My Next Life as the Heroine – Chapter 7

Author’s Notes

Apparently this never got posted. It’s more like chapter 6.5, so the story flows well enough without it, but I still think it’s better with it.

Dating it to the past so it appears properly in the collection

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Mary Hunt is my name. I was born as the fourth daughter of the Marquess Hunt’s family. Although my mother was a beautiful and gentle person, she was not accepted in the Hunt family due to her low social standing. I, her daughter, was treated the same way.

While my mother lived, my relatives were content to merely remain cold and distant. Although it wasn’t pleasant, I was nevertheless able to find comfort in the warmth of the love I received from my Father and Mother. 

With Mother’s untimely death, however, that warmth disappeared. Father was often away on business, after all, and in his absence my older sisters went from merely distant to viscous bullies. They would hide my things, and sometimes even break them, or sometimes even say… terribly unpleasant things about me.

They would call my red hair filthy, and say that I had no class. They would claim that the stench of commoners oozed from my veins, and that I should know my place. Hurtful things that, while terrible when inflicted upon me, make me all the more concerned when I think about how they might affect her.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I should start at the beginning – at our first meeting. Our only meeting, seeing as how our second will not commence for a short while, but again I am getting ahead of myself.

I suppose the proper way of going about things would be to discuss the state of my heart, up until this point. To put it bluntly? It crumbled long ago. Under the onslaught of my siblings’ vitriol, I quickly became frightened of interacting with others. Fear permeated my entire being. In time, I even began to believe what my sisters said – that I was no good, and that I would never amount to anything.

My only real escape was a small garden in the courtyard. When I tended to those flowers, my heart felt at ease, and my mind at peace. And it was on the way to those very flowers that I met her. A girl whose name I would not learn for many years, with a smile I would never be able to forget.

I came across her at random. A girl with short blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and a grin on her face. A commoner – something I could tell at a glance, based on the quality of her clothes alone. Though the green dress suited her, it was entirely too simple for a visiting member of the nobility. What’s more, she seemed too young to be a servant, and had no obvious purpose for being in our halls.

Before I even had the chance to consider asking her for an explanation, however, she was already eagerly asking me for directions to her destination – Mary Hunt’s garden. In other words, the small courtyard garden that I took care of. Or, in her words, “The super gorgeous flower garden that may or may not be in the vague direction of some bathroom or another?”

Although I was confused – both as to her intentions, and as to how she found out about the place to begin with – she assured me that she simply wished to see the flowers, saying she wanted to experience what it was like to be surrounded by gorgeous plants.

I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to show her. Perhaps it was because of the complements she’d heaped upon me – they didn’t feel like mere flattery, coming as they did from a girl who didn’t seem to even be aware of my identity. And they were certainly the nicest things I’d heard in quite some time, even if it was mostly directed at my garden. But maybe that was all the more reason for me to show her – because I took pride in that garden, despite long since losing the ability to feel pride in myself.

Maybe it’s no wonder, then, that I was so happy to show off the garden when we got there. Happy enough that I didn’t immediately notice the damage my siblings had done to my precious sanctuary. A small amount of damage, mind you – a single flower, ripped from its stalk, with the flowers immediately surrounding it crushed underfoot as if they were merely in the way.

No, that’s exactly what it was – they were merely in the way. This wasn’t a dedicated attack on me, after all. Someone had simply wanted a flower, and hadn’t cared if they crushed my work. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse… To be hated from spite, or to be so insignificant that hurting you becomes a simple byproduct of other desires?

Yet even as I held back the urge to cry, the girl I’d led here stepped forward. She said that she would fix it – and next thing I knew, light was pouring from her hands and into my flowers. One by one, she fixed the stalks, with some of them even sprouting new buds, each healed using the rarest form of magic in existence. 

Then, when she parted from it, she smiled brightly and said, “I’m sure Mary will be able to fix things up from here…. I mean, anyone who can make something as beautiful as this garden has gotta have more talent in her thumb than I’ve got in my whole body, don’t you think?”

Simple words, delivered in a simple way – and yet it was the first compliment anyone had paid me in so long. Where before she had merely talked up my garden, now she talked up me. As if I were someone special… No. Maybe, to her, I was someone special.

Someone she would never forget.

I never saw her again, after that day. Even though the farmers she’d come with returned many times, to deliver groceries, over the years, she was never with them. But that didn’t bother me as much as I would have thought – because I knew we would meet again, at the academy. There was no way a girl who could use light magic of all things wouldn’t attend, after all…

One thing did bother me, though: her status. Namely because of how I myself had been treated – if my siblings accused me of “oozing commoner blood” simply because my mother was of lesser status than my father, then how cruel would the various nobles at the academy be to a literal commoner with no noble backing? 

The thought of them bullying her and breaking her things haunted me. The idea of that smile of hers becoming as fragile as mine, or even disappearing altogether, was more horrible than anything I could imagine.

That’s why I made up my mind, then and there – the weak and cowardly Mary would be no more. Instead, I would perfect myself in the eyes of high society. 

Now, on the verge of entering the academy, I could only hope that my status as a prince’s fiancee would be enough. That my hard work would allow me to protect that which was once taken from me. That I would be able to serve as a shield for the rumored commoner, who wielded light. That all my effort would… pay off…

No. That was the weak-willed Mary talking. I would do more than simply hope. 

I would do whatever was necessary, to protect Maria Campbell’s smile.