Your life might be yours and yours alone, but there isn’t much about it you get to choose for yourself. Take your parents, for example. If it were up to you, you’d ask for kind, considerate people who are financially well-off. But not being able to get what you want is a part of life, and that’s just the way things have to be.
If all mothers were slim-figured, beautiful, kind, good at cooking, and could even dish out two-hit multi-target attacks, society would collapse. Bloody wars would break out between fathers and sons competing to win the same woman. Indeed, the world is made up of complex balances. I understood this fully in my previous life, even though I only experienced a short twenty-five years of it.
My life started without me particularly wanting it to and reached its final conclusion under the wheels of a truck—not the kind of death I’d hoped for.
In other words, I had no say in the moment I was born nor the moment I died. And even in the brief moment between my death and my reincarnation, I still wasn’t allowed the freedom to choose my own job.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was in a room for people seeking to be reincarnated. It was like a small conference room, containing a number of folding chairs and nothing else. It was so normal-looking. Nothing about it let on that this was the afterlife. One moment I was dying in a traffic accident, the next I was here.
Near the front was a stern-faced man in a suit, interviewing the deceased one by one. He was going over where they would next be reincarnated and what job class they would be given. There didn’t appear to be any careless, voluptuous goddesses handing out cheat skills...
Well, expecting some kind of meet-cute before my reincarnation was probably as wrong as trying to pick up girls in a dungeon. Besides, a fox-eyed lady knight was more my type than an airheaded goddess. Holding out for a woman like that might be a long shot, but it would reduce competition. I decided I’d keep my hopes high for my next life.
At any rate, it seemed being hit by a truck really did send you to another world for reincarnation. That wasn’t just an urban legend. This room was filled with people waiting to be sent off to their next life.
“Wow, you were hit by a four-ton truck? Mine was ten tons.”
A man with a face covered in pimples was bragging to a scrawny boy about the size of the truck that had hit him. Apparently guys who prided themselves on the stupidest things were a dime a dozen; you could find them anywhere.
It’s not like you wanted to be hit by a ten-ton truck, I thought. If you cared about size so much, you should’ve just gone to the US and flung yourself in front of an 18-wheeler.
I couldn’t help but be pleased when he was sent to the next world with the lame job of novice mage. I had no doubt he’d wanted a better job. When he heard what he’d been assigned, his bitter disappointment was written all over his face. In comparison, the boy who’d been taken out by a mere four-ton truck was on his way to the next world as a hero.
It seemed the weight of the trucks that had killed us had nothing to do with how good of a job class we were assigned. Or at the very least, bigger wasn’t necessarily better. That was a bit of a relief, since it’d been a mini truck that had done me in.
“Yusuke Yahagi.”
“Yes, sir!”
Hearing my name, I sprang to my feet with vigor. It was probably strange to describe myself in such a lively way considering I was dead, but I felt it was good to stay positive.
“It looks like you are going to be transferred rather than reincarnated,” the man said, flipping through some documents.
“Transferred?”
“That is correct. You will be sent off to the next world exactly as you are.”
“Huh...”
Even if I objected, it wasn’t like I’d be able to overturn the decision. I had to obediently accept this new life I’d been given. Just like I’d said, there wasn’t much in life that you could choose for yourself.
“As for where you will be headed, it is what we call a world of swords and magic.”
Even upon hearing that, I still didn’t object. That meant my next life was likely to be filled with battles and warfare, but I’d be content so long as I got a busted cheat skill. I intended to do my best to live.
“It has also been decided that you will be a dagashi-ya.”
Okay, cool, so I got an easy job as a...what?
“Um,” I started hesitantly, “what do you mean by a dagashi-ya?”
“Are you unfamiliar with what dagashi are?” he asked. “They are snacks cheap enough for even children to afford.”
Yeah, I do know that much. And a dagashi-ya is the person who sells those cheap snacks.
“If you tell your shop to open, it will do so on its own,” he continued. “Likewise, if you tell it to close, it will. It is a convenient ability, no?”
The suited man in front of me spoke with such confidence. I couldn’t help feeling a little irked at his smug face.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Now then,” he said, ignoring me, “please enjoy your next life.”
And with that, I was tossed into a new world.