Daily Life Without the Mentally Unstable Saintess
Daily Life Without the Mentally Unstable Saintess
The best way to push back the surging wave of self-loathing: autosuggestion.
I opened my eyes, thinking of the cheat code that would erase yesterday's shame.
Then, looking at my flushed face reflected in the mirror, I spoke.
"I am a person of tremendous capacity. I can accomplish anything. My focus is astonishing. I am someone advancing medieval civilization. I possess infinite potential..."
In an instant, a haughty, beautiful girl stared back from the mirror.
At least my attempt to erase the self-loathing had succeeded.
'Today, I'll try living a little differently.'
There is a common trope in reincarnation stories.
As I mentioned before: the advancement of civilization.
Changing the world with modern knowledge.
That was the plan I came up with the moment I reincarnated.
Of course, I immediately scrapped it the second I saw the Saintess's letter.
But right now, wasn't the Saintess absent for a whole ten days?
It felt far too wasteful to just sit still and breathe.
"Let's try something."
First, I resolved to try anything at all.
And so, I began by sketching a mind map.
What made life inconvenient for Rosaria?
And what tools would be nice to have?
First, I listed Rosaria's current condition.
-Difficulty moving > solved with a wheelchair
-Physically weak > solved by the Saintess
-Boredom from having nothing to do > unsolved
The moment I wrote down the third point, I found the problem: a lack of entertainment.
I set that as today's theme and began thinking of solutions.
"So, how do I solve it?"
Making a smartphone was out of the question.
Making a computer was also impossible.
If I eliminated all mechanical elements first...
Board games, as expected.
At least analog-style board games were something I could make.
Then, what kind of board game should I make?
First, chess and playing cards already existed.
There were other games adapted from them, too.
After looking into it, I found that Oriental civilization's Go and Janggi were also around—played, apparently, at the level of medieval hipsters tinkering with them.
But they were all too bland, weren't they?
They couldn't compete with the stimulating variety of board games from the modern era.
There were no casual board games here where you smashed someone's hand off to get fruit, spent all day reciting effects while summoning monsters, dynamically experienced a person's entire life, or formed a dungeon-exploring party to break through traps.
I decided to create those kinds of games first.
What could they do, call it plagiarism?
There's no copyright law here.
Besides, those companies don't even exist.
If I plagiarize, what are you gonna do about it?
In a world this blissfully free from lawsuits, there was no problem with plagiarizing to my heart's content.
"...Still, I wonder if there'd be people who'd actually play them."
The truth was, to make a product like that, you first needed to understand market trends. What kind of consumers, how many, and so on.
But Rosaria's body rejected all of that.
Market research or investigation? I couldn't even walk out of the courtyard to begin with.
Rumors I heard? Most noble gossip spread through parties or shady shops, but Rosaria the shut-in was quite removed from such places.
On top of that, this was near the Holy Kingdom.
A clean region where no balls—those heaps of luxury, vanity, and desire that medieval nobles held—ever took place.
'...I really know nothing about this world.'
I knew even less than I thought.
If the Saintess hadn't taken me into the city, I wouldn't even have known what a city felt like.
Just as I was about to give up in frustration and go back to reading books or playing card games with the maids as usual.
"...I could just go see for myself."
Come to think of it, why had I been trying to walk there myself?
I had a tool called a wheelchair, made through collaboration between the local blacksmith and the maids.
Truly, a fool's body suffers.
Though, to be fair, it was a body that suffered even when not foolish.
"...Isabella? Are you busy right now?"
Noble young lady trait: does not use her own body.
I could just use Isabella, the maid who was the same age as me.
Of course, I still had some reluctance about ordering people around, but what did it matter? This wasn't a body that could afford to be picky.
"Lady Rosaria, did you call for me?"
Knock, knock—Isabella tapped on the door.
At first I thought it was some kind of magic, and it really was magic.
A magical tool, a magic-call-bell, existed in this world—a magical version of a summoning bell. If science was lacking, you just used magic.
Isabella had come running swiftly, having received the summon from that magic-call-bell.
"Yes, I called for you, Isabella."
Isabella opened the door the moment she heard my reply.
She entered the room with hurried little steps.
She must have run here—her short brown hair was disheveled, and she hastily straightened her hairband as she offered her greeting.
"If something is troubling you..."
Isabella was trying to guess, for the moment.
What reason could her young mistress have for calling her specifically?
But, strangely enough, there was no particular reason it had to be her.
The head maid handled most things, after all.
From meals to bathing, even the bathroom and room cleaning.
"...Nothing is troubling me. I simply have a task that I can only entrust to you, Isabella."
Rosaria smiled kindly, easing the tension.
Seeing that, Isabella's cheeks flushed.
Of course, it wasn't romantic affection or anything like that.
From her position, Rosaria was someone of a completely different status.
