The Resident Guide
Overview: The Adaptive Villa provides a code of conduct to ensure a pleasant living environment for our residents.
Please familiarize yourself with the following.
The villa assumes no responsibility for any accidents that occur as a result of residents ignoring or violating these rules.
1. The Adaptive Villa is a space where those unfamiliar with modern civilization may more easily find their footing, and where people who have crossed over from every kind of world can share their hardships, take comfort in one another, and receive know-how for adapting to the present day.
We do not forbid speaking of the past, but please do not pry unless the other party brings it up first.
There are those among us who have lost family, friends, comrades, and everything else in worlds that were destroyed.
The Adaptive Villa assumes no responsibility for any catastrophe that results from poking at their trauma.
2. Floors 1 and 2 of the Adaptive Villa are equipped with various amenities.
The washers and dryers in the laundromat, as well as the medical facilities, are free of charge. However, items purchased at the convenience store that are not daily necessities are paid products.
Please keep this in mind. We hope you will be spared the unhappy experience of being penalized for helping yourself without paying.
2-1. If you have not yet found a way to earn money, or if you have exhausted your support funds and find yourself in a tight spot, please check the quest board in the main lobby.
Commissions are posted there ranging from simple labor such as painting or repairing damaged buildings, to artifact crafting and artisan work that lets you put your individual talents to use.
3. The intercom installed in each unit connects only to visitors at your front door and to the security office.
If you hear someone claiming they are calling from another unit, hang up immediately and contact the Management Knight's office.
4. If, while walking the hallways, riding the elevator, or climbing the stairs, you see a door appearing in midair, please close your own door at once.
Under no circumstances should you enter that room or look inside. If someone comes out of it, returning a greeting is acceptable, but please refrain from any further interaction.
If you are not careful, you may be dragged off by that resident and forced to binge-watch the entirety of Hailey Potter and Emperor of the Rings for up to a week.
4-1. If you do happen to get dragged away, and you have something you absolutely must do, please explain your circumstances honestly and ask for understanding.
If you lie, we assume no responsibility for what follows.
However, you must finish your urgent business and return without fail.
Otherwise, the next time you will not be allowed out until you have binge-watched both of those film series andSpaces War in their entirety.
4-2. When watching Spaces War, Spaces War Episode 8 does not exist. Do not mention that episode.
5. Except when airing out a room or looking outside, always keep the windows closed and the curtains drawn.
There is nowhere to set your feet beyond the windows of this building.
If someone happens to be peering in with their face pressed to the glass, draw the curtains immediately and contact the security office.
She will take the necessary measures.
6. If you discover a trail of slime in the hallway, do not step in it. Contact the security office.
The slime is not harmful to the human body, but it is extremely slippery and sticky, and if it gets on your shoes it will not come off easily.
Please detour around that path to prevent slip-and-fall accidents.
7. Regardless of your own gender, lewd acts in the villa hallways and public spaces are absolutely forbidden at all times and in all places.
CCTV is installed in the hallways with no blind spots.
We sincerely hope you will not have any embarrassing incidents.
8. Even if you find a unit with the door standing open and no one inside, do not set foot in it.
If you happen to see such a place, we would appreciate it if you quietly closed the door and informed the Management Knight's office.
Alternatively, you need not close the door.
9. If a girl soaked to the bone, looking utterly pitiful, comes asking to stay just for one night, do not take her in no matter what reason she gives.
This girl comes even on days when it is not raining.
The villa will never compensate you for the various accidents that occur when you let this girl into your home.
9-1. Accidents that have occurred to date include: the bathtub filling completely with shampoo foam; the entire bed transforming into some unknown fluffy object; all the food in the refrigerator turning into cake; and so on.
10. Please refrain from smoking indoors.
Smoking areas are located on the rooftop, or at the smoking area behind the building.
If you violate this and smoke indoors or in the bathroom, the villa assumes no responsibility for what happens afterward.
This notice does not have an item number 4
If you saw item number 4, don't worry about it too much and come watch movies with us, it'll be fun
There are lots of other fun movies too action romance fantasy horror whatever you like
Hmm.
The notice was long. Far too long. I was supposed to commit all of this to memory?
At a glance it seemed like you could get by on common sense alone. But the contents were so bizarre, and every other line threatened you with penalties if you stepped out of line, that I couldn't just let my eyes skate over it.
And there were plenty of campfire-story entries, too. Break a taboo and the penalty waiting for you was the refrigerator filling up with cake, or waking up with doodles scrawled across your face. Nothing but trifles like that.
Well. Trifles to me — if an ordinary civilian got hit with them, it might be a little unnerving.
But if the one doing it to me was a cute girl?
I could forgive that without a second thought.
