Mebius World Online – Mari’s VRMMO Diary, Embarking on a Laid-back Adventure as a Novice - Chapter 55
55. Mari-nee and a certain seamstress’s monologue (Part 1)
Along the lines of the pattern drawn on the paper, I was marking thin fabric using a tool resembling a pen with a sharp-toothed gear called a roulette.
“Susan, can’t you annul the engagement?” Suddenly, those words flew at me.
Why did they come at me like that? Because it was conveyed not in person or over the phone, but through a notification on an app.
Before I could even ask for a reason, he threw his reasons at me as if to say, “Oh boy, here’s the list!”
According to him:
“You’re more talented than I am.”
“You’re stronger than I am.”
“I become miserable when I’m with you.”
“I feel suffocated when I’m with you.”
“I’m unhappy because of you.”
“I feel like dying because of you.”
I received almost a hundred messages like this.
The first two didn’t seem completely off, at least not in capturing me positively.
But soon, the tone shifted to blaming me, and it ended up just being a string of insults.
The first time I met him was when I had just launched my clothing brand as an individual.
The brand name hadn’t gained much recognition yet, and I was selling only a few pieces of clothing a month. It was during this time that I called him to model for a photo shoot to be uploaded on the internet.
Several potential models were introduced to me by acquaintances, but most of them had a neutral face that lacked excitement.
Among them, his aura, which prominently displayed his own vulnerability, felt unusual, and I remember choosing him.
When combined with the unforgiving designs of the clothes, the contrast made a lasting impression, and through social media, my brand became known to many in an instant.
Orders for clothes poured in endlessly, and leveraging the features of the designs that sold well, I kept designing new clothes.
And he was always the one to wear them.
As we worked together hand in hand, our relationship naturally grew closer.
As the brand gained momentum, on the one-year anniversary of meeting him, he handed me an engagement ring.
We hadn’t explicitly labeled ourselves as being in a relationship, but I was also in my late twenties.
I was already tired of my parents subtly mentioning marriage over the phone, so I thought, why not, and accepted the proposal as fate.
And then, the unexpected cancellation of the engagement.
And it hadn’t even been half a year since I received the engagement ring.
To be honest, there was no room to ponder why or what I could have done differently.
The sheer volume of messages that had been sent was overflowing with words that wounded my heart.
Before I knew it, I was slamming my clenched smartphone onto the floor with all my might.
Upon returning home from the studio, I was greeted by an unusual, subdued atmosphere.
I had anticipated it, but it seemed he, with whom I had been living halfway, had already left.
In the eerie silence peculiar to an empty house, I entered the living room and turned on the light.
There, only his belongings were missing, scattered as if a thief had broken in.
And on the floor, strewn about, was the safe box that I had stored deep in the shelf.
Many of the items that had been stored in it were scattered around, some appeared to have been stepped on, and others were broken.
There were footprints on some items.
The broken ones were seashells.
The photos were ones taken with him.
The seashells were a gift from him, picked meticulously from the beach the first time we went to the sea together.
Even as such precious memories lay exposed in such a sorry state, the engagement ring, which had been stored together with them, was the only thing missing.
“If you’re going to do it, at least tidy them up properly…”
I gathered the scattered photos and broken shells and placed them on top of a glass ashtray, presumably left behind because it was too heavy and bulky to take.
Then, I lit the photos with a lighter.
The photos turned to ashes from the edges as if eaten by insects.
And the flames burned red, so red…
Both scenes seemed to reflect my heart.
After the engagement was called off, I threw myself even more into work, and several weeks passed.
I had to work to live, and many of the designs were based on him, so I had to make changes. I had no choice but to immerse myself.
But emotionally, things weren’t settled.
It wasn’t a clinging feeling of being unable to forget him; it was a melancholic feeling of wondering if the year we spent together was only worth that much.
With such unresolved feelings, I received a notification from someone I didn’t want to deal with.
It was a notification from a classmate from my fashion school days who seemed to harbor a strong dislike for me.
Her name was Rumi Nikaido.
She was the heiress of a large company that had achieved success in fast fashion and rapidly expanded their stores.
Blessed with good looks, she always had many followers around her.
I tried to avoid her as much as possible, but for some reason, she kept coming at me, so I had to shut her down with all my might.
When it came to design, I never allowed myself to slack off, let alone lose.
As a result, she had never surpassed me in design grades.
Yet, she contacted me.
We exchanged contact information during a drinking party when we entered school, but we never communicated afterwards…
I unlocked my new phone and opened her notification.
There, I saw a picture of her being embraced by him, or rather, my ex-fiancé, with a smug grin on her face.
The message contained just one word.
“I’m getting married?”
I slammed the newly bought smartphone onto the floor once again.
Afterwards, I immersed myself even more in work, but the sales were continuously declining.
I couldn’t deny that anger had clouded my designs, but more than that, the impact of Rumi Nikaido, who released similar concept clothing with my ex as the model at a cheaper price, was significant.
In front of her powerful company backing, despite gaining some recognition, my individual brand simply couldn’t compete due to the vast difference in resources.
The more I rushed to create designs different from before, the more my crucial designs wavered, and the decline in sales accelerated.
As I began to dip into the red and started to deplete my savings, the days of sleeplessness due to stress and anxiety continued, further worsening my designs, creating a negative spiral.
After three months of such a lifestyle, feeling mentally and physically cornered, I received a package from an unknown sender.
It was something addressed to my ex-fiancé, something I didn’t want to be reminded of.
For a moment, I considered refusing to accept it, but if it was something important, I decided to accept it, thinking I would do to him what had been done to me.
The simple box had no logo or markings.
However, inside was densely packed shock-absorbing material, and there was a device resembling a circlet? and a single software.
On that software, there was something written, perhaps a title:
“Mebius World Online”.