I always felt the cold, hard floor for some time after my birth.
It was unbelievable that they let a baby sleep on the ground with only a thin sheet of cloth. Give me a crib! I resented them at first, but I soon realized that there wasn’t a single bed in this house.
House? More like a... hut?
It was hard to believe that four people, including myself, were living in a place that was so small that we could probably move anywhere in just five steps.
The hut was worn-out and draughty, and the wallboards would occasionally peel off. Rats with pointed faces would appear out of nowhere from the wallboards.
They were probably sewer rats. They were very big. Super big. Maybe because I've gotten smaller, but they looked like ferocious beasts who are over 30 centimeters tall.
I don’t know why, but it was coming towards me without hesitation and sniffing at my ears while I was unable to move.
“No!”
A hand quickly shot out from the other side and chased the rat away.
I thought I felt something hard against my ear for a moment… I think my ear was about to be bitten off. Rats attack people?
A sickening feeling ran down my spine, and the hand that had saved me lifted me up and the face of a young girl appeared in my vision.
“You okay?”
The tips of her reddish-brown hair brushed against her overly thin shoulders as she tilted her head in concern. Her beautiful dark-green eyes looked unusually large because of how thin she was. My eye and hair colours were the same as hers.
She'd been delighted about it, saying we matched.
“Aah, buu.”
Thanks, I’m okay, was what I wanted to say. I was learning more and more words, but I still couldn’t get my tongue to form them.
“There, there, Aime is a good girl~.”
Though I guess she knew what I wanted to say anyway. She held me in her lap even though I was almost half her height as she dexterously mended things.
She is my big sister. Her name is Ridill.
Aime is the new name she gave me in this world.
The other two people living with us were my mum and dad. Both of them are out of the house during the day for work, so it’s just me and my sister. My sister, who is only seven years old, takes care of me, a baby who can barely crawl along the floor, and the house all by herself.
This would be unthinkable in modern Japan, but perhaps it wasn’t unusual in this world.
Even a quick look around this house showed me that civilization in this world was very far behind the world I had come from.
They used a kiln for cooking, fires were lit with a flint, there was no electricity, no gas, and no running water. Water had to be brought in from outside in buckets.
There were no windows, so it was dim even during the day, and the smell of garbage or something else was always wafting through with the draught.
There were no baths, and the occasional wipe-down with a damp rag did nothing to get rid of the smell. I was horrified to see fleas bouncing around on the floor.
Yet even with all that, one of the most unbearable parts of my life was eating.
"Time to eat~.”
My sister once again pushed the translucent soup that she scooped directly from the pot with a wooden spoon towards me while smiling.
I was grateful that she worked hard to prepare a home-cooked meal for me, but what was simmering in the pot was a whole rat.
My baby food is rats! My baby food is rats!
I shouted twice because it was too shocking.
Using traps to catch rats and eating them like it was perfectly normal made my head spin.
There was fur floating in the soup! Its head, legs and tail were also in one piece! At least chop them up!
The soup was poured down my throat no matter how much I fussed or cried, since I wouldn't survive otherwise. By the time I understood this, I was able to endure the nausea as I drank it down while crying.
God, if you really exist, and decide my fate, then I want to ask you a question.
Was there nowhere else to put my soul?! Why has my standard of living gone down with my reincarnation?!
My reincarnation wasn’t paradise, but a new life filled with hardship and pain.
But I still hadn't given up hope even after I realised this.
I’m fine with being in poverty as long as I have a warm family. Material wealth isn’t everything. Living modestly while supporting each other is also a form of happiness. I know this since I had met many people and had been exposed to many ways of life before my death.
That was why I still held onto hope, even if only for a brief moment.
At night, dad would come home drunk.
I didn't know what our parents did for work, but dad is a small man with tanned skin, so I guess he’s a physical labourer. He’s probably a day labourer.
“You've been drinking again?!”
Mum, who had come home earlier, shrieked hysterically in the candlelight. She was slender and rather beautiful, but her shadow reflected on the wall looked like a monster.
