“I’m so tired.”
I couldn’t contain my exhausted whining as I plodded down the dark street home. Lately, I’d been working ceaseless nights of overtime. They’d become so common, in fact, that everyone had started assuming overtime was the norm, so what was there to complain about? And of course, since no one complained, the company kept piling it on. It was a vicious cycle.
“Screw all this unpaid overtime. I don’t need to wait on my job hand and foot like that,” I groused.
I hadn’t had a single break in two weeks. But wasn’t the government pushing for work culture reform and better work-life balance? Hah, don’t make me laugh. The Labor Standards Act was a joke if companies could get away with making people work two solid weeks in a row.
Even if I’d gotten a pay bump, it wouldn’t have been worth this. It still wouldn’t have been worth it even if I’d gotten rich—I knew it was all over the second my body broke down from stress. If I had friends or a significant other, I might have had opportunities to go out on the town. But sadly, I wasn’t that lucky. Day in and day out, my life was a revolving door between home and work.
I didn’t have anything to spend my money on aside from fancy dinners and booze. I would’ve loved to go traveling, though. TV programs featured a lot of famous sightseeing places all the time—I wished I could see them in the flesh, just once.
“Yeah, that’d be nice. I wanna go traveling.”
The moment I expressed my wishes out loud, ardent hopes began to fill my mind one after another. I didn’t have a family I could lean on, nor did I have any friends close enough to hang out with. No partner to coddle, no clear goal... I needed something to fill the void in my completely empty life, and I had now decided travel would satisfy that need. I wouldn’t have to go on a full-blown vacation. As long as I could go somewhere that would heal me mentally and spiritually, that was good enough.
What if I just changed careers? Nah. At my stage of life, I doubted I’d be successful at whatever job I hopped to. How could I, when I was already scrabbling to find any sliver of good fortune?
“Just gazing out at the gorgeous scenery, eating good food, and taking it easy,” I continued. Man, what a blessed time that’d be. I’d love to just rest in an environment where I wouldn’t have to run the rat race, working myself into the grave. I guess I was basically describing what some people call “the slow life.”
I was born and raised in the city, so farming sounded like heaven. To me, those TV shows where people get set up with a farm out in the countryside were honestly a dream come true. I’d be happy to move out where the pastures were green and there were no obligations, and I only had to tend the fields.
Unfortunately, a humble office worker like myself didn’t get to make choices like that. Besides, I didn’t know the first thing about agriculture, and I needed money just to survive. Without any friends to call on, I lacked the means to purchase a plot of land anyway.
But that was exactly why I wanted to go traveling—I could experience the slow life during my excursion. Even if it were merely a fleeting dream lasting only a few days, that’d still be a few days of happiness. I didn’t need more satisfaction than that to fill my empty, hollow heart. If I became too full of joy, the hard drop back to reality would probably curse me with the flu.
A self-derisive chuckle slipped out with that thought. Then, right at that moment, a car coming down the street ahead of me swerved unnaturally to the side—and slightly to the left. The glaring headlights filled my vision with a brightness so blinding, I couldn’t help but squeeze my eyes shut.
That was the last thing I remembered.
☆
Eyelids heavy, I cracked open my eyes.
The first thing that leaped into my vision was an unfamiliar, lumber ceiling directly above. I grimaced at the overwhelming scent of wood and looked around at my immediate surroundings, which gave me an idea of where I was, even if only vaguely.
I was inside a wooden building. It was moderately spacious, and the interior design and upholstery was on the old-fashioned side. I’d once visited my grandmother’s home in the countryside, and it had been a lot like this.
“Wha?”
Huh? Someone had spoken at precisely the same time I had. Their voice sounded an awful lot like that of a baby...and the very second that thought crossed my mind, my confusion was instantly solved. The answer was right in front of me—or rather, my body itself was the answer. I was stunned into silence.
My limbs had shrunk. The bottom half of my torso had also shrunk—or, well, that wasn’t quite accurate. It was more like I’d actually become a baby!
Then my brain finally caught up with a realization: I’d been struck by some sort of interdimensional incident. My mind and memories were still intact, as far as I could tell, but for some reason, my body had become that of an infant. That explained why everything around me looked ridiculously huge. It wasn’t that the room was spacious—it was just that I was small, so I was perceiving things as bigger and wider.
“Da-ba-bwah? Ah-wha!”
I desperately tried to scream for help, but the words that rolled off my tiny tongue were indecipherable. But what exactly had happened to turn me into a baby, though? Had I been reborn? Or had time somehow reversed? I couldn’t understand what was going on, and I therefore also had no idea what had caused it. Panic began to consume my thoughts.
But just before hysteria gripped me, the door to the room opened. A blonde girl walked in, perhaps because she’d heard my babbling. She strode directly toward me, then gently cradled me in her arms as I cried. Looking young enough to be in her teens, she was a stunningly pretty girl. I could tell she’d one day become a gorgeous woman.
She looked tenderly down at me, then spoke. “What’s wrong, Hisui? Did a ghost spook ya or something? You started wailing outta nowhere.”
Wow. Her rough way of speaking definitely wasn’t what I expected, considering her refined features. If she dressed like a guy, you could mistake her for quite the handsome fellow. But still, the way she spoke was giving me some serious whiplash.
Hang on, though... “Hisui”? Who was that?
Judging by the fact that she was speaking to me, I could probably guess who she meant. But my name was Midori Osaka. The character in my name was used in Hisui too, I guess, but it still wasn’t my name.
“Ahw-ah. Ahw...” I burbled.
“Heh heh. Sorry, but I got no clue what you’re saying. Don’t worry, though. Your big sis’ll protect you, no matter what,” she responded.
My “sis”?! But I don’t have a sister! Both of my parents just up and vanished, and I never had any siblings at all. For the longest time, I’d really wanted a brother, but I’d never entertained the thought of having a sister as charming as this; that would’ve just been creepy. Was this a dream born from my unconscious desires or something?
But the tactile sensations against my skin, the visual information captured by my eyes, and the sounds that drifted into my ears were all distinct and realistic. I seriously doubted this was a dream.
“I’d love to keep chatting, but I gotta get to work. If I get some free time, I’ll come back to see you again. Till then, keep your crying down, all right?” And with that, she laid me back on the swath of fabric that was my bed and left the room with a wave.
The door closed with a clack, and I cried out—but only in my mind this time, of course. What the heck was going on?!
However, I was left in the dark.
☆
Five years had passed since I, once a thirty-year-old office worker, was reborn. During that time, I found I was now in a place that wasn’t Earth. I was essentially in another world.
There were two reasons I’d come to this conclusion. Firstly, the geographical and political names of places: I’d never heard of any of the countries or towns. Secondly, and the main reason for my hypothesis: there were three types of magical powers that existed in this world.
One was magecraft, the ability to strengthen the functioning of all creation. Another was godcraft, the ability to revert things to their natural state for all creation. Lastly, we had spellcraft, the ability to transform and alter all creation.
All three had been passed down since antiquity in the Twylite Kingdom where I now lived. It was commonly believed that these were the powers of the three goddesses who supported the country and who were worshipped by the people of the kingdom. One of my older sisters wielded magecraft, while one of my older brothers had awakened in spellcraft.