While She Slept
Hmm. I know there are unspoken rules that come with living under the same roof.
Don't raise a racket while everyone else is trying to sleep. If you're going to eat something, at least ask if anyone wants to join you, if only out of courtesy. If you're heading out, you ought to say something like, "I'll be back."
But all of that only applies when people are awake—or at least when it isn't the first time. You can't exactly shake someone out of a dead sleep to ask if they want ramen, or announce, "I'm heading out! Sleep tight!" to a person who's already snoring.
Anyway, I haven't done anything wrong!
Sleep wasn't coming in the first place, and just lying there doing nothing was boring. I couldn't very well wake Helena or Yegyeong and drag them into something. So I figured I'd slip out quietly and amuse myself on my own.
And yet, when I came back to the house, Helena had sat me down on the sofa and taken the seat beside me, while Yegyeong stood in front of us with her arms folded. Both of them looked haggard, staring at me in silence, and I started to feel as if I'd done something wrong after all.
Well, if I had to pick something... waking them both by causing a commotion I hadn't meant to cause? I hadn't intended that, of course. Living things get terribly stressed when their sleep is interrupted, so I could understand why their faces had gone so gloomy.
"Ehehe, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. I ended up waking the whole neighborhood. You two should go back to bed. You must be exhausted."
So I apologized first. It wasn't hard. I could have been shameless about it—insisted I hadn't done anything wrong, that circumstances had simply unfolded that way. But that wouldn't have solved anything, would it?
"Haa... Yeonmin. Were you planning to escape last night? Or did you just go out because you were bored?"
"Yeonmin. If you go out like that without even putting on shoes, I can't help but worry. Even if that body of yours is only a shape, what if you stepped on something sharp and tore your foot?"
And yet neither of them said anything like, It's fine now, we're going back to bed. Hmm. I must have worried them quite a bit. Helena's concern was purely genuine, of course; Yegyeong was probably asking in her capacity as our handler. But there was so much worry in both their voices that it didn't bother me. If anything, it made me happy.
I had always been the one wringing my hands over other people, only exhaling once they'd made it through their hardships... Ah—back then I didn't have a body, so I didn't have a chest to wring or breath to let out. Anyway. To think there were people who would worry about me in return—me, who had only ever worried about others.
"Yegyeong. You don't have to worry about me running away. I'm going to stay right here and watch over Helena. And Helena—I'm fine. The hallway is all carpeted, so it was nice and soft. Even if I wandered around, I only meant to stay inside this villa. I just got so bored once everyone fell asleep that I stepped out for a bit. I was curious whether anyone else might be awake at night and feeling lonely."
So I was able to answer with a light heart, and I told them they had no real reason to be so worried about me besides.
As our handler, Yegyeong's job was probably to watch us and keep us from doing anything impulsive. To help us adapt to this world, we needed all sorts of experiences—but if we just wandered into the city knowing nothing, or ran into ordinary people, she'd be worried an accident might happen in that state. She had every reason to feel that way. Even if I had no intention of doing anything bad, they were afraid of my power. We hadn't built enough trust yet. That was fair.
The President of the United States can have the nuclear launch button and that's fine—but if some guy from next door you barely know steps into the elevator with a gun, you get nervous. Ah, is that analogy outdated? Helena walks around with a pistol, and nobody thinks it's strange.
"You were... bored. Yeonmin. Could it be that you couldn't sleep?"
Helena sent me a look of worried puzzlement. Come to think of it, I hadn't told them. This body of mine was only a form given shape. It didn't have inconvenient functions like that!
"Hehe. My body functions perfectly well without something like sleep. I could close my eyes and pretend, of course. But that would be deceiving all of you, so I decided not to."
So I said it with a little pride. It wasn't as if I'd been trying to hide it. Telling them now was fine, wasn't it?
"I... see. Hmm. Then you must get terribly bored at night, all by yourself..."
Yegyeong seemed to understand right away. Of course, understanding was one thing, and her sense of duty as our handler was another. On the surface she looked as if she were taking it in—but she was probably worried that once she fell asleep, she'd have no way to watch me or restrain me.
What I'd been trying to do, though, wasn't just about easing my own boredom. I'd also been planning, while I was at it, to put everyone else's minds at ease.
