Chapter 4

　　Elena had found Jayden in her backyard—or, to be more precise, sprawled in the middle of her vegetable patch.

　　That day had been no different from any other. Elena had been minding the general store, and it had not seen a single customer. Her home was in a small mountain village at the southernmost tip of the Blake Empire, a place so small that neighbors knew the number of spoons in each other’s cupboards. Elena ran the only general store there, having taken over for her parents after they went missing. Given the village’s size, customers were rare. In fact, days like today, with no visitors at all, were the norm.

　　Maybe I should just close up and have dinner.

　　Jingle.

　　Just then, the firmly shut door swung open for the first time all day. “Welco—”

　　Elena’s polite smile froze on her face as she saw who it was.

　　“What? Cat got your tongue?” Hans, a man her age, swaggered in with a greasy grin.

　　“You’re not here to buy anything,” she stated flatly.

　　“True. Business good today?”

　　“What do you want, Hans?”

　　“‘What do I want?’ What kind of question is that, between us?”

　　Despite her icy tone, Hans just laughed it off. Elena knew exactly why he had been making a point of visiting her store lately, and she did not welcome it in the slightest.

　　“Is there really any kind of relationship between us that would warrant you saying that?”

　　“Why have you gotten so cold all of a sudden?” he scoffed, as if her attitude was nothing more than a childish whim.

　　Here we go again. Hans was one of the few people her age in the village, and he had recently started making pathetic advances. His intentions were obvious—it was a warning to her and any other potential suitors. We are getting married, his actions screamed. In a remote village like this, people married young, and now that they were of age, Hans was being more blatant than ever. But Elena had absolutely no intention of marrying him.

　　“I was never warm to you in the first place.”

　　“But you were not this cold, either. Come on, let’s get along. I mean, who else would have you?”

　　His arrogant assumption made Elena sigh. What could she do? It is partly my fault. Not long ago, she had resigned herself to the idea of marrying Hans and had tolerated his possessiveness. In this place, it is just what you do when you come of age.

　　In this world, an unmarried person was an anomaly. The villagers were insular, with no tolerance for anyone different. The most grating part was their view of women as helpless creatures who required a man’s care.

　　“Elena, it is about time you got married, is it not?”

　　“You need to start relying on a husband now.”

　　“If a man says he will take you, you should go with him quickly.”

　　She was constantly bombarded with this pressure to marry. Elena had a particular fear of being seen as “not normal,” so she had responded to Hans’s aggressive advances with ambiguity. She thought she had to marry him.

　　But now, she knew she did not.

　　The truth was, Elena had been special since birth. She had spent her life trying to be normal to hide that specialness, but upon reaching adulthood, a second ability had awakened within her.

　　The ability to see other people’s lives as dreams.

　　Some might call it a mere dream, but Elena’s were no ordinary dreams. They were so vivid it felt as if she were living those lives herself. After nearly a year of such experiences, the values from those dream-lives had seeped into her own, fundamentally changing her. The most recent dream had been particularly transformative. Elena had become a woman on a planet called Earth. That woman had declared she would never marry, had built a successful life for herself, and had navigated society with confidence. Why, then, should Elena have to endure this humiliation just for being a woman? That ridiculous marriage was not something she had to do.

　　“Don’t be so stuck-up. It is only because it is me that I am even willing to take you.”

　　And I am supposed to put up with a man who says things like that? Elena wanted to live peacefully in this village—not because she liked it, but because she wanted to be here if her missing parents ever returned. She had endured everything for that reason, but she was done.

　　“This is how I am from now on. I have no desire to be close to you.”

　　“What?”

　　“You heard me. I have no intention of marrying you.”

　　As she refused him so firmly for the very first time, a mixture of shock and offense flashed across his face. “Ha! Found some other man, have you? Did someone actually make a move on a girl like you?”

　　“There is no one else.” All the men in this village were cut from the same cloth as Hans. Even if they were interested, she was not.

　　“Right. Who in this village would take a flawed girl like you? Probably no one but me.”

　　That damned word, flawed.

