Since childhood, we are told the same thing over and over again, like a mantra:
"You only have one life. Live it with dignity. Leave your mark on history."
Well.Apparently, I took that a little too literally.
I really did try. Since childhood I was thrown into every form of art at once — painting, music, literature. I wrote, I drew, I found inspiration, I burned out, and then I wrote again. By eighteen, I had become a fairly well-known writer in certain anime communities (yes, exactly those where the comments look like "WOW THIS IS GENIUS" and "WHY DID HE DIE?!").
At twenty-four, I was named Woman of the Year among young writers. Sounds pretentious, I know, but the diploma is still gathering dust somewhere between old drafts and a mug of dried coffee.
Year after year I honestly tried to leave a "mark in this damn story."
And now I'm thirty.
I have my own publishing house.Stability. Money. A name.
And… emptiness.
As if the world had faded the moment it started revolving around me. The colors grew dull, emotions became muted, and inspiration turned into something like a rare guest who drops by without warning and leaves just as quickly.
I remember the day my editor brought me the manuscript with perfect clarity.
"The Demon Seal," she said, with the expression of someone handing me not a book, but a ticking time bomb.
The author was a young "aspiring writer." The quotation marks appeared in my mind instantly.
I opened the book.
Read the first chapter.
Then the second.
And halfway through it, I dialed my editor's number.
"Agnes," I said in a tired, defeated voice, "what the hell is this crap?"
After a long round of persuasion — "just finish it, maybe there's a twist,""she shows promise," and "you're always the one saying people deserve a chance" — I finally gave in.
Fine.
The prose was decent.She wrote confidently.Medieval fantasy was my weakness anyway.
But the plot…
Oh, that plot.
So cliché, so sugary, so painfully boring it made my teeth ache.
Beautiful heroine.Demon.Seal.Suffering.Beautiful prince.Happy ending.
I closed the book with the expression of someone who had just eaten a stale marshmallow.
Throwing the manuscript into the far corner of my apartment, I sent my editor a short and merciless message:
"Tell the author to rewrite the plot into something alive. Otherwise — rejection."
With a clear conscience, I went to sleep.
And that was when I had a dream.
A girl in a black robe stood before me. She looked upset. Not tragically so — more like a student whose thesis had just been rejected. Silently, she held out a feather quill and said:
"Only you can fix everything."
And that was it.
I opened my eyes to the sound of loud female voices.
"She's beautiful, Duchess!""Just look at this child!""Oh my, what a darling!"
What is this noise? Who are these people? Why are they so loud?
I opened my mouth to say everything I thought about people violating my personal space and sleep…
And said:
"Goo."
"Goo"?!
I snapped my eyes open and realized I was being held in the arms of some enormous woman. No, not just big — gigantic. I felt like a character from Gulliver's Travels, only without the adventure and with extremely questionable casting.
Around me stood several other equally gigantic women in bonnets. They were smiling. Cooing. Looking at me as if I were the very meaning of life.
The woman holding me said happily,
"Mariam, it's me, your mother!"
Mariam?
Mother?
You?
WHAT?!
I tried to protest, but instead of a well-structured argument I produced… a baby's cry.
"She must be hungry," one of the bonneted women said.
"Oh, of course! I'll feed you right away, my little girl," my "mother" said as she reached under her blouse.
WOMAN, DO NOT STAB ME WITH YOUR NIPPLES.
GOOD LORD, WHY?!
But the world remained deaf to my pleas.
After the feeding — which, I must admit, was actually quite pleasant — they placed me in a tiny crib. The realization didn't come immediately. It fully hit me a few days later, when "mother" carried me to a mirror.
"And here is our Mariam!" she sang cheerfully.
From the mirror, a cute baby looked back at me.
Very cute.
And… about thirty years younger than me.
I knew about reincarnation.
About other worlds.
About isekai.
But all of that was supposed to stay inside books — not happen to me.
Now there was only one important thing to figure out:
Where am I?
And what the hell am I doing here?
Although… given my current situation, that question was a little premature.
First, I should probably learn how to walk.
And that's how this whole…
REINCARNATION MESS
started.
Or whatever you want to call it.