Chapter 1

Where do souls come from, and where do they return?

That’s the kind of thing I was absentmindedly pondering—despite being only three years old. At that age I should’ve been just a toddler, but since I had reincarnated with memories of my previous life, I sometimes found myself drifting into these oddly philosophical thoughts.

In my previous life, I was born into a perfectly normal household, grew up perfectly normal, made it into a decent high school and college, and thought I’d just carry on into an ordinary job and live an ordinary life. That is… until I ended up working for a black company.

As if that weren’t unlucky enough, I graduated right in the middle of Japan’s so-called “employment ice age.” Switching jobs to get a proper position was next to impossible. They told me—well, threatened me, really—that quitting a company right after getting hired would kill my chances of finding another job. So I decided I’d endure at least three years. I somehow survived those three years and tried switching jobs, but the next company turned out to be an even more extreme flavor of black. I wanted to cry.

It was all-nighters stacked on all-nighters, with days I couldn’t even go home. And when I finally did make it back, I caught a cold, collapsed into bed, and… that’s where my memory ends. Chances are, it was exhaustion and overwork that did me in. RIP, corporate drone.

What’s the point of being born, the point of living? Even kids’ anime sometimes makes you think about things like that. At the very least, I want to believe I wasn’t born just to slave away at a black company and work myself to death. This time, I want an easy life. I want to get by while working as little as humanly possible. I swear, I absolutely refuse to work.

Of course, the only people who get to live without working are the wealthy elites. My new family is relatively well-off, but we’re still middle class. If I really tried to live without working, I’d just end up burdening my parents terribly.

And there was one more problem: in this life, I was reborn as a girl. In my last life, I was a man—so yes, this is one of those gender-swap reincarnations. Goddammit.

Sure, Japan has the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, but in practice, climbing the corporate ladder as a woman still has plenty of barriers. I honestly can’t see myself working until retirement.

Then I thought: if I’m a woman now, I could just become a housewife. But that would mean marrying a man. Even if I was reborn female, my insides are still male. The thought alone made my eyes roll back. Looks like I’ll be staying single for life.

If I’ve been reincarnated, maybe I’ve got some cheat ability that’ll let me earn easy money without joining the workforce? That hope had me experimenting with all sorts of things—but no superpowers, no miracles, no magic. Nothing. I was crushed.

That said, with an adult brain in a child’s body, I was bound to be treated like a prodigy. But as the saying goes: “A prodigy at ten, a talent at fifteen, a nobody at twenty.” And I knew all too well that’s exactly what would happen. After all, in my previous life I wasn’t particularly skilled at anything. Just painfully average. Better to stay ordinary from the start than get everyone’s hopes up and disappoint them later.

So there I was, turning over another round of unanswerable life plans in my head while blankly watching TV…

『Special Feature: Genius Child Actors! The Income Rankings of Today’s Most Popular Kids!?』

Apparently the children’s anime I had been watching had ended at some point, replaced by an evening variety show aimed at housewives.

『And now, the annual income of today’s shining top child actors—』

With a bam, a giant flip board revealed a number in the nine digits. Billions of yen, ladies and gentlemen.

A precocious-looking child smiled gracefully as a greasy host interviewed them, chatting about daily lessons. A reenactment VTR showed them starting as a child actor at a very young age.

They didn’t sound like an elementary schooler at all, more like an adult reborn into a child’s body. A top child actor.

A single year of work, and they were making more than a salaryman could hope to earn in an entire lifetime.

The moment I saw that, it hit me like divine revelation.

"I’ll become a child actor!"

Even if I ended up crashing back into mediocrity as I grew up, if I made enough before then, I could coast on those earnings. Once I hit my lifetime income target, I’d live out the rest of my days as a NEET. With online shopping around, I could hole up in the countryside without a problem. When I became an adult, I’d live without working.

"And if that doesn’t work out… maybe civil servant?"

If I couldn’t make it as a child actor, then being a government worker was the next best plan. The pay might not be high, but it seemed stable, and you got to leave on time every day.

I’m Hanamura Nanami, ten years old, now in fourth grade.

Yeah, sorry for skipping ahead in time. Since then, I somehow managed to persuade my parents, passed the audition for a major child acting agency, and officially started working as a child actor. I thought, “If I’ve got the body of a child and the mind of an adult, this’ll be easy,” and, honestly, it was.

At around age three, all you really had to do was sit still properly, smile when told “smile~,” and memorize a few lines. That alone made you useful. Nobody expected much in the way of acting ability from toddlers.

Other kids my age in the business were still babbling or couldn’t sit still for more than a moment. And at a filming site, surrounded by adults and blinding lights, a lot of them just broke down crying.

Meanwhile, me? I was an adult on the inside, toddler on the outside—totally unstoppable!

And since I was working as a girl child actor, I made sure to act feminine. Speech… well, polite language worked fine, same as when I was a salaryman. Clothes… I used to bawl whenever my parents tried to dress me in frilly pink outfits, but now I put on the cutesy girly clothes without complaint—for the money. I even grew my hair out from short to almost waist-length.

The image I aimed for was Yamato Nadeshiko—pure, polite, graceful, and adorable.

