Chapter 22
This is the first time I have left the room.
Of course I step outside once a day for the blessing, but that is only going down underground with Hieronymus and coming back up again, so I have never walked anything but the same path. Officially, then, this really is my first time out. And by officially I only mean that this is how it is to be taken—for reference. Whatever the truth of it may be.
Countless people who have received my blessing have already wandered this district, so the map of the area is nearly full. The point of a stroll, then, is not to look around. It is to move the body. What was it they said? That you have to run for at least an hour? When I trace back my old memories—so faded now that nothing but gray remains—a video like that surfaces. Back then I exercised for two days and quit. This time, I suppose, I will have to exercise a great deal more.
I had left the room and started walking when Hyungkeshuni followed along behind me.
"Hey. Rebecca. What are you out here for? If you mean to eat warmth, I'll have no choice but to stop you."
"You prepare three people a day for that, don't you? I came out to run. To maintain a body, they say a person needs to run."
The tone is strictly that of someone who saw it somewhere. She will assume Rebecca Rolf knows it, but in truth I saw it in a video. I don't lie.
"Running. Right. It's certainly not a bad way to train a body. But you're going to run in that body?"
Hyungkeshuni said it while pointing at me. I looked down at myself. The chest makes it hard to see below, but the body is healthy. I turned, testing its range of motion. It moves well—limber, this way and that. I can even manage poses I never could when I was a man. I drop into a full split, kick up into a handstand, and come back down onto my feet.
"The body moves just fine."
When I looked at Hyungkeshuni, she was staring at me with the face of someone who had seen what she was not meant to see. She scratched hard at the back of her head and stepped up in front of me, then hooked a hand beneath my chest and lifted. Such a very small hand. Through it, I felt I could lick the light. Close enough that I could take the warmth as well.
Of course, I held back. Yes. Not yet. I still have to hold back.
While I was honing my patience, Hyungkeshuni lifted my chest a few times, then caught the cloth and felt it. A deep sigh.
"Move around with something this heavy hanging off you, in clothes that thin, and the clothes will be ruined—the body along with them. There's a garment that holds them in place. Wear that. Do you remember it?"
Clothes. Other people's memories hold several kinds. Isla, for instance, suddenly had an adult's body after receiving my blessing, and she struggled to move; I have the memory of her trying all sorts of clothes then. But Rebecca Rolf's memories do not.
"There is no such thing in Rebecca Rolf's memories."
"Then I'll prepare it. For now, how about going back to the room?"
Ah. Of course. So Hyungkeshuni had not wanted me to leave my room. At the very least, she needed time to prepare. Had she only been waiting for a chance to tell me to go back? Or had a convenient reason simply presented itself, and was she testing me once?
I know this person still has not let her guard down. From time to time, looking at me, she wears a pained smile. Most would think it is because she is amused. In truth, it is the exact opposite. It is something like a habit. A very old habit. When she was afraid, she smiled instead of looking frightened, and she smiled that way for so long that—whatever her true age—she has forgotten the face one makes when afraid. If someone like her speaks while she is afraid, I will go along with her.
"Yes. I understand."
So I turned and walked back toward the room where I live, quietly studying Hyungkeshuni's expression as I went. She looked relieved. And beneath that expression—at the center of a person, there is light. A light considerably larger than the average, and, set beside that light, extremely little warmth.
Large light and abundant warmth. Large light and little warmth. Small light and little warmth. Those three exist. But I have never seen small light paired with abundant warmth. Light is the vessel, and warmth is something else. At first I thought it might be potential, but then a baby's small warmth makes no sense. So what warmth truly is remains unknown.
I suspect the light changes color when I am held inside it because I have been poured into the vessel. Originally it is a clear glass with water in it; once I enter, it becomes muddy water. Which is to say that Hyungkeshuni possesses an extremely large vessel. I look forward to the day that inside grows warm. If I can, I want a great deal of warmth. So—not yet.
I returned to the room. I sat down in the chair I often use, and Hyungkeshuni left, saying she would look for underwear. The part about looking for underwear is probably true. But that will not be all she means to do. It is very likely she intends to tell Hieronymus.
But that is fine. Even so, it is all right.
When Hieronymus looks at me, he sees me entirely as his subordinate. Yes. He believes he has domesticated me completely. In his gaze, his actions, his expression, there is the contempt of a man looking down on someone beneath him. The sour look he gets, especially, when he is forced to address me with respect is truly a sight to behold. But I pay it no mind.
Yes. I can read all of it, yet unless I am asked, I have no intention of saying that I know. Because no one asked, did they? If someone asked whether I can read their expression, I would say yes. I have no intention of lying.
So Hieronymus is very likely to think along these lines. Leave Rebecca Rolf's body alone and it weakens. She went out because she needed exercise, but she came back at Hyungkeshuni's word. A creature brought perfectly to heel. Ta-da. The weakness of a living thing, plain to see. It obeys commands. There is no problem anywhere.
