J-Novel Heart

With her back against the wall, the pea-brained princess forced herself to think.

“This might come as a surprise to someone like you,” she continued, “but we are all human. And humans will fail. No one lives perfectly. That is why we forgive, so that we may all have chances to make amends.”

Yes, she was afraid. She was uneasy. She was unsure. But until she walked on her own two feet down a path of her own choosing, she couldn’t call herself a grown woman.

While Dahlia would feel the sunlight, she would also be exposed to the wind and rain.

present, the Rossetti Trading Company consisted only of Dahlia and Ivano. They didn’t deal with their clients directly, instead conducting all their business through the Merchants’ Guild. Their products were stored not on their premises—for they had none—but at the Merchants’ Guild, or they could be delivered directly to the castle by the Tailors’ Guild. Dahlia was thankful for such convenient arrangements. When Dahlia imagined all the clients and products they would have to manage in the future, she couldn’t help feeling a bit apprehensive.

“Behind every item a merchant sells is the work of someone who made it. Crops come from farmers. Craftwork, from artisans. Cuisine, from chefs. They’re all the product of labor. The act of putting a price on a product is therefore the process of valuing the labor that went into it.”

They say men get over relationships like sliding down a staircase, but women jump out through a third-story window.

The consumer was a creature who demanded. The technician was a creature who pushed the bounds of what was possible. The craftsperson was a creature who tried to make feasible ideas into a reality. Most good products were found at the intersection of all three perspectives. Trading opinions, making prototypes, putting them into action, making improvements—those were joyous, meaningful parts of creating something. At the end, however, criticism was also unavoidable.

“Yes. The Serpents are an infection that spreads between the weak and the defeated, warping their conscience. It corrupts the morals of the frail, rewriting what they take to be common sense and transforming them into beings intent on destroying order.”

“A parasitic thought that infects through the human flaws that create the weak and strong, winners and losers...that is the true form of the Chaos Serpents. Thus, we’ll never die out. You’ll never destroy us, and we’ll never disappear, as long as humanity lives on, continuing to create winners and losers.”