“I’m sorry, Dahlia. I want to call off our engagement.”
It was Dahlia and her fiancé’s first day together in their new house. They had moved in little more than an hour ago.
Her fiancé’s sudden announcement felt to Dahlia like something out of an otome game. It was the kind of fate that befell the villainess, determined to have the handsome prince in her clutches, at the school graduation ceremony. But there was no such wicked young woman in the room now; the two of them were completely alone. It seemed Dahlia’s mind was just trying to distract her from reality.
“Can I ask why?”
Tobias’s—her fiancé’s—familiar light brown eyes glistened with tears.
“I’ve...found my true love.”
For Dahlia not to burst into laughter at that moment took a praiseworthy amount of self-control.
Theirs was a world filled with magic, monsters, knights, and sorcerers. Such things had been mere fantasy to Dahlia until the day she’d been reincarnated here. In her previous life, she’d been born into an ordinary household in Japan. She had gone to high school and college, then found work at a company that produced household appliances. Although she had hoped to stay in their manufacturing department, she’d been transferred in her second year to a position handling customer complaints. It was grueling, soul-crushing work. Late one night, while working overtime, she’d suddenly felt an intense pain pierce her chest. That was the last thing she remembered. She could only guess she’d died of a heart attack.
The next time she’d opened her eyes, she had found herself in this world, in the body of a small child. Her new name was Dahlia Rossetti. Unlike the flower she was named after, Dahlia was rather subdued in her appearance. If you were to be less kind, you might just call her plain. Her reincarnation hadn’t panned out quite like the stories she’d read in her previous life—rather than wealth and nobility, she’d been reborn into a family of toolmakers.
However, the tools they created were no ordinary hammers and chisels. In this world of fantasy, even humble craftspeople dealt in magic.
Dahlia’s father, Carlo Rossetti, was a master of magical toolmaking. Such was his skill that the king had made him an honorary baron (a nonhereditary title, unfortunately). Dahlia had grown up surrounded by magical tools, and she had never wanted to do anything other than follow in her father’s footsteps.
Carlo counted a certain merchant among his close friends. When Dahlia was nineteen and a fledgling toolmaker in her own right, it was decided that she would marry the merchant’s second son—Tobias Orlando, the young man who now sat across from her. Tobias was also a toolmaker and had apprenticed under her father. He now worked for his own father’s company, Orlando & Co., handling the development and sales of their magical tools. He was academically gifted and handsome too—among common folk like them, he was quite a catch.
Dahlia and Tobias had intended to marry once she turned twenty and he turned twenty-two, but the sudden death of Tobias’s father caused the family to go into a period of mourning. Then, just as the mourning period had ended and the couple’s wedding day had approached, Dahlia’s father followed his friend into the grave.
Even by this world’s standards, both of them had gone before their time. Dahlia had a fair idea of the cause. Though he’d tried many times to give it up, her father had been a heavy drinker till the end.
Two years had passed since Dahlia and Tobias’s initial engagement. At long last, every form had been signed, and there was finally a lull in their work. They had moved into their new home, and tomorrow, they would formally register their marriage. At least, that had been the plan.
The two of them sat in silence on opposite sides of the living room table. Dahlia’s eyes were downcast, and she expressed only a single sigh.
This didn’t feel real. Surely she was supposed to cry, or get angry, or something. Instead, she just felt utterly, utterly tired.
Still, it was no good just sitting here. They had to figure out what to do now.
“Who is she?”
After a pause, Tobias spoke without prevaricating. “Emilia. Emilia Tallini.”
Recognizing the name, Dahlia soon recalled the young woman to whom it belonged. Emilia had begun working at Orlando & Co. as a receptionist just a few months ago. She was a sweet and gentle girl with honey-colored hair, warm brown eyes, and a petite frame. She could hardly have been more different from Dahlia, whose tall stature was her only distinguishing feature. It came as a surprise to her that Tobias favored a kittenish little thing like that.
“I intend to marry her.”
“I see.” She hadn’t asked. She could feel a headache coming on. “We’ll have to sort out the paperwork, then.”
“All we have to do is agree on it, don’t we?”
If only life were so simple, she wanted to say, but she bit her tongue for the moment.