I have shown him a low intelligence all along, so there is no need to complicate the question of how he sees me. Unfortunately, I only see a great deal; I am not clever. I cannot manage complex calculations either. That is simply all there is. If I was going to become a monster, I wish I had become a genius, the way a monster ought to be. Wishing for what I do not have changes nothing. So I only need to lower myself, until I am easy to predict. For the sake of warmth, I have no choice but to think hard with the cards I currently hold, and go on from there. I need more warmth.
I was laying plans for the future when the door opened, and Joanna came in carrying a new blanket and a cover.
"Welcome, Joanna."
"Yes, Lady Rebecca. I've returned. Ah—I might bump into you, so would you step a little to the side?"
Joanna's arms were full of bedding. But if I followed her gaze, she knew exactly where I was from my reflection in the mirror and the metal. I would hardly get in the way of someone working so diligently to clean the room I live in. I stood, picked up the chair I had been sitting in, and went to stand in the corner.
Seeing me, Joanna smiled faintly, carried the bedding to the bed, and set the place to rights with practiced hands. The mattress looked almost too large for a woman to lift, but Joanna can hoist a water barrel the size of a person in one hand. Among those who have received my blessing, her strength is on the high side. Her light, though, is not particularly large. Average, or a little below. So it seems a large vessel does not necessarily let one bring great power to bear. I am not sure.
"Lady Rebecca. Where has Lady Hyungkeshuni gone?"
"She went to look for underwear."
"Oh my, underwear? That should all be in this drawer. You mean your underwear, Lady Rebecca?"
Joanna said it while drawing the cover over the mattress. I had only said underwear, and yet she knew it was mine, not Hyungkeshuni's. Quietly marveling, I told her yes. Then she patted the cover smooth, and when she shook the blanket out over it a few times, it settled into a neat fold all on its own. Remarkable skill.
And she came to stand before me. Say blue, and one thinks of a bruise gone livid, but this was a woman with blue skin of a somewhat different shade. By her looks she seemed more a girl than a grown woman. Her eyes were inverted, the whites gone black—the sort certain works call demon eyes—and that strangeness covered the rest of her appearance. Joanna stepped up to me and offered a docile smile.
"Seeing clothes I've never seen before, were you perhaps about to go outside?"
She had caught on. Joanna is not a simply gentle person. If anything, it is remarkable that she can make a face like that.
After her husband abandoned her and she was driven from the household, she did every kind of grinding labor. She deceived people, and even sent them to dangerous places knowing they would die. And a few coins for her trouble. That was how she lived. In this world, unless one is taken to a temple—a place with treatment like magic—and money is spent there, a miscarriage damages the body quite fatally. It ruined the mind as well as the body. A typical person, steeped in misfortune and turned wicked. And it was no different even after she placed herself in the care of the Church of Future Hope. A life of slandering others and dragging them down in order to climb, simply so that she might live. Then her ruined body finally failed to hold and began to rot, and in the end she was cast out. As she lay dying, Hieronymus dragged her before me as a test subject.
"Yes, that's right, Joanna."
"Then Lady Hyungkeshuni went to find undergarments for exercise? If it's clothes like that, I know someone who knows them well. Shall I bring them?"
She said this while picking up the chair in front of me and setting it back where it belonged.
"It won't be too late to do that after I've seen what Hyungkeshuni brings."
Joanna nodded. There was no light of faith in the way she looked at me. She simply tended me because I was someone above her. In her memories she had leaned on the Church of Future Hope as the pillar of her heart, enough that I thought she might cling to me, but I saw none of that distortion. If anything, she had changed in a remarkably wholesome way. By day she looked after me; when night came, she went to where the warriors of the faith trained, and she trained. She had crossed paths not only with Isla but with Wide as well, and neither of them paid her any mind. Nor did she offer her opinions to anyone. She lowered her head quietly and passed by—this, when most who receive my blessing swell in ego and come to trust their own power more than any god.
Or was it that her experience had told her what I was thinking? Perhaps, because I am nothing but a beast, she was caring for me with the feeling of someone tending an animal in a zoo. And so we simply went on, keeping a lukewarm distance.
Ah, I did startle Joanna once. One day, far off, my harvesters were fighting a knight whose sword was wrapped in light, and I wanted to attend to that side, so I laid Rebecca Rolf down on the bed and focused over there. When the battle ended and I looked, Joanna was reading a book beside Hyungkeshuni. The moment Rebecca Rolf sat up, Joanna closed the book. So I told her then to just read. To do what she wanted. She was strangely surprised. Of course, nothing changed after that.
If anything did change, it was only that when I sit still, she reads from the bookshelf at Hyungkeshuni's place. But facing me while I do nothing is no fun, so I ought to let her do something or other. Because once she dies, I will take all of it. I would like her to gather as much as she can. Then, when I take it, I can take more. That warmth is the most important thing has not changed. But licking memories is enjoyable, too.
That is roughly how it is. This is how I live, inside this wide room.