Episode 222: The Bluetooth Shower
Rinea hummed a little tune as she worked. As the shrine maiden charged with guarding the World Tree in person, she was under no obligation to fuss over every petty chore — and yet simply keeping the ground around the World Tree clean filled her with such quiet satisfaction that she went about it of her own free will, whether anyone asked her to or not.
"Mmm..."
When evening came, the streets grew more dazzling still. Lamps flared to life in time with the setting sun, and the roads held on to a brightness that hardly differed from day. Barring some special occasion, the holy site allowed passage at every hour, and the shops kept hours to match. A few even ran three shifts and stayed open around the clock.
Once the day's work was done, she made her way to where Hana was. She had not forgotten, of course, to stop by whenever a spare moment offered itself, just to look in on her. It was Rinea, after all, who had willfully dragged the World Tree here in the middle of her amusement in another dimension, and so she had to see to it that the girl suffered no discomfort. Why the World Tree went off to another dimension to amuse herself, Rinea could not say. Every shrine maiden until now had simply understood it that way. An unspoken rule, if one had to call it something.
Had it not been for her own greed, she would have sent the girl straight back to the place she had lived. But Rinea had always been different from the other shrine maidens. The moment she laid eyes on the World Tree's form, her heart had refused to stay in her grasp. Anyone who saw a World Tree so adorable, so lovable, would have thought exactly as she did. And so she had chosen to live beside her, if only for a single month. In truth she had wanted to hold her far longer, but to do so would plainly have dealt a grievous blow to the dimension where the World Tree properly dwelled. From what Rinea could sense, the concentration of the World Tree's presence in that other world was so high that most of the people there could no longer live without her.
She had wanted to keep her all to herself, and could not. Perhaps it was that contradiction that left the ache of regret behind. She was tempted, even, to throw everything aside, take the World Tree with her, and live in hiding. The other elves, of course, would have been horrified if they could see what she was thinking.
"My God...?"
Rinea opened the door slowly and stepped inside. A barrier lay over the house and its surroundings, a space no ordinary person could enter as they pleased. It stood high on a hill, and from its windows one could look down on the people enjoying the holy site. Perhaps that was why, when she came in, she found Hana gazing out through the glass at the view beyond, with the look of someone who badly wanted to go and play.
Creeeak—
I heard the door open and turned around. Rinea had come in. I gave her a single glance, then turned my attention back to the scenery outside. There was something so unreal about it that I couldn't help staring, wide-eyed with wonder.
That enormous tree was astonishing no matter how far away you stood. I had always thought skyscrapers were huge, and yet the tree was so vast it could casually dismiss even those as small. Immense. Majestic.
From talking with her, Rinea struck me as a kid who fit her age exactly. If I had to put a picture to it, she was like a girl in middle school — grown enough, but still a little too young to call a high schooler. Set beside me, a third-grader, she looked mature.
Of course, I hadn't asked her age, so I had no idea she was past a hundred. The moment I learned that, I might well have bowed my head and started calling her Grandma. No — a hundred years old was well past grandmother and into great-grandmother territory. The gap was more than wide enough for that. I was supposedly a child carrying the soul of the World Tree, but I didn't much care about things like that, and when I factored in that I'd been in my twenties before my previous life, I'd been looking at Rinea a little as if she were a kid. Learn her real age, and I'd be the one standing there as the child.
"Hmm..."
Anyway, I was still eyeing the festival-like bustle outside when Rinea seemed to read something in the way I was acting. She broke into a radiant smile.
"My God, would you like to step outside and take a turn around with me?"
The sun had already set, and still the world beyond the window shone as bright as a night market. Looking at it, I found I wanted to go out just as she said. Fortunately, she showed no sign of locking me away so she could have me all to herself. The mood up until now had felt exactly like she meant to shut me up somewhere quiet and only come by to look at me, so that was a relief.
"Yeah. Let's go out and play."
My heart was pounding. Who knew that being able to go back to my real home would put me so at ease? In novels, once someone gets dragged across dimensions, they almost never make it home again. Stories where the hero actually returns are vanishingly rare. But I was different. From what Rinea told me, sending even one person back to their original world was entirely within her power — declared, of course, with no small confidence that it was a tremendous spell which burned through a great deal of mana.
Ordinarily, she said, crossing dimensions required exact coordinates. Write down the coordinates of a place you knew nothing about, and it wouldn't be strange at all to pop into existence in the middle of outer space. Rinea, though, already knew the coordinates of where I had been, so she could open a dimensional gate that traveled back and forth between this place and the one where I lived. I didn't understand the first thing about how such a gate was made, or how it worked. What mattered was that she looked at me with kindly eyes. I wasn't locked in a laboratory and treated like a test subject, the way I had been before.
"Then allow me to explain this place to you...!"
Caught by the hand, I was hauled outside. I had been wearing clothes fitted for this world for quite a while now. The ones I'd originally worn were tucked carefully away, saved for the day I went back. This place had a developed civilization of its own, so the differences weren't all that stark. From the way Rinea talked, maybe it was somewhere around the modern era? Magic, though, was a variable, and that made the differences show in other ways.
What truly stunned me was learning they had a Bluetooth shower for bathing. Not a single hose was connected to it, and yet the moment I flipped the switch, water came blasting out. Film that and post it online, and ten people out of ten would swear it was a fake. A Bluetooth shower — wasn't that exactly the sort of magical nonsense people only joked about?
It felt like I'd come on a trip. Rinea looked strong, for one thing, and more than that, a place with an atmosphere this much like a fantasy world simply couldn't exist on Earth. The tree alone, with its impossible size, was proof enough. If I was only going to play here for a month and then leave, enjoying myself seemed like a perfectly good idea. Though from where I stood, it didn't look as if things would end in a month. One glance at the state Rinea was in, and I had to wonder whether she'd dig up some other way no matter what it took.
I stepped out of the cozy house held in Rinea's arms. I told her I could walk on my own, and what did she do but shake her head and try to carry me anyway. Being held was nice, so I didn't make much of a fuss. I could have refused with all my might, but wasn't it more comfortable to be carried?
We must have walked quite a way. Before I knew it, we had arrived at the holy site, which had taken on the look of a night market. Late as it was, plenty of elves were still coming and going. Maybe because it was night, or because the lighting was a little dim, it wasn't as splendid as I had imagined. Even so, there was nothing to stop us from walking around and enjoying it.
"Shall we go to the most important place, my God?"
"The important place?"
"Yes! A place none may enter unless they are authorized!"
That caught my ear at once. Right now I felt as if I'd landed in some tourist spot overseas. We could understand each other, thankfully, but nearly everything around me was strange and new. I nodded at what she said. If someone at a famous sightseeing spot told you a thing like that, following them was only common sense.
"Okay!"
With that, Rinea took my hand and started walking. Somewhere in the course of our earlier talks, watching the way I spoke, she seemed to have slipped little by little into treating me like a child. I was an adult, though, so that had to be a misunderstanding, didn't it?
Just because I looked young on the outside didn't mean I'd gotten younger on the inside too! I didn't care what anyone else thought. I was sure of it! I couldn't say what Rinea made of me, but she always spoke as if she were pouring reverence into every word. At our first meeting, her voice had trembled so hard it nearly shook apart.