"That's right. That's why I was going to hang around with the people in this villa a bit. Then you wouldn't have to worry about me disappearing, and I'd get more chances to ma— to meet more cute girls."
"You weren't about to say make, were you? You're just meeting them, right?"
Hmm. So this was why she was the handler. Yegyeong was rather sharp. But I wasn't so poorly cultivated that I'd stammer my way through an awkward answer. There's a way to slip past these things without actually lying.
"Hehe. What do you think?"
Toss the judgment back at the other person! Then I don't have to say yes or no myself. But Yegyeong wasn't that easy to shake.
"It's not a matter of what I think... You've already turned the Angel Statue into a woman. That's a problem. Unless that's what she wanted, of course."
"Hmm, well, that form was the one she wanted. I only granted her wish. She said she was dieting, so I even helped her lose weight. Being startled by the change is only natural, but all in all, it was a happy ending."
"Hmm... but still..."
Cute girls are always right! Yegyeong couldn't bring herself to argue with that eternal truth. This time, though, the trouble came from Helena's side.
"Hold on, Yeonmin. Then you used your power again? When your body hasn't even properly recovered!"
"Huh? Recovered? I'm perfectly fine."
"..."
Since the last moment of my previous life, I had never once been hurt. Of course I hadn't. I hadn't had a body to begin with. I'd only just now been given a body by those who called themselves my believers. I hadn't been cut by a blade or struck by a blunt weapon. I hadn't even bumped into anything or fallen on the floor. There had never been an occasion to get injured in the first place.
So Helena must have been badly mistaken. Even when I said so with genuine confusion, her expression wouldn't ease.
Ah—then I realized. This probably wasn't just a matter of a restless night. The whole world had been turned upside down; of course her sleep would be unsettled. Yesterday she might have slept soundly because she'd held me. Today she'd slept alone. Whether you have something to hold or not is a very big deal for a human being.
"Ehehe. Helena. It looks like you had a bad dream. Don't worry. I'm right here. Hmm, I guess it can't be helped. If you can't sleep, that puts me in a bind too. Come on—let's go nighty-night together."
So I leaned against Helena's shoulder and gently closed my eyes.
Huh...? Why is everything going fuzzy...?
Yeonmin leaned against Helena's shoulder with a smiling crinkle of her eyes. It almost looked as if she were flirting with her. But then she slipped from Helena's shoulder and slumped, and anyone could see she had lost consciousness.
Helena, her face conflicted, caught Yeonmin so she wouldn't fall any farther. Yegyeong looked at the two Returnees and asked, her eyes full of questions.
"Recovered...? Are you saying Yeonmin is unwell somehow?"
"...Please keep this between us. As you know, Yegyeong, Yeonmin is a goddess. A god exists by taking the faith of their believers as power—as nourishment. But Yeonmin doesn't have a single believer in this world. Of course, if I count as one, then she has at least one..."
"Ah. Then... she used her power the way she did in that other world, without having recharged at all, and collapsed...?"
"I think so."
Yegyeong was no fool, so she understood at once what Helena meant. And so she, too, looked at the soundly sleeping Yeonmin with a pained, pitying gaze.
"Then these restraints are essentially meaningless..."
"No. If anything, they're a necessary measure. We need to keep her from using her power properly."
"Ah."
Yegyeong had been thinking, in her own way, of taking Yeonmin's restraints off. They'd come to a villa full of people in similar circumstances; once they settled in a little, it would be fine. But these most powerful Mana Restraints were serving as a safety device—not only for ordinary people, but for Yeonmin herself. Which meant that leaving them on was, in fact, a kindness to her as well.
"I'm already worried because she goes around putting on airs in front of other people. She has such strong power—I'm afraid they'll start asking her to use it, to help them. And then kindhearted Yeonmin would go right ahead and help. I just hope the restraints do their job so that never happens. ...Get some sleep. We'll turn in as well."
Having laid her complicated feelings bare to Yegyeong, Helena gathered Yeonmin into her arms again and headed for her own room.
Left alone in the living room, Yegyeong, fighting her exhaustion, started typing what Helena had told her into her phone—then sighed and deleted it all.
This was what happened while Yeonmin slept.