Being Loved for the First Time Chapter 2

Part 1. Let Me Introduce My Family

 

As always, my wish did not come true.

 

“A young lady has been born!”

 

It was a midwife’s delighted voice that announced my birth into the hundredth life I had so desperately not wanted.

 

I instinctively held my breath.

 

Living might be a bother, but I didn’t want to die the instant I was born.

 

It wasn’t because I was particularly attached to being alive.

 

If I died, I would only be born again anyway.

 

‘I just don’t want to be forced to watch another real-life misery story right off the bat. It gives me the creeps.’

 

There was a reason I’d obediently saved their world in my ninety-ninth life.

 

When I staked my life willingly, my senses were cut off quickly and I could find peace.

 

But if someone killed me, or I died after being caught up in the world’s destruction, things became truly horrific from that point onward.

 

As though it were all my fault, I was forced to watch every last moment of that hellish pandemonium until the world was completely destroyed.

 

The voices of people cursing me, the agonized struggles.

 

No matter how numb I’d become, I had no desire to see all of that again.

 

That was why I’d merely played a cute little prank before obediently saving them.

 

‘Dying is about the only time I ever feel like I can get any rest. I can’t give that up.’

 

I didn’t have any hobby of enjoying the sight of other people suffering, either.

 

For those reasons, I was always on edge immediately after being born.

 

Since, regardless of my wishes, I invariably ended up in insane worlds on the brink of ruin, with bizarre families, this was the most dangerous time of all.

 

Some had tried to kill me for crying; some siblings had pointed knives at me to eliminate a rival; and there were cases in which my very birth was a secret.

 

‘Well, it doesn’t look like the last one applies this time.’

 

The midwife had shouted so happily, after all.

 

Still, I had no idea what sort of deranged parents or siblings might be waiting for me. The best course was to clear my airway with a faint cough and lie quietly.

 

But then….

 

“My baby. My youngest.”

 

A delighted voice unlike anything I’d ever heard before tickled my ears.

 

“Thank you for being born safely, my little one.”

 

The woman speaking sounded slightly exhausted, and her face was filled with a smile.

 

As though she were genuinely happy about my birth.

 

‘What… is going on here?’

 

After ninety-nine lives, I’d developed a mental manual for every possible awful situation, so I was confident I could quickly respond to most threats to my life.

 

Crash, bang—!

 

Just as I was bewildered by this new pattern, a loud noise came from the other side of the room.

 

I assumed it was something like a rebel attack.

 

However.

 

“Ah…! You’ve worked so hard. You’ve worked so hard, my lady!”

 

The person striding toward us was a man as enormous as a house.

 

His features were so sharp that I instinctively thought of a wild beast. Yet, incongruously, the moment he saw my mother and me, huge tears began to roll down his face.

 

“Isn’t she a lovely daughter, darling?”

 

“Yes, she’s as lovely as you are.”

 

It was at those words that I realized this man, whose looks and behavior were such a mismatch, was my father.

 

He had a beastlike face and a mountain-sized body, but his hair was a sweet shade of pink and his eyes were the soft green of spring foliage.

 

No, despite those colors, the impression of a wild beast was still strong. Seeing tears stream from that stern face was terribly awkward.

 

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen someone who’s supposed to be my father react like that in the first place….’

 

Until now, indifference had been the best I could hope for. Usually there was disgust, and in the worst cases, attempts to kill me.

 

But my fascination with observing my father was short-lived.

 

‘Ow, ow! Why are your hands so rough?!’

 

Because the midwife had begun patting my tender newborn skin harder and harder.

 

“Oh dear, why won’t our little lady let out her first cry?”

 

“She’ll have trouble breathing at this rate. Young lady, quickly, please.”

 

At the midwife’s and maid’s words, my parents also turned pale and looked at me imploringly.

 

“My baby, my youngest. Let Mommy hear your voice, quickly.”

 

“What’s wrong, little one? A-are you startled because Daddy looks scary?”

 

And then my father even turned away, sniffling.

 

‘I cleared my airway. I already cleared it!’

 

I felt terribly wronged.

 

To be honest, I could have cried if I wanted to. But all my accumulated experiences made me deeply reluctant.

 

‘There was even a madman who smiled at me at first and then suddenly tried to kill me because I cried!’

 

What had he said? That a holy infant who had received an oracle would never make a loud, ill-mannered noise like an ordinary baby?