Even looking at this notice right now, here and there, the stars of every ghost-story clause were all girls, weren't they? Ghost or not, if a cute girl was the one pulling those stunts, I could make every allowance in the world and keep her company.
"Is this villa... actually safe?"
Helena, apparently, did not share that view. She had worked through the notice line by line, and now she was putting the question to the Management Knight.
"Except for people who injured themselves by doing something dangerous, no one has ever been hurt or killed here. Voices are raised between neighbors from time to time, but when a conflict arises, everyone gathers in the lobby and mediation begins."
"Mediation? Like a trial?"
"It is not a matter of identifying a guilty party and handing down a verdict. The purpose is simply for everyone to live together in good spirits. Both sides are heard, a compromise is sought, and suggestions are offered as to how they might stop quarreling and come to understand each other's conduct. A discussion, in that sense. Ah — and if you would rather not take part, you need not."
The Management Knight was filling in something the notice had never mentioned. On the face of it, it sounded like neighbors gathering to help one another get along.
To my ears, it sounded more like this: Hey, everybody, those two are fighting! Why? What's it about? A fight? I want to watch! They had simply made the whole thing legal.
Then the quarreling neighbors would spill everything to the rest of the building, each insisting they were the one in the right. And the neighbors would mediate — this one went a little too far, that one kind of had a point, somebody ought to yield and try to understand. Wouldn't it go something like that?
Just hearing about it, it was entertaining content.
No — if it wasn't content, what was I supposed to call it. Anyway, it meant the villa was legally providing a spectacle.
They say watching a fight is as much fun as watching a fire. A fight doesn't have to mean fists flying and blades coming out. That razor-edged conflict that starts from two people thinking in completely different ways. That struggle where sparks fly because each one believes they're right, and they collide according to their convictions. As long as it isn't my problem, that sort of thing is thoroughly enjoyable.
Now that I've grown closer to Helena, I've come to realize that simply standing back and watching wasn't always such a good thing, and I've been reflecting on that a little. But this is a conflict show staged in public, with no one getting hurt. And a happy ending is waiting at the end, where the two of them hold hands and make up. I can sit in the audience without a shred of guilt.
"Oh. That sounds fun. Helena, we should do that together."
"Why would you go out of your way to watch other people fight..."
"Well... because it's fun? And it's not just the fight — it's the process of working through the conflict!"
I had also figured it would be a chance to show off Helena's good sense. Instead she only sighed and shook her head, then added that if I went she would follow, but she wouldn't say a word.
Hmm. So Helena doesn't much care for watching other people fight. Fair enough — when she took up a gun and fought, it was for the sake of revenge. It wasn't because she loved fighting itself that she had thrown herself into those desperate battles.
I'm not the type to drag a friend along to a movie that doesn't suit their taste. Nothing to be done, then. If one of those mediation sessions opened, I would just have to come down to the lobby by myself.
"Anyway, we've finished the notice. Is there a test on this?"
"You need only familiarize yourself with it. Now then, you may choose your home. Do you have a preferred environment? Somewhere warm, or cold, or humid — or if you require any particular conditions, please let me know."
So that was the rough briefing on how we were supposed to live here. And now they were offering to shape the very environment of our house. My eyes went wide all over again.
When you say villa, don't you usually mean identical units clustered together? Heating and cooling, I could accept. But humid? Specific conditions?
"Oh. If I said I wanted to live underwater, would you give us a house like that?"
"We will create that environment in your home. We can have a river running through the middle, or turn the bedroom side into a pool of flowing water."
"Wow."
It wasn't as if the technology would be impossible by modern standards, or even by the standards of that other world. Still — installing something like that in a home meant they were investing in us, and investing heavily. Helena didn't seem to feel how generous the treatment was. She only looked unimpressed. I, on the other hand, lit up and clung to her.
"How about it? Want to turn our bedroom into a swimming pool and live like that?"
"It would be a problem if your face went underwater in your sleep."
"Ah — then if we put a rope around your neck so you don't sink..."
"That's a hanging."
A swimming pool in the house. I had thought it sounded impossibly romantic. Helena, it seemed, was deeply skeptical. Maybe that was what came of living too bleakly for too long.
"Aww. You're so picky, Helena. Then please give us a warm house. Helena doesn't like the cold, you see."
I couldn't push any further than that. The memory of her shivering through the night, struggling to keep a campfire from going out, rose up, and I decided to ask for only this much.
"Understood. This is the main building; you will be in East Wing Room 502. Please look around the house, and if you need anything, let us know."
With that, the Management Knight held out two keys. Helena taking one I could accept. The problem was that Yegyeong took one as well.
"Uh... does Yegyeong need a key too?"
"Of course. I'll be living with you."
"What?"
What? We weren't going to be living just the two of us?