14

Nelly, a housewife, was tired.

(What was my life, really?)

Nelly’s married family was a merchant house that widely handled ornaments and the like in the Royal Capital.

Business was stable, and Nelly was respected as the mistress there and lived in reasonable wealth.

But Nelly was not happy.

Lately, her health had not been good either, and her proud beauty had faded, and by now she was completely a middle-aged woman.

Nelly looked at her face reflected in the mirror and sighed for what must have been the umpteenth time today.

Nelly had been born as the daughter of a poor farming family.

Because Nelly in her youth had been fairly beautiful, her husband, the son of a wealthy merchant who had been drawn to that beauty, strongly asked for her hand, and they were married while she was young. Then she was blessed with four children in all.

Immediately after her marriage, Nelly had lived together with her parents-in-law.

Nelly had been born as the daughter of a poor farming family.

Nelly, who had barely attended school and had not known much about manners or how to calculate, was trained extremely strictly as a merchant’s wife from immediately after she married into the family, so that her parents-in-law could make her support her husband, who would inherit the business.

From how to keep ledgers to relations with business partners.

How many times had she wet her pillow with tears over unfamiliar studies and unfamiliar business?

Even so, Nelly thought she had listened carefully to everything her parents-in-law said and protected the household properly.

Ashamed of her own lack of education, Nelly strictly educated her children and worked hard to get them into good schools.

She also properly attached etiquette teachers to her daughters. She herself thought she had been too strict with her children, but that was because she did not want to make her children suffer the hardships she had experienced.

While all that happened, her father-in-law fell ill, and then even her mother-in-law grew senile, and while supporting her husband, who was still immature as a merchant, she desperately nursed the two of them and saw them off to the Goddess.

After losing her father-in-law, who had been a fine merchant, and losing the main pillar of the family, business carried out by groping around in the dark was one difficult situation after another. Even so, at last, when her husband somehow began to stabilize as a merchant and she thought she could finally take a breath.

What came to light this time was her husband’s affair.

The woman he was having an affair with was a lovely young girl who greatly resembled Nelly when she had been young.

“You were fine even without me, so I got lonely.”

She had supported her unreliable husband, seen off his parents, given birth to and raised four fine children, both boys and girls, and handled the business. It was this man’s fault that she could not remain a delicate young lady forever.

At her husband’s words, Nelly could not even cry.

By then, the sons she had raised had grown up splendidly as her husband’s successors, and her daughters had also married into upper-class families, but because she had disciplined her children too strictly, and because there had been nursing care and a business crisis when her children were in the important years of puberty, the price of having neglected her children had come due, and her children no longer came near Nelly.

She had become estranged from her family home.

Young Nelly had been ashamed of her poor, poorly educated family back home compared to her married family.

Outwardly, it must have been a very blessed life.

A poor farming girl with nothing but beauty had caught the eye of the heir to a wealthy merchant house and married into money.

She had also been blessed with four fine children, both boys and girls.

The business was secure, and her eldest daughter would soon give birth to a child.

Even if her husband had a woman he was having an affair with, Nelly’s position as the mistress was unshakable.

And yet, before she knew it, Nelly was all alone.

Her husband and children had gone somewhere else, and what remained was a single middle-aged woman who had lost both youth and beauty.

(Even though I worked so hard and lived so earnestly, why on earth am I not happy?)

Nelly looked back on her life.

She had convinced herself she was happy, but had that truly been so?

(Perhaps my life was nothing more than marrying a man I did not particularly like, doing business I did not want to do, and caring for that man’s parents.)

Last week, a letter had come from her childhood friend Marie.

Marie had married for love the son of an equally poor cattle herder in the neighboring town, and as she had not been blessed with children, she had taken in an adopted boy.

She said that the orchard business she had started together with her husband had begun to get somewhat on track, and since they no longer had to worry about money, they were thinking of retiring because they wanted to hand the orchard over to their adopted only son and soon cherish time for the two of them.

It was an invitation, saying that if Nelly liked it, she should come visit the orchard.

The letter concluded that the adopted son treasured Marie very much, and if he had made her the mother of such a good child, then she had no regrets about a life in which she had not been able to give birth to her own child.

(Marie seems far happier than someone like me.)

In the poor village where Nelly’s family home was, Nelly had been called the luckiest girl in the village.

Nelly herself had believed that without a doubt, and she thought that deep in her heart, she had actually pitied Marie for marrying a poor man.

(Why?)

As she was lost in her thoughts and minding the shop, the orange color of the flowers in the vase at the storefront, whose water one of the shop girls was changing, suddenly jumped into Nelly’s eyes.

“What a beautiful color of marigold.”

Nelly murmured casually.

Until last year, it had been common sense in the Royal Capital that marigolds were rustic flowers that bloomed anywhere, but this year, every flower shop had nothing but marigolds connected to Eugenia’s awakening.

“It’s a beautiful orange color, isn’t it, Madam! When you decorate with a vivid color like this flower, it really brightens your mood. Wherever you go during this year’s autumn festival, there are decorations of this flower.”

The shop girls loved trendy things.

Praised by the strict mistress for their fashionable marigold decorations, the girls happily got excited over the topic of the autumn festival.

One girl spoke to Nelly.

“Madam, if you are not feeling well, why not go see the float from Ezra-sama’s place that everyone is saying is amazing? Everyone says it makes them feel better, and Eugenia-sama’s marigolds have magic cast on them, so they are very beautiful.”

“What do you mean, amazing? How is it amazing?”

After living in the Royal Capital for years, she did not think to go out of her way into the crowds of the autumn festival, but the girl’s words made her a little interested.

“Apparently, it heals you incredibly, and the energy to live wells up in you.”

Normally, Nelly would give up on the conversation here because of the lack of detail typical of a young girl, but today she pressed further.

“The energy to live wells up in you? What on earth does that mean?”

The girl seemed happy that Nelly, who had been suffering from melancholy lately, had shown interest for once. Her face immediately brightened, and she answered Nelly.

“Apparently, it is a float that makes you remember once again the joy of having been born. They say it is like remembering things you had forgotten, like everything you had left behind comes back to you!”