Bedtime
I know my body is nothing more than a shape.
I can eat. I can touch other people, and they can touch me. I understood that most kinds of interaction were possible.
At the same time, I had come to learn that certain functions simply did not exist.
I never needed the bathroom, for instance. Everyone else would be dripping with sweat in the heat, and I never did. No—from the start, I could feel the warmth of sunlight and the cool of an indoor room, but heat itself never registered as discomfort.
And I had also learned that I never needed to bathe.
I found that out because Helena suddenly flushed and announced she was going to wash. The way she sniffed her own sweat and her face went pink was so exactly like a girl her age that it was genuinely charming to watch.
Still, if she felt grimy, she ought to wash. So I thought I might as well wash with her.
The moment I actually considered it, though, I realized my body had no need. I hadn't shed a single drop of sweat. I didn't smell of anything in particular. No—I didn't smell of anything at all.
People say it's hard to catch your own scent, but this flesh was sensitive enough to find spicy pork stir-fry genuinely spicy. Even so, I thought it might be nicer to wash, just for the feeling of being clean.
"Ah, the restraints have a built-in purification function, so you needn't worry about hygiene."
The person I had gone to the trouble of summoning said something like that!
Of course, staying clean without bathing would be an advantage in most situations.
"Eugh. You're telling me to give up the feeling of sinking into warm water? That's just cruel."
To have a body at last and not be allowed to enjoy that warmth. In my heart I had already been imagining splashing around, letting the heat unkink every tense muscle, and then, quietly, with Helena...
Ahem. That was far too much self-interest. I needed to rein that in.
Anyway, denying me content that already existed was just mean. So I whined about it, and the person who had come all this way in the middle of the night turned out, unexpectedly, to be kind.
"Ah, if you'd like, you're welcome to get in just as you are. Plenty of people enter the Association public baths with their clothes on. There's a drying facility as well, so you needn't worry about getting your clothes wet."
"Eh?"
I could just get in like this. Honestly, I was pretty tempted. How long had it been since I'd soaked in a hot bath?
If I'd been alone, I would have taken that agent's word without a second thought. But I was with Helena, and that made it hard.
Helena would be going in completely undressed, and if I were the only one still wearing clothes... wouldn't that be a little unfair?
...And I knew how my body would look. There's a saying that sometimes being dressed is more indecent than being naked. The nun's habit already clung so tightly it left nothing of my figure to the imagination. If I went into the water like that...
Then even if Helena and I were the same gender, she would look at me with enormous embarrassment. Not with eyes full of desire—more the kind of look where you wrinkle your nose and think someone is pathetic.
I didn't have a physical body back then, so it's hard to put a number on my age, but I had looked after Helena since she was small. I could reasonably claim to be something like an aunt, couldn't I? An aunt receiving a look like that would feel utterly mortified.
"Mm, no. Even if you can dry the clothes right away, I don't want to put everyone to the trouble. I'll wash once the restraints come off. Helena, have a nice bath."
So I swallowed the disappointment and gave it up.
Hmm. Climbing into bed without washing. That's practically sacrilege. Well, they said my body was clean, so it should be fine.
The faintly complicated look Helena gave me suggested she was disappointed we wouldn't be washing together. Was she envious that she had to go through the bother of bathing while I just got to lie in bed? Or was she hurt that she wouldn't be doing something together with the only person she thought of as a friend—or a companion?
But if I went in fully dressed while Helena alone was stripped... that would be its own kind of unkindness. However helpless I am around cute girls, however much I want to dote on them and turn every good person I meet into a beautiful girl, I couldn't do something that unfair.
I was a gentleman, after all. Ah—I've become a woman, so I suppose I should say a lady.
That had been thirty minutes ago, lying alone in bed.
Helena, who in that short time had washed and even dried her hair, came back into the room and immediately wrapped herself around me and lay down.
"Uh...?"
Unlike before, she now carried a lush, fragrant scent. Not that she had smelled bad before she washed. I don't know how humans would have perceived it, but it was simply her own scent, soaked thoroughly into her skin. Back then I had only thought, oh, Helena smells a little like ash.
