Thump! Thump! Along with the sound of something being slammed against the floor or a table, the place where I was sleeping shook violently. Each vibration made my head ache as if someone were pounding it with a hammer, and I furrowed my brows tightly with a small groan.
Noisy… So damn noisy.
That annoying racket and shaking didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. It kept up at a steady rhythm, making it impossible to stay asleep.
My consciousness had been roused by the vibrations rumbling through my head, and I tried covering my ears to block out the noise.
Even so, my body wouldn't cooperate. A high fever and joint pain spread throughout me, like I'd come down with the influenza.
"Ugh…"
I'd need my glasses to get a handle on the situation. Keeping my eyes closed, I groped around for the glasses I always kept by my pillow. My whole body felt vaguely numb, and my hand movements were sluggish.
As my hand fumbled about, I heard a rustling sound—like paper or straw rubbing together beneath me.
"…What's that sound?"
Despite the hoarseness from the fever, what came out of my mouth was a high-pitched, childish voice. No matter how I thought about it, this wasn't my own voice.
Though my body was heavy with fever and I wanted to keep sleeping, I could no longer ignore the strangeness surrounding me. Slowly, I pried open my leaden eyelids.
The fever must have been quite high—my vision was blurred and warped. But somehow, through the tears that were essentially serving the role of glasses, everything looked far clearer than usual.
"Huh?"
What I saw was a ceiling that had probably once been white but was now blackened with soot, several thick, dark beams crisscrossing together, and enormous spiderwebs.
None of them existed anywhere in my memory.
"…Where am I?"
Being careful not to let tears spill from my brimming eyes, I moved only my eyeballs to look around. The one thing I grasped immediately was that this was clearly not the
The architectural style suggested by the ceiling was not Japanese but Western. And not the modern steel-frame kind—an older style, at that.
The bed I was lying on was hard, with no mattress. Instead, a prickly material was being used as a cushion. The filthy cloth draped over me as a blanket gave off a strange smell, and something was biting me all over—fleas, maybe, or mites. My skin itched everywhere.
"Wait, hold on…"
The last thing I remembered was being crushed under a mountain of books, but it didn't seem like anyone had rescued me. At the very least, no hospital in Japan that I knew of was so filthy that it would make a patient lie on such a grimy blanket.
Trembling, I held my hand up before my eyes. What I saw was a small, emaciated child's hand.
I'd always been the indoor, book-reading type, so I shared the same unhealthy, unpallid complexion. But my hands at twenty-two had been properly adult hands. They were nothing like these malnourished little child's fingers.
I clenched them, opened them—my child's hand moved according to my will. But the body I could control was not my own familiar one. The shock was so great my mouth went completely dry.
"…What is this?"
Could this be reincarnation? Had God heard my wish and reincarnated me so I could read books again?
I couldn't make sense of any of it.
Needing as much information as possible, I lifted my heavy head and slowly sat up with my feverish body. Ignoring how my sweat-soaked hair clung to my neck, I surveyed the room.
All I could see was something resembling a bed, the filthy blanket thrown over it, and a few wooden boxes for storing belongings. There wasn't a bookshelf in sight.
"No books, huh…"
There was an open doorway. The racket that had been pounding through my head had stopped at some point, but I could hear someone else there—footsteps bustling about, the sound of someone doing something.
I had no idea what was going on.
Looking at the pillars and walls, and the furniture in the room, I'd guess this was old-fashioned Western style. But not modern. Either this was some not-very-civilized country, or I'd time-slipped into the past. How on earth was I supposed to figure out the situation?
"Am I just having some weird dream on my deathbed?"
As I agonized over this with my fever-addled head, perhaps my movements had caught someone's attention, or perhaps they'd heard my voice—a woman appeared.
She was in her late twenties, with a triangular kerchief or something on her head. She might have been pretty, but she was disappointingly unkempt. If she'd just washed her face and clothes and tidied herself up, she could've been quite presentable. What a waste.
I was someone who didn't particularly care about appearances—as long as things were clean and not grotesque. On the flip side, I could do without anyone, no matter how good-looking, if they were filthy and repulsive.
"Mine, ⑈&＄#＋@*＋#％?"
"Ahya!?"
The moment those incomprehensible words hit my ears, memories that were not my own surged through me like a dam breaking.
In the span of a few blinks, years' worth of memories were crammed into my head, and the overwhelming discomfort—like my brain was being violently stirred—made me instinctively grab my head.
"Mine, are you okay? You weren't waking up at all, so I was worried."
"…Mom?"
The woman gently stroking my head and peering into my face was my mother, and Mine was my name—that's what the flood of memories told me.
