The Full Adaptation Support Package!
Agent Park left, and the interrogation room was ours alone.
We sat on the bed staring blankly, our eyes wandering this way and that. When I flopped down first, Helena stole a glance at me and then quietly lay down beside me.
Ah, and of course we kicked our shoes off, just as Agent Park had told us to. Even with my hands bound, peeling off shoes with my feet was easy enough. Tidy them up? Did we really have to?
Helena likewise pulled off her boots and settled in next to me. After that we just lay there again, gazing at the ceiling, listening to nothing but the even rhythm of her breathing.
Which is to say: two women were lying together, and not a single scrap of gossip was being exchanged!
I mean, there's that saying about how when three women gather, the dishes start to break. Granted, there were only two of us. Still, when two close girlfriends get together, shouldn't their voices fill a little room like this to bursting?
I'd thought that once Helena and I were left alone, we'd murmur back and forth about all the things we hadn't gotten to say in that other world. But now that we were actually in this situation, I was realizing something anew.
Helena's finest conversational tool had always been that nameless revolver. Which meant she didn't have much of a way with words. And on my side, I'd been watching over her all along, so there wasn't anything I didn't already know—and therefore nothing much to talk about.
So it wasn't quite suffocating, but we lay still in an interrogation room wrapped in silence. I wanted to tell her how to adapt to this world, but I was a walking pile of ignorance myself, so I didn't have much to offer. We just lay there, savoring the awkward sensations our bodies were sending us.
I hadn't noticed until now—I'd been too busy to pay attention—but the stockings on my legs were oddly bothersome. They seemed to squeeze the flesh just so. When the cool air from the AC brushed over them, they almost felt refreshing. At the same time, because they were covering my skin, I had the illusion they were making me warmer than bare skin would. And when I rubbed my legs together, that thin nylon layered over my skin dulled the sensation and created another peculiar feeling entirely. Which only made me rub them together more, swish, swish.
Hmm. I was so bored, with nothing to do, that I'd started playing with my own legs.
Helena was probably bored too. Should I make her a few tentacles to play with?
Ah, of course that was just a private little joke of a thought. I couldn't even bring that up as a joke. Even if she knew those black tentacles were me—the ones I'd stretched out as thought-forms to save her—looking at that hazy dark aura probably wouldn't feel very pleasant. People feel fear when they see something they don't understand, or so I've heard.
We were killing time like that when someone knocked, tap-tap, on the interrogation room door.
"Excuse me. Are Yeonmin and Helena inside?"
A calm woman's voice. If she already knew our names, she had to be the person Agent Park had mentioned—the one who'd come to guide us.
"Yes. Please come in."
I said it as I tried to sit up. But actually doing so turned out to be anything but easy. Lifting your upper body requires more balance than you'd think. Without arms to push against the mattress, all I could manage was a pathetic wriggle.
If I'd had a strong body, maybe. But mine, even being generous, was hard to call robust. And on top of that I had two breasts the size of my own head hanging off me. Of course getting up was hard.
I was still thrashing around trying to get off the bed when, of all moments, our assigned handler walked in. Helena was reaching out to help me. I was twisting myself into a bizarre pretzel on the mattress. The handler, seeing that, seemed to lose her words; she shut her mouth and stared at us for a moment.
...It wasn't like I wanted to be doing this. My body's muscle strength was just that weak. And if I stretched out a thought-form to lift myself, Helena would probably be startled.
Anyway, once I got up with Helena's support, the handler finally dipped her head in a bow.
"Good afternoon. As of today, I will be the caseworker assisting the two of you in adapting to our world. My name is Ji Yekyung. I look forward to working with you."
I'd thought she might be looking down on me for lying there. Turns out she had just been waiting for me to get up so she could greet us properly. I'd been a little worried, given that cold, severe beauty of hers, but fortunately it was only a matter of her face. Thanks to that, I was able to answer with a gentle smile.
Beautiful women are always welcome!
"Of course. It's a pleasure. I'm Yeonmin."
"......Hello. I'm Helena."
Helena, by contrast, edged a little closer to me, looking distinctly shy. Was she wary of a new face, or was she simply bashful? Either way, she was doing it because she found me more familiar than Yegyeong, and that was a thoroughly welcome thing.
It was a bit like the emotion you feel when a hamster that never pays your hand any mind suddenly comes scurrying over to cling to you the moment a stranger walks into the house. Of course, Helena was a human being incomparably prettier and cuter than any hamster.
Once the introductions were over, Yegyeong promptly pulled out a notebook and began briefing us.
