A House of My Own
I waited until my adoptive father, the village chief, had come home before I told them the story.
When I explained that a bizarre curse magic had struck my body and made me younger, Father nearly jumped out of his seat.
"A curse?!"
He looked genuinely stunned.
"To be honest, I don't really know myself. Even the temple couldn't figure it out."
Well, that wasn't entirely a lie — the temple really hadn't been able to make sense of it. I'd only exaggerated a little.
Mother watched me with worried eyes.
"It's some kind of magic, but nobody could identify it."
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yes. It's already been four months, after all."
Looking at my adoptive parents fretting over me filled me with guilt. If I hadn't gone running off outside the village insisting I wanted to be an adventurer, none of this would have happened.
"Still… I'm glad you came back safe."
"Ah — I have a favor to ask."
"A favor?"
"Yes. Could you give me a house to live in on my own?"
"A house for you? We've got those to spare."
As expected of the village chief. Sorry to the other villagers, but one house shouldn't be a problem, right?
"What are you planning to do?"
Mother was still fretting.
"I'm going to try to find a way to reverse this."
The pitying, worried looks on my adoptive parents' faces made my chest ache all over again. Of all the bodies I could have ended up with…
They brought out some meat they'd been saving specially for my homecoming. It had been heavily salted and the flavor was a bit strange, but meat was a rare luxury in the village all the same.
I ate my fill and spent a peaceful night in the home I'd been away from for so long.
It bothered me that I'd come back without having accomplished anything… but still, there was nothing quite like being back in the arms of family.
Word that I had returned to the village — and that I'd been struck by something like a curse — spread to the villagers through my adoptive father. So for the next few days, whenever I stepped outside, the people I ran into looked at me with open pity.
The Instructor, especially, seemed heartbroken.
"You never had much talent, but you were always such a hardworking child…"
"Come on. Just because my body's smaller doesn't mean that much has changed."
My reach was a little shorter, that was all. Over time I'd grown used to this new body. And as I'd learned how to handle it, I'd realized something — I could actually move more nimbly now, which had its advantages.
Of course, I couldn't win a contest of strength anymore…
"Is that so? Then will you join training like before?"
There was no way I was skipping physical conditioning!
"Of course I will!"
Even if I'd become a woman, I hadn't given up on awakening mana. According to the Instructor, the best path to a mana awakening was diligent training and real combat experience.
And I still needed to grow taller! From my previous life's knowledge, I knew that moderate exercise helped a body develop. My height right now was barely bigger than a mouse, but given my apparent age, I should still be in a growth period.
I couldn't abandon training if there was even a chance it would help me get taller.
Every morning I trained with my sister at the village self-defense force — exercise dressed up as drills. My body was smaller, but the Instructor praised me for moving better than before. Well, of course. I'd trained steadily as an adventurer and racked up plenty of real combat experience.
"You've definitely improved."
"Right?!"
I scrambled up from where I'd been lying on the ground.
"But you're still weak."
At the Instructor's merciless assessment, I flopped right back down.
After we finished the basic drills, the Instructor said he wanted to test my skill and demanded a spar. The result: he subdued me in twenty exchanges.
I'd only lasted that long because I was using a spear. With a sword, it would have been even worse.
"You've gotten better at managing distance."
"I've built up real combat experience."
Sparring could teach you a fair amount, but fighting with your life on the line was something else entirely. I'd learned that firsthand… that particular sensation you only feel in the moment when life and death hang in the balance.
Of course, the instincts of someone with no mana and no talent were still pretty pathetic.
"Hmm!"
The Instructor clapped me on the shoulder as if he were proud.
"Keep working hard."
"Yes, sir!"
I had no intention of quitting training — not if it raised even slightly the odds of a mana awakening.
Once everything was finished, the Instructor asked about my condition.
"Honestly, I lived as a knight for twenty years and never once heard of a curse like that."
"I'm not even sure it really is a curse."
