The House Is Big
Once your heart starts racing, every word that might leave your mouth suddenly feels dangerous.
You start worrying the next thing you say will give that feeling away. Or that it will show on your face.
Of course, whether Helena knew my heart had skipped or not wouldn't have made the slightest difference. Helena is a woman, and the body I wear now is a woman's as well.
Would Helena even like this flesh of mine?
Well, there's no law that says she couldn't. Living things are wired to be drawn to the opposite sex so they can have children, though. Not feeling that kind of love for someone of the same sex is the ordinary way of things, isn't it?
Humans, of course, call all sorts of affection "love." The feeling you give and receive inside a family, from the people you trust most — that's love. The kind you lavish on everyone without asking anything back, the sort they named agape — that's love too.
Still, the emotion that nudges a man and a woman toward pairing... what do they call that again? Bonding? A flutter? That racing of the heart?
Whatever the name, a relationship like that is just hormones doing their job so babies get made. It doesn't happen between people of the same sex, does it?
Mmm. You could argue that slipping free of that instinctive brainwashing of body and brain is what real love looks like. Anyway, the point is I shouldn't get my hopes up that Helena would feel that way.
...And saying "hopes" makes it sound like I want her to.
Helena is a beauty, and I do love beautiful things. So if she wanted to go out with me? I would be wildly... welcome to it. I've just never actually dated anyone.
I've watched humans fall in love plenty of times, of course. The words and gestures that stamp themselves on each other's hearts. Until they reach a place where they can't live without one another, and share a bed...
Ah — I absolutely never watched what came after that, so I can't describe any more.
I could show Helena the dating techniques I've picked up from all that watching. She wouldn't want that, though. So I'll keep this little flutter to myself, and spare her the fluster. It isn't even romantic love, anyway.
My heroine, of all people, had taken my arm. Held me fast so I couldn't go nuzzling against her. And I had been so startled my heart had hammered — that was all.
Even if I ever came to like Helena, it would have to stay fan-love. A fan dating a star? It happens, sure. But movie actors usually date among themselves, don't they? That's the idea.
So I tried to settle my startled heart and smile the way I always do. Maybe because I hadn't said a word the whole way to our destination? For some reason Helena broke the silence first, fidgeting as she spoke.
"I, um, I think I spoke too roughly earlier. And I put my hands on you without asking. You weren't hurt, were you?"
"Hm? Ehehe, I couldn't have been. Even if I can't handle spicy food, this body doesn't feel pain from something like that."
So she'd been worrying about it too. The only reason I'd gone stiff, though, was that sudden move — I'd been startled, and my heart had raced.
Even if I'd spent so long without a body that I never put much stock in my own gender, and even if I have a woman's body now... having flesh again might have shoved me back into the old idea that I used to be a man. So when a stunningly beautiful woman faced me and seized me like that, my body locked up as if I'd just been confessed to.
That was all it was. Nothing for Helena to worry about. My own fluster was the kind of thing you let pass in a moment.
So I smiled as if nothing were the matter. Only then did Helena let out a long breath, as if a weight had lifted.
Had she been stewing over it the whole ride here? It was so cute, like a teenage girl fretting, that I quietly rubbed my head against her shoulder. Earlier she'd found that kind of thing so burdensome, but this time she let me be clingy. She still looked embarrassed, of course. And because that was cute, I wanted to do it even more.
Besides, I ought to get used to this kind of girl-to-girl closeness if I want to make friends, right? Other people might be even more touchy-feely than I am. On a first meeting they eat together, hold hands, go shopping, hit the pool! If Helena made friends like that, settling in here would be easier for her.
"The parking garage is here, as you can see. And that building up ahead is where you'll be staying. It isn't exactly luxurious, I'll admit. But it has everything you need. Even if the building feels a little cramped, this is the most we can offer people who've come over from other worlds."
Yegyeong had cut the engine by then and come around to explain. Just as she said, what stood before us was a villa stretching in a long semicircle. A plain white exterior, no ornament to speak of, with a laundromat, a convenience store, a bank, a clinic, and other such facilities packed into the first and second floors.
