Chapter 3: The Mystery of Aesthetic Sense
I had heard that there are regions with many beautiful people, but no matter how you look at it, itâs strange that every single person passing by is attractive.
Something is wrong.
I was so shocked that it turned into fear.
“âAnhen!!”
“What is it, Amadeus-sama?”
Anhen, the refined elderly butler, gently grabbed my shoulders as I panicked.
“Um⌠this town⌠doesnât it have a lot of good-looking people? Like, way too many?”
“Hahaha, is that so? Now that you mention it, Amadeus-sama often says our servants are beautiful as well. Perhaps you havenât yet met someone truly exceptional, so itâs hard for you to tell. Both our staff and the townspeople are quite ordinary.”
âââO⌠ordinary?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
Still in shock, I toured the town with the butler and my guard.
Occasionally, I would spot someone and think, âOh!! Thatâs a fairly average-looking person!!!!â but even then, it was only at the level of âmaybe not exactly beautiful.â
For a man, heâd easily be praised as a clean-cut handsome guy, and for a woman, sheâd be plain but still the kind of pure beauty who would be popular.
In Japan.
In Japan!!!
Thatâs right, this other world was a world with inflated beauty standards.
At least, for me as a Japanese person.
After returning home and calming down, I started to think that it might be similar to the âcanât tell foreign faces apartâ phenomenon.
When there are many varieties of something, you canât tell the differences unless youâre used to them.
Like how all Gundams look the same, or how college girls can look like mass-produced clones.
In fact, everyone looked beautiful to me, yet they themselves didnât think so.
At first, I wondered if they simply didnât care about appearances, but that wasnât the case.
They didnât say it in front of me, but when I overheard the servants gossipingâ
“I heard the floristâs kid canât find a wife. Well, with that face⌔
“The blacksmithâs successor canât find a bride either. His looks are unfortunate, after all.”
They were clearly judging people based on appearance.
When I went out to town, I checked the people they mentioned, and they did have ordinary faces.
Even so, from my perspective, they were clean-cut handsome men and elegant beauties.
In Japan, that is.
“The innâs poster girl is cute, huh. I wonder if she has a boyfriend.”
“Of course she does. Thereâs no way a beauty like that doesnât.”
That poster girl was indeed beautiful.
But I didnât think there was that much of a difference between her and our household staff.
What standard are they using to judge beauty?
I mean, yes, she is beautiful.
Undeniably so.
But if youâre going to say that, then you guysâ(note: two male servants in their 20s)âare beautiful too, arenât you?!
At a loss, I decided to just observe.
For the time being, I waited until I would grow accustomed to the faces of the beautiful people in this world.
After various things, I turned 12.
I STILL DONâT GET IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only thing I understand is that everyoneâs face is absurdly perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the end, Iâve reached this point without really understanding how beauty and ugliness are judged in this world.
Since I lived a frail, indoor life in Japan, I had many indoor hobbies.
Besides music, I liked drawing.
I copied many manga illustrations and borrowed art books from the library to study them carefully.
Because of that, when I drew, people would often praise me, saying, âYouâre good!â
Of course, it wasnât like I had truly professional-level skill.
It was more like âbetter than average,â âhas some charm,â or âpretty good for an amateur.â
Through that process, I learned an idea: that drawing beautiful people is easier than drawing ugly ones.
Beautiful people have well-balanced faces.
The placement and shape of their features follow certain patterns.
But to draw an ugly person, you have to intentionally disrupt those placements and shapes.
So, it actually requires more skill than drawing a beautiful face.
Thinking about it from that perspective, could it be that the god of this worldâŚ
Didnât have the skill to draw ugly peopleâŚ?
Or rather, didnât have the ability to create them?
Most people on Earth might think thereâs no need for such an ability anyway.
But what people find beautiful varies greatly.
There were people who preferred âugly,â or âchubby,â or what others might call bad taste.
If someone with those preferences had been reincarnated here, would they have fallen into despair�
The reason I find the people of this world beautiful is simply because of my own sense of aesthetics.
Even if there are no ugly people, it doesnât mean everyone looks the same, so differences in appearance still exist.
However, as someone born and raised on Earth who canât abandon those values, I still donât understand how to judge those differencesâŚ
Whether I understand it or not, my life goes on.