“Where’s the money you made today?!”
“Drank it away.”
Dad shouldn't have given that answer, but this wasn’t the first time he had said something like this.
So my mum would lose her temper and hurl insults at him which made him snap. Mum was also strangely defiant, and she fought back with a door bar that was used instead of a key.
As soon as the fierce martial brawl started, my sister quickly took me in her arms and ran outside.
“It’s okay.”
She didn’t go far and went around the back of the hut and sat down on the ground and hugged me tight on her lap.
“It’s still a bit cold out.” She muttered carefreely as if the commotion behind her didn’t even reach her ears.
Spring must have just begun. I remember spending time with her like this even on colder days. It didn’t seem to snow much around here, which was a relief.
There weren’t any streetlights and I looked up at the white moon in the sky. Even though it was only a little bigger than a half-moon, it lit up the night brightly enough for me to see the faces of people nearby.
My parents were inconsiderate people who didn't care if their children got hurt during their fights, and they hardly took care of us on a daily basis.
They hadn’t even given me a name.
I guess they didn't want me.
I was probably an accident.
It could have been like the virgin conception of Jesus Christ. Well, I don’t have any miraculous powers though.
If it weren’t for my sister, I might have died right after my birth, without any time to grieve my misfortune.
“When will Aime speak~?”
My sister was playing with my cheeks under the night sky. She seemed like she wanted to think about something else to avoid listening to the argument happening behind us. I wonder if she was suppressing her anxiety.
“Can you say Ridill?”
She pointed at herself and tried to get me to say her name.
It was a tall order for a baby who had just started to crawl, but I had to try for her.
“Ii, uo.”
“That’s not even close~.”
Sister pouted unhappily. I tried my best but my tongue just won't cooperate.
“Ri, di, ll.”
I tried to imitate her as she broke her name down to syllables.
“Ri, i, iu.”
Ah, wasn’t I getting closer? But Sister still wasn’t satisfied.
“Ri, di,ll!”
“Rii, ru!”
Dill is hard to say.
I couldn’t say it for the life of me and she gave up after the fifth attempt.
“Then, how about Onee-chan?”
She tried making me say something even longer.
“Ri, le, ne!”
I hope you’ll be happy with this. She blinked her big eyes in surprise and repeated what I had said.
“Rille-nee?”
Yes, Rille-nee. It's pretty impressive for a baby who is less than a year old to be able to say that much, you know?
“That’s not quite correct, but alright.”
She smiled in satisfaction.
I’m glad I didn’t have to fall into the hell of having to repeat myself. My mouth felt tired even though I didn’t use it much.
“Say it again.”
But then she asked me to repeat myself with an innocent smile.
“Rille-nee.”
“More, more!”
“Ille-nee.”
“Nope, wrong! Again!"
“Iu-nee!”
“That’s even worse than before! Again!”
Ugh, I ended up having to repeat it after all.
I wish she'd let me off the hook, but it made me happy to see her laugh whenever I got it right, so I went along with her for as long as I could. Me being born had meaning if I could ease her anxiety.
We both fell asleep outside on this day.
We went back inside after the morning sun woke us up and found the house in a terrible state. The few pots and pans, wooden tableware and even the ashes from the kiln were scattered all over the place, and since both our parents had gone to work without cleaning up, Rille-nee was stuck cleaning their mess.
Even if we had our sisterly bond, this environment made it hard for us to have a loving relationship with our parents.
I think that being born with my previous life’s memories and already being mentally mature helped me in this nearly broken household. But, that still wasn’t enough.
Even though I had learnt how to stand and walk, my small body couldn’t stop dad’s violent outbursts, and I couldn’t intervene in or mediate their quarrels with my lisp.
I would spend the night outside with Rille-nee when they argued, and on rainy days, we would endure in silence at the corner of the room until they settled down.
It was the same on the nights when dad didn’t come home. Mum would take her anger out on us instead.
She was like a naggy sister-in-law who complained about food tasting bad or the house not being cleaned.
Then, in the middle of the night, she would make us start cleaning all over again under the moonlight.
