Chapter 1: The Brand of "Colorless" and a Fragment of Hope.
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 a room holding its breath.
“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 of 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, 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. Her 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.
***
That evening at supper, the air was thick with unspoken words. Father and Wilhelm talked of the day's work at the forge, the heat, and the quality of the steel. I pushed my food around on my plate, the vendors' whispers still echoing in my ears.
Mother had managed to buy a small honey cake with the leftover Drax, a rare treat. She divided it into four portions. Wilhelm's eyes lit up as he got his piece. He was about to devour it, then stopped. He looked at my untouched slice, then at my face.
Wilhelm’s happy expression faded. Without a word, he broke off half of his own cake and slid it onto my plate. The gesture hit me with a force that tightened my throat, stealing any words of thanks. My response was a quiet echo: I cut my slice in half and ate the smaller bit first.
Father watched, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He said nothing, only taking a slow, deliberate drink from his mug.
***
The next day, when Mother and I went to the smithy, a plan formed in my mind. While they talked, I didn't just wander. I had a mission. I snatched a piece of discarded parchment and a lump of charcoal from a bucket.
In a quiet corner, my hand moved. It wasn't the smooth flow of my G-Pen, but the rough, scratching drag of charcoal. I drew a design, a detailed blueprint for a small, elegant dagger, its hilt intricately woven like the roots of a tree. It was the kind of fine work I knew our smithy never produced, something unique for Wilhelm.
Clutching the parchment, I approached the cooling forge. A small piece of scrap metal lay near the embers, still warm. If I could just get it to the anvil, if I could just hold the hammer... My fingers closed around the worn wooden handle.
“What do you think you are doing?"
My father's roar echoed off the stones. He strode over, snatching the hammer from my grasp and the parchment from my other hand. His face was a mask of soot and fury.
“This is a forge, not a playground!” His voice cracked like metal. “You’ll burn before you learn.” He glared at the charcoal blueprint. "And what is this nonsense? Drawing? Do you have any idea what people would say if they saw you in here, failing at this? “You think… doing this will make you useful? You can just walk in here… charcoal and dreams, and make something of it? They’ll call you useless, girl. They’ll say I raised a fool.”
I shrunk back, the heat of his anger more scalding than any fire. His stare was a physical weight, pinning me in place, and in the silence, I braced for another blow.
But then, Wilhelm stepped forward, his voice quiet but firm. "Father. I am sure she has her reason."
He picked up the torn parchment from where Father had thrown it. "Look at it. It's... it's beautiful. No one in the village draws like this." He looked from the design to me, his eyes seeing not a colorless girl, but a sister with a gift he couldn't comprehend. "She wasn't being careless. She was being useful.”
Father looked between us, his anger warring with his shock. The sight of Wilhelm defending me, of him valuing the very "nonsense" he feared, left him speechless. He didn't scold me again. He just turned and walked back to my mother, his shoulders stiffer than the steel he worked, the silence now filled with a new, more complicated tension.
The air in the smithy cooled, but Father didn’t look at me again. Wilhelm kept the torn parchment, tucking it into his apron like a secret.
For the first time, I wasn’t sure which burned hotter… the forge or the space Father left behind.
Later that night, Mother found the smudges on my hands.
“She smiled faintly, rubbing until the cloth turned gray. ‘It won’t come off,’ she murmured. Then she kissed my forehead.
“Maybe it’s better that way.”
The first thing Elsbeth "painted" in the world was not paper.
Soul memories, apparently, don’t disappear easily.
Next time, her “flame” wakes silently, and fate sets in motion.
Next week, same time, same place.
Thank you for reading.