Words I hadn't understood just moments ago were now comprehensible, but the sudden deluge of information had thrown my mind into utter chaos. Honestly, if you're going to stuff information into someone, at least take their condition into consideration.
I was the one who had wished to be reincarnated so I could read books, but actually going through reincarnation was a different story. Even though I recognized the woman before me as my mother, I couldn't just accept it right away.
"How are you feeling? Your head looks like it hurts."
Her fingertips, reaching toward my forehead, were stained with splotches of yellow and green. Was this mother a dyer by trade? I remembered the indigo-dyed fabric artisans I'd seen in Japan having fingertips stained like that.
In my memories—existing but alien—I didn't want this mother I knew yet didn't know to touch me. So, dodging the outstretched hand, I rolled over onto the foul-smelling bedding.
Then I closed my eyes, refusing the contact.
"…My head still hurts. I want to sleep."
"Alright, rest up."
I waited for her to leave the room, where beds were crammed together in what looked like a shared bedroom, and thought.
My head was spinning from the fever, but I couldn't just lie here quietly in this state of utter confusion.
"I definitely… died, didn't I?"
My own mother's face suddenly surfaced in my mind. I silently apologized to the mother I would never see again.
She must have been furious. "That's why I told you over and over to reduce the number of books!" she would have been crying and yelling, for sure.
I raised my heavy arm and wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes.
"Mom, I'm sorry…"
After murmuring that apology that would never reach her, I deliberately shifted my thoughts and began slowly sifting through the memories of little Mine that had just flooded in.
Mine's most recent memories were of pain, agony from the fever, unbearable suffering.
In a vague sort of way, I suspected that Mine, the original owner of this body, had died and that I had possessed it. Or perhaps the high fever had triggered the recovery of my memories from a past life.
"Either way, it doesn't matter, does it? I have to keep living as Mine from here on out…"
If so, I needed to understand the surrounding situation from whatever memories of Mine I could recall, however incomplete—otherwise my family would immediately grow suspicious.
I racked my brain trying to remember, but Mine's memories were those of a small child whose language skills were still undeveloped. The words of her father and mother were difficult to understand clearly. They didn't make sense. The available vocabulary was limited, and most of the memories were unintelligible.
"Ugh, wait—what am I supposed to do with this…"
From the memories seen through the young Mine's eyes, the things I could confirm were: she lived in a family of four; the woman I'd just seen was her mother; she had an older sister named Turi; and her father worked as a Soldier.
And most importantly—this was not
Among Mine's memories, there was one of her mother without the triangular kerchief on, and her hair was an astonishing emerald green. Not an unnatural, dyed green—an actual, real green. It was the kind of color that made you want to grab it and check whether it was a wig.
Rather than thinking that her mother was a perpetually disheveled cosplayer who wore a wig at all times, it was far more realistic to conclude that this was a different world.
Incidentally, her sister's hair was blue-green, and her father's hair was blue. Mine's hair was dark navy. Whether to be grateful it was at least close to black, or to lament being part of a cosplay family—I couldn't decide.
As far as I could tell from rummaging through memories, there didn't seem to be a mirror anywhere in the house, so aside from her hair color, I had no clear picture of my own appearance. But judging from the facial features of my parents and sister, the base model probably wasn't bad. The problem was definitely the filth.
"Oh, I want a bath. …Is there even one?"
In practical terms, my own appearance wasn't really the biggest issue for daily life. The real problem was that this new household of mine was staggeringly poor.
Just looking around made that painfully obvious. The cloth wrapping sick little me was worn thin and completely ragged. Even as a hand-me-down from my sister, this was too much.
At first I thought someone might be deliberately mistreating me, but the memories I had of Mother's clothes showed the same thing—patchwork rags were the norm. My sister's clothes were no different. This must be the family standard.
My father seemed to be the only one with relatively sturdy clothes, with fewer patches, but apparently those were his Soldier work clothes, issued once every few years.
This house didn't seem to be a standalone dwelling, either. From beyond a stone wall that looked like it was made of bricks, the closest one, I could hear footsteps going up what sounded like stairs and the voice of a neighbor. Perhaps it was some kind of apartment building.
Hey, when you reincarnate, don't you usually end up as a noble or something? Somewhere where you don't have to worry about making ends meet?
The sheer bleakness of the situation made me sigh. My previous life had been an utterly ordinary Japanese household, but the gap in living standards was enormous.
Wherever and whenever this was, Japan had been a good country. Nicer things were everywhere—soft fabrics, comfortable beds, books, books, books…
"Ahh, I want to read a book. I feel like my fever would go down if I could just read."
