Paladin of the End - Volume 3.1 - Chapter SS1

A Dream of Bygone Days

“Hmm... This can go with these...”

“...”

“Oh, but maybe this goes better?”

“U-Umm, Mary?”

We were in a room in the temple. Several sets of clothing were tidily folded up into piles.

Mary had been using me as her personal fashion doll for over half an hour now. This was because Blood had managed to pull out some clothes that were still in good condition from the ruined city.

Clothing would normally be in a heck of a state after a few hundred years, but if they were stored in a clothes chest with magical Signs engraved upon it, that was a whole different story.

Kids grow quickly. I too had shot up in height and was now twelve solstice years old. The clothes I was wearing last year were already far too small. Mary had, of course, been working her own kind of magic to adjust the length of the clothes I was wearing, but it looked quite a difficult task to manage. And so Blood had been considerate and gone on a search for clothing, and he had come back with a mountain of piled up clothes that, as I mentioned, had gotten Mary completely fired up.

I never had much interest in fashion, in my last world or this one, so to be honest, I was just confused and unable to keep up. “It’s not like anyone’s coming. As long as I can wear them—”

At least that was how I saw it.

“Oh no, that won’t do.” Mary smiled. “You need to build up your knowledge of clothes, or you’ll embarrass yourself when you go out into the world someday.”

Mary took items of clothing in hand one after another and started explaining them to me. This is silk, this is cotton, this is linen. This is a plain weave, twill weave, satin weave, cross weave...

She showed me the different ways of sewing each part, the meanings of the patterns and designs stitched onto the clothes, and how to wear various fashion accessories. And while warning me that things had probably changed in the outside world, she taught me the customs relating to what people wore at each level of society.

For instance, she taught me that not all fur coats were created equal, and only the upper class could use martens and squirrels. That got a “Huh,” from me, and I started to gain an appreciation for clothing despite myself as I listened to her. I’d hardly had any interest at all up until now, and I was surprised at how many different kinds of clothing there were in the world.

“It’s incredible,” I said.

“Buildings, cooking, and clothing are things that people can’t live without. Of course there are a lot of them,” she replied primly. She seemed to be in a good mood and enjoying herself.

“You know a lot about this.”

“I liked clothes and decorations. If I hadn’t heard the voice of our Earth-Mother, I might have aspired to be a clothes-seller or a dressmaker.” Mary seemed to be looking far off somewhere. “If I’d never heard God’s voice, or if I’d been born as the daughter of some dressmaker...”

Everyone imagines that kind of thing at least once. My memories of my previous life were still vague, but I had the feeling that there was a time when that was all I thought about.

How did things end up this way? If only I’d been born into a different family, if only I’d been born in a different country, an entirely different path might have stretched before me—

“But no.” Contrary to my own thoughts, Mary smiled.

“As a dressmaker’s daughter, I would never have met Gus or Blood—” She tilted her head to the side and looked at me. “And of course I wouldn’t have met you, Will.” Her smile made her look very pretty.

“Yeah. I’m glad you weren’t a dressmaker’s daughter, too.” I smiled back.

Where had I fallen down in my previous life? Was it a failure that I had brought on myself through my own carelessness and complacency? Or had I become disheartened by crippling circumstances I was powerless to change? Maybe it was half and half.

I could no longer pull that memory from beyond the haze. All I knew was that at the end of it all, I stood here, in a fantastic world of swords and sorcery, raised by a gentle family of undead. I thought myself very lucky.

“Alright.”

I’d lost myself in those thoughts. Mary’s voice pulled me back to reality.

“That’s enough talking. Let’s try this one next, shall we?”

“What? There’s still more?!”

Mary was a good mother on the whole, but she got like this sometimes. I wailed in protest and tried to escape, but Mary was surprisingly nimble. She caught me with no effort at all, and for a full hour after that, I was made into her personal mannequin...