It was sometime between the spring and the summer, shortly after Anna’s seventh birthday. For her special day, I had a small wooden chest made. It was two feet by one by one, so not too large with a parabolic top lid that opened upwards by hinges. The chest was made from hardened oak, smoothly sanded and stained in deep red under the pine-sap varnish. I paid extra to have the chest encrusted with thin silver leaves around the edges. The lid was decorated with many colorful lake stones that were semi-opaque, giving off jewel-like feel. Apart from looking beautiful, the other notable thing about this chest was that the interior compartment could be sectioned by inserting three thin wooden plates vertically as desired, effectively allowing Anna to resize each section at her will. This was meant to be her treasure chest. Anna put it into immediate use, quickly filling it up with lots of beautiful pebbles and ribbons, jewels, dried insects, and small toys that held special meaning to her.

On the one hand, I was glad Anna liked my present, but on the other, I felt the treasure chest alone wasn’t quite enough. I had spent a fair amount of coins on commissioning the chest, but surely a bit extra wouldn’t hurt my coffer too much. It was thus around this time that I became obsessed with the idea of spawning a bicycle. Screw horses and donkeys. A bicycle would be so out of this world, that it would be the best ever present any child would ever want. And my Anna would be the first of this world to not only have but also ride a bicycle. How fucking cool is that?

So I set out to the town, clutching a basic drawing in my hand. I had sketched a schematic as best as I could, relying on my memory of how bicycles looked in my before-life. I had people from the blacksmith and the woodwork come over to my father’s tavern, and we sat down at a table at a corner. Father brought out free drinks, pleased with the fact that I held some statue over common folks.

“Do you want the wheels to turn on the axle, or along with the axle?”

One of the craftsmen asked, after having listened to me and studied the schematic I had drawn.

“What do you mean?”

“Surely these wheels are supposed to rotate?” the man waved his hand over my drawing and continued. “So, the question is, do you want the axle to be a fixed part of the wheel or a separate piece?”

I blinked, lost. What the heck was this dude talking about? A bicycle was a simple thing. It had the main body frame, two spoked wheels, a handlebar and a saddle, a set of pedals, then a chain that transferred the force to a wheel. How complicated can it get?

“He’s asking whether we want the axle to rotate. Do we want the wheel’s hub grinding against the axle, or the axle grinding against its socket?” a blacksmith chimed in, clarifying the question. “It makes a world of difference in where the wear occurs. We also have to think about the load-”

“What wear?” I asked, still lost. The experts exchanged glances, unanimously decided I was of no use, and then began discussing among themselves. There was a heated discussion regarding the material choice; a metal hub on a metal axle, metal on wood, wood on metal, wood on wood.

“-and what are these bubbles next to each other?” a man from Master Marcel’s workshop nudged me and put a finger on my drawing.

“They aren’t bubbles. It is a chain. Here, let me show you.”

I pulled out a blank sheet and began to-. Wait a second. I don’t really know much about bicycle chains. Thankfully, another man came to my rescue.

“Well, it looks like this big sprocket is supposed to turn that little sprocket in the back-”

“So, a chain of interlocked pins over the teeth…”

“Looks like it, yes.”

They sat there and argued and discussed for hours. As the craftsmen discussed, I shrank on the little stool I was sitting on.

In the end, this bicycle was impossible. Although making hundreds of tiny pieces that made up the chain was indeed feasible, albeit extremely time-consuming, making them with consistent strength and properties was just not possible for these tiny pieces. There were simply too many little parts involved in the chain alone. That led me to ditch the idea of the chain. Desperate, I instead suggested the primitive pedals-on-wheel arrangement. Like I had seen on the tricycles for kids back in my previous life. That, in turn, forced the saddle to be re-positioned forward, introducing even more load on the front wheel and its axle. To compensate for the load, the front wheel was redrawn to a proportion that it became impossible for the child’s legs to pedal the rotation. Then an ingenious young man snatched the pen from my hand and sketched something completely different. He drew a bar that connected the front and back wheels, like that of a locomotive. There was a spark of inspiration around the table as men leaned in and raised voices. The saddle was pushed back to the previous position. Footrests were added onto the locomotion bars. Anna would half-sit, half-stand, perched on the saddle, and she would-

“But would the young Lady have enough strength to power this?” Somebody asked, and the table fell silent. We eyed the rough sketch, then sighed. This thing had become too big and too heavy. The axles, hubs, pivots, and pins… all had to be strong enough to bear the load and, at the same time, be resistant to wear from grinding against each other. So, naturally, things got bigger and heavier.