It made my eyes roll back, but thanks to that big fake mask I wore, the job offers came pouring in.

“This life’s on easy mode!” …or so I thought, for a few years. But once I entered elementary school, people started expecting actual acting skills. And kids my age quickly caught up. The genuine prodigies out there were on a whole different level. Some could deliver performances so powerful they put adults to shame. Others were absurdly athletic—so much so that I wanted to ask if they were descendants of ninjas. Backflips, somersaults, mid-air spins—you name it. Honestly, they should’ve been aiming for the Olympics. Oh, action star? Yeah, you’ll probably get there with no problem. Best of luck.

I had been praised as a “genius child actor,” but the moment I saw those real geniuses, I was floored. At the end of the day, I was just an ordinary person with an adult brain. If I didn’t level up fast, I’d be buried under the competition long before I earned my lifetime savings. In fact, by the time I reached elementary school, they’d already caught up. Genius child actors are terrifying…

So I dropped the laid-back attitude and started throwing myself into acting lessons, determined to secure my future NEET lifestyle. Thanks to belonging to a major child acting agency, the support system was excellent. Depending on the monthly fee, you could pick a set number of lessons. And if you became a scholarship student, your fees were waived, along with various other expenses. I passed the audition and immediately got in as a scholarship student, so all my lessons were free and unlimited. Jackpot!

Basic acting lessons, singing, voice training, dance, Japanese dance, deportment, action—you name it, I could take as many as I wanted. (Yes, that’s the second time I’ve said it.)

And beyond the agency’s lessons, I also picked up extra activities to broaden my range: tea ceremony, flower arranging, horseback riding, kendo, archery, classical martial arts…

Classical martial arts? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “What good is that?” But there are dojos out there that teach stage combat—tate—using those old techniques. I’d never heard of tate before, but it’s basically the swordfighting you see in historical dramas. It also applies to unarmed fighting scenes.

And if you wanted a shot at the big leagues—being cast in a historical drama on the national broadcasting station—those skills were essential. You could learn simple stage combat in the agency’s action lessons, but for the real deal, you had to go to a specialized dojo.

I figured it couldn’t hurt to learn a bit of everything, and sure enough, I passed the audition for a historical drama. But since I was a girl, horseback riding, kendo, and tate didn’t seem all that necessary. The roles for girls were usually childhood versions of princesses or village maidens. In that particular drama, I was cast as a princess.

So I thought all that training had been wasted effort… until another offer came in, this time for a historical film. My role? The childhood version of a female ninja assassin.

Apparently, they were looking for a girl child actor who could do tate and ride a horse. And that’s how I got picked. That said—jumping from one galloping horse to another while doing flips? Yeah, I didn’t train for that. Could we not? I could ride just fine, thank you very much.

What’s that? Some kids can do it? Ohhh, right—the acrobat kid aiming to be an action star also got the role. My childhood friend in the ninja village, huh.

And look at that, they’re leaping from one running horse to another, spinning in mid-air. Are you kidding me? Ninja. They’re literally a ninja. Amazing.

Well, with all that going on, I figured you never know what’s going to come in handy, so I kept dabbling in all sorts of lessons. Once I got to a decent level, I’d switch to something else. Piano, violin, classical ballet, rhythmic gymnastics, various sports… basically, anything I could think of, I gave it a shot.

You’re probably wondering if it even makes sense to do so many things halfway. But it’s not like I need to become a world-class expert in any of them. Take piano, for example: if I’m cast as a pianist, the actual soundtrack will be recorded by a professional. I don’t need to sound amazing—but if I look like an amateur fumbling around, the illusion breaks. So I practice just enough to make it look like I know what I’m doing. Once I can play the famous pieces well enough to pass as “plausibly pro,” I only practice occasionally to keep from getting rusty. Same with violin and ballet—once I felt I had the basics down and could pull off the classics, I stopped.

Because if you wait until you get an audition notice to prepare, it’s already too late. Sometimes you get told about an audition the day before—it happens all the time. For adults, you can get a stunt double or have another actor sub in for certain shots, but with kids? Nope. No child stunt doubles. If you can do it, you get the part. If you can’t, too bad.

Thanks to that mindset, I started landing all kinds of auditions. As my exposure grew, so did my name recognition. And once you’re known, you don’t even need to audition—they come to you with direct offers. More offers meant I could start choosing my jobs, and as popularity rose, so did my pay. To maintain that popularity and income, I had to keep up with lessons and pile on more extracurriculars.

And, let’s not forget, I was still an elementary school student.

That’s right—compulsory education.

I had the duty to attend school. I wanted to say, “I already did all this in my previous life, thanks, so can I skip it?”—but no dice. When I didn’t have shoots, I had to attend school on weekdays. Out of consideration for me being school-age, most filming got scheduled on weekends or holidays, but of course some still fell on weekdays. Then, in the gaps, I had lessons and extracurriculars, plus homework, and by the time I got home… I’d just collapse straight into bed.

Super black company levels of overwork. Thank you very much.

"I want to quit already…"

I had died from overwork at a black company in my past life, and that’s why I swore I’d be a NEET this time. So why the hell did it end up like this…?