A Bath
Come to think of it, I hadn't taken a single bath since arriving in this world. More precisely, I had decided I didn't need to.
The reason was the Number Twos.
Thanks to those remarkably capable summons — creatures that could handle laundry and a shower at the same time — a certain degree of cleanliness had never been much of a problem. Several times a day they spun around me, beating out the dust, clearing the dirt and grime from my clothes, even coaxing my hair into something vaguely presentable. I could lie perfectly still and still come away reasonably clean. Once I'd settled into the mansion, I barely even felt dust gathering on me.
And I was undead. Sweat, oil, the usual secretions of a living body — mine produced remarkably little of any of it. I hadn't been especially fond of showering to begin with, either. On a day I'd sweated through a summer afternoon, or when I absolutely had to go outside, I'd wash well enough. Most days, though, I stayed in, and skipping a day or two to save on the water bill had been nothing unusual.
So perhaps it was only natural that the necessity of a bath never quite registered.
The world, however, has a way of educating the complacent.
A genuine shock to the system.
They say you never really notice your own smell. Her silence until now had been nothing more than a small kindness, and the comfortable belief that I didn't smell at all had been my own delusion. I was still turning that over when Evelyn took my hand and pulled me to my feet.
"All right, then, Aira. Let's go take a bath."
...Nothing for it. I might not be fond of bathing, but I wasn't so lacking in common sense that I'd refuse once someone told me I smelled.
"...Okay."
And in that very moment, I realized the direction she was leading me was wrong.
"Wait — why are we going outside?"
She'd said bath. Why was she suddenly dragging me out of the house?
"What are you talking about? How would we bathe in here?"
"Huh."
Now that she mentioned it... fair point.
The mansion had no shower room — not even a basin to hold water — so I was more or less hauled into the forest. Before long we arrived at a valley stream.
"Whoa..."
Clear water drifted slowly past. Pebbles glittered like jewels in the sunlight, and the surface was so transparent you could see straight to the bottom. There was a place like this near the mansion? I forgot entirely what was about to happen and simply stared, dazed, at the view.
"Good. Doesn't look like anyone else is around."
Evelyn set her things down at once. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she pulled off her gloves and shoulder guards and started on her boots.
Wait. Wait a second. This was proceeding far too smoothly.
I froze without meaning to, swallowing hard as I watched her undress, and only then did she turn a puzzled look on me.
"What's wrong? You need to get your clothes off too."
"Hold on — you want me to undress here?"
"Well, you can't bathe with your clothes on."
Another perfectly reasonable point. My common sense rejected it anyway.
"Th-this is outside!"
Undress outdoors, without so much as a screen? This was basically public indecency. It might be everyday life for people of this era, but not for me. I had a considerable amount of resistance to stripping in a place this wide open.
Evelyn kept undressing as if none of that mattered.
"I already checked — there's no sign of anyone. And if it seems like someone's coming, I'll tell you right away."
She was probably right that no one was nearby. A hunter strong enough to keep a village's peace on her own, and a master of tracking and reading signs — if she said so, it was almost certainly true. But she was overlooking something. She counted as a person too.
All of this was too much for me. I was human enough not to be entirely uninterested in Evelyn undressed, but seeing it with my own eyes — not through a monitor — hit with a force I had no words for.
"I-I'll do it later, on my own! You go first...!"
The moment her hands went to her trousers, I hid myself behind a tree.
The moment she sank into the stream, a pleasant coolness spread through her whole body — the fatigue of the hunt rinsing away all at once, along with the sweat. Savoring it, Evelyn looked toward Aira, who had vanished behind the tree. What on earth was she so embarrassed about?
"You're really not coming in?"
No answer. Only the sound of wind brushing the leaves drifted slowly over the valley. Evelyn went on, half teasing.
"You don't have to worry. I'm a woman, and so are you."
"...Th-that's not the problem...!"
"Then what is?"
"Th-that's...!"
Aira couldn't finish.
What is wrong with her...
From the way she'd let herself be led to the stream, it was clear she didn't particularly like bathing — but she didn't seem to hate it, either. She understood she needed to wash. A gently raised noble young lady might well balk at undressing outside the mansion; Evelyn could understand that much. Even so, the reaction felt excessive. She had undressed first herself, to show that it was all right, and Aira still shrank from bathing together?
The Elysia family was hardly so poor they couldn't afford bath attendants. Aira had likely grown up being bathed by servants from childhood, which meant she shouldn't find the mere act of showing her body to someone else so unfamiliar...
Then another possibility occurred to her. Wait. The Aira of now was undead. So perhaps there was a reason she couldn't show her body.
The thought made Evelyn curse her own carelessness, dragging a hand down her face. She should have thought of that sooner.
"Aira, it's all right."
"..."
"There's no one here but me."
"..."
"Whatever the reason, I won't be shocked, and I won't laugh."
"..."
In the end, no answer came. Nothing for it, then. Forcing something like this wasn't wise. Better to wait, and let her do it alone, the way she wanted—
And then.
"...Wait."
"Hm?"
"Just a moment... could you look somewhere else?"
"Ah. Of course."
Evelyn turned her gaze at once to the far bank. For a little while there was only the sound of the water.
Rustle...
Cloth coming away, soft and small. The heavy robe fell first, and lighter fabric settled over it. Whether she simply wasn't used to undressing without help, Aira's pace was markedly slower than most people's. Even so, Evelyn didn't rush her.
A moment later — splash. Cautious footsteps entered the stream. Only then did Evelyn slowly turn her head.
And—
"...!"
For an instant, she had no words.
Skin white to the point of pallor. A frail figure that looked as if it might break at a touch. And across it, stark and merciless, the clear lines of stitches — beginning beneath the chest, crossing the lower abdomen, running on in a diagonal from the right side. The nape of her neck, her arms, her legs: all of them bore scars just as vivid, marks as if someone had split the body open again and again and sewn it back together. Places usually hidden by clothing. Here, in the water, they stood out with terrible clarity.
At that wretched sight, Evelyn swallowed without meaning to. So that was it. Aira hadn't wanted to show this body.
For a corpse to move as if alive, simple magic is not enough — all the more so for an undead as natural as Aira, one you could hardly tell from the living. Merely appropriating a preserved corpse would never suffice. The undead are a kind of golem. Rotten or worn-away organs and flesh are filled in with something else, and black magic, a corpse, and a constant supply of mana keep the thing running: a living golem, of a sort.
A living golem of corpse, black magic, and unending mana.
Had she gone that far, just to bring her dead daughter back? The march of the Saintess's Knight Order had already given her some idea, but still...
Lady Elysia... what you did is truly unforgivable.
Just then, Aira hunched in on herself and murmured.
"C-could you please not stare so openly?"
"Ah. Sorry..."
Evelyn snatched her gaze away. An awkward silence followed. Only the stream went on, murmuring as it flowed.
And if this was how it was... how, exactly, was she supposed to attend a bath?