Mum seemed to be working as a cleaner at some house and she did these things to vent away her frustrations from being scolded in the day.
Far from fostering love, as the years passed I no longer wanted to think of either of them as parents. My reincarnation didn't even come with so much as a warm family.
God, let me ask you again.
What the hell do you have against me?! Was it because I didn’t believe in you?! Which god are you even?!
If you hated me that much, you should've just annihilated my soul and been done with it!
All I could do right now was hold a broom that was taller than myself, and sweep away the dust while venting my anger and getting rid of my drowsiness along with it.
I would only be beaten if I stood up to mum’s irrationality. Rille-nee would also be beaten up while trying to defend me, so I decided to obey her in silence even though I was frustrated.
“You can go back to sleep, Aime.”
My kind sister worried about me as I rubbed my eyes, but I couldn’t do that.
“No, I’ll do it.”
If anything, she was the one who needed rest. The only family I could truly love is Rille-nee. I could do my best even if I’m sleepy or get beaten because of her.
But how long can we keep living like this?
My patience had already reached its limit after living here for four years. It was also a very bad environment for Rille-nee’s upbringing. Dad was rarely seen at home these days and mum began coming home later too. They are only parents in name.
If I had been born ten years earlier than Rille-nee, then I would have taken her and left this house in a heartbeat.
A lot of things are out of my control.
―― It happened suddenly one summer day as I was thinking about such things.
“Bye.”
Mum left the house with only a casual farewell which sounded like a joke.
I didn’t understand what she meant at first.
She suddenly came home one day when she was supposed to be at work, packed her bag and got into a covered wagon that was parked on the road.
She clung to the arm of the young coachman and was gone.
She didn’t give any explanation, but I knew that she wouldn’t be coming back.
It turns out my parents were just as fed up with their current life as I was.
You’re leaving us for a new man and are planning on living somewhere else?
You’re kidding me, the words I shouted didn’t reach her.
I wanted to abandon her, but she abandoned us instead.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
After spending the night without our parents, an old man who we didn’t know arrived the next day around dusk.
He said he was the owner of this hut, and I learnt for the first time that we were renting this house.
Then, he suddenly told us to leave.
“D-dad's coming back...”
Rille-nee tried her best to argue, but the old man shook his head.
“Your father's dead.”
I couldn’t help but be surprised.
We hadn’t seen him in a couple of weeks… turns out he drank too much, fell into the canal where gondolas carrying cargo passed through and drowned. They found him this morning and had already been taken care of. The old man said it like dad was rubbish that was being swept away.
Oddly enough, dad had died on the same day that mum left us.
I didn’t feel sad. I thought it was rather ridiculous.
We were mercilessly kicked out of our house because of the disappearance of our parents, even though they’re useless here or not.
Rille-nee was only 11 years old and I was only four.
Where are we supposed to go? How were we supposed to live?
We didn’t have any money and we were hungry. The dresses we were wearing were so worn-out that they could be mistaken for rags if we took them off, and we didn't even have any shoes. How can the world throw children like this out on the streets?
Sister squeezed my hand as I stood there angry that we had nowhere to go.
“It’s okay.”
She started walking towards the end of the long, shadowed path.
My feet naturally followed her.
“Rille-nee.”
I called out to her, my words carrying the questions, where are we going and do you have a plan at all?
Her dark green eyes, which were like mine, stared straight ahead.
“It’s okay. Your big sister will protect you, Aime,” She declared clearly.
She had been protecting me since I was born. She gave me a name, took care of me and gave me love in place of our irresponsible parents.
She was still doing so.
This girl, who had fallen into the depths of misfortune like me, was facing forward without shedding a single tear for my sake.
Was I just going to be protected by her from now on?
―― No.
If God truly existed, and there was a reason I'd been reincarnated here with my memories intact, then perhaps it was all for her.
It doesn’t matter if it wasn't. I’ll decide this for myself. I’ll etch it into my brand-new soul.
My new mission is to get out of this hell and make Ridill happy.