My little brother was gorgeous. Heita, or as I called him, Peyta, of all people, was stunningly beautiful. Now that I’d recovered my memories of my past life, I couldn’t believe it for a second.
“How the heck are you so damn cute?! Like, you’re gorgeous, dude! It’s giving me the creeps!”
“Yeah, that’s you all right... Mina-nee’s the only one I know who talks like that!”
Peyta’s expression was a mix of emotions, but even that was gorgeous to look at. We Tanakas had all been painfully average-looking. Peyta had been especially so since he never shaved and his naturally curly hair was always bushy and unkempt beyond imagination. He always looked so grungy, I’d always comment on that in lieu of a standard greeting. The only thing he had going for him was how nice he was, and he was such a baby that he couldn’t even hold down a job. Just when we thought he’d found something, he’d always quit before we knew it. He was a loser through and through.
Unfortunately, that same helplessness just made him lovable in his own way, so our relationship was actually pretty decent.
“Martha told me you were acting kind of weird, so... I thought maybe you’d been reincarnated too.”
I still hadn’t come to terms with my own reincarnation. I mean, that sort of thing was too good to be true. But there, right in front of my eyes, was my reincarnated little brother. And he was adorable.
The little jerk... How much good karma did he collect while he was freelancing or whatever?! His hair is silky smooth, for Pete’s sake!
“Hey, so... How much of your past life do you remember, anyway?” William asked.
“Uh... All of it?” My memories as Minato were about the same as they had been right before I’d died in the earthquake.
“Really? For me, it’s all been slowly coming back, but...there’s a lot that still feels pretty foggy.”
Martha was probably right. It was likely based on how much matsutake each person had eaten. And if William’s memory was slowly coming back, then maybe he hadn’t even had to sleep it off. And (although this was changing the topic), what about everyone else? Had they also been reincarnated or not?
“Peyta, did you ask anyone else in our family about this whole reincarnation business?”
“Uh, yeah no. Unlike you, Mina... Er, I mean, Emma, I’m a totally normal kid in this world. I couldn’t go around asking our family weird questions!”
Even if his memory was a bit spotty, reincarnation was such a ridiculous situation, I’d kind of hoped he’d at least tried to check.
“Wait, what the heck do you mean, unlike me?! I don’t wanna hear that kinda crap from someone who was a total bum in our previous life!”
Peyta could only groan in response.
I just don’t get it. Why is everyone going on and on about how weird I am in this world? Whatever. I’m definitely gonna have to keep my mouth in check, because my manners totally slipped just now. Maybe it’s a side effect of the reincarnation, but my verbiage and manners are getting all mixed up. It’s fine if it’s just me and Peyta, but I’m gonna have to be more careful.
I could understand how hard it would be to ask anyone else in the family about their situation. In the forty-plus years of my combined lives, I’d never had to ask such a ridiculous question either. It made sense why William had waited for me to wake up. If our positions had been reversed, I would’ve gone to him first too.
My previous life Minato Tanaka, had been a bit of an otaku. She read more manga and light novels than the average person. Her little brother, Heita, had been the same way. Add in their older brother, and it could be said that swapping manga was the secret to the siblings’ good relationship.
Minato and Peyta were familiar enough with the isekai genre, but their older brother, Wataru, had been more of a manga nerd than a light novel one. While reincarnation appeared in manga from time to time, the explanations tended to be pretty wordy, so there was no telling whether Wataru knew about it or not.
No wonder Peyta came to me first. And he used my adorable purple spider to chase Martha out of the room, just in case.
Gosh, look at how cute you are, making your web like that...
My heart skipped a beat. It was a feeling that Minato had never felt. Emma Stewart was supposed to be a...countess? But her reaction just then was more like an elementary school boy in his bug nerd phase.
Weirdly enough, I wasn’t all that broken up about Minato’s death. Sure, I had some regrets that weren’t beer-related, but it didn’t feel like any time had passed between then and now. I was even kind of glad I didn’t have to go to work the next day.