No matter how terrible the environment, if I had books, I could endure it. I lightly pressed a finger to my temple and searched through my memories for books. Where on earth was there a bookshelf in this house?
"Mine, are you awake?"
As if deliberately interrupting my thoughts, a girl of about seven or eight tiptoed into the room. It was the sister from my memories—Turi.
Her blue-green hair was carelessly braided, and its dry, brittle condition made it obvious it received little care. Like her mother's, her face was grimy and in need of a good washing. It was a waste—she had a cute face.
The reason I couldn't help thinking this was probably because I was viewing things through the eyes of a Japanese person, whom foreigners consider pathologically clean.
But if you're poor, you especially need to pay attention to hygiene, since getting sick and seeing a doctor would cost more money.
But never mind all that. Right now, in this situation, there was only one thing that mattered.
"Turi, can you bring me a 'book'?"
With an older sister like this around, there had to be at least ten picture books in the house. I was sick in bed, but I could still read.
I'd gone through the trouble of being reborn. Enjoying books from another world was the absolute priority.
"Turi, please?"
The cute little sister's plea left Turi tilting her head with a puzzled expression.
"Huh? What's a 'book'?"
"What do you mean, what—well, it's something with 'pictures' or 'letters' written on it…"
"Mine, I can't understand what you're saying? Speak properly!"
"So, a 'book'! I want a 'picture book'!"
"What's that? I don't understand!"
It seemed that any words not in Mine's memory came out as Japanese pronunciation.
No matter how desperately I tried to explain, Turi just kept tilting her head in bewilderment. Saying "hand me a book" in Japanese wasn't going to make sense. I needed to pick up the language quickly.
"Oh, for crying out loud! 'Translation function, get to work'!"
"Mine, why are you getting angry!?"
"I'm not angry. My head just hurts."
Taking it out on a child like Turi over the language barrier was, frankly, immature. But I'd already done it.
First, I needed to focus all my effort on listening to people's voices and memorizing as many words as possible. If Mine's young, flexible brain was combined with the reason and intellect of a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, learning the language should be easy—if that's how it worked.
At the very least, remembering the effort I'd put into learning foreign languages to read books in my previous life, this shouldn't be too hard. My passion and love for books was intense enough to make the people around me uncomfortable.
"…Are you angry because you still have a fever?"
Thinking she was going to check my temperature, Turi's grimy hand reached toward me. I instinctively grabbed it.
"My fever's still high, so you'll catch it!"
Making it look like I was concerned about her, I used a grown-up's trick to avoid having Turi's dirty hand touch me.
"Right. I'll be careful."
Safe.
She'd be a great sister if she just kept herself clean, but I didn't want to be touched right now. Since it had come to this, I'd have to find some way to drill basic hygiene into this family. Without improving our living conditions, I didn't think survival was possible.
As far as my memories showed, Mine had been a sickly child who frequently came down with fevers and ended up bedridden. There were far too many memories of lying in bed.
For the sake of my own peaceful reading, I and my surroundings needed to be healthy. This family looked too poor for me to afford a doctor if I got sick, and I didn't want to experience whatever passed for medical care at this level of living.
"Turi, help me with dinner prep."
"Yes, Mother."
Apparently, Mother had called from somewhere, and Turi went scampering off.
Judging by the angle of sunlight through the window, it was probably almost time to start dinner. Turi still looked like she was in the early grades of elementary school, but she was already helping out with chores.
In this kind of poverty, children were undoubtedly considered part of the workforce.
"Ugh, I don't want to…"
Thinking about what would happen as I grew up put me in a gloomy mood. There was no way I'd be the only one exempt from helping. My reading time would definitely decrease.
I was the type of person who found even easy household chores—done with modern Japanese appliances—annoying, and I'd always preferred spending my time reading. Could I really fit into this life?
Thump! Thump!—Heavy sounds echoed intermittently. She'd said she was making dinner, so I assumed it was some kind of cooking noise, but what on earth was going on over there? I couldn't see from where I was lying, and honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to.
I'd been reincarnated, so I needed to think more positively. There were books here that didn't exist on Earth—for their sake, I needed to get my health in order first.
With that thought, I slowly closed my eyes.
"Welcome home."
"I'm home."
A clattering of metal accompanied Father's return, and by then dinner appeared to be ready.
I could vaguely sense, from a little ways off, the rest of the family enjoying their meal without me—since high-fevered Mine couldn't eat yet—as my consciousness slowly sank away.
As darkness closed in, only one thought remained.
Oh, I don't care what—I just want to read a book.