I told him the temple hadn't noticed anything wrong with my body either.
"Huh. Even the temple couldn't tell…"
Now the Instructor was looking at me with the same pitying eyes as everyone else.
"As long as I can live without any problems, that's enough."
Right. What if that magic back then had been an attack spell instead? I'd be dead. So I decided to look on the bright side. Surviving at all was something to be grateful for…
Though becoming a woman still irritated me to no end.
My house came together faster than I'd expected. The village had already built homes set aside for young people when they became independent, so the house itself was ready almost immediately. Furniture and moving my things took a bit of time, but that was all.
The house I received had originally been meant for a newlywed couple, so it had a full two rooms and a spacious living area. And that wasn't all — there was even a latrine out back.
On top of that, my adoptive parents were so worried about me that they even gave me an expensive, practical water-generating magic tool. With that, I barely needed to go to the well anymore. Extremely convenient.
"So this is a house…"
"Yeah. A house."
……? Why was my sister standing next to me?
"Sis?"
She tilted her head with her usual blank expression.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm living with Yuli."
Live with my sister? Absolutely not. She already found all sorts of reasons to keep me under her thumb on a normal day. If she were right next to me at all times? Just imagining it was terrifying.
"We're close enough already. You can just come over every day."
"You don't want to live together?"
"You already have Father's house."
She hung her head.
Besides, if we lived together, she'd find out I was a girl. So this was one request I simply couldn't grant.
"…Fine."
I did feel a little bad. She was the one who'd have to handle the alchemy combinations for me — maybe I was being too harsh. But being under her thumb every single day was still a hard no.
Maybe it was because I'd lived alone in the city before, but I adapted to living on my own almost immediately.
Getting used to my sister dropping by constantly, on the other hand, was much harder.
Well, if I was going to keep living in this village, I'd just have to put up with it. Crossing the future village chief never ended well for anyone.
My restarted village life had already stretched past a month. Nothing particularly dramatic had happened, but there was one small problem: my alchemy wasn't making any progress.
I'd asked my sister to try making a few of the recipes written in the thousand-year-old alchemy book. We got results, but that was as far as it went. I hadn't managed to discover any new combination methods or attempt any new formulas.
"I suppose that's only natural when you're basically flailing around in the dark…"
I had to make everything myself, and I had no foundational knowledge to work from. The only knowledge I could lean on was from my previous life — and even that was nothing but scraps from games, novels, and comics. Gathering materials was a problem too. Common ingredients were one thing, but things like the components for an awakening agent weren't easy to find in a village.
"Suddenly everything feels hopeless."
The more recent alchemy books were no help at all, and they didn't contain anything useful either. Those were closer to modern science, far too difficult to understand with my current knowledge. Talk of making alloys and adjusting ratios… maybe if I had expensive equipment, but with the slapdash methods I was using now, it was hopeless.
The thousand-year-old alchemy book, at least, centered on the action of mana, so it was full of fantastical elements that ignored scientific understanding. The idea that putting herbs and tree bark together and applying alchemy would produce a poultice was absurd on its face.
"Hah…"
I was sprawled out sighing when my sister showed up at the house.
"Yuli?"
She looked at me with concern as I lay there deflated.
"Let's go gather materials today!"
I'd decided to stop just collecting herbs to make salves and poultices. From now on, I was going to gather all kinds of materials and try every combination I could think of!
"Gather materials?"
"Yeah! We'll go to the Forest of Delusion, collect all sorts of ingredients, and make something new!"
When I said it with my eyes shining, my sister broke into a bright smile.
"Okay!"
Seeing her happy made me happy too, somehow.
Of course, we had to prepare thoroughly before heading out to gather.
"Yuli, what are you doing?"
My sister had finished getting ready with nothing but the sword she always wore at her hip. She was even still in a skirt!
"You're going in a skirt?"
She tilted her head as if she didn't understand what I meant.
"…Well, it is you."
