I'll Turn Them Into a Beautiful Girl!
We didn't even need to go to a hospital. The building with the interrogation room simply had an infirmary attached — though the place gave off more of a laboratory vibe than a clinic. I couldn't help wondering if they ran scientific experiments in there. Still, if you're putting your hands on people instead of machines or chemicals, that counts as a hospital.
There, we stepped up onto a scanner, took a single flash of light, and stepped back down.
Honestly. Back in my day, a checkup meant measuring your height and weight, testing your vision, and even drawing blood. If they wanted more, it was a sleep endoscopy, or an ultrasound, or X-rays of your bones. Here we just stood on some platform, got bathed in light once, and our data came scrolling up the doctor's computer in a rush.
"What did you do to us?"
Helena couldn't make sense of whatever was appearing on the monitor. She just looked herself over, checking whether any of the light had lingered on her skin. The doctor explained it kindly.
"We're checking your height, your weight, and whether anything hurts. The machine has mana circuits drawn in advance and injects mana into them, so all I have to do is press a button."
"Wow..."
Helena didn't seem particularly impressed even as she said it. I, on the other hand, had to stick my tongue out at that. Just how much better had the world gotten?
"We used to have to measure everything ourselves with a ruler and a scale. Technology's advanced so rapidly lately that it's this convenient now."
Nobody had asked her to explain, but Yegyeong chimed in from the side, clearly itching to show off. Was she that delighted I was acting like such a country bumpkin? My first impression of her had been of a fiercely cold, no-nonsense office agent. Looking at her now, though, she seemed a little clumsy.
Anyway, what kind of person Yegyeong was wasn't the important thing right now.
"How is she? Is Helena healthy? What's her height and weight? High blood pressure? Diabetes? Anything with her lungs or liver?"
"Yeonmin, where on earth did you even hear those disease names..."
I grilled the doctor about every last detail of Helena's condition. The doctor glanced at the images they'd taken of her body, muttered something medical under their breath, then answered lightly.
"She's extremely healthy. Her blood looks clean, as if she exercises regularly, and her skeleton and internal organs are all perfectly fine. She does need to eat a bit more meat, though. She seems slightly undernourished."
I couldn't even say how relieved I was. To have grown up healthy, without a single ailment, in that barren world. Hmm. It wasn't as if I were Helena's mom and dad. Was it too nosy of me to think this way? But she really was something. What was I supposed to do about how proud I felt?
Exercise, well — you ended up doing that whether you wanted to or not when you were fighting all the time. Still, just having her body intact was something to be grateful for. As for needing more meat, I'd simply demand a meat side dish with every meal from now on. In a world like this, that should be possible.
"However... Yeonmin's data isn't showing anything besides height and weight. Is the mana unable to read you? Are you perhaps wrapping yourself in something like an aura?"
The consultation with the doctor didn't end there. I'd figured that once we had Helena's information, we could wrap things up and head back to the interrogation room. Instead, the doctor launched into a whole spiel about me.
Well, honestly, a little suspicion was only natural. That I wasn't human was something Agent Park and Yegyeong already knew, even without a checkup. So a diagnosis like that wasn't all that strange. It wasn't as if my not being human were a secret.
But this... if I played it right, this might be an opportunity. Could I use this chance to get these annoying restraints off?
"Couldn't it be because of these restraints? They said they suppress mana. Wouldn't a machine that runs on mana go dead, then?"
I'd steer this toward taking the restraints off. I wouldn't cause any incidents. Then everyone would realize that someone like me — well, I wasn't exactly a good person, but I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, either. They wouldn't feel the need to keep me in restraints, would they? Then I could cook delicious food for Helena with my own hands. My wishes really were that humble.
"That can't be it. If that were the case, we wouldn't even have gotten a picture like this. The machine would have gone completely dead, and we wouldn't have been able to scan you at all."
"The doctor's right. Don't tell me you've been wrapping your body in mana while wearing the restraints? Don't tell me those restraints never worked at all..."
Instead, the two of them backed me into a corner. Ugh. It was true they didn't really work on me. But I didn't want more restraints piled on when I hadn't even done anything.
"I didn't do anything like thaaat..."