　　As a baby, Elena had been abandoned at the village entrance. Her adoptive parents had cherished her, but to the villagers, she was always “the abandoned, suspicious child.”

　　“Then why are you clinging to a girl like that?” She protested back.

　　Hans’s face flushed. “Clinging? I am taking you in because I feel sorry for you! I am the only one who would even bother with you. You think any other guy would take you seriously?”

　　“Then don’t bother. I am perfectly capable of living on my own.”

　　“Looks like you’re in a bad mood today, Elena. Talking all sorts of nonsense.”

　　“My mood would improve if you left.”

　　Instead of leaving, Hans took a slow look around the store. His eyes lit up when they landed on a large stack of boxes in the corner. “These are still piled up? Here, I’ll move them for you.”

　　“I will move them myself. Leave them alone.”

　　“If you could have moved them, you would have done it already. This is a job for a man like me. Hup!” Hans grunted, staggering slightly as he heaved the box up. It was clearly heavier than he had expected.

　　I knew it, Elena thought. The box was full of farming tools and was incredibly heavy.

　　“I-I just need to take this to the storeroom, right?” he asked, his arms and legs trembling as he feigned nonchalance. He was too pitiful to watch. Elena came out from behind the counter and approached him.

　　“I will move it. Give it here.”

　　“Hmph, how could you move something this heavy? You would have had a hard time if I had not helped.” He was trying to puff out his chest, to prove he was strong and that she was a woman in need of his help.

　　If anything, he just looks pathetic…

　　He should have gotten his pained expression under control first. Tired of arguing, Elena simply snatched the box from him. Effortlessly.

　　“Wh-what, you?”

　　“I told you I did not need help.”

　　Hans’s jaw dropped as he stared at Elena, who was not struggling in the slightest. “How can you lift it so easily?!”

　　Elena had been strong since she was a child, possessing a monstrous strength that was unbelievable for her age. The first time she had made a “mistake,” the villagers had been horrified. A toddling child had single-handedly demolished a hut in the village square.

　　Strangely, however, the young Elena was always found without a single scratch. At first, the villagers dismissed the hut’s collapse as a coincidence, a stroke of luck for the child. But soon, such incidents grew more frequent.

　　“She broke it again!

　　"She ruined another one!"

　　"It was Elena!”

　　Everything her hands touched, she destroyed, still too young to control her incredible strength. Inevitably, a rumor began to snake its way through the village:

　　“Elena is a monster.”

　　The rumor quickly hardened into action.

　　“Don’t go near her. Stay away!”

　　Everyone began to avoid Elena on sight. For what felt like an eternity, she was forced to live in a mire of prejudice, ostracized simply for being different. The villagers could not comprehend anything outside their narrow norms, and so, Elena’s gift became a curse. From a young age, whispers, shunning, and suspicious glares followed her relentlessly. Had it not been for her parents, who showered her with devotion, Elena would never have endured it.

　　Once she was old enough to understand, she began to hide her abilities, pretending to be as weak and ordinary as everyone else. It was the only way to survive in the village. To all appearances, the Elena of today had no trace of unusual strength—precisely why Hans had felt bold enough to act so arrogantly.

　　That mask had just been shattered.

　　“I’m strong, you know,” Elena declared, hoisting the box as if it weighed nothing. She fixed the stammering Hans with a cool gaze.

　　“You… you were supposed to be normal now…” he trembled. The memory of her childhood flashed through his mind—a monstrous strength that broke everything she held. He had confronted her, thinking that part of her was long gone. “You’ve been deceiving me, no, the entire village all this time?”

　　A look of disgust crept into his eyes, his entire attitude shifting in an instant, all because she was strong.

　　In the past, that look would have shattered me, she thought. But she was fine now. In fact, the charade of playing the delicate, proper lady had been far more exhausting. Who cares if I don’t get married? As long as I can live my life with my head held high.

　　Elena decided then and there to stop suppressing that part of herself. With her incredible strength and her dreaming ability—her two special powers—she no longer needed to worry about what others thought.

　　“Yes,” she admitted, her chin lifting defiantly. “I was pretending to be demure.”

　　At her confident admission, Hans’s jaw dropped.