J-Novel Heart

Chapter 1: Graduating From the Academy of Magic

With her back against the wall, the pea-brained princess forced herself to think.

Holmes and I rang the bells together, bowed twice, clapped twice, recited the traditional prayer that begins with, “O Gods, purify us from evil,” bowed once more, and then left the building. There were a lot of people in the shrine grounds.

Roughly forced onto her feet by the muscular guards, Alphina ascended the steps. She thought she might try to shoot a wink or two at the crowd glaring at her, but a decapitated head with one eye closed sounded like it would be too creepy, so she controlled herself.

After they bound Alphina to the guillotine, the guards left.

Now, I wonder where my hundredth time i

Indeed.” Holmes looked up at the sky. “Having money means you can make choices, such as, ‘I can buy anything, but I won’t,’ and ‘I can go anywhere in the world, but I’ll stay home.’ There are people who say things like, ‘You don’t need money to be happy’ or ‘Money isn’t the only thing that matters in the world.’ These statements are not false. However, I believe that being able to make any choice you want in a variety of situations is what gives you freedom.”

I nodded with a strained smile. “That’s exactly what I thought—I didn’t need money to be happy. But after these events, I realized that having money gives you freedom. I think the resistance and guilty feelings towards money I had deep inside my heart have diminished.”

Indeed.” Holmes looked up at the sky. “Having money means you can make choices, such as, ‘I can buy anything, but I won’t,’ and ‘I can go anywhere in the world, but I’ll stay home.’ There are people who say things like, ‘You don’t need money to be happy’ or ‘Money isn’t the only thing that matters in the world.’ These statements are not false. However, I believe that being able to make any choice you want in a variety of situations is what gives you freedom.”

I nodded with a strained smile. “That’s exactly what I thought—I didn’t need money to be happy. But after these events, I realized that having money gives you freedom. I think the resistance and guilty feelings towards money I had deep inside my heart have diminished.”

Indeed.” Holmes looked up at the sky. “Having money means you can make choices, such as, ‘I can buy anything, but I won’t,’ and ‘I can go anywhere in the world, but I’ll stay home.’ There are people who say things like, ‘You don’t need money to be happy’ or ‘Money isn’t the only thing that matters in the world.’ These statements are not false. However, I believe that being able to make any choice you want in a variety of situations is what gives you freedom.”

I nodded with a strained smile. “That’s exactly what I thought—I didn’t need money to be happy. But after these events, I realized that having money gives you freedom. I think the resistance and guilty feelings towards money I had deep inside my heart have diminished.”

allen was because I’d gone into capsaicin shock (hey, that has a nice ring to it) and had been flooded with memories of my past life. I didn’t feel like diving into that with him, though. I’d only been alive for seven years, but even I knew better than to think that concepts like “past lives” and “reincarnation” had any place in the worldview here.

And yet, here I was, with all these memories of the old me. What’s more, I was able to understand the concepts of a “past life” and “reincarnation” as if they were completely self-evident. That was precisely why I knew that there must’ve been people out there who believed in reincarnation, and why I’d come to think that it was very plausible that I myself might’ve experienced it.

But in the world I was currently in, the dead returned to the earth, and

t talking about it here was even more complicated. If you wanted to talk about such abstract concepts—like reincarnated souls and past-life memories—then you’d have to start by explaining what they were and why they mattered. After all, the people here had no exposure to them. They didn’t even exist in fairytales. What’s more, even if I were to do my best to explain it all, it seemed unlikely that I’d get the response I was looking for.

It didn’t help that my previous memories were so fuzzy and fragmented. Even though I’d managed to recall my perspective on life and death, I didn’t feel confident that I could explain it in any logical way. I could imagine explaining things like video games and electricity, and it seemed doable to describe what it was like to live in the world in which they ex