The odd thing was that places like that usually hang out signs so people on the street can see them — and there wasn't a single one. I only knew what was inside because the facilities themselves were visible to me. More precisely, because I don't see with my eyes, so I can feel what's on the other side.
Ah — and I do not use that ability to peek at pretty girls in the nude. Not looking when people bathe is a point of pride!
"...The house is quite large."
That was the whole of Helena's review. Fair enough — to her eyes the villa was simply an enormous building. The design wasn't lavish, after all. Mansions in her world, once they reach a certain size, tend to dress up their façades. This suffered by comparison.
Still. "The house is large." Wouldn't you normally say the building is large?
Yegyeong seemed fairly thrown by the wording too. She stammered as she asked again.
"I-is it? Compared to the Association building, isn't it rather small?"
"That is a place where many people work. You said this is where we will live."
Only then did I understand what Helena had meant. Right — we'd been told this was the house we would live in. Someone like Helena could easily take that to mean the entire thing was ours.
Mmm. Should I pretend I'd made the same mistake, so she wouldn't feel embarrassed?
"Ah, no — you won't be using the whole place. You'll share the first- and second-floor amenities with the other residents, of course. But the two of you will have a single unit in that building. Hmm, how should I put this..."
"It's divided into rooms, like an inn. And each one has a little private chamber attached."
I was the only one who could bring this down to Helena's level. No matter how carefully Yegyeong described the interior, getting her to picture it clearly would be hard. What you need at a time like this is a metaphor — taking things the other person already knows and using them to explain what's here.
"Ah. I understand."
See? She got it right away. The trouble was, her reaction wasn't the exaggerated, flustered comprehension I'd been hoping for. Just a quiet oh, I see. I'd wanted to watch her face go adorably red. Missing that was a shame.
The weather was hot besides, so we headed straight inside — and compared to those barren white outer walls, a surprisingly lavish interior rose up to greet us. The lobby had been done in a medieval style, the ceiling soaring open all the way to the second floor. Straight ahead sat what looked like the Management Knight's office.
I'd been wondering why it wasn't called a management office. Then someone sensed our presence and stepped out — a knight in full heavy plate.
Wait. The Management Knight was an actual knight?
"Welcome to the Adaptive Villa. This is a place meant to help you adjust to modern civilization by living among others in similar circumstances, so that settling in comes a little more easily. Many of our residents come from very different cultures, so we ask that you be generous if small differences in communication arise. Would you like to move in at once, or would you prefer to look around first and then decide?"
Even so, the voice that rolled out of that fully enclosed armor was kind. And it was a woman's. I didn't even need to peek inside the helmet; the voice alone told me she was a beauty.
Anyone who wears armor like that has to have a thoroughly trained body. Not lean and quick like Helena — genuinely solid muscle. That's physical beauty in its own right. It might sit a little far from "pretty girl," but it is still a kind of beauty.
I could have checked the face behind the armor, of course. That would have been as rude as looking at someone's underthings, though, so I decided to wait and hope the day would come when I saw it properly. If we lived here long enough, maybe I'd catch a lovely lady knight lifting her helm for a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow because it was too hot... probably not. The air-conditioning kept the inside of the building quite cool.
While I was practically licking my lips at the thought that a new pretty girl is always welcome, Helena accepted the offer first.
"We have nowhere else to go. If Yeonmin has no objection, I would like to move in at once. Adaptation is simply a matter of doing it, is it not?"
"Hm? Oh — right. We're the ones who have to adapt. What should we start with?"
We'd come here for that in the first place, so there wasn't much need to ask my opinion. The moment we agreed, though, a next step I had never imagined arrived.
"Then I would be grateful if you would first read this manual carefully. Violating these points can lead to rather troublesome outcomes."
Without any warning, the Management Knight drew several sheets of paper from under the office table and held them out to us.
Don't tell me... we have to study this?