 

No, thank you. I wasn’t interested in experiencing that again.

 

And I was even less interested in accidentally dying and being forced into another session of watching a tragedy unfold!

 

I’d just steeled myself to remain silent when….

 

“Young ladyyy, it must hurt. Why won’t you cry?”

 

“Baby, don’t you want to let Mommy hear your voice?”

 

“I-is our daughter sick somewhere?”

 

The hands trying to make me cry gradually stilled, and now it seemed as though *they* were about to burst into tears.

 

No—my father had been crying for a while already.

 

‘Ah…. I’m weak against faces like that.’

 

Was it because I’d met nothing but indifferent, cold-hearted people for so long?

 

I was terribly weak against faces so full of affection that you might see one only once in a hundred years.

 

I’d even ended up helping people like that when they were merely passing acquaintances.

 

And this time, they were my family.

 

Surely, surely this wasn’t some trick to deceive me and test me?

 

Although I knew I was softhearted, an unfamiliar feeling rose inside me, and my lips trembled before I knew it.

 

And then.

 

“H-hiiing….”

 

A tiny whimper escaped before I could stop it.

 

It was such a faint sound that someone not listening carefully might have missed it.

 

However….

 

“Well done, young lady. Very well done.”

 

“Even our baby’s voice is so lovely.”

 

“Th-thank goodness…. Thank goodness, my youngest.”

 

They heard even that tiny sound and spoke as though I’d accomplished something wonderful.

 

My mother took me from the midwife, gently patted my back, and whispered.

 

“My youngest, thank you so much for coming to Mommy.”

 

Her voice was so warm.

 

Was this really my family?

 

Not a nightmare I was having before my hundredth life began…?

 

Not a fleeting encounter, but really my mother…?

 

Bewildered, I drifted to sleep beneath her tender touch.

 

Because the warmth of those gentle pats was impossible to resist.

 

It was as though the weariness of a heart that had nowhere to go over ninety-nine lives had caught up with me all at once.

 

***

 

‘I must be out of my mind.’

 

That was my first thought when I woke up.

 

No matter how unprecedented that flood of affection had been, I’d let my guard down far too much and fallen asleep.

 

‘To do something so dangerous….’

 

After all that determination never to have to watch another real-life tragedy, I’d relaxed completely.

 

Well, judging from the fact that I was still alive and unharmed, perhaps it hadn’t been a bad choice.

 

But it really was strange.

 

It wasn’t as if no one had ever patted my back before.

 

Even in lives when I was neglected, there had been occasions when a maid or caretaker was assigned to me.

 

‘But it felt completely different.’

 

What difference could a few little pats make?

 

And yet it truly was different. My mother’s touch seemed, strangely enough, to tell me that it was all right to relax completely.

 

For someone as wary as me—even though I was weak against those faces—to fall asleep at once….

 

‘Did she use some kind of magic?’

 

After entertaining the thought, I quickly dismissed it.

 

If she’d done that, there was no way I wouldn’t have noticed.

 

With two thousand years’ worth of power accumulated within me, my senses would detect it even if I didn’t want to know.

 

‘Then is there really… a chance that they’re decent people?’

 

I wiggled my hands and feet as I pondered.

 

No matter how I thought about it, there was no way such good fortune would come to me.

 

‘Is someone letting my guard down to throw me into a sewer for the special occasion of my hundredth life?’

 

Whoever kept reincarnating me might well be capable of something like that.

 

I shivered.

 

Suddenly, I felt cold.

 

Even someone like me, who had always accepted life and death with indifference, might have difficulty enduring something like that.

 

What a truly twisted sense of humor.

 

To make me remember the wish I’d held in that distant first life….

 

‘Well, I’ll just live quietly and keep my guard up.’

 

Even if my surroundings had changed a little—no, a lot—what I needed to do hadn’t changed, after all.

 

***

 

But the following day, my modest expectations shattered along with the name my parents told me.

 

“Anastasia, our youngest. That’s your name.”

 

My mother stroked my cheek with a gentle gaze.

 

Beside her, my father spoke with a proud expression.

 

“It’s the name of the hero who saved this world. Our youngest deserves a name at least that—”

 

I didn’t even hear what he said next.

 

A hero?

 

A heeerooo?

 

If I could have, I would have violently rejected the name.

 

Every time I’d been given a hero’s name, I’d ended up living the absolute worst lives imaginable!!