Chapter 136
While Victoria slept, I sat quietly in my seat and watched the world through the small window. The ship was running along the coast, and the distant shoreline kept the view from growing dull.
Being aboard a ship did not mean we were bound for an island, or for some other continent. Victoria's school and her home stood on the same landmass. All that lay between them was a jungle so thick it could not be conquered.
For her to go from school to home, she had to sail along the coast, or else take a train the long way around. She had simply chosen the easier and faster of the two. The train truly took forever.
Beyond the little window, a flash would sometimes glint deep in the far-off forest. No matter how I looked at it, it seemed like fire, and yet no blaze ever caught. It was the light of this world's native life.
Beasts that deserved to be called monsters roamed that jungle, which was why no one went there. From the start, the jungle itself was a domain that refused humankind.
Jungles have a way of lingering far longer than one expects, even after a civilization has advanced. Unless there is some special resource to be had, the cost of clearing them is simply too great beside whatever profit might be gained, even when the technology to do it exists. That is how it goes in worlds that do not use mana or qi.
In a world inhabited by creatures that do, the danger climbs several hundredfold. And so this world had sketched its outline, yet never managed to fill in the interior. It was that sort of world.
"Uh, uh. Uhhh? Who... are you?"
Victoria sat up with a rumpled look on her face. Then she startled, clutched the blanket to herself, and stared at me in blank astonishment. Sleep still had its hold on her; she hadn't come fully awake.
"You're still inside a nightmare."
I answered half in jest. At my reply—half of it the truth—she glanced about in a daze, from me to the rest of the room.
"Ah! Hi. Good morning."
"Strictly speaking, it's night."
I pointed out the window. It was a ship's window, too small to open, but the night sky beyond it was plainly full of stars.
Victoria blinked, slow and heavy, and swung her legs down off the bed. Then she looked down at her clothes and flinched.
"My—my clothes! What! I don't think I changed before I went to sleep!"
"They were in your travel bag, so I changed you. Now that you're up, wash first."
Whether she was still half asleep or simply couldn't make sense of the situation, Victoria looked around, and then, as if she had sorted her thoughts, she got to her feet. A chill passed over her face. She turned her clothes inside out, inspected her underwear, and said one thing.
"Changing even my underwear for me is going too far, isn't it?"
"You'll get sick."
"What are you, my mom?"
Hygiene matters. It matters all the more in a world that has only developed halfway.
Of course, this world had magical treatments and physical ones living side by side, and they did administer antibiotics by injection. Even so, ritual methods were the more popular of the two. With mana in the world they were not wholly without effect, but the impression was of a place caught in transition. A limb torn away could be regenerated, while an illness born of a lethal plague or of contamination was handled rather poorly.
In any case, it was enough to be careful within the range of what could be done.
I was waiting like that when Victoria called to me from where she had gone to wash.
"Hey! Come in here!"
"Yes."
I stepped inside and found Victoria naked, floating lightly atop a droplet of water, studying herself in the mirror. Even from the side, it was a rather uncanny sight.
A great bead of water hung in the air, and Victoria was inside it, only her head rising above the surface. The water was hard to see, being transparent, but it was turning within itself, scrubbing her body the way a washing machine would. A psychic ability. She handled it well.
Still washing like that before the mirror, Victoria spoke to me.
"I didn't think all my hair would turn purple. White skin is nice and all, but what is this?"
She asked it while holding a thoroughly unreserved pose.
"That is what happens when you make a contract with me. Unless you are in the middle of dying, your hair turns purple and your skin becomes pure white. Wounds close, the body grows robust, the mind sharpens, and sometimes you gain an ability."
I suspected that the awakening came less from chance than from a reality that even an improved body could not escape, but I did not say so.
Victoria examined herself closely, and then her attention reached me. The droplet split. A portion flew at me, and, leaving only my head free, it submerged me. At a glance it looked like an attack. It was not.
The droplet that had tossed and scrubbed me as if I had been thrown into a washing machine fell away. I must have been quite dirty, because the water had turned black. A moment later it slipped neatly down the drain. Not a drop clung to me, and yet I was clean.
"The ability. You're making good use of it."
"It moves as naturally as my own hands and feet, and I hate how that feels. But are you really not a god? Just listening to what you said, it sounds incredibly good. And this power, more than anything. If a god didn't give it to me, then what is it, honestly?"
It meant that what was lost was greater still. I did not tell her that. I said something else instead.