"Your identity registration is complete, so the two of you will be going for a health examination first, shortly. We'll be checking whether anything is currently ailing you, of course, but also whether the two of you, having come from another world, can adapt to this one, and what factors might make things difficult for you. There may be foods you need to avoid due to allergies, for instance."
A health examination. If you asked me for South Korea's greatest virtue, I'd probably say national health insurance. And they were extending it even to us, who'd come from another world. Then again, maybe it was an examination they had to run no matter what. Who knew what kind of virus we might have brought over from the other side?
Of course, they had already disinfected us once before bringing us here. The moment they met us, they'd wrapped us in some kind of luminous haze for quite a while. I could more or less tell it was a purifying light. The dirt and dust on my stockings and nun's habit had vanished on the spot. I probably didn't need to worry about disease. Still, you never know. And in any case, having someone check that nothing hurt was something to welcome.
"That said, the way you were struggling even to sit up just now... Yeonmin, is it possible something is hurting you?"
She seemed to have gotten the wrong idea. Yegyeong lifted her eyes from her notebook and spoke in a worried voice.
Well, I supposed you could see it that way. If someone can't sit up on their own, people generally assume they're ill. Understanding that didn't make it any less unfair, though.
"Ah, I'm just weak, that's all. I'm not used to this body yet, either. Getting up from lying down is a bit hard."
They were the ones who'd trussed me up tight, so I was the one who had to put up with this inconvenience. And yet Yegyeong, with that cool impression of hers, kept looking at me with pity in her eyes.
Why, though...?
Had she overheard what Helena and I had been saying? However politely they treated us, we were still aliens. They might have planted a CCTV in the interrogation room and been watching us. Maybe she'd taken it to mean that a goddess who lived on faith was on the verge of starving to death. Helena had said as much, after all.
That wasn't actually the case. I wasn't exactly full, but I'd eaten lunch earlier. And I was never all that close to faith to begin with. People had gone and mistaken things on their own and created this body for me, but it was only a physical form born from their belief. I'd gotten along just fine without a body.
"I understand for now. The health examination should tell us more. That's the only item on this afternoon's schedule, and once your IDs are issued tomorrow, we'll arrange mobile phones for you. We'll also need to look into housing for the two of you."
Wow. She'd said she'd help us adapt, and now she was laying out the full package. An ID made sense—it would make it easier for them to manage us, so of course they'd handle that themselves. But a phone and a place to live?
It brought back a joke I'd heard in my previous life. Since I'd never be able to afford a house this time around, I might as well die and come back. And then—ta-da!—it had actually happened. Go to another world and they'll give you a house!
"You'll also be going through a series of procedures. First, there will be a simple test to see whether you can live in this world without incident. Nothing difficult—just questions about how you would act in certain situations. Please answer them honestly."
"Ah. If we don't pass, do we get deported or something?"
"Even if the universal truths are the same, there are bound to be differences in the finer points..."
She'd said to be honest, so I went ahead and asked honestly from the start. I was curious. As Helena had said, the values here and in that other world might not be the same.
"If there isn't any particular difference in values, you'll simply receive instruction in this world's common sense and then enter society. If there is, we have a separate educational facility, so please don't worry. You can think of it as a place that explains why murder is wrong to people who don't understand that you shouldn't kill."
Hmm.
That was going to be a pretty big difference. How many people had Helena killed, just by herself? At this rate, she wasn't going to pass that test. As for me, I'd lived in this world before. My memories were a little hazy, but I should get through it just fine.
And even if Helena didn't pass, that was all right. I could just stick by her side and keep feeding her the right answers, couldn't I? If it meant my heroine could settle here and live happily, I would help her with that much as much as she needed.
"Then... if we pass that test without trouble, will Yeonmin's restraints be removed?"
"Yes, of course. If you understand and abide by the law and by morality, there will no longer be any reason to restrain Yeonmin."
Helena, who had far bigger problems of her own, was worrying about me instead. It was so cute I couldn't help grinning.
"All right. So we're going for the health examination now?"
"If you'd like to rest, we can leave a little later. But there's nothing else scheduled today, so I'd recommend getting it over with quickly and then resting properly."
"Then let's go now."
I thought so too. More than anything else, it meant I'd get to find out Helena's height and weight. She'd grown up worn down in a barren environment, so I really was a little worried. Then again, considering she was reasonably tall and her chest had filled out quite a bit, you could also say she'd overcome that environment and grown up splendidly. Still, I wanted to hear a doctor say that Helena was healthy.
...Did that make me a little shameless? I'd done what I could, in my own way, to keep her from going hungry. I'd guided her toward places where she could find food, and when there was truly nothing, I'd even taken the bandits' stored provisions and left them somewhere she could see. I could only hope it had done some good.