“Besides, even if Lady Anna had the strength to ride this, she would have one heck of a sore crotch.” A woodworker commented. The others nodded and murmured in agreement. Damn. We had no suspension.

###

In the end, my bicycle for Anna had devolved into a rocking horse. After agreeing on the size, the general theme of the decoration and ornaments, and finally the price, I commissioned the job to the craftsmen. I then returned to the Baron’s manor, depressed.

Things weren’t exactly the same as the light novels and mangas I had read. Such fantasy works would, in general, conveniently have a local genius engineer at ready, who would churn out whatever devices and gadgets the isekai’ed protagonist described. And the heroine would be an angel, too. Were I in those stories, Anna would surely run up to me, study my face, and then ask, ‘You seem depressed. What’s wrong?’ And then the heroine of the fantasy fiction would cheer the protagonist up by beaming a smile and would thank the boy for trying to get her a special present. And, to my surprise, Anna did all that! She ran up to me and asked me what was wrong. I seemed upset. So I told her why, and she did indeed smile and cheered me up. Anna, however, didn’t forget to comment that she was seven, and a rocking horse was for little babies.

This little personal upset of mine, nevertheless, had become a seed for interesting thoughts and musings. Even if I had a full production drawing of a bicycle memorized in my head, the result would have been the same. To begin with, I had very little to no understanding of how and why things of my previous world had worked. And what little knowledge I had were very impractical to manifest here in the world of my reincarnation. Everything was intertwined. Wheels, for example. A wheel wouldn’t last long because the hub and the axle would wear down quickly. Bearings and proper lubrication would have solved the problem, sure, but producing a batch of metal balls with the uniform properties… welp, let us just say this world wasn’t at that level yet. A typical isekai protagonist would conveniently happen to be an expert in the metallurgy, but me? Heck no. All I had on me was the rudimentary capability to put two and two together and come out with a four.

So I sat down and observed things and thought about stuff. What was and wasn’t available in this world, especially things that mattered to our Barony’s daily lives. True, the Roseland was a land of plenty, yet there was much to be desired.

“What would you want from the Roseland, when you become the Baroness?” I asked Anna one day.

‘I want more of these. For everyone,’ she said, holding the large piece of honey roasted chicken drumstick in her small mouth as to free the hands to do the talking.

“That is good. What else?”

‘And more candles. It is annoying that one lasts only a couple of hours.’

“That’s good, too.”

She paused for a moment, thinking.

‘Would having more candles do it? More or larger? Larger ones would last longer.’

“I think either would be fine.”

Then I thought about her coming to this world. Did she mean to be the Baron’s daughter? Had she any plan for the Roseland, at all? I asked Anna thus.

‘No, the plan was simply me being dropped on your head. You just happened to live here in the manor.’

“Where the Baron and the Baroness were conveniently childless-”

‘Yeah. Lucky me,’ Anna finished her chicken drumstick and licked her fingers. ‘I do really love mama and papa, though. I am grateful.’

“You should be.”

We then talked some more.

Despite being a spoiled, entitled brat, Anna, deep down, had a glimmer of compassion and humility, seeded by her parents. In that regard, I, too, was grateful that it was the La Rose family that had taken her in.

From time to time, Anna and I talked about things we wanted to do, or what we wanted to become once we reached our respective adulthoods.

I myself hoped to keep working as a member of the Baron’s Council. I loved my Roseland, and I wanted the land and its people to thrive. I felt immensely proud and satisfied whenever I saw the evidence of my inputs, no matter how small or big. Clermans, for example, had implemented standardized training courses for their fields of business. Such as masonry, mining, and mountain hunting, et cetera. It was I who had kicked off the initiative some years ago. Now, other towns and villages were doing it, too, and we at the Baron’s court were eager to hear about the outcome. It wasn’t just Clermans. There were so many other things that I wanted to do in many other aspects of the Barony.

Anna, on the other hand, hoped for small things. Things that were more tangible and visible. Such as abundant chickens and fatter candles.

‘And I will ban carrots. No subject of mine shall farm carrots,’ she said.

“Eh, let’s not do that.”

‘And a pony ranch. I need one.’

I thought about it. Heck, why not?

“Yes, we can do that.”

‘Rabbits, too?’

“Sure, why not.”