"If it got your height and weight, that means it already worked just fine, doesn't it? Yeonmin has no reason to hide her condition. We all already know she isn't human."
In this awkward situation, Helena was the only one who took my side. It made my chest ache a little. My precious heroine, standing up for me like this? Helping her really had been worth it.
And then, right in the middle of that, the doctor clapped their hands and made a fuss.
"Ah, so you weren't human? No wonder nothing registered inside your body. Well, if something had actually gone wrong, we wouldn't have gotten a scan at all. But if you aren't human... are you a phantasmal species? Or a spiritual entity? That would make sense. You just shaped an appearance and didn't bother with the inside. That's why it's empty."
More unfamiliar words. Phantasmal species. Spiritual entity. The world had changed so much I didn't even know what those were. But listening to it, maybe that really was what I was. In that other world I could exert physical force, so I wasn't quite a ghost — but I wasn't a spirit either, since nobody could communicate with me. Still, I thought, therefore I existed. So a spiritual entity. It sounded plausible.
"But I eat food, you know."
"Hmm, we'd have to research that. But most spiritual species that can eat are pure masses of energy. I hear the food they consume just combusts and turns into gas."
"If it's a racial trait, then we don't need to worry about it further. That's a relief. Then we can proceed with the next step. The same one as the Returnee personality test."
"Ah, it was the same manual?"
"The contents are completely identical. I never understood why they even store them separately."
I see. So my body was just an illusion. Then couldn't I change it a little, however I wanted? Hmm... the exterior was already so pretty I didn't really need to touch it. I had been curious about trying a different hair color, though.
But it didn't work. Maybe because the believers in that other world who had decided my appearance had such strong faith. I'd probably need my will to be stronger than the sum of all that worship for it to work. But this wasn't anyone's wish. It would burn through a lot of power. No need to waste it. I'd just live like this.
While I was roughly sorting out my identity, Helena traced her fingers over my skin.
"An illusion... Yeonmin, is this a body you shaped yourself?"
"When I crossed over into this world, this is how I looked. I suppose this is how the people who think of me as a goddess imagined me."
It wasn't a perverted kind of touch. She was just curious, now that she'd heard I was an illusion, and wanted to feel for herself. The flesh was soft and springy at the same time, and when she touched my shoulder or elbow she could feel hard bone. When her hand came to my chest it hesitated, as if she were having a serious internal conflict, then turned away.
"From the outside it feels just like a real human... that's amazing."
If it were Helena's hands, I wouldn't even have minded her squeezing my chest. We were both girls, after all. Even so, Helena carefully withdrew her hand.
"I think it's amazing too. I thought I'd gotten a human body. Ah, at least I don't have to go to the bathroom. That's nice."
I wasn't particularly disappointed about that, so I just shrugged it off. Meanwhile the doctor pulled a few sheets of paper from a file.
"Since you both came from another world, we'll read the questions for you. Just give us your answers. The doctor and I will mark the answer sheet."
"Okaaay."
"Understood."
I could read Korean just fine. But with my arms bound, being able to read didn't really matter. Someone else had to write the answers anyway.
And so the test began. Honestly, it wasn't some other exam — they said it was a personality test, so I underestimated it. But listening to the doctor go through the questions in that gentle voice, they were problems you could take pretty lightly.
"An elderly person is struggling to cross the street with a heavy load. What would you do?"
"Hmm..."
"Ah, just pick whichever option you think is most right. Even if it isn't something you'd do yourself, choose whatever is the kindest. Or if you have a better idea, you can answer with that. All right. One: snatch the load and run. Two: hit them. Three: pick up the load and cross the street with them. Four: walk on by."
The answer was way too obvious. This wasn't even fun. There was no way Helena would miss something this simple...
"There's no telling what kind of weapon or intent that old person might be hiding. I'll go with four."
...or so I thought!
I supposed the values of the world she had lived in were different. No — even there, if she had lived in peace it might have been different. She had just had such a hard life that her heart had gone barren.
All right, Helena. Listen to my answer and try thinking a little more creatively. That was how she would realize this wasn't that desolate world, and start living a life of her own.
"I have a better idea. You turn them into a beautiful girl. Then they'll be healthy, and carrying the load won't be hard anymore."
Though this didn't feel creative so much as... the best possible answer.