Chapter 2 - Volume 1 (1/2)

I think I’ll tell my story here, recite it just as I please – like this.

My name is Filmina Veer Adina. I’m the firstborn daughter of the Adina family, a noble family just upper class enough to live in the capital. But it’s fine if you don’t manage to remember that.

I don’t mean to say something difficult like 「That’s because that name is just my name 『now』, and not the 『past me’s』 name. 」 I just mean it’s not that necessary for the story, that’s all.

You probably understand now. You don’t even have to ask — there’s no doubt that I’ve gone through this thing called reincarnation.

Reincarnation – or, in other words, to be born again. In my past life, I was on a planet called Earth, in a country called Japan, born to an ordinary family, a very ordinary girl. By the way, I was just about to reach my thirties.

Did I forget who I was? No, I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t forget the reality that I’d suddenly been laid off at the height of the employment ice age due to the business recession. I’d ended up job-hunting after several years, and was walking along a street at night when I encountered a purse snatcher. Was I the wrong one for showing too much willpower, refusing to let go of my bag? I ended up being dragged along by a car and dying just like that. That was 『me』 from my past existence.

I was born into this world and didn’t realize that I was 『me』 until I was three years old. I got an illness that was going around and ended up with a high fever, spending a week wandering between life and death. Even my father who kept his face stone cold as he worked as the Governor of Magical Books at the palace, nicknamed ‘Smiles’, said, 「That was the only time I was actually terrified.」 We still talk about it even now, so I could say it was a fitting occasion.

Yes, in that fitting fever, I carelessly remembered 『me』. Groaning in the middle of my feverish nightmares, I desperately chewed up and drank that『me』 and made it part of myself. If I hadn’t, no doubt I would’ve been swallowed up by 『me』 instead and gone insane.

So at the age of three years, I triumphed against the almost-thirty year old 『me』 and then overcome my illness too. Good job, me.

A lot of things happened, and that three-year-old me who’d turned into myself and become the base of who I am today, realized. I realized that this world was called fantasy in my past life, a world of swords and sorcery.

Yes, fantasy. A world that not only little boys and girls longed for, but even adults went crazy over.

When I realized I was born in that world, I – embarrassingly – was foolishly delighted. I thought I was the chosen one, and almost misunderstood horribly. I want to emphasize 『almost』 here. I was practically forced to realize that, whether I liked it or not, I misunderstood.

A child born into a fantasy world, remembering their past life. If you look at it superficially, it sounds like it’d be renowned and displayed for the world, but nothing really came of that for me. No matter how many times I ask why, the truth doesn’t change. I was still just a three-year-old, nothing more and nothing less. Yes, in those days, I was just a three-year-old in the end. Whenever I tried acting upon my biased knowledge from my past life, all roused up, I always lost in the end.

For example, I aimed to be a child prodigy from a young age, trying to read magical books.

My father, who grew dear to me, worked hard as the Governor of Magical Books, a government official who passed as one of the elites. Thanks to that, there were many valuable magical books at our house, but what if I tried reading them?