I pulled out my clothes along with the gear I'd used as an adventurer and put it all on. Then I grabbed my spear and a large bag for carrying things.
"Ready!"
My sister watched me make my full preparations with a blank face and simply waited.
"Let's go."
With the sun high overhead, we set out for the Forest of Delusion. Villagers regularly went there to forage or hunt, so no one found it strange. After a half hour of walking, we arrived at our destination.
"W-we… hah, hah… made it… hff."
I'd pushed without resting because I didn't want to waste time, and now I was out of breath.
"Rest."
"Y-yeah…"
As I caught my breath and looked around the forest, I saw things I never would have noticed before. When I'd come here as a child, I hadn't known enough to recognize any of it. Now I could.
The reason was simple. After reading field guides and books so diligently, every plant and tree in this forest looked like a treasure trove of natural riches.
"Wow. So this is what this forest really is."
I left my sister behind and immediately started gathering materials from the ground.
"Gathering?"
"Yeah. You know this herb, right?"
It was the recovery herb we used when making salves.
My sister only tilted her head.
"Want me to help?"
"No. Just keep watch for me."
She didn't know many materials anyway. It was faster to leave the escort and lookout duties to her and gather on my own.
With my back completely entrusted to my sister, I threw myself into finding ingredients and stuffing them into my bag.
"This is a medicinal herb, this is a poisonous plant, this is a toxic mushroom, this is an edible mushroom."
I sorted them by effect into the boxes I'd packed in my bag ahead of time. Poisonous materials especially were dangerous if you didn't classify them carefully.
"Oh! This is the flower used to make antidotes!"
Man, materials were this abundant just at the edge of the forest? How many more would there be deeper in?
"Yuli?"
I was completely absorbed in gathering. Whenever I spotted a material I hadn't tried before, I snatched it up at once.
"This is… foam grass?"
It was a plant famous for being completely useless. It grew everywhere — fields, forests, swamps, any environment you could name — and yet no one had found a proper use for it, which was exactly why it was so well known.
Rub the grass and it produced foam, but the foam was toxic. Eating it was out of the question, and it was too dangerous to use as detergent or soap either — the toxin affected human skin badly enough that direct contact would crack it, and in severe cases peel it right off. So there was no practical way to put it to use.
From a modern person's perspective, if you could just neutralize the toxicity, it looked like it could become a revolutionary product…
"The problem is that other people have almost certainly tried removing the toxin already."
And since no method had ever become known, there probably still wasn't one.
Soap did exist in this world. It was just expensive enough that only nobles used it…
"If I could just solve the toxicity, it'd be the perfect material…"
I started to pick it, then stopped. Gathering it bare-handed would be more toxin than I could handle. I put on gloves first and used two fallen twigs like chopsticks to collect it.
Since it grew everywhere, there was plenty of it nearby.
"That's dangerous."
"I know. That's why I want to try using it."
If I could just deal with the toxicity, it seemed like it could work as detergent or soap… Maybe mix it with something that had a detoxifying effect? No… from my previous life's knowledge, foam and such were alkaline, related to pH levels. Should I mix in something acidic?
This wasn't the place to think it through. I needed to get home, keep proper records, and experiment properly.
For now I set the foam grass aside and threw myself back into gathering.
Even without going deeper into the forest — just scouring the surroundings — I found a wide variety of materials.
And that wasn't all. There were plenty of food ingredients too, so I collected those as well, planning to use them for dinner.
After about four hours of gathering, the sun was starting to sink low. If we wanted to get back before it set completely, we needed to leave now.
"Sis, let's head back."
My sister, who'd been standing blankly out in front, spun around and came over at my words.
Why did her expression look so sour?
"Sis? I picked a bunch of tasty mushrooms, so let's eat them together."
"We'll have dinner together?"
"I'll make you a delicious soup."
"Hurry up, then."
Her expression shifted, and she started walking ahead. She'd seemed to be in a bad mood just a moment ago… uh-oh. I scrambled after her.