The Seamstress Girl Chapter 1

The Seamstress Girl

Chapter 1:
"Spiders and Needles

Translator Note:

I'm translating the ncode version of the novel. If you'd read the published version, the beginning is a little bit different. It's nothing important, but I wanted to point that out :c

I only own a couple of old clothes, a spider, and a needle.

Apparently, the family I was born in, the Nylle family has the power to sew blessings into clothing; a power also known as “Divine Protection Embroidery”. 

My previous life’s name was Tsumugi, while my current life’s name is Ewey. In my previous life, I belonged to the handicraft club, so I thought that having sewing as a family business, to me, was like an actual blessing.

Yes, when I was a toddler and was yet to know how things at this house worked… I grew up making clothes for the spirits. Those little spirits that were silently crying and somehow looked hurt with their clothes tattered. From time to time, they appeared right before my eyes.

Since the moment I was born into this world, my eyes have been able to see such things. Additionally, I am able to manipulate my own magic into the things I made.

Little kids have a lot of free time.

Even though I was just a little kid who was yet to understand words, I never felt a single ounce of love from the people that were taking care of me.

I spent most of my time sleeping, and since I had the memories from my previous life, I still had my own ego and it became stressful not being able to move the way I wanted to. And if it weren’t for the fact that I could see the spirits or any other magic related thing, I would have certainly broke.

I kind of felt bad saying that I was just wasting my time, so I started using my string-like magic to try and mend the spirit’s clothes. At first, the little spirit had a frightened look when she saw me use my magical power, but then her eyes lit up in surprise when I fixed her clothes.

When I finished fixing her clothes, I cut off the string. And the same magical string I used to mend her clothes disappeared, her clothes now being adorned with something glitter-like. The spirit then kissed my cheek, and flew away joyfully and looking more than happy.

Since then, I mostly continued to use my magic when being around the little spirits. And on my tenth birthday, I got a spider and a needle as a present (?), and I was supposed to work with those on fixing things… Normal clothes were supposed to be fixed on a “normal” way… But the magic string that came out of the spider was anything but normal… Oh well, I will just sew things the normal way, as I have always done so.

My hands did the job faster than anyone else, and it was done so beautifully… Compared to how I used to use the sewing machine in an unskillful way in my previous life, I did a better and faster job with my own two hands.

But it was already too late when I realized that doing this kind of thing in this house, was considered to be more than worthless.

Constant days of verbal abuse.

Plain meals.

Being laugh at as I was a good-for-nothing child.

My own family just treated me as a nuisance.

And the fact that my little sister, even though she made wobbling stitches, was able to put her magic into it made my position even worse.

… It looks like normal people can’t manipulate the threads like magic. However, a blood relative of mine made some kind of contract with a special spider, and the magic power that thread had given us the power to sew blessing into its threads with our magic.

The truth was that, if I tried, I was also able to sew like that, but… By the time I came to realize that, I had already lost the will to do anything worth for this family.

Well, for starters, I never liked this family. And maybe it was the fact that even in my previous life I didn’t have any kind of relationship with my blood relatives, that now I was destined to live this way.

I just hope that, in the future, I’ll be able to have a family of my own.

And during the spring of my fifteenth year, I was taken away from that house.

If there’s a god who throws things away, then there is also a god who picks them up… Rather than looking at me for not being able to cast a single blessing into my work, he was someone that wanted me because he found beautiful the things I made with my own hands.

My sister wasn’t happy about it… because that person was apparently a good-looking aristocrat with a good reputation in the capital. Or rather, he was the one she wanted to marry with all her heart.

He was in such a good mood when he said that I wasn’t going to his house to become his wife, but his seamstress. He said that if in the future I wanted to marry someone, I had to work hard. So he joked around saying that I should respect him for giving me a job.

People at home always acted like they were special, more than anyone else. And I’d that same feeling with him.

It was disheartening.

And even though I was somehow, still part of this family, he paid a big amount of money just to have me as his seamstress.

It’s no surprise that I wasn’t given the money... And when arriving at his house, the old lady that was going to take care of me and also my boss was moved to tears the moment she saw both my appearance and how little baggage I had.

After an interview with the owner, Kalosthylla Roden-sama, I was bathed, polished, dressed in the old lady’s daughter’s secondhand (but as good as new) clothes, and was served a decent meal in the dining room. For I had now a small stomach, I apologized to the head chef for not being able to eat more than half of the food he served; and even the strong-faced head chef broke down in tears.

My body was so skinny that it still made me look like a ten-year-old, even though I was already fifteen. Both my hair and skin also look ragged from the lack of nutrition…

They took me in as if I was a poor girl that needed refuge (though I was just a trashy aristocrat). For a moment I thought I would receive the same treatment I had on my parent’s house, but the Kalosthylla house immediately welcomed me in and that was something I wasn’t expecting.

At first, they weren’t really happy at the news of receiving a member of the Nylle family, since that family has a really bad reputation on the public eyes. But when I got there and they saw with their own eyes that I was just a mistreated little girl, they gave me a warm welcome. [End of Chapter 1]