Sarasa Ichinokura was tired. It was Friday, the end of a long string of overtime. Tomorrow, she could finally rest. Of course, she wouldn’t know what it was like to not be tired. Though Sarasa’s health wasn’t particularly poor, ever since she was very young, she had always been tired.
“Guess it’s nothing new...”
Kindergarten was one thing, but when she’d moved up to grade school, though she naturally envied the kids who had a lot of energy, she had found herself almost envying the sick kids with frequent fevers and coughs more. All Sarasa had was a constant feeling of sluggishness and a headache that never went away, which was hard for the other kids to empathize with.
It was as though there was a limit to the amount of energy she could use on any given day. If she didn’t push herself, she was fine, but if she was even slightly more active than she had the energy for, that sluggishness would come back in full force. Her symptoms were vague, and no doctor could ever determine the reason for the way she felt. It was almost too much for her parents and her school to deal with. It was too much for Sarasa herself to deal with.
It wasn’t bad enough to leave her unable to move, so she couldn’t rest. She couldn’t rest, so she only got more tired. Eventually, she got tired enough that she couldn’t move.
Finally, her mother had simply said to her, “It’s just your constitution. You were born with it.”
“It’s hard now because you have school,” she’d further told Sarasa, “but when you’re an adult, you’ll have something called paid time off. You’ll only work five days a week, and have bigger breaks, so it’s basically just four days a week. It’s okay if you can’t handle more than that.”
Work four days a week and rest three. Sarasa thought she could probably handle that much.
“With the right job, you won’t have to do overtime, like you do with club activities at school, and you won’t have homework either. If you just work enough to cover your living expenses, you’ll get by fine.”
Those words gave Sarasa hope when school was exhausting her, and when she became a working adult, she was able to follow through on them for a few years, using up all of her paid time off every year. She was able to efficiently make use of her limited stamina, and she was even able to enjoy her hobby of making handicrafts, so those first few years after becoming a working adult might have been the happiest ones of her life.
But her workplace had been short-staffed lately, and she’d had to do a lot more overtime over the last six months, so things were getting steadily more difficult.
“Wonder what it’s like to not feel tired...”
That was the last thought Sarasa had as she sunk into slumber after finally making it home from work.
The next time Sarasa opened her eyes, she found herself in a white room for some reason.
“You are to be reborn into another world.”
So said a shimmering, goddess-like woman who stood before her in a white dress.
Ah. A dream.
Still lying down, Sarasa closed her eyes once more. With her eyes closed, she couldn’t see the figure anymore, but she could sense the confusion emanating from her.
“Hey, wait, this is the part where you’re supposed to ask, ‘What’s my reincarnation perk?’ right?”
“Whatsmyreincarnationperk...”
“Not very enthusiastic, are you? At least open your eyes. Come on, have some hopes or dreams or something.”
“Uh-huh...”
Sarasa was too tired to have hopes, dreams, or even curiosity. She heard the goddess sigh and felt her crouch down beside her.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t joke around. Everyone’s so happy to reincarnate lately, I forgot that there are people who aren’t.” She patted Sarasa on the shoulder. “Sometimes, people are born into the wrong world. My job is to guide those people to the world where they’re supposed to be. Though it’s mostly just moving people from Earth to my world.”
“Born into the wrong world?” The implications were preposterous.
“Yes. For instance, your body requires mana, but you were born on Earth, where there’s very little mana, so you’ve always been sluggish, right?”
At that, Sarasa opened her eyes wide. There was a reason for her sluggishness?
“See? How is it now? There’s mana here, so you shouldn’t feel so exhausted.”
Sarasa stood up. She didn’t have a headache. She should have been tired, but she was filled with an unprecedented amount of energy and stamina. She felt like she could do literally anything.
“If you go back to Earth, you won’t have much longer. Why not move to my world and live a healthy life?”
“But...”
“Unlike Earth, my world is filled with mana; there’s almost too much of it, in fact. That’s why we need people like you who can absorb large amounts of mana. And it’s not just you. I’ve moved a lot of people to my world from Earth, and all you need to do is be there. You’re like air purifiers.”
Even if that was true, what about her family and friends back on Earth? And how was she supposed to live in an entirely new place that she didn’t know anything about? Sarasa was a natural pragmatist.
“How exactly will it work, living there?”
“It’s basically the same as it is on Earth. I’ll send you to the person who needs you the most there. I’m sure you’ll be well taken care of. And don’t worry about your family back on Earth. I’ll explain things to them.”
The goddess was not providing her with very much concrete information. This wasn’t something Sarasa could simply decide on the spot.
“There’s no time to hesitate. I’ll send you to Trilgaia now. Oh, and you’re going to be about ten years old so that your body adapts to Trilgaia a little better.”
“Huh? Wait!”
“Take care!”