Now she was clinging to me, radiating some kind of floral perfume, and my heart started thudding for no good reason.
When I made that startled little sound, Helena softened those sharp eyes of hers and put on a pitiful expression.
"...Does it bother you, having me hold you?"
Ah. Who could look at that face and turn her away?
Of course I did hesitate, wondering if I should tell her to let go. But if I had to choose between stilling the hammer of my own heart and Helena's contentment, my choice was obviously Helena.
A child dropped into a strange world, with no one and nowhere to lean on. The only thing that child could still attach herself to was me.
"No, it isn't that. I know humans say it's comforting to hold something when they sleep. But if you hold me..."
"Yeonmin is soft and squishy. I like it."
She had picked up a gun at an age when she should have been playing with dolls. She had breathed gunpowder at an age when she should have been discovering tea and perfume. Maybe that was why she needed a doll to hold at night, so late.
There was no way I could push a Helena like that away.
Hmm. Maybe I should ask Agent Park to buy her a stuffed animal later. If I said Helena needed a doll to sleep with... would it be too expensive, and she'd refuse?
I let that train of thought run on, and before I knew it Helena's breathing had grown slow and even.
Yes. She must have been exhausted. Through more than ten years of finishing her revenge, her body had worn itself out, and her mind had been driven to the point of taking her own life. And then, in that state, she had crossed into another world. It was a miracle she had held herself together this long.
From a distance, I had only been able to admire how beautiful it was, the way she carried her will through to the end. Lying beside her like this, she just looked so terribly young.
I hadn't been the one to lay those trials on her, and still I felt sorry for having left a child like this to suffer. I wanted to stroke her hair, at least. Even if my arms hadn't been bound, I don't think I could have done it with these hands. I wasn't sure I had the right. I had only been a bystander, watching Helena struggle.
So I simply let her hold me as she pleased. And I whispered, very softly.
When I thought about it, I had been granting other people's wishes all this time. Was there anyone, anywhere, who would grant mine?
I hoped there was.
I murmured that and quietly closed my eyes.
...Except sleep wouldn't come.
It was true that having Helena wrapped around me made me a little tense. But when a human lies down and shuts their eyes, they're supposed to get drowsy, aren't they? I had moved around quite a lot today, thank you very much.
And I couldn't sleep? I wasn't even tired?
That was when I understood.
This body could not even sleep.
...Which meant I would have to endure Helena's embrace in full, clear consciousness, lying perfectly still until morning.
It was soft, and warm.
And there was a faintly familiar scent. That sweet, enveloping fragrance that used to rise from her mother's arms. A scent she had not even been allowed to miss, not since the day bullets tore through the carriage and the house she should have gone home to burned...
The wrongness of it snapped Helena's eyes open.
Her hand reached reflexively for the revolver at her thigh. But there was no holster there. She startled, looking around—an unfamiliar room. The revolver she wanted sat neatly on the desk, leather holster and all.
Only then did Helena remember that she had taken the gun off before bed. A flicker of guilt passed through her—to leave so unguarded a weapon she had never once taken from her body—but she did not scold herself for it.
This was a place where that was allowed. Because the soft presence cradling her in her arms was none other than her own goddess.
And that goddess was smiling at her, gently.
"...Ah. I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"
"No, I was already up. I was just lying still."
"Don't tell me you woke because of me and couldn't even move."
"I'm tied up anyway. There isn't much moving I could do. Did you sleep well, Helena?"
Helena apologized, late, afraid that holding her through the night had made Yeonmin uncomfortable. Yeonmin only smiled, softly.
This goddess of hers hadn't a hair out of place, even after what should have been sleep. She had the innocent temperament of a rather childish girl, and yet—perhaps a goddess was still a goddess.
Helena swallowed the urge to nestle in again and slowly sat up.
A strange room. Strange air. And yet, because of that, a good feeling.
Yes. This was not a world where a blow might land on the back of your head at any moment, where a bullet might come from anywhere at all. A truly new world. A kind world, kind enough to help even complete strangers settle in.
In a world like that, a good goddess like Yeonmin would surely find many believers willing to take her in.
And so, for the first time in a very long while, Helena was able to offer a bright good morning.