hour and were back to their usual activities the very next day. It seems they’d only had a small bite of their mushrooms, while you’d scarfed down a whole one...”
I could tell she was passive-aggressively telling me I needed to do something about my eating habits, but it was matsutake, okay? I’d hardly ever gotten to eat them in my previous life either! They were so good that my instincts had cried for them even after I’d lost my memories!
“I must say, they have all been acting rather strangely, though. I’ve seen them looking awfully perplexed since then, even though they should be used to your...proclivities.”
Oh, c’mon, Martha. What’s that supposed to mean? She’d always been pretty cold, but I’d just recovered from my illness. Would it have killed her to be a little nicer?
“Now, I know I’ve said this before, but I am deathly worried about you, my lady. You will be twelve years old this year, and next year you’ll be living in the capital. I’m begging you to stop with this incessant obsession with bugs, mushrooms, insects, and especially bugs!”