Author: aji (あじ)

Translator: sleepingjay

"Really, what a good nuisance."

When I returned home, I would have to do some sewing again.

Throw it away because it got torn. Throw it away because it got dirty. Throw it away because I didn't like it.

Now I could never again do such things.

Over and over, the worn out clothes were repaired with needle precision and stinging fingers, and worn again.

Many times, I would get injured when the needle p.r.i.c.ked my fingers. I would lose my patience, but the feeling when I managed to sew on the b.u.t.tons perfectly was also good.

Life was difficult now, but at the same time I still liked it.

The house I returned home to, even from just a look, was shabby. The bath had no extra furnis.h.i.+ngs and the door fitted poorly, making an awful noise like a magic beast.

It was like a house that would fly away if the wind blew, but even so, it was this place that was my home.

It was a splendid house rented with money I earned by labouring with my own hands.

Every time I looked at this house, I would have mixed feelings.

Once, I lived in a house so splendid it could be mistaken for a castle.

In a certain country, I had been the second son of a prestigious n.o.ble family that possessed some of the strongest magic powers.

Now, what about those things?

The me that had been deprived of n.o.ble rank and exiled from the household was now living a splendid commoner life.

Luckily, I had such a large, almost inexhaustible magic power.

Thanks to that, I didn't lose my means of living, and one way or another I was able to live out each day.

However, this world wasn't so easygoing that I, who had always lived as a haughty, self-important n.o.ble, could go without encountering any difficulties.

There were times where I had been deceived, and there were also times where I had almost been killed. There were also times where, through inhuman magic, I'd almost withered away while being kept as an animal waiting to die.

In that way, I underwent hards.h.i.+ps all the way up to this point. The things I had lost were many, but at the same time I had also grasped valuable things.

Things necessary for a person to be a person.

What the previous me did not have. It was at this age that I first understood the meaning of human kindness.

The country I lived in now was located far away from my birthplace.

An affluent, beastmen country that governed the southern continent — the Thoel Empire that certainly everybody knew about.

A land that nurtured abundant crops using their rich resources.

The Order of Magic Knights that protected the empire was the foremost elite throughout this world, and thus, no country could make a move on the empire even if they wanted to.

The surrounding countries understood that choosing to ally with the empire could give them a great deal of benefits and they could also have a pleasant coexistence.

Thanks to that, each day of my commoner life was a daily war, but I thought, in terms of the country itself, I truly had a blessed life.

Even in such a remote village, there was no case of anyone starving to death.

My house was in a location considerably far from the town. The village was much closer.

Even I myself had times where I wondered why I live in such an inconvenient place.

Currently, as a healer that was part of the healer squad, I couldn't abandon the village.

Certainly, if a villager went to the town, there would also be pharmacists and healers there to heal them.

However, as mentioned earlier, because this village was considerably deep inside the forest, it was rather inconvenient to go to the town.

It was the most rural area of the Thoel Empire.

Of course, it wasn't like I wasn't worried when I was choosing a place like this to work in.

But who was it that had reached out a hand to me when I was at my most hopeless?

As long as I remembered that, there was no need to be troubled.

Due to things like that, the present me lived a poverty-stricken rural life despite being a healer that could have been rather well-paid.