Since becoming engaged, the two of them had been working under a joint registration with the Merchants’ Guild. In anticipation of their marriage, they’d each borne half the cost of building their new home. These contracts had to be dissolved, names changed.
“We went to the Merchants’ Guild with our fathers and submitted our engagement certificate, remember? There’s a section in that document for breaking the engagement. We’ll need to change our joint registration with the guild into separate ones as well. If you’re going to marry her, you need to finish this properly.”
“Right, the engagement certificate. I remember now.”
“We’ll go to the guild this afternoon and find out what needs to be done. Will two o’clock be all right?”
“Yeah.”
With that settled, there should have been no reason for him to linger, but he just sat there scratching his right temple with a finger. She knew he did that when he had something uncomfortable to say.
“Is there something else?”
“Well, she, uh... She mentioned she’d like to live here.”
Tobias was the one who’d overseen most of the house’s construction. The only part Dahlia had had much say in was the workshop they were supposed to have used together, so she wasn’t greatly attached to the place.
Still, losing your fiancé was depressing enough without hearing that his new love was eager to move into your house.
“Once we’ve settled the finances, we’ll turn the joint ownership of the house over to you. Then I’ll get my things back home as soon as possible.”
“I’m sorry.”
Without another word, Tobias got up and left.
For a while, Dahlia simply sat there staring down at the table. In both her previous life and this one, she’d always had a slight tendency to slouch.
Dahlia had never so much as been in a relationship in her past life, let alone gotten married. Even here, it had taken until she was almost twenty. And now, just when she’d thought her love life was finally blossoming...
“If anything happens, let Tobias look after you,” Dahlia’s father had told her. She was sure he’d never imagined things would turn out like this.
Tomorrow had been the day they’d planned to register their marriage at the city hall; they had never actually wed. Even so, they’d spent a whole two years engaged to each other. Nearly all of their friends and acquaintances knew about it. No doubt their breakup would bring a deluge of sympathy and gossip. The thought made her even more depressed.
There was also the fact that, up until now, she’d procured all the materials for her tool making through Orlando & Co. Once she and Tobias were no longer engaged, perhaps they’d cease doing business with her. Even if they didn’t, it would be a horribly awkward arrangement.
The more she thought about it, the worse her headache became.
A memory of the day she and Tobias were engaged drifted into her mind. She recalled something he’d said to her after the initial pleasantries had been exchanged.
“You’re awfully tall, aren’t you?”
She was indeed somewhat tall for a woman, while Tobias was slightly short for a man. Their height difference was around three centimeters. With high heels on, Dahlia was, of course, the taller one. After that day, she’d stopped wearing heels, sticking to flats at all times.
Her natural red hair was much too bright, Tobias had said, so she’d dyed it a dark brown and kept it tied up.
Tobias didn’t like anyone whose appearance drew attention, so Dahlia had swapped her silver-rimmed glasses for black-rimmed ones and made her already subdued wardrobe duller still, until all she wore were shades of navy and dark gray.
These past two years, she’d taken such care both at work and at home to become the ideal wife for Tobias. It seemed that he, however, had never looked at her that way.
She remembered something else as well—something about work in her previous life.
Whenever she had apologized to a complaining customer, she would hang her head. Whenever her boss had roared at her for not handling a complaint quickly enough, she would hang her head. Whenever she’d thought about the increasingly distant friends she had no time to contact, she would become depressed and hang her head.
She was still hanging her head when she’d slumped over her desk and breathed her last in that world. That desk was the last thing she had seen before she’d died.
“This has to stop.”
Dahlia looked up and out the window, through which sunlight was streaming into the room.
In her previous life, she’d tried so hard to please everyone that it had eventually killed her. In this one, she’d done everything she could to become Tobias’s ideal woman, and this was where it had gotten her.
She’d been given a second chance at life. Was this really how she wanted to use it?
Enough was enough. It was time she held her head up high.
She wasn’t going to hide what she liked and what she didn’t anymore. She was lucky enough to have her work as a magical toolmaker, which she loved. She was able to support herself; she didn’t need to rely on anyone else. She would work hard, she would go where she pleased, and she would eat and drink whatever she liked.
From now on, she was going to live life her way.
Filled with a brand-new vigor, Dahlia stood up. The spring sky outside was so bright and blue that it stung her eyes.