Mia Returns Crossing the River - Chapter 4
‘So that means I can find a place with two rooms and a balcony.’
Everything had been done by Mia for Mia alone.
But now, these great people who hadn’t shown up when she needed them most suddenly claimed to be her aunts, greeting her with gentle faces and expecting her to happily settle in this unfamiliar neighborhood?
To just throw away the life she built with her own hands?
No way. She hated foolish dreams like that.
It didn’t matter if she was twisted inside. This was who she was. Born with lacking physical ability and short patience, she was always suspicious of sweet words first and foremost.
‘Hmph. Aunt, what aunt. There’s no one else here who looks like me.’
Thanks to staying sharp all this time, she’d managed to make it alone somehow. But to blindly trust and follow strangers she’d just met? Mia’s common sense and pride wouldn’t allow it.
“I have my own life. I’ve done the best I could up till now. And you come dragging me around without even consulting me…”
“Your body will tell the truth even if your words say otherwise.”
Scheherazade spoke calmly, reciting some cheap lines.
“Hello? Is this the time for jokes?”
“This is serious. Baby, no, Mia. How old did you say you are now? Hmm… I see. Then it must have been a really close call.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“If you’d stayed living in the other world, your remaining lifespan wouldn’t have even reached another ten years.”
Mia was truly speechless.
“Let’s see if I’m right. Mia, you’ve been weak since childhood. Often sick, spending lots of time in hospitals. Even though it wasn’t malingering, doctors there couldn’t find the cause and just said your nerves were sensitive. It’d probably be faster to find a place on your body that isn’t hurting.”
“How do you know that?”
Indeed, Mia had often been ill. She still carried a pouch full of various medicines in her bag.
There were times she collapsed without reason and was rushed to the ER more than once, but the hospital found no symptoms and just told her to avoid stress and get plenty of rest.
It was a dream impossible for modern life.
Her body seemed inherently weaker than others’. She ate and slept just like the kids in the orphanage, but only Mia suffered from stomach aches, caught colds, and developed pneumonia. Even when falling, she was the only one who broke a leg. And those bones didn’t heal well.
An unknown foreigner, an orphan, an unusually fragile girl.
For someone like Mia to live “healthy and normal” in the other world, she had to try twice or thrice as hard as anyone else.
But it turned out there was a reason for all that struggle.
“Because you belong here. None of your body’s elements come from that world, so the world there has always rejected and excluded you. We searched desperately for you but feared it might already be too late… Seeing you grown and safe now, I’m truly glad. Meeting you safely fills me with genuine joy.”
Scheherazade spoke firmly, like driving a stake in the ground.
“But how about now? Do you still feel that weak?”
Mia looked down at her body anew and suddenly touched her face.
“Where are my glasses? Did I drop them in the water?”
There’s a saying that healthy people don’t understand the feelings of the sick.
Conversely, it means Mia, who had been frail all her life, had no real idea what being healthy felt like. The constant pain that had always accompanied her vanished completely after coming here. It was only someone’s words that made her realize that.
“I don’t have my glasses, but how can I see so clearly…?”
It wasn’t just her eyes. Her head didn’t ache, her throat wasn’t scratchy, her nose wasn’t congested, and her stomach wasn’t queasy without food. Her shoulders, waist, wrists, and ankles all felt good.
Mia moved her body as if bewitched by a fox. It was as if she’d been taken apart, washed thoroughly, and reassembled in light and refreshed. She unknowingly inhaled deeply.
“This is… what it feels like to breathe using both nostrils?”
Is this the ordinary state of a healthy human body? Are there really people in the world who live with such a refreshed body all the time?
Mia bounced in place and stretched her limbs. The air and gravity felt soft and sweet, perfectly attuned to her. The corners of her mouth, stubbornly turned down before, twitched with excitement on their own.
It was the moment a freshwater fish living in the sea finally returned to its born river.
Scheherazade said.
“But, well. If you insist on returning there, risking death…”
“Wait, hold on! You said I’d die soon if I go! That changes everything!”
“Is that what you’re saying, child?”
Regardless of the women’s delighted faces, Mia switched on the recording function on her phone.
“But here, at least room and board will be provided, right?”
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