Nice to meet you.

Hey. I guess I’m back again—now eight years old, and my name’s Elen.

Never thought I’d end up doing the whole reincarnation thing, you know, like in Buddhism.

Before this life, I was a scientist in a country called Japan, so religion was never really part of my world.

Back at my lab, we mostly focused on discovering new materials and developing new substances.

We’d synthesize stuff, measure it, prototype it—everything under the sun. Picked apart the behaviors and phenomena of metal compounds, electronic materials, organic conductors, you name it. Even though it wasn’t my department, when we finally cracked the synthesis of a new element, everyone went absolutely wild.

Honestly, I have no clue why I died.

I think I might’ve been running some experiment at the lab, or maybe I just collapsed from burnout—those all-nighters were routine, after all.

Twenty-eight, and I’d married research—more or less. All I remember is that every day felt full. Like I’d packed a lifetime into each hour.

Back to the start, though. This hero story? It’s about my father in this life.

Mother was the Queen of Origins, the first of all things. I was born eight years ago from the union of spirits and humans.

Truth is, Father had fallen asleep in the Spirit World, but woke up again just a year later.

No sooner had he heard the whole story than he said he was tired. Said it’d be a hassle going back, so he stayed in the Spirit World for a while, resting up. There, he made a pact—got together with the mother of the Spirit King, the one he’d been partnered with all along. They made it official.

By binding himself to the Spirit King’s mother, Father became half-spirit. That’s why he lost control of his power.

I’d originally been granted power through a contract with spirits, borrowed from the Spirit King. When I tried to absorb that power and make it my own, the innate human magic I already possessed clashed with it—triggering a rejection reaction. That’s how I ended up going off the rails.

Because it was deemed too dangerous, I couldn’t return to the human world anymore, not even in the way I had before.

I’ve been training in the Spirit World to control my power, and after that, I raised a child. Only now has everything finally settled down.

To be honest, my own training period is part of that timeline.

Being born half-spirit, half-human, I was fated to oversee the remnants of something I’d specialized in during my previous life.

As soon as I realized I’d reincarnated, I got so excited—drowning in research mode—that I practically pulled off the ultimate cheat code.

That incident—me being groomed since age two as the next Queen of the Spirit World—still gives me pause whenever I think about it. But as a researcher? Never regretted a thing.

My research spirit’s bone-deep. If something bugs me, experimentation is inevitable. Otherwise, I can’t sleep. Literally.

Realizing a spirit requires power beyond the Great Spirits, but since I’ve human blood in me, I naturally take human form and age at a human pace.

Still, being a spirit, I’m slightly smaller than average. Compared to the average ten-year-old girl at 140cm, I’m not even 120cm tall. So people often mistake me for a five- or six-year-old.

Mother said my growth would likely stop around the physical maturity of a fifteen-year-old human. But even then, I still shake my head, thinking, “I’m growing too slowly.”

I just realized something. Maybe my pre-reincarnation self is still affecting me. I was, like, ridiculously short.

...As you might guess, I was a total child-faced, flat-chested mess... I remember getting told, “You’re just like my little sister,” when I tried confessing to someone. Once, I even got accused of being a criminal just for walking beside someone. “I can’t be seen with you in public,” they said. That’s, uh... kind of a trauma.

Anyway, my mom in this life? She’s got huge boobs. Massive. Probably around the eighth or ninth size if you count from A. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, let my DNA do its job and give me those at least.

But my dad? He’s fine with the small ones. “Perfect size for hugging anytime,” he says, always smiling.

And me? I’m like, “Eh, whatever,” and I’m constantly doing a little victory dance, begging for a piggyback ride. It’s my thing.

Once growth slows down completely, they say I’ll only grow at a rate of one year every few decades, maybe even centuries. Long-term growth, huh? I’m going to be patient. Really, really patient.

And as you might guess from the name—Elen—my power as a spirit comes from "element," yes. The elements.

Some strange twist of fate had me reborn as a spirit of the elements.