"Remember this. The contract happens only once. Do not imagine that if you are hurt again, another contract can heal you."
"If I could keep coming back to life, that would be scarier. Anything else?"
There was nothing else. I thought so, and I had already begun to shake my head when I stopped. There was one thing.
"If a living creature contracts with me while bearing a wound that endangers its life, its skin turns blue."
"Blue? I thought my skin looked a little blue. Is it this?"
That was only because her skin had turned white. Skin of pure white is sometimes called pale, but it is not that kind of blue. I pointed to a vivid blue picture on one side of the washroom.
"This color."
Victoria startled.
"That's a corpse's color. People would mistake me for something a necromancer made. But if it can only happen once, then this has nothing to do with me, does it?"
For the moment, no. But when someone met with a terrible accident, there would be a person beside them whose power could heal any wound. Accidents arrive without warning, and the scars they leave last a lifetime. If they called me then and resented me for it, that would be a problem, so I was drawing the line in advance.
"I am not a god. I am nothing more than a simple monster. Remember that."
Something in my words must have reached her, because Victoria nodded with a serious face. Then she came down to the floor and poured every bit of the water into the drain. In the place where she had washed, not a drop remained—not even dampness. She had gained an tremendously powerful ability.
Handled well, I thought, she might dry a person out entirely, like jerky, or move the blood inside them. It was only something from a story, but there had been a case where waterbending became bloodbending. Instead of saying so, I said this.
"Get dressed quickly. Before you catch a cold."
Victoria gave a bitter smile.
"It's a little much to talk like that and then introduce yourself as a monster."
"I have a principle of not telling lies. I'll be waiting outside."
I stepped out and waited for her to dress and emerge. When she did, I moved to tidy her hair, realized there was not a drop of moisture in it, and lowered my hand. Psychic powers really were something.
Victoria and I sat facing each other. An oddly awkward air had just settled over us.
Paaaaaaaaang.
A horn blew, and with it an announcement rolled through the ship, declaring that we had arrived somewhere. The broadcast blared three times, and the moment it ended Victoria opened her mouth as if she had been waiting for it.
"We're not getting off here. We get off the stop after next, so remember that."
I already knew, but I nodded as if I didn't. I had no intention of telling anyone that I gained the memories of those I harvested. Not now, and not ever after.
Victoria stared straight at me. From the top of my head to the tips of my feet, she looked me over in every corner with a strangely glassy gaze.
"Oh, right. Your name. You asked me to decide it earlier."
That she was asking meant she had decided.
"Is the postponement over?"
"Yeah. I figured that if I thought about it properly it'd take forever, so I decided to keep it simple."
Victoria flicked her fingers. The humidity in the room dropped, and at the same time a droplet formed before her. She moved it, and shaped it into letters.
A simple name. Well, a name tossed together like that suited me. It was only a nickname, anyway.
"Bell. Then I'll use this as my name from now on."
"You're not going to say it's too simple?"
"I like it that way."
Victoria let out a small sigh of relief. In truth, I knew her sense for names, so I was more than grateful even for this. She was the sort of person who stamped her inventions with nothing but names overflowing with a science student's sensibility, things like Standard Ingestible Synthetic Construct ver. 1.2.
For reference, that one was popcorn. That should give a rough idea of the naming sense in question.
"Bell, is it. A beauty? Does this face look pretty to you?"
"Ah."
Something caught. I looked at Victoria, and she wore a guilty expression, avoiding my eyes. I searched her memories and found no one who had ever gone by the name Bell.
"What is it?"
"No, it's just... don't get mad?"
"I won't."
When I answered, she quietly reached a hand into the empty air. A monster's shape appeared there. The first form of this body.
"This was extremely horrific, so you came at it ironically?"
It was a memorable face, certainly. Cloudy white eyes. Needle-sharp teeth packed tight together, and a face hideous as if a fish and a human had been stirred into one. By the standards of the Daegon's original species, it was a handsome man!
"Someone is due for a scolding."
"You said you wouldn't get mad!"
I wasn't mad. Naming a person that way did look rather conscienceless. It wasn't that I failed to understand the notion of looking at an ugly creature and calling it Pretty.
"I'm hungry, so buy me a meal. This body. If it doesn't eat soon, there'll be trouble."
"You really do talk strangely. But, yeah. You're right. There should be a dining hall, so let's go there."
The one with the money was Victoria. We left our luggage and headed for the dining hall together.