‘And we breed Jehan, so there be a whole lot of beautiful-’

“No, Anna! No!”

###

As had been every year, the Baron asked Pascal to paint yet another portrait of Anna. Pascal came in a good mood, ready to get the first sketch done. After pleasant chitchat over tea, Anna was sent to her room to get changed into something nice. However, when she emerged from her room, we gasped in horror. Anna had her bang cut short. I felt a pang in my heart. Why, Anna, why? The front hair barely covered the very top of the forehead, and she looked quite dumb with that straight line high bang and the thick grub-like eyebrows. Naturally, we shook her back and forth and demanded to know why the heck she had done this to herself.

‘So a bit more of my pretty face is shown,’ was her answer. I face-palmed hard as I translated her response.

She had always been confident of her appearance. Anna had long ago decided that she was the prettiest thing in the entire world. Yes, decided. It wasn’t a conclusion derived after careful observations and objective comparisons. She had simply decided so and declared it as a fact.

Welp, OK. In fairness, Anna was very pretty. A cute little thing. And based on what I remembered of sleeping Firis, I would say Anna had a beautiful future ahead, at least appearance-wise. But for now, she was just a child. Just turned seven, yes, old enough to have lost the baby fat on her cheeks and limbs. But she still had that long bulging belly, as all children do, perched on the pathetically small pelvis, from which the thin short legs sprouted out downward. With the years, her body had grown just enough to make the head appear less disproportionately large. Nevertheless, Anna used to complain her head was too small.

‘My head needs to be larger so people would see my pretty face even from afar,’ she said.

Underneath the thick, dark, grub-like brows, the eyes were huge and curtained by the dense forest of long eyelashes. Her mysterious iris reminded me of the back of a beetle. The nose was small but not too high, not too low. The tip jutted out from the bridge outward. It would have been pointy sharp, but ended abruptly, resulting in a small curved rectangle. Combined with the shadows, it gave Anna a permanent impression as if somebody had touched the nose with an inky finger. The mouth was small, too, with the upper-lip still wavy from adolescence. Anna’s hair was-, God, it pissed me off. Why the heck did she have to go and do that to her bang? She looked so dumb now. Yeah, a bit cute in a silly, funny way, but still dumb. Just why, Anna? Why?

The Baroness was, of course, devastated. She almost cried. The Baron, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind. He had a permanent filter installed in his eyes. It made him see Anna, his daughter, as the most beautiful thing no matter what ridiculous shit she pulled off. This invisible paternal filter also had a built-in feature, which amplified even the tiniest of blemishes and scratches on the precious child. So the Baron would spot a minuscule rash or a barely visible scratch, and he would then fuss and worry about it all day. Hence, he, too, was upset with Anna’s new now-non-existent bang. He leaned over, squinted his eyes, and pored over Anna’s forehead.

“There, see?” the Baron pointed with a shaking finger, “the scars! Those damned wolves be cursed!”

“But, milord, they are barely visible!” the Majordome tried to talk some sense into His Lordship, but to no avail.

In the end, though, things settled down, and we watched in silence Pascal doing his work. Anna behaved herself and sat still on a stool. She was grinning, which was her attempt at complying with Pascal’s request for a ‘faint smile.’ Once Pascal was done with the essential sketch and some basic coloring, he would take it with him and finish the work at his atelier. In a month or so, the new portrait would be delivered to the Baron’s manor, and it would go on the wall next to the sixth portrait that had been painted around the last birthday. The Baron and the Baroness liked to walk along the wall, studying the series of paintings that portrayed Anna’s growth. They would often stop before a face on the wall, and would say,

“Dear, do you remember? Around this time, Anna did such and such.’

“Yes, of course. I do remember vividly.”

And then they would discuss how they would need a longer wall, and thus a longer hallway, for the portraits of the years yet to come.

So, years later, when Anna died, and I was about to end my life, for some reason, I briefly imagined a scene. I would have my eyes shut tight, about to drive a knife into my heart. Then in the darkness behind the closed eyelids, I would see. The lonely Baroness walking down the hallway of the manor. Series of Anna’s faces lining up the candlelit wall; her first year. Anna’s second birthday portrait. When she was five. And seven, when she had that dumb hair. Here, the Baroness would chuckle to herself, reminiscing. And she would walk some more, caressing each portrait as Anna grew year by year. But it would come to an abrupt end. The rest of the long hallway wall, vacant. The mother would repeat the walk every year. Every spring.