The blush that rose was simply a human instinct reacting to seeing something beautiful, not a refined emotion like love.
'She's beautiful again today.'
Her appearance made you stare, even as a fellow woman.
Especially when she was with the Saintess—the room had been filled with an almost artistic beauty.
Isabella had dreamed of being a painter and majored in art, but ended up as a maid due to her family's opposition and her own failure—yet in her bones, she was an artist. With a divine sculpture like this right in front of her, there was no way her heart wouldn't race.
"It's about the design you gave me last time."
And as expected, it was Isabella who had drawn the wheelchair design. Rosaria couldn't draw, so she had asked around for a maid who could draw, and in the end, it was Isabella who had transformed the wheeled-worm drawing Rosaria had scribbled into the form of a wheelchair.
Because she was that precious designer, Isabella was the maid whom Rosaria—who had knowledge but zero ability—favored most.
"Ah, are you trying to make something again this time as well?"
Isabella's face brightened, perhaps because it was work only she could do. Being an artist at heart, she loved the act of drawing itself so much that she was simply delighted whenever such an opportunity came.
"...Well, it's similar."
I would be making something.
But that was for a bit later.
"Today, I'd like to go outside for a bit."
"Then I will fetch the head maid."
The role of physically supporting Rosaria belonged entirely to the head maid. It was at that moment, when Isabella was about to instinctively head to the head maid without a second thought.
"...It's something I want handled discreetly."
This was something the head maid would never permit.
Pulling a wheelchair out into the town?
The head maid was the type who would put me to bed if I so much as stood up and grabbed a broom. A date was an event overseen by the Saintess—while no one in this world could object to that—an outing organized by Rosaria, the world's most fragile being, was something many people would oppose.
"I... I cannot do such a thing."
She was simply terrified of the consequences.
She was strict even with Rosaria, so how strict would she be with the maids? Entering a lion's den would be less terrifying than facing the head maid's fury.
"...I'll take responsibility."
Truthfully, I wasn't certain.
Still, I had to get Isabella on my side first.
'Because Isabella is the only young new hire.'
The rest were all the head maid's hands and feet.
No one but Isabella, who was still a bit scatterbrained, would even consider humoring such unreasonable demands.
"This is a request I can't make of anyone but you, Isabella."
Everyone but you is on the head maid's side.
No one but you, who hasn't been tainted yet, can do this kind of deviance!
You're the only one I can recruit as an informant, Isabella.
"S-Still, it's frightening."
But as expected, time had passed since Isabella arrived here as well.
She was about to give in to the fear she'd learned through observation. I hadn't wanted to use this, but it seemed the time had come after all.
"...Please, Isabella."
The finishing move: a sincere plea.
Taking both of her hands in mine and asking as earnestly as possible.
You might think it's nothing special, but that's a matter of who's using it, not a problem with the technique itself.
When the user is Rosaria,
it was a technique that could bring even the world's strongest Saintess to her knees.
In the end, I succeeded in winning Isabella over.
It was a little embarrassing, but what did that matter? Success was all that counted.
*
Ultimately, Isabella was conquered.
She became a splendid informant and helper.
"Lady Rosaria... I truly beg of you. You absolutely must explain this well to the head maid later. My life is now, for all intents and purposes, tied to you, Lady Rosaria..."
Isabella pulled the wheelchair, her hands trembling.
That loyalty, offering her very life, was highly commendable but...
I honestly wasn't sure how that part would work out. Even though I was above her by rank, in terms of charisma, force, and locker-room dominance, the head maid was superior.
And besides, she had raised Rosaria since childhood.
Some invisible something that transcended status existed within the head maid.
"...I'll do my best, Isabella."
So I couldn't give any guarantees.
But don't worry too much.
The finishing move works equally on everyone.
I'd just have to shed a tear or two, what of it.
Is there any tool of persuasion as easy as the tears of a frail, beautiful girl?
Money might come close,
but that's cheating, so excluding that, there is none.
And so, what was unveiled was Rosaria out in the courtyard (feat. Isabella).
It was my first time visiting a medieval rural village since reincarnating.
The first impression I felt was that there were more people than I'd expected. Of course, not as many as in a city. But I had thought it would be a quiet countryside—yet it seemed that rural did not necessarily mean quiet.
First, what caught my eye were the people filling the wide-open fields, busily working as harvest season approached. They were laboring diligently, even singing peculiar work songs.
The second thing was the bustling marketplace. It wasn't as large or as tidy as a city's, but that feeling actually made it seem more like the countryside, which was charming in its own way... but since it was my first time seeing a medieval rural market, it was simply fascinating and novel.
That was around the time we arrived at the market without any major trouble.
"Huh? Isn't that Isabella?"
A voice calling out to Isabella came from behind.
"Ah... hello, Mister Kal."