It seemed like my brain mostly held information from Minato. I wasn’t sure if it was because my life as Minato was longer, or if it was because Emma’s brain was just bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Both Minato and Emma had huge appetites, and although she didn’t squeal about them like Emma did, Minato liked bugs well enough too.
I just didn’t feel like there was much difference in our personalities. It was like Emma complimented Minato perfectly, each filling in what the other lacked without really losing anything either. Regardless, I was worried about how the heck I was going to fit in as a lady of high society. Minato was a commoner through and through, and Emma might as well have leaped straight from the pages of the Heian Lady Who Loved Insects.
I’ll just have to uh...give it a good old college try, I guess... Ha ha... Yeah...
“So, weird question, but did you ever play any otome games, Mina-nee?” William asked with a very serious expression.
“Why, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah, me neither. And I don’t really remember any stories that resemble this world either... At least, I don’t think I do.”
In many of the isekai stories I’d read in my past life, someone would be reincarnated into the world of their favorite otome game or something, but neither Minato nor Heita had any memories of playing one. Here we were, hoping to use our memories of our past life to make things easier for ourselves, but it seemed we wouldn’t get the chance to be overpowered or overly cautious.
Reality could be so cruel. I knew that, having lived thirty-five years in my previous life. Being untouchable in another world was an untouchable concept, it seemed...
“Wait a sec! I played a game where I romanced Shingen Takeda once! You know, the feudal lord?!” The memories of those lovely CGs came flooding back into my mind. That counted, right? I was pretty sure that counted as an otome game. I played it several years ago and I definitely didn’t finish it, but I remembered the gist of it.
“Why in the world were you romancing a feudal lord?”
The honest answer was that Minato had been a bit of a history nerd.
But despite having remembered my gamer girl history, as I looked around the room and searched through Emma’s memories, I realized we were in a Western-ish world I’d never seen before. If this were Sengoku-era Japan like in that mobile otome game I played, then I could’ve easily cheated my way through life here. Heck, I probably could’ve romanced the real Shingen Takeda.
Now that was the biggest shame of all.
Though truth be told, I really would’ve wanted to marry Kanetsugu Naoe, the samurai... I would’ve polished his famous helmet every day with as much love as he lavished upon it.
Anyway, the reason I said this country was Western-ish was because it was just slightly off from the Western world I knew from my previous life. I started noticing the weird differences from the moment William brought up otome games. We were raising silkworms here, so clearly we hadn’t needed a Silk Road, right? So there were probably some other differences in this world’s history, but I couldn’t really pinpoint them right away. I was a Japanese history buff, not a world history buff. It looked like any prior knowledge I had from my previous life would be totally useless to us here.
What was worse was that if this was an otome game, we had a pretty big problem on our hands.
“This is bad... If this is one of those worlds with a villainess or something, we’ll have to avoid her evil schemes!” I moaned.
The otome game I had played hadn’t had a noble villainess or rival teahouse girl or anything, meaning I didn’t have any tips or tricks on how to avoid a bad end. The thought of getting humiliated at a graduation party in front of everyone was too much to bear.
“If it’s any consolation, I think you’d make a pretty great villainess yourself, Mina-nee,” William said, with not a shred of malice in those big beautiful eyes of his. I wanted to hit him so badly, but I restrained myself. Normally, I would’ve punched him to high heaven, but I couldn’t hurt such a beautiful face!
It’s not fair! Why did you get such a stupidly handsome face?! It’s so gross!
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to check with the rest of the family later,” I said, relaxing my fist and hopping off the bed straight onto Peyta/William’s little toe.
“OW!”
It was my job as his big sister to teach him that even the handsomest little guy would be in for a world of hurt if he acted up. I couldn’t possibly hurt his face for obvious reasons, but a pinky toe was a perfect compromise.