Chapter 3 The Daughter Reflects
'Isekai Reincarnation, huh?'
Sara lay on her bed, lazily thinking back on her past life and her current circumstances.
In her past life, Sara was Uno Sarasa, a woman in her late thirties. She was a career woman working for a trading company, and her job was extremely interesting. As a result, she kept putting off romance, and she didn't even have a boyfriend for many years, let alone get married.
After returning from an overseas business trip, she got into a taxi at the airport to head home, but she got caught up in a traffic accident... or so she thought, but her memories of the time just before and after her death were hazy and unclear.
'I bought that wine that's supposed to be delicious, so I was planning to drink it slowly at home. What a waste, it was expensive too...'
Even when she tried to recall her memories from just before she died, only trivial things came to mind. There must have been many other things, but all she could remember were work-related things like "I still haven't made the materials for tomorrow's meeting..."
It wasn't a black company or anything. Her boss would often tell her to take paid vacations, but she would always forget because she was having too much fun working. Sarasa was just a workaholic.
The only thing she could recall from her private life was cleaning her brand-new 2LDK apartment on her days off, making a simple meal, and enjoying it with a nice wine. "I'm living the single life!"
Her hobbies, if people could call them that, were reading e-books or online novels during flights or work breaks. She didn't have many friends, and she wasn't exactly a heavy drinker.
In that sense, her job was probably her biggest hobby.
Moreover, most of her friends from the same generation as Sarasa were already married with families, so she didn't have many opportunities to spend time with them on her days off.
"Well, I'll just take it one step at a time and try to remember..."
If she thought about it too much, she would just end up feeling lonely, so she decided to focus on sorting out her current life for now.
* * *
Sara is currently 8 years old. She is the only daughter of Arthur, the third son of the Marquis Grandchester family, and Adelia, the daughter of a merchant family.
Her parents fell in love despite their different social classes, got married in secret, and ran away together. They settled down in a small town near the national border and opened a general store-like shop. Although they weren't wealthy, the 3 of them lived a relatively happy life.
However, when she was around 7 years old, her father had an accident while on a business trip and passed away. Since he had most of the store's cash with him at the time of the accident, her mother and she lost their family's main breadwinner and a large portion of their assets all at once. In cases like this, it's almost impossible to recover the lost money or goods.
Her mother tried to stay strong, but without cash or goods, she couldn't keep the store running. She started working at a nearby bakery early in the morning to make ends meet, but her wages were meager, and she had to do extra work at home until late at night.
Their daily meals became scarce, and dinner often consisted of just a bland soup with hardly any ingredients and leftover bread. This harsh lifestyle took a toll on her mother's body, and about half a year later, she followed her father's path and passed away.
Before her mother died, her mother sent a letter to her father-in-law, Marquis Grandchester, entrusting him with her care. Three days after she passed away, the Marquis came and took her, who was starving and lying in bed, to his mansion in the capital. She supposed even he wouldn't want his grandchild to starve to death. This all happened about half a year ago.
In the Grandchester mansion in the capital, not only did the Marquis live, but also his eldest son, Edward, and his wife and children. The Marquis's wife had passed away before she was born, and he hadn't remarried.
In other words, she was suddenly taken in by a family consisting of her grandfather, uncle, aunt, and cousins. By the way, the Marquis's second son was serving as a governor in a distant land and didn't live in the capital mansion.
'My uncle and aunt are total nobles-at-heart. They put on a good face in front of my grandfather, but behind his back, they say terrible things like 'commoners are inferior' and 'commoners are uneducated.'
It's only natural that her cousins, who were raised by such parents, would look down on her and bully her.
Her past life was as a Japanese person, so she rarely had the opportunity to be aware of her "social status." She knew that royalty existed, but they were distant figures, like people she saw on TV or in magazines.
Due to her job, she had chances to interact with foreign royalty and nobles, but in modern-day Earth, absolute monarchies were a minority. Many of those she met in business settings had a mentality similar to that of a large corporation's CEO. They viewed their country as a huge enterprise, earning foreign currency, enriching their nation, and loving their people.
Moreover, such royalty and nobles were well aware that cultures differed by country. They rarely acted arrogantly, misusing their status, towards business partners from other countries.
It wasn't that she had never been mistreated by so-called "celebrities." However, most of those who acted violently were nouveau riche who had only recently become wealthy and mistakenly thought they were superior.
Such annoying people caused trouble for many, and it wasn't rare for them to get flamed on social media. While thinking that online society was scary, she saw a wealthy young lady who had insulted her holding a press conference to apologize, and her heart skipped a beat.
However, Sara, who was born into the Marquis family in this life, was currently receiving a baptism by fire in the aristocratic society, which was steeped in authoritarianism. Since her mother was a commoner, her uncle, aunt, and cousins saw her as a child with inferior blood and looked down on her. Her cousins would often bully her.
The servants around her also accepted this as a matter of course, and unless something major happened, they wouldn't stop it.
'You're a noble, so why bother with commoners?'
The world wasn't that simple. It seemed that was true in other worlds as well.
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