Eight years have passed since I was reborn in Oikoumen. This tiny body of mine is still clumsy, still foreign. They call me Elsbeth, a name that never quite fits. But inside this fragile shell, the soul of Sayaka Tsukishiro, a twenty-five-year-old mangaka who once created worlds with a G-Pen, is still trapped.
My mother sat at the scarred dining table, her shoulders bowed not in weariness but in concentration. Before her, a meager collection of coins gleamed dully in the weak light, mostly dull copper, with a single, fleeting flash of silver. The soft clink as she counted was the only sound in the room.
"We're short again," she murmured. The words were not for me but a confession to the silence itself. Her sigh that followed was the quietest sound. I knew, the sound of hope deflating.
I padded closer, the worn floorboards cool and familiar beneath my bare feet. "Mother?"
My gaze drifted from her tired profile to the corner of the room, where a single floorboard caught my eye, a deep groove carved into its pale wood. I couldn't remember it being there before. Or maybe I'd just never noticed how struggle left marks, not just on people, but on the bones of their homes.
I looked around and saw our whole life at once. To my right, the door to my parents' room. To my left, the narrow gap is my own. Wilhelm's pallet lay rolled near the hearth. No corridors. No spare space. Just this single chamber, with its groove in the floor and its small, hopeful pile of coins.
Mother startled slightly when she noticed me watching, then gathered the coins into a leather pouch. The gesture was neat, practiced, and final.
"It's nothing, darling," she said softly. But her eyes flicked once more toward the worn groove before finding mine. The room seemed to echo that look, the silence swelling around us like held breath.
She paused, her gaze lingering on my face as if truly seeing me for the first time in a while. A complex look passed over her features, a mix of sadness and resolve. "Come, Elsbeth. It's time you learned how money works in this world."
"These are Drax," she said, holding them up to the candlelight. "Bread coins," I call them. We never seem to have enough."
She thumbed the silver piece next. "Pulshnd. A hundred Drax. I keep it for bad winters."
She hid the silver coin in her pouch, her voice dropping to a whisper. The gesture felt less like storage and more like a burial.
"Let's hope we never need it." I knew better than to ask about the gold Manfyll I'd heard of in market tales. That was a story for other houses, not for ours.
As she spoke, something cold and old stirred in the back of my mind, a ghost of calculation from a life I left behind. The numbers started shifting on their own, translating themselves into a language I hadn't used in years.
One Drax for a loaf of bread, Mother had said.
A loaf of bread... that used to be about two hundred yen.
So… one Drax equals two hundred yen.
My eyes flicked to the pile of coins she had just counted.
Twenty, maybe twenty-five copper Drax. My mind did the math before I could stop it. Four thousand yen. Maybe five. That was everything? For food, repairs, rent, and life itself?
Then I remembered the silver Pulshnd tucked away in her hidden pouch. One Pulshnd, one hundred Drax. Twenty thousand yen. My breath stuttered. A single coin, their last resort for a "bad winter," was worth less than a cheap phone, less than a single week of comfort in the world I once knew. Disposable there. Sacred here.
All that clinking copper and one sliver were everything standing between us and hunger.
By the measures of my past life, we weren't just poor.
We were living in a world where bread itself was gold.
"Come," she said, tying the pouch to her belt and forcing a brightness into her voice that didn't reach her eyes. "Let's see if we can afford something sweet from the market today."
I nodded and followed her out.
The market was alive with noise and color, a stark contrast to the quiet tension of our home. I clung to Mother's skirt as we weaved through the stalls. The air smelled of baking bread and trampled herbs.
As we neared the soaps and herbs stall, a snippet of conversation, sharp and clear, cut through the general hum.
"...have you heard about Frieda's daughter? The little one?" A woman's voice asked, laden with morbid curiosity.
"Of course, I've heard," another voice, older and rougher, replied. "From Old Marta herself. Such a tragedy. Wilhelm is such a talented boy, blessed with strong fire, just like his father. Yet the sister... colorless."
The word landed not as a sound but as a punch to my chest. My steps faltered.
For a moment, it felt like my ribs were shrinking around a heart that didn't know where to go.
Mother's grip on my hand tightened, her knuckles turning white.
A hush fell over the stall. The shopkeeper, Hilda, looked up and saw us. Her eyes widened slightly. She gave the other women a sharp, warning look and muttered under her breath, "Shh! Here they come."
She then painted on a smile that was too wide and too brittle. "Frieda! Elsbeth! A lovely morning to you," she chirped, her voice artificially bright.
The two other women found sudden, intense interest in the bundles of thyme on the counter, refusing to meet our eyes.
Mother didn't acknowledge the previous conversation.
Mother's face was a mask of calm dignity, but I could feel the tremor in her hand as she placed our coins on the counter. "Just the thyme today, Hilda."
"Of course, of course," Hilda said, swiftly wrapping the herbs and avoiding Mother's gaze. The silence around the stall was louder than the market's noise had been.
I watched the slow, tedious ritual, a knot of frustration tightening in my chest. We have to stand here while she literally bites our money. No ATM, no tap-to-pay, not even a bloody barcode. The weight of this world's backwardness felt physical in that moment, a thick, slow sludge I had to wade through every single day.
Mother took the bundle, gave a curt nod, and led me away. I could feel the weight of their stares, pity, curiosity, and cold judgment burning into my back long after we had left.
Now, the whispers had faces. They had voices. My fate wasn't just a condition; it was a spectacle.
On our way back home, I saw magic again: two girls my age, their fingers sparking with tiny embers as they lit a streetlamp. When they noticed me watching, the flame snuffed out.
I walked beside Mother, each step heavy, feeling the weight of their indifference pressing down on my small shoulders.
That night, brushing my hair in front of the mirror before bed, I remembered a manga I once drew, Katherine, the girl abandoned by her world. I used to think she was naive. Now, I know better.
Every time we went to the forge, the heat hit me like a wall. Inside, I watched Father and Wilhelm move in perfect rhythm, a dance of hammer and flame.
"Again," Father barked.
Wilhelm adjusted his strike. Sparks scattered like stars against the stone floor.
Father clapped Wilhelm's shoulder. "Good. The fire speaks to you, boy."
He turned from the forge, his face gleaming with sweat in the firelight. For a single, fleeting heartbeat, his gaze found mine.
And shattered.
He looked at me, and the fire in his eyes flinched and died. In that fractured second, I saw it… not anger, but a raw, gut-wrenching shame.
And somehow... that was worse.