Thus began the very first Tanaka family meeting.
Emma’s House wasn’t just a castle for her and her bugs. It was also where the Stewart family researched silkworms, and the building was even outfitted with small meeting spaces as well.
Emma had been obsessed with bugs since she was old enough to think, so this was the perfect place to cultivate a budding entomological genius. Emma carefully bred the silkworms, refined their meals, and constructed the ideal environment to raise them in. Now, a single silkworm in her care was an unbelievable fifty centimeters. She had hoped to breed silkworms that could produce enough silk for one whole dress per worm, but the food and upkeep would have become untenable if she’d kept pursuing that goal. Her new project was to see if she could maintain their size while also increasing the number of cocoons they produced. She was truly a beast when it came to these things.
Emma’s House was a place everyone felt at home in, so that was where the family gathered to discuss their newly discovered reincarnation.
The problem was...they were all so gorgeous. Emma had thought her little brother was stunning, but now there were three more to take in. Her father and older brother both had blond hair and violet eyes. They weren’t really pretty boys, but they both had handsome, chiseled features. Her father was especially built, and had a tall frame to match.
Her mother had long, elegantly styled auburn hair and light green eyes, with a beautiful intensity about her that gave her a domineering air. She seemed like someone you wouldn’t ever want to see mad. Actually, she didn’t just seem like it. Emma had plenty of memories to prove just how scary her mother was when she was upset.
Minato’s parents, who had been in their sixties in their previous life, were now about the same age that Minato had been in her previous life. She couldn’t help but be jealous of her mother’s commanding beauty. Though Emma had the same blonde hair as her father and older brother, it just wasn’t as lustrous. She had the same sparkling, light green eyes as her mother, but without the intensity. She looked more like a space case than anything else—not a trace of strength or ferocity in her.
Well, she’d have to put a bit more thought into her appearance, then. Emma might’ve had her head full of bugs up until now, but there was still time for her yet. That being said, she had to wonder what the rest of her family thought of their new beautiful bodies, considering the Tanakas had all been painfully average in their previous life.
“So, uh...is it just me, or are we all, like, stupidly beautiful?”
“Uh... No? This is just what people look like in this world.” The eldest sibling, George responded as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Well! I guess that’s that, then!
Maybe it was because Minato had inherited Emma’s life and Emma had never really considered others’ appearances (because she didn’t care), or maybe everyone else’s past life memories were still pretty hazy. Regardless, it seemed the only one who was weirded out by their looks was Minato, since she was the only one who had all of her memories from her previous life. And as established before, even her stupid little brother was beautiful now.
“Okay, but we were all total Joe Schmos with black hair and black eyes back in the other world! It’s weirding me out!” Standing before her was the most beautiful family, but if she let her guard down...she’d see how they looked in their previous life in comparison, which made it even harder to let go.
“You say that, but I think you’ve been adorable no matter what world you’re in,” her father, Leonard, said with a big goofy grin. Apparently, he was just as sweet on his daughter in this world as he had been in their previous life.
The goal of this family meeting was for Minato and Peyta to impart their manga and light novel knowledge to the rest of the family, but the small talk afterward was when things really started to liven up. The most important part—the cycle of reincarnation—was easily explained away, because Japanese people didn’t really need any kind of otaku knowledge to understand the basics of Eastern philosophy. In fact, it was a bit anticlimactic the way the rest of the family just kind of accepted it, but the Tanakas had never been the type to think too deeply.
On a side note, in the country they’d been reincarnated into, black hair was a symbol of royal lineage. As Japanese people, it was a bit strange to have found themselves in a place where black hair was a rarity, but it also meant there were no blond princes on white horses or whatnot riding around either. If this family’s beauty was the norm here, it was bound to be a huge sparklefest of beauty from here on out.
“Anyway! There is something far more important to discuss here!” Melsa, the matriarch of the family said, staring down each of the siblings one by one. “You three are getting married in this life! I want some grandbabies! Do I make myself clear?”
The three siblings shared uncomfortable glances in silence.
“I said, do I make myself clear?”
Getting scolded by their mother was scary enough, but her beauty made her even more terrifying. She had always been harping on the siblings to get married in their previous life too, but her intensity now was off the charts.
“Mother, I’m only nine years old right now! I think marriage can wait a bit, right?”
Nice one, Peyta! You can’t get on our cases when we’re just widdle kids! Telling us to have babies when we’re not even grown-ups is just unthinkable!
But their mother was undeterred. “Not to worry. We’ll make it work.”
“No, we will not!” the siblings shot back. There were some lines that did not need to be crossed.
“W-Well, uh...maybe Wataru-nii... I mean, George can get married first! He’s the oldest! I’ll think about it once he gets married!”
“Oh, come on! Don’t put it all on me! I... Uh... Let’s think rationally about this, mother! I’m uh...I’m only fifteen, you know? So in our previous life, that’s like only in middle school! And I only just got to start going along on hunting trips and stuff...”
Yeah, that’s the stuff! George has got us covered—
“George...” Their mother’s eyes narrowed. “You know that men can get married at sixteen in this world, right? And it’s fourteen for girls, Emma. These are the exact same excuses you used for why you couldn’t get married in your past lives, you know!”
The two siblings groaned. Why did parents always have to remember the worst things? It just made everything so much harder!
No matter what they said, there was no fighting their mother’s wishes.
“Don’t you three worry. I’ll start picking out some potential suitors for you all tomorrow!” Melsa beamed at the three of them as they hung their heads despondently.
From the moment the topic of marriage came up, their father had been noticeably silent. He knew better than to poke a mama bear.
Thus did the first Tanaka family meeting come to a close, their futures in this world all forcibly changed. From then on, it was all about marriage for the three siblings.