Isabella greeted him demurely.
Curious about who it was from her attitude, I turned to look behind us.
His appearance screamed blacksmith all over his entire body.
With iron ore in one hand and coal in the other, a hammer hanging at his waist—he was unmistakably a blacksmith.
"That person riding in the wheelchair, who is she?"
Since there were still only a few wheelchairs in this world,
he must have been curious about the identity of the person riding in one of his rare products.
"Uh... what should I do, Lady Rosaria?"
Isabella was so flustered that even her voice trembled.
"...The other maids have probably already found out by now anyway. We need to create an alibi, so let's go by my real name."
Isabella nodded her head.
"This is Lady Rosaria. She said she wanted to see the outside, so I dragged... no, escorted her out."
Did her true feelings just slip out a little?
Still, she'd at least fulfilled the role of introduction. Good work.
I was thinking that and turned around without much thought when—
"L-Lady Rosaria?"
Kal, visibly startled, dropped to his knees.
"I-I've committed the grave discourtesy of not recognizing you, my deepest apologies!"
What the hell, why is he suddenly doing that?
He knelt and adopted a formal posture as if he had committed some crime. And at Kal's actions, eyes began to gather.
"...Huh? Uh? My lady, what do we do now?"
Isabella was flustered by the unexpectedly high number of watching eyes.
And I was the same.
Because of it, my mind began to seize up, but thankfully, hadn't I armed myself mentally before coming out this morning?
"...We carry on with confidence, Isabella."
I am confident, without a single wrongdoing.
I am a person of tremendous capacity.
The autosuggestion, bordering on narcissism, erased my panic.
And for some reason, strength began to fill my shoulders.
I started to act the part of the dignified noble lady, Rosaria.
"Please raise your head. It is not a pleasant sight in a place with so many people."
First, I raised Kal, the source of the commotion.
"Truly, I am so sorry for not recognizing you."
Kal apologized with all his might.
The hell, was I this big of a deal outside?
Was I, a picky-eater shut-in invalid inside the house, actually some kind of super-celebrity who was a hit out here, or something?
"...There are too many eyes watching."
But I hailed from the Eastern country of propriety.
No matter how medieval this place was, where status was supreme, I didn't much care for treating elders like that. And besides, according to the head maid, wasn't I the face of the family? There was absolutely no reason to perform actions that drew this much attention.
I calmed Kal down for the moment.
But the water had already been spilled.
Countless gazes began to focus on Rosaria.
"...That person is Lady Rosaria?"
For them, Rosaria was probably a figure known only through rumors. They might have seen other members of the Bersian family—the ruling nobles of this city—once or twice at festivals or events, but Rosaria? They hadn't.
The gazes of people looking at Rosaria as if they were seeing a fairy out of a fairytale were deeply bothersome.
The most common type of gaze was one of captivation.
'Wow... that feels genuinely fucking awful.'
But the problem was that those were men's gazes.
Sure, Rosaria was a woman, but I wasn't gay.
Being the target of men's admiration brought me no happiness whatsoever.
On top of that, the pure stares of children were also burdensome.
The sensation of becoming someone's first love couldn't possibly be pleasant.
Their pure innocence made it feel base, and their lack of refinement made it vulgar—I was not at all pleased to have become the first love of children.
Even the voices of women whispering amongst themselves were unpleasant.
It felt exactly like being an exhibit in a zoo.
Was it because of that?
My stomach began to churn.
The gazes, mixed with all kinds of emotions, were oppressive.
But I had to maintain face, so I couldn't say a single word.
I still didn't know about this world.
I could only remain silent; I couldn't act.
"...Let's move somewhere else, Isabella."
So this was what it felt like to have every eye on you. I felt like I finally understood why celebrities were so stressed and burdened by those stares. There was no way it could be pleasant to receive gazes even from complete strangers, eyes that looked at you as a different kind of being.
Because of that, a panic began to set in.
And Isabella noticed it too.
However scatterbrained she might be, she was still a maid of the Bersian household.
She grasped Rosaria's worsening condition at once, steeled her heart, and began to fulfill a maid's duty.
"P-Please move aside!"
She raised her voice and gestured at the people surrounding us.
"If you so much as touch the young lady, I will report it to the lord!"
The word of the lord was absolute.
No one wanted to lose their head, so everyone obediently cooperated with Isabella's cry.
"L-Lady... my lady, are you alright?"
I was sweating coldly and trembling.
Rosaria had said she would take responsibility, but seeing her in this state, Isabella was bound to grow anxious as well.
"...I'm alright. So, just take me somewhere without people for now. And don't worry too much. This much is nothing."
It was a pathetic sight.
I was the one who had stubbornly insisted we go out, and yet the one who had suggested it was in this state.
'...Truly the worst.'
For the first time, I was the